Vol. 71/No. 31 September 3, 2007
Billboards herald the "rebirth" of New Orleans and the big hotels and downtown casino report record profits. But many working people face huge obstacles in trying to return to live and work here since the social disaster precipitated by Hurricane Katrina two years ago. “None of those apartments suffered much damage and yet people are not allowed to live in them,” Hayes said, as we passed by hundreds of empty public housing units. “The hospitals are closed.
“And just look at all those nasty little trailers. Almost two years since Katrina and people are still stuck in them, getting sick while they wait forever to see if they can get some help rebuilding their homes. FEMA is still trying to hide from that,” she said, referring to the 76,000 trailers that continue to serve as “temporary” housing for people throughout the Gulf Coast.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) delayed testing the trailers for formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, for more than a year after complaints that residents were becoming ill, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported July 20. In a recently exposed 2006 memo, the paper said, a FEMA lawyer cautioned against testing. He wrote, “Once you get results and should they indicate some problems, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.”
“I lived in one of those for a year,” Sh’tarra Ohillia, a student at Southern University at New Orleans, said in an interview. “Apartments are so expensive now, but my baby was just getting too sick in that trailer. The whole SU campus is still in trailers.”
Many workers came to New Orleans from other states or countries to find jobs doing cleanup and reconstruction jobs. They not only confront inferior housing, high rents, closed hospitals, and lack of other basic services. Many have complained that contractors sometimes do not pay them after long days cleaning up the hurricane-damaged areas.
Mike Ware, a construction worker who moved here from Indiana shortly before Katrina, said, "I found myself with nothing after the storm passed. I literally lived out of a tool shack for three months.
“Then I got work over in Marrero,” he recounted. “I’d carpool there every Monday with a group of six guys from Mexico, stay in trailers during the week, and then come back here on Saturday.
“We really fixed up those trailers—brought up our own microwaves, TVs, VCRs, stereos, and other things,” he said. “Then one Monday we came back and it was all gone - the trailers and all our stuff—taken by the bosses along with all hope of getting paid."
"Yes, sometimes you end up working for free," Samuel Galán, a Guatemalan-born day laborer said as he stood with half a dozen other workers on the median strip at Broad Avenue and Martin Luther King, waiting for trucks to come by and offer them work for the day.
"And now you're lucky if you even work four days a week,” said Galán. “And the pay is down from before."
In the spring of 2006 Rick Tompkins went to New Orleans to take a job offer hauling trailers for FEMA. “The first week I worked there the government shut the job down,” he said. “Apparently they were writing checks to all kinds of people who weren't doing any work, leaving none for us workers.
“After that I did cleanup work, but we had to fight to get paid from that contractor, too. I just stayed there just until I made enough to get back to Houston."
“This is why we are going to have the Tribunal,” Hayes said. The organization she belongs to, Safe Streets/Strong Communities, along with the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and other local groups have called an international tribunal on hurricanes Rita and Katrina from August 29 to September 2. The Tribunal will charge the U.S. government with criminal mistreatment of hurricane victims.
“We’re all going to testify and we are going to take it through these streets with an anniversary march on August 29,” she said. “Tell everybody to come down for that.”
Related articles:
Gov't disregard for safety led to bridge collapse
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