“They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”

Published August 29th, 2007 in Articles

New Orleans two years after
by Greg Palast

[Thurs August 30] “They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.”

It wasn’t a pretty statement. But I wasn’t looking for pretty. I’d taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn’t Malik’s concern.

We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”

These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the  Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.

Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.

Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?

“They just messing all over us. Putting me out our own house. We come to go back to our own home and when we get there they got the police there putting us out. Oh, no, this is not right. I’m coming here from Texas seeing if I can get my house back. But they said they ain’t letting nobody in. But where we gonna go at?”

Idiot me, I asked, “Where are you going to go tonight?”

“That’s what I want to know, Mister. Where I’m going to go - me and my kids?”

With the help of Patricia Thomas, a Lafitte resident, we broke into an apartment. The place was gorgeous. The cereal boxes still dry. This was Patricia’s home. But we decided to get out before we got busted.

I wasn’t naïve. I had a good idea what this scam was all about: 89,000 poor and working class families stuck in Homeland Security’s trailer park gulag while their good homes were guarded against their return by mercenaries. Two decades ago, I worked for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Even then, the plan was to evict poor folk out of this very valuable real estate. But it took the cover of a hurricane to do it.

Malik’s organization, Common Ground, wouldn’t wait for permission from the federal and local commissars to help folks return. They organized takeovers of public housing by the residents. And, in the face of threats and official displeasure, restored 350 apartments in a destroyed private development on the high ground across the Mississippi in the ward called, “Algiers.” The tenants rebuilt their own homes with their own sweat and their own scraps of cash based on a promise of the landlords to sell Common Ground the property in return for restoring it.

Why, I asked Malik, was there this strange lock-out from public housing?

Malik shook his dreds. “They didn’t want to open it up. They wanted them closed. They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”

For Malik, the emphasis is on “poor.” The racial politics of the Deep South is as ugly as it is in Philadelphia, Pa. But the New Orleans city establishment has no problem with Black folk per se. After all, Mayor Ray Nagin’s parents are African-American.

It’s the Black survivors without the cash that are a problem. So where New Orleans once stood, Mayor Nagin, in connivance with a Bush regime more than happy to keep a quarter million poor folk (i.e. Democrats) out of this swing state, is creating a new city: a tourist town with a French Quarter, loose-spending drunks, hot-sheets hotels and a few Black people to perform the modern version of minstrel shows.

Malik explained, “It’s two cities. You know? There’s the city for the white and the rich. And there’s another city for the poor and Blacks. You know, the city that’s for the white and rich has recovered. They had a Jazz Fest. They had a Mardi Gras. They’re going to have the Saints playing for those who have recovered. But for those who haven’t recovered, there’s nothing.”

So where are they now? The sobbing woman and her kids are gone: back to Texas, or wherever. But they will not be allowed back into Lafitte. Ever.

And Patricia Thomas? Patricia found work sweeping up tourists’ vomit and beer each morning at a French Quarter karioke joint. Not much pay, no health insurance, of course. A few months ago, Patricia died - in a city bereft of health care. New Orleans has closed all its public hospitals but for one “charity” make-shift emergency ward in an abandoned department store.

And the one bright star, Malik’s housing project? The tenants’ work was done this past December. By Christmastime, they received their eviction notices - and all were carried out of their rebuilt homes by marshals right after the New Year, including a paraplegic resident who’d lived in the Algiers building for decades.

Hurricane recovery is class war by other means. And in this war of the powerful against the powerless, Mr. Bush can rightly land his fighter plane in Louisiana and declare that, unlike the war in Iraq, it is, indeed, “Mission Accomplished.”

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FightNight2007

VS.

So who do you think would win? smart money is on Mr.Stay-Puft.  The scoundrel was called onto earth by none of other than Gozer, the Transdimensional god of Ancient Cimmeria. Between you and me (on a tip from The Keymaster), Mr.Stay-Puft fights dirty. That puts Buddha as the lovable underdog, so higher odds pay higher dividends.

Anyway, look this is what really caught my attention at the Buddha temple on Sunday. And I guess this is some wierd cultural thing I'll never understand:

Rafik has left Wuxi.
Here's the breakdown of events:
- a beer at the blue bar
- one dinner at a sushi restaurant
- one afternoon at the Wuxi zoo
- a couple of lunches at the muslim restaurant

Amazing how little time you can spend with someone when they're staying over at your place for two whole months but are pussy-whipped into submission by some bird they barely just met.

Interesting update: I was browsing through some of my videos, and my Wuxi Zoo video was apparently linked off the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for animal rights. I can't find the original link or embedded video on their website, but whatever. It was at one point linked there. Cool! The closest I'll ever come to Bardot and her tattas.
They linked to a video article on SKY NEWS that's actually quite interesting on animal cruelty right here in Shaaaaaaao'lin land. The video is fascinating; to the amusement and howls of laughter of tourists, old and young alike, they feed live cows to a pack of overweight tigers and watch them tear the beast into pieces. And they didn't censor it for once.

