Mike Howell's commentary on tragic 9th ward fire of 12/28/10

December 30th post on the C3 list on tragic Tuesday, Dec. 28 fire in an abandoned warehouse that killed 8 young people:

Hi Elizabeth,

While Landrieu is forced by circumstances to acknowledge that New Orleans suffers from a homelessness problem, he is also proposing "solutions" to the social problems highlighted by the Ninth Ward fire that in effect trample on the human rights of the city's homeless. Today's Times-Picayune reported the Mayor as saying, "It is, just from my perspective, if someone's in a dwelling and they're putting themselves and other people in danger, it's better for them to be on the street". That people who live on the sidewalks and streets of the city are in danger of dying from exposure to the elements apparently does not register with Landrieu. Another one of Mayor Landrieu's "solutions" to the dangers confronting the homeless who squat in abandoned homes is to have those who are fortunate enough to reside in safe, sanitary and affordable housing to rat out their squatter neighbors to the authorities. Just what the homeless need, new enemies in the form of neighborhood vigilantes! Yeah, you right Mitch. And, finally, another one of Landrieu's "solutions" to problems confronting the homeless, in particular those homeless drawn to squatting, is to step up the mass demolition of the city's true shelters of last resort-abandoned homes. These "solutions" collectively sound like a final solution to me.

So what can those of us who are in a positon to challenge the narrative on squatting and homelessness being spun by Landrieu and the gentrifiers in the wake of the Ninth Ward fire do? Bill Quigley and World Socialist Website have provided a progressive analysis of the tragedy for a national audience. I think it would be a good thing to network with the Crescent City Anti-Authoritarians and interested housing activists to see if there is intererest in organizing collective resistance to the most heinous of the Mayor's proposed "solutions" to the problems facing homeless squatters. Perhaps this networking will lead to a meeting, an educational, a press conference, a protest or something else. Whatever, I do have a gut feeling that the tragedy on Tuesday in the Ninth Ward is putting some fire into the bellies of the often beaten beaten down people of New Orleans.

Any feedback?
Mike Howells


December 29th post on the C3 list:

Today Mayor Landrieu put forward his solution to the acute problem of poor people in New Orleans being compelled by force of circumstances to find shelter in abandoned structures, demolish the abandoned structures! This is the same mayor who would like us to believe that the proposal to destroy the Iberville Housing Development, the city cente'rs single most important source of affordable and safe low-income housing, is an anti-poverty measure. Don't get the wrong idea though. Landrieu is not against all low -income housing close to the city center. He is a booster of that one form of state owned public housing for the poor that every member of the local ruling class supports, Orleans Parish Prison. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Mayor is now attempting to use the tragic fire in the Ninth Ward as a pretext to promote "anti-bilight" measures that promise only to worsen the city's horrific shortage of low-income affordable housing.

If anything approaching a humane solution to the problem that forces thousands in New Orleans to take shelter in abandoned and unsafe housing here everyday is to be achieved, the first thing that needs to be demolished is the unspoken rule that as far as housing policy goes the government is only in the business of promoting gentrication. As part of this process well intentioned people need to come to terms with the reality that charity and self-help measures are band aids that do little more than partially cover the growing social cancer of homelessness. This is clearly a very hard lesson to learn for the people of a city who have given so much of themselves to self-help initiatives and charitable activities. Still, this is a lesson that needs to be learned. This is a stepping stone to the building of a movement that demands, fights for and achieves the addition of the tens of thousands of units of safe, sanitary and affordable units of housing that New Orleanians need but that politicians like Landrieu and his corpoarate paymasters don't want.