Tag: Lower 9th Ward

The New York Times Magazine recently ran a story on my home, the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, a place one of the most powerful newspapers in the world insensitively dubbed a “Jungleland.” Contrary to the article, residents don’t live in an untamed mess of overgrowth or in a forgotten wasteland. We are not resigned to anything; we are fighting to revive our community.

The storm that brushed by New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, was never the cause of the disaster. The real disaster began immediately after the storm when the city’s white supremacist economic elite and its “colored” collaborators decided to remake the city in their image, which strongly resembles a 21st century plantation. All people who believe in social justice should make it a point to march on Aug. 29 from the base of the Industrial Canal in the 9th Ward at 10 a.m. to Hunters Field.

Fighters for justice welcomed the guilty plea by a New Orleans police lieutenant Feb. 24 that he spearheaded a massive cover-up of the police shooting of six unarmed Black civilians as they walked across the Danziger Bridge Sept. 4, 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

On Thursday, Sept. 3, at their weekly town hall meeting, the leaders of SLAM (Stop Lennar Action Movement) reminded the audience of the kind of power they have in the battle to save Bayview Hunters Point. Minister Christopher Muhammad, Archbishop Franzo King and Francisco Da Costa shared the latest news of SLAM’s progress and urged the audience to understand that by staying focused and vigilant and not letting anything turn them around, they will win the war.

"Malcolm X would love to make mixtapes, have those out on the streets. The same reasons they boycotted and had protests in that era are our reasons too. We're coming from that same mindset, but we're using new tools, trying to get our inheritance."

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.

Many of us see, within the Bayview Hunters Point district and without, strategic similarities in the wars being waged in Iraq, in New Orleans and here in our own home town.