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VIDEO: Katrina Plus Ten Months - Professor Bill Quigley Speaks

Over 7,200 family dwellings sit empty throughout New Orleans. No, not FEMA trailers. These are solid brick public housing projects that survived Katrina. They only require interior repairs, and thousands of displaced low income families want to move back in. But instead, they are being fenced off and condemned. Why? Chris Hume and L. Wild Horse speak with Professor Bill Quigley and several former tenants.

I have watched this video, and it is heart-wrenching to see the St. Bernard Parish Public Housing Project with some of their former tenants' belongings still in the vacant buildings, while the tenants are locked out by a huge padlocked fence. They sleep in tents, on the street..

All of the people interviewed would be more than willing to paint and do whatever repairs were needed to make these dwellings habitable. It would not take that much, as these buildings are structurally sound, without major damages. However, the city does not want these inhabitants of the 'projects' back. City officials want to tear down the buildings to make upscale developments and a golf-course. It is all part of the gentrification of New Orleans, where low-income residents are the unwanted detritus.

"God did in one weekend what we've been trying to do for 20 years", a local Congressman said after Katrina, according to Prof. Quigley."

Quigley asserts that there are Lower Ninth Ward-type areas scattered throughout the U.S., in all major cities. He talks about the enormous sums spent on American militarisation around the globe, and how that money could be put to so much better use to fix America's urban infrastructures and social programs.

By this callous, ruthless disregard for its poorer citizens, USA the global bully, shows the world: "do as I say, not as I do"...

And the locked-out, homeless residents are planning a march to reclaim their homes on that biggest of national American holidays: the 4th of July.

WATCH VIDEO



Tags for this entry: New Orleans, Katrina, USA.

posted by Annamarie at 11:09 PM