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New Orleans Katrina Pain Index at 10: Who was left behind?
July 31, 2015
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, the nation saw tens of thousands of people left behind in New Orleans. Ten years later, it looks like the same people in New Orleans have been left behind again. The population of New Orleans is noticeably smaller and noticeably whiter. While tens of billions poured into Louisiana, the impact on poor and working people in New Orleans has been minimal.
Oakland Unified School District bans lessons on MLK and Mumia: Demand they restore them! Protest May 28
May 28, 2014
Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police and Fox News, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) just shut down the entire Urban Dreams website including material on Martin Luther King and Mumia Abu-Jamal authored by Oakland teacher Craig Gordon. OUSD is censoring and attacking the academic freedom of students in the Oakland schools and of teachers. This shameful action must be reversed immediately!
Ras Baraka, son of famed poet Amiri Baraka, fights a historic tide in Newark mayoral race
May 7, 2014
History keeps colliding with the present as Ras Baraka, a Newark city councilperson and city school principal, is exactly one week away from finding out if he will become mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city. Baraka is accusing his opponent, Seton Hall University Law School professor Shavar Jeffries, of openly being supported by outsiders who are attempting to buy the Newark election.
Katrina Pain Index 2013: New Orleans eight years later
August 29, 2013
Eight years after Katrina, nearly a 100,000 people never got back to New Orleans, the city remains incredibly poor, jobs and income vary dramatically by race, rents are up, public transportation is down, traditional public housing is gone, life expectancy differs dramatically by race and place, and most public education has been converted into charter schools.
Celebrating celebrating?
August 27, 2013
TV screens, newspaper pages and radio stations have been replaying, reprinting and rebroadcasting dark, grainy black and while film, photos and audiotape of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech – his “I Have a Dream” speech – in a hypocritical celebration of the 50 years since that fateful day in 1963, in Washington, D.C.
Rolling back the Civil Rights Movement, with BART workers as a major target
August 3, 2013
The Civil Rights Movement, which led to a massive expansion of educational, political and economic rights for African Americans and others who were traditionally marginalized, has been under attack since before it started. The ongoing attacks against public sector workers and unions seem to be more of the same. Rather than happening in far away states, though, the attacks are happening to workers in the Bay Area.
Katrina Pain Index 2012: Seven years after
August 29, 2012
There are 123,934 fewer people in New Orleans now than in 2000. How does New Orleans rank today, in comparison to other U.S. cities and the world, seven years after Katrina?
Broken promises of a just recovery in the Gulf Coast
September 13, 2010
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Gulf Coast residents are still trying to rebuild their lives after years of broken promises and government neglect. The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act to provide hundreds of thousands of jobs languishes in Congress. Affordable housing eludes both survivors and those displaced by the storm.
Five years later: Katrina Pain Index 2010 New Orleans
August 6, 2010
It will be five years since Katrina on Aug. 29. The impact of Katrina is quite painful for regular people in the area. This article looks at what has happened since Katrina not from the perspective of the higher ups looking down from their offices but from the street level view of the people.
Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans three years later
August 24, 2008
Zero apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development. 2.6 billion FEMA dollars for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered. Renowned people’s attorney Bill Quigley has compiled a shocking “pain index” caused by the continuing ethnic cleansing of New Orleans.
