Chicago college learns about Katrina survivors

After nearly six months of bureaucratic hoop-jumping at Harold Washington College in Chicago, a new student group, the Progressive Student Forum (PSF), held its first meeting on Feb. 20 to discuss the treatment of Hurricane Katrina survivors.

Protest at Chicago’s FEMA office. WW photo: Eric Struch

The PSF is a multi-national group of students, all of whom have a background in community organizing or other types of political activism. Harold Washington is part of the community college system here, its student body mostly African-American and Latin@, with many working-class white students and recent Asian immigrants.

Working closely with the Black Student Union, the PSF organized the meeting for Black History Month around the theme, “Black History Month Means Struggle, Stop Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans!” The featured speaker was People’s Hurricane Relief Committee organizer Malcolm Suber.

Suber painted a picture of New Orleans as a city where the African-American community was under attack before the storm, saying, “The hurricane hit way before Katrina.” The disaster only intensified an already existing situation. Most people who needed shelter after Katrina also needed it before, said Suber, who emphasized that what was shown on television doesn’t begin to convey the magnitude of the destruction. It must be witnessed to be believed.

Suber said Katrina provided the opportunity the city administration had been looking for to displace the African-American community, to carry out “ethnic cleansing by neglect.” This catastrophe also provided the opportunity for the rulers of New Orleans to reach another goal—the destruction of the city’s public school system. All 5,000 teachers have been fired and their union has been broken. There is no public educational system in New Orleans any more.

The city’s white rulers are treating what remains of the African-American community as their private social laboratory to study the feasibility of a completely privatized “educational system.” All functioning schools in New Orleans are now charter schools that do not recognize the teachers’ union and are beyond any sort of public oversight.

Suber criticized current New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, calling him “an African-American front man for the New Orleans bourgeoisie.” Although Nagin will be running against several rich white men in the next election, the African-American community does not see him as representative of their interests, said Suber. In the last election, Nagin received only 20 percent of the Black vote.

Suber sees a clear danger that many of the African-American survivors who were forced to flee Katrina will be disenfranchised during the next election. New Orleans has had an African-American mayor since 1978. Suber made it clear that no one in the Black community wants to return to the days when rich whites had a monopoly on the mayor’s office.

Suber considers the handling of the Katrina disaster to be an attack on the African-American nation at its very heart. He said that in order to move the revolutionary movement forward in the heartland of imperialism, the anti-war movement must take up Katrina survivors’ demands.

Their demands are: (1) The right of survivors to return; (2) no spending of money without the people’s approval; and (3) the people must direct the reconstruction.

Activists at the meeting planned to attend a demonstration at FEMA headquarters in Chicago that was held on Feb. 28.