Power to the people of New Orleans

What took place during Hurricane Katrina, and has been playing out ever since, is nothing less than an attempt to wipe out the historic African-American community of New Orleans, which has survived slavery, segregation, the Great Depression, the Ku Klux Klan and every form of racism and repression for generations.

The ruling class of New Orleans is trying to utilize the Katrina crisis for a vast and brutal program of urban removal and racist gentrification. This must be stopped. The struggle for the right of return of the survivors, and for self-determination in rebuilding the Black community of New Orleans, is a vital cause which deserves and requires the full and determined support of all progressive and revolutionary forces throughout the country—from the anti-war movement to the labor movement and every sector of society fighting for social and economic justice.

What began as a natural disaster, when Hurricane Katrina first hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 31, ended up as an unnatural social catastrophe for the African-American population of New Orleans. Racist authorities sat by as flood waters from broken levees trapped tens of thousands of people.

The Katrina crisis became an international event of great magnitude as the world watched U.S. racism in action. Thousands of African-American men, women and children in the first days of the crisis were stranded on rooftops, herded into the Superdome and the Convention Center and left without food, water, clothing, medicine or any means of escape.

The U.S. government, which has the resources to build vast military bases overnight and can move armies across the globe, did not move rapidly to the rescue. Instead it sent in the 82nd Airborne, the National Guard, and Blackwell mercenaries—fresh from the battlefields where they had been fighting to colonize the people of Afghanistan and Iraq—to the streets of New Orleans to protect the property of the wealthy, to keep people from taking food and the necessities of life, and to treat the victimized, suffering Black population as the enemy.

The media reinforced the state with false reports of gunfire directed against “rescuers.” It also inflamed racism with charges of “looting,” directed against African-Americans trying to survive, while describing white people doing the same thing as merely trying to provide necessities for themselves in an emergency. The most outrageous, totally unverified reports of violence in the Convention Center and at other locations, later shown to be totally false, were reported as hard facts by the racist media in order to justify the state repression.

When transportation finally came, families were forcibly separated and herded onto buses without knowing where their relatives and loved ones were being ship ped. Such scenes were painfully reminiscent of family separations during slavery.

Today, more than two months after the disaster, there are still over 6,000 people officially listed as missing, many of them children. Families are still separated. Hundreds of bodies have not been identified. The callousness and racism of the authorities knows no bounds.

The intentions of the rich in this disaster were made clear early on when Joseph Canizaro, one of the biggest developers in New Orleans and close to the political power brokers, indicated that Katrina presented New Orleans with a “clean sheet to start again.” And James Reiss, who serves the shipbuilding industry, told the Wall Street Journal: “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, politically and economically.” Reiss emphasized that he was “not just speaking for myself here” but for the New Orleans ruling class.

Since then Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin have created commissions stacked with bankers, real estate developers, corporate managers, investment firms, shipyard owners, energy and chemical companies, restaurant owners and all manner of rich capitalists who are poised to take over the reconstruction effort.

These forces want to see to it that the hundreds of thousands of survivors remain scattered across the country. They want to keep the African-American community weak and fragmented while they take over their neighborhoods and rebuild them with condominiums and high-income devel opments of all types. While wealthy and middle-class white areas and tourist centers are coming back, the Black community is being left to further deteriorate.

The bold attempt by the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coali tion to convene an emergency conference and Survivors General Assembly and to organize a march on New Orleans must be applauded and supported. It is a step forward in the struggle for self-determination of the African-American community and it points the way to the creation of an independent, self-acting mass organization, which is the only real basis upon which the community can be defended.

The emphasis on the right of return is fundamental. The need to reach out nationally and find ways to reconstitute the community is a first priority. This is a direct repudiation of the right of FEMA, which is a subdivision of the Department of Homeland Security, to run the assistance program. How can this repressive police agency possibly be left in charge of helping the people of New Orleans?

It is a repudiation of the right of the corporations to design the programs and control the billions of dollars that are going to flow into reconstruction. The community must be in control of the rebuilding.

The government must be investigated and charged with crimes of neglect, criminal indifference and negligence, and reparations must be paid to victims and survivors, as called for by the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund.

Finally, it must be said that the anti-war movement and the labor movement should have done a great deal more much earlier in this crisis. Up until now they have hung back. But now that the organized effort to build solidarity and support for self-determination is taking shape, the opportunity arises to catch up. Nothing could be more vital to build unity in the movement than to forge solidarity between the oppressed African-American people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and the anti-war and working class movements.

All support to the Survivors General Assembly, to the march on New Orleans, and to the struggle for the right of return and self-determination in New Orleans.