Rush Hour 3 has hit theaters in the US and DVD shops in Wuxi. The reason? Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker and Brett Ratner signed a big fat check. Maybe one of those novelty jumbo-sized checks, with a complementary handshake from the studio execs. You can't make fun of a movie like this because its simply like making fun of an impaired individual. Its not fair because it wasn't born like everyone else. Doesn't matter. I'm thinking its the perfect film to review for the next Wuxi life, at least as a humorous piece, because as far as mind-enlightening reading material goes you'd have to be fucking kidding!

This bit from Roger Ebert gave me a good chuckle:
The cops go there and have a battle with the world's tallest man (Sun Ming Ming). I think he's the same man who got married recently and was about twice as tall as his bride. Or maybe he's another tall guy -- naw, it has to be the same guy. Yao Ming, the basketball player, is only 7 feet, 6 inches, and Sun Ming Ming is 7 feet, 9 inches. A guy that tall, on his wedding night he could be making love and solving a Rubik's Cube at the same time.

Ho ho ho.

My review will naturally cover the deep cultural implications of a film that deals with the complexities of an interracial pairing of police officers (get it?!! one's black and one's asian! LOL!!!!!!!!).

My time with "Cokehead" is coming to a close. I can't say we've had much fun, because he was never around anyway. My place was his roadside motel with all the nasty details that entails. I shoulda charged him rent...

August is halfway through and soon we'll be basking in the calm waters of September once again. I'm looking forward to the peace and quiet that'll wash me back into a zen-like state.
I've recently joined a pool club and can now enjoy a swim in the morning on select days of the week. The pool in terms of cleanliness is alright, but I've seen better. What's most important is the fact that I've got an outlet to shed some extra energy and pounds over the course of a week (only about 4 times a week with my current schedule).

I'm scheduled to finally visit the LingShan Buddha statue here in Wuxi after a year of excitedly and impatiently waiting. Would Jesus be angry at me for visiting a shrine to one of his competitors?

Couldn't they all just be friends?

Feel this. Robert Downey Jr as IRON MAN in Marvel Studio's first independently produced picture. The suit is epic.



full pic here: http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/ironmangroundpose.jpg
As I previously mentioned, this is Marvel's first independent project, which means one of two things: 1) total creative control over their intellectual properties and 2) ownership of their said properties.
This would have never happened without the success of Spider-Man as developed by Sony Pictures or Fox with the X-Men franchise, but I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind as to the squandered hopes of the Fantastic Four film and Hulk. With the latter, it's currently under production again, that's right, a HULK remake directed by Louis Letterier. You might remember Letterier (really?) from Danny The Dog (aka Unleashed in the US/Can). Ang Lee's version was decent, but Marvel is aiming for a more mainstream relaunch of the Hulk franchise without necessarily dumping the original's groundwork. Letterier is an action director from the Luc Besson mould, and has really impressed me with his work (Danny the Dog and The Driver 2, it's not about the plot, its about the action choreography in both those cases, which proves this French director is the goods. I'd even venture to say that Danny went beyond that by featuring some rock solid casting and heart-tuggin' moments for an action pic).

Iron Man is following Marvel's vision of getting directors with actual ideas to bring life to their 2-3rd tier characters until they regain film rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men. Jon Favreau is directing Robert Downey Jr as Tony Starks, Terrence Howard as the brother who is War Machine and that Paltrow which I don't care about. Oh! And the DUDE! Mr.Lebowski, Jeff Bridges is also part of the cast. Hotness. Favreau impressed me with his kids' film ZATHURA, having a preference for old-school effects melded with CG effects. It made for an honest to god good kids flick.

I saw parts of Slither yesterday on the Philippine  satellite TV in the Blue Bar. It looked like some good fun, but I'm glad I never got around to buying it on DVD or cinema. I've seen enough Zombie films to last a (after)lifetime.

Now that we're rolling with regular updates again, I'm going to give you the totally exclusive scoop on what I wrote about for the Oct-Nov issue of WuxiLife if I ever hear back on them that is.


First is an article on the Palm Pictures Director's Label series on the music video works of Mark Romanek, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, Stephane Sedanoui and Jonathan Glazer. Its a very slick set with some great production values (in the videos and the DVDs themselves). I picked them up on the cheap and cheap, you know how we roll.

Second article is a review of EXECUTIONERS FROM SHAOLIN, the 1977 Shaw Bros flick that first stared Pai Mei, last seen in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Its a great kung-fu flick where the main villain is able to retract his testicles.

Miracles happen. For some reason, MSN Spaces has now reverted back to its original state, in which I can now use it normally again. The internet never ceases to amaze me with its endless headfuckery.

Summer is a lot of stress for everyone, but allow me to gripe about MY personal problems. For one thing, I feel the workload is heavy, but nothing I can't deal with. At the moment, I'm dealing with company trainings and regular classes. That, I can handle. What makes me go a little bonkers is the heat, the rotten mood it puts people in, the feeling of being bloated like a beached whale in the summer heat, relationship woes and people mooching off your living spaces. When summer ends, it won't have been soon enough.
I guess to teachers back home, summer is the best time, but for ESL teachers, summer is the busiest most rotten time of all.

I need desperately need some 'alone' time. I figure I'll go get a pool club membership to I can go work off this stress and stay cool.

My aunt Lourdes and Ron got married this weekend despite having been together for a long, long time. It looked like a beautiful ceremony and I wish I could've been there. Even old warhorses such as myself get homesick sometimes.