The Upcoming, all important fight: Rebuilding NO

[judy]

Naomi Klein nails it:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050926/klein

"The statement came from Community Labor United, a coalition of low-income groups in New Orleans. It went on to demand that a committee made up of evacuees "oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations collecting resources on behalf of our people.... We are calling for evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans."
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There are already signs that New Orleans evacuees could face a similarly brutal second storm. Jimmy Reiss, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, told Newsweek that he has been brainstorming about how "to use this catastrophe as a once-in-an-eon opportunity to change the dynamic." The Business Council's wish list is well-known: low wages, low taxes, more luxury condos and hotels. Before the flood, this highly profitable vision was already displacing thousands of poor African-Americans: While their music and culture was for sale in an increasingly corporatized French Quarter (where only 4.3 percent of residents are black), their housing developments were being torn down. "For white tourists and businesspeople, New Orleans' reputation is 'a great place to have a vacation but don't leave the French Quarter or you'll get shot,'" Jordan Flaherty, a New Orleans-based labor organizer told me the day after he left the city by boat. "Now the developers have their big chance to disperse the obstacle to gentrification--poor people."

Here's a better idea: New Orleans could be reconstructed by and for the very people most victimized by the flood. Schools and hospitals that were falling apart before could finally have adequate resources; the rebuilding could create thousands of local jobs and provide massive skills training in decent paying industries. Rather than handing over the reconstruction to the same corrupt elite that failed the city so spectacularly, the effort could be led by groups like Douglass Community Coalition
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This is going to be the crux of the matter...However, I can't help but feel that the Junta has other plans in mind...
We're going to have to help and be activists to do what we can for this! I hope at least some Democrats jump on this and defend the people of New Orleans reclaim their city!

Another problem that is not mentioned very much in MSM: What to do with the poisoned waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Dumping them into the Mississippi or into the Gulf will create a nationwide/worldwide environmental disaster.
Will it be possible to contain the waters and clean up the lake in place? (I am an ignoramus in these matters...)