UN to Investigate Forced Evictions in Post-Katrina NOLA
Published July 22, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
Courtesy of the domestic economic human rights organization NESRI, I see that the United Nations's Advisory Group on Forced Evictions will spend next week in New Orleans, investigating three key eviction issues: "the demolition of public housing; the displacement of Mid City residents to make way for the Louisiana State University hospital; and growing homelessness." It is the UN's third visit to the city in 3 years; the tour will begin with testimony from displaced residents, incl. their visions for rebuilding the city.
Domestic human and civil rights activists have worked with the UN for decades in an effort to pressure the US to grant and honor full rights to its citizens, to little tangible effect from the average citizen's perspective (there's a both lack of public knowledge and a willful ignorance about HR violations and activism here at home). Certainly, during the Bush Administration, and in the post-Katrina era, when I became especially tuned in to domestic human rights activism, the public shaming that the UN brings to our country was virtually ignored, if not outright condemned by our nationalist, imperial Administration.
What does seem to be highly influential in involving the UN in stateside investigations is the impact on Americans who have had their human rights violated. From conversations with Sam Jackson, founder of May Day New Orleans (a partner of NESRI's) and others, I know that human rights organizing of poor communities and communities of color - particularly when its linked to other communities (e.g., Tsunami survivors) - is an excellent tool for mobilizing and empowering residents to fight back against social injustice. Now if only we could equip them with more resources for their fight, and shift public awareness to the relevance of international human rights treaties on our laws and policies.
NESRI's announcement includes this key passage on how NOLA's post-Katrina HR violations are part of a nationwide move towards privatization and displacement:
The forced evictions being investigated in New Orleans come as a result of a rebuilding process that favors private sector interests over the interests of residents. This emphasis on private sector develop-ment is being felt across the country with devastating effects including the current economic crisis, which has its roots in the housing sector. While post-Katrina redevelopment policies have had a disproportion-ately adverse impact on poor and low-income African American communities, the ongoing lack of afford-able housing, and the evictions to make way for private sector development, is a significant issue for all residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. (my emphases)
Additional info is available here, here, and from the National Law Center on Homeless & Poverty here.
(Photo of March 2009 May Day NOLA Rally at Lafitte public housing site, New Orleans, LA; by NESRI)
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Comments (4)
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Author
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Leigh is a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery. She sits on the Board of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, and has worked with non-profits, foundations and local governments on policies and programs aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality.
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I recently came back from Gulf Port and there are similar violations there. It is a shame when property owned by a family for years is being to decendents because of lack of their names on a deed.
HUD is to blame accross the land in how they are not in the business of building low-income housing. When they started doing urban renewal then it became some sort of monster that cares noting about housing anybody. Hope VI programs and other tear down programs have destroyed at least a third of the public housing that was available in many communities and the legal discriminating practices are causing homelessness rampitly.
There were changes in Gulf Port to how far a house had to be from the street in order to be able to be rebuilt. This hit some communities hard, who had lost there homes to Katrina and lost their land to Gulf Port.
It was sad to see the only thing still there was an occational mailbox. No one should have been able to take that land. But they built back the casios. Public Housing is necessary for families with low incomes to be able to have housing. What is wrong with us as a society when somebody made $200000.00 on boxes that they won't even let people live in them now. And the poisonous trailers. That somebody know were messed up before the first was sent.
More than civil rights were being violated. Nothing was done about it. There should be housing for all American. Not prisons or jails instead of housing. But this is what we build and housing our homeless here and in every city in America is not any kind of a priority.
My heart goes out to groups fighting to help these folks who not only suffer from the event itself but from being treating like human trash not deserving of even a thought. Women for Coastal Change keep on keeping on.
Posted by Cathie Buckner on 07/22/2009 @ 09:50AM PT
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Cathie - Thanks for your comment! I will have to check out Women for Coastal Change!
Posted by Leigh Graham on 07/22/2009 @ 10:17AM PT
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Yeah, there's something seriously wrong with our society and it's about time that someone - the UN if that's who it has to be - starts calling us on it. Why? Because we've grown very selective in what we call human rights - particularly within our own borders - and we'll actively violate at least Article 25 of the Declaration of Human Rights while pretending we uphold it so well we try to work on enforcing the same document elsewhere because of violations of other Articles. Yuck. Can anyone say blatant hypocrisy? Either we support human rights or we don't - and human rights involve much more than being able to tell your government that they suck when they don't want to hear that and would like to imprison or kill you for saying so.
We've been at this for a long time too. Often along not just the lines of poverty, but quite often along lines of any identifiable "difference" - ethnicity, race, disability, gender, etc. Back on Hopi between there an Navajo, there's an area long known as the Disputed lands. The area was given originally to the Hopi, then the U.S. decided to re-deed it to the Navajo in violation of the treaty with the Hopi and the Hopi called them on it. That was fought for years and it reached a point that for quite a while if you were living on the Disputed Lands, you'd need a housing permit to do any repairs needing more than masking tape and thumbtacks - this in an area with gale force winds than can get snow in winter and dust storms the rest of the year. This is observing human rights? No wonder the Hopi took the U.S. and its treaty violations and how they treated the Hopi people to the UN.
As to HUD, seems like lately they're more interested in getting the middle class into purchasing homes. Which has become a bit of a cash cow since a lot of those end up in foreclosure if you know where to look But what is this doing for housing those who NEED the help? Nothing - absolutely, positively NOTHING. If anything, it's stealing money from our needs and making sure the housing we need won't happen.
As a side note, did you know we're the only "Western, civilized nation" that didn't sign the treaty about disability rights that was developed under Bush (as in W)? He claimed that our ADA - which has a particularly and hideously lousy history of protecting the disabled - would be "enough" and that we "didn't need it" so he refused to sign on. So it's the U.S and some weird Third World Countries that didn't sign.
I hope that the UN finds wrong doing - I'm sure it's there based on what I've seen in my life, even having gone no further east than the Texas Panhandle. And I hope that whatever they find is made VERY public and forced to be fixed - with some sort of restitution for those who've suffered. These wrongs in our nation need to stop NOW.
Posted by Danetta Amschler on 07/22/2009 @ 09:16PM PT
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Am I the only person who sees Post-Katrina NOLA as being a gentrified NOLA?
Posted by Sarah Nelson on 10/23/2009 @ 03:58PM PT
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