As reports of hurricane relief fraud surface this week, the Bush administration and the state of Louisiana are likely to use this to further starve legitimate reconstruction in New Orleans.
When the government fails people, sometimes it is the place of the people to take control. I am not proposing riots or revolution in the 9th ward. I am proposing that the third sector -- the nonprofit sector -- take further charge of reconstruction and that they call in friends outside the US.
Nonprofits have taken lead on much of the effective parts of Katrina relief. Churches have sent necessities, work crews, and funding to their churches in the Gulf. While some have questioned the effectiveness of the Red Cross, ongoing efforts by large and small nonprofits have kept some of New Orleans shambling toward a new city, new homes.
If I were an organizer in New Orleans, I might form a coalition at this point and pull in friends overseas. Historical ties with France might be a good place to start. How poignant might the French find it to help their former colonial capital -- when the largely despised Bush administration can not seem to effectively help?
The appeal of sending foreign aid to help Americans -- as a tweak on the miserliness and corruption of the current American administration -- might really attract popular support.
Households in Orleans, France where little children drop a Euro in a cardboard box for poor homeless American kids in their sister city.
Headlines in central Asia and the middle east reporting that Muslim aid societies in the US express their gratitude for the support of the foundations of Saudi Arabia.
And crews of college students from the academic capitals of the world could make a pledge of a summer's labor rebuilding schools, teaching summer classes, and working with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild the poorer neighborhoods.
Why wouldn't it work? Could such an effort revitalize popular attention here? Could it possibly shame the shameless bureaucracies who are morphing a vital city into a new theme park?
--
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Comments: 12
Do you think a complete takeover of the rebuilding by nonprofits would perpetuate the administration's neglect in similar future situations?
Mayor: New Orleans Will Seek Aid from Other Nations
Reuters
Monday 07 February 2006
New Orleans - Shortcomings in aid from the US government are making New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin look to other nations for help in rebuilding his hurricane-damaged city.
Nagin, who has hosted a steady stream of foreign dignitaries since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, says he may seek international assistance because U.S. aid has not been sufficient to get the city back on its feet.
"I know we had a little disappointment earlier with some signals we're getting from Washington but the international community may be able to fill the gap," Nagin said when a delegation of French government and business officials passed through on Friday to explore potential business partnerships.
Jordan's King Abdullah also visited New Orleans on Friday and Nagin said he would encourage foreign interests to help redevelop some of the areas hardest hit by the storm.
"France can take Treme. The king of Jordan can take the Lower Ninth Ward," he said, referring to two of the city's neighborhoods.
Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city and killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.
The Bush administration has pledged billions of dollars to Katrina victims but five months after the storm, New Orleans remains largely in ruins.
Nagin said his message to President George W. Bush would be that the federal government needs to refocus on the devastated area.
"We need your undivided attention over the next six months," he said. "We need backup. We need for you to make the words that you spoke in Jackson Square a reality."
Nagin was referring to the president's September 15 address to the nation from New Orleans, in which he pledged "we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes" to rebuild.
French Transport Minister Dominique Perben, leading the French delegation to a city that was founded by France in 1718, said, "This catastrophe has deeply upset the French people and the French government."
France, Perben said through a translator, "wants to be a long-term partner for Louisiana and New Orleans."
and the link to the artcile I wrote on gather at the time:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976747362
unfortunately the Bush administraton as hamper France in this endeavor quite a lot.
I wish they would make it easier for outside money to come in.
And as far as nonprofit sector weakening response, we rarely remember that nonprofits are given tax exemption because they are considered to be doing the work that otherwise the government should be doing in education, research. (In the case of churches it's partly non-interference and partly a credit to the social capital purposes of faith communities, and their charitable works).
I sometimes wonder if nonprofits, with leaner bureaucracies, might better do much of the work of government, via block grants and such.
Fraud in hurricane relief efforts? (gasp) And here GW had gone on and on about all the oversight and regulating that would be imposed on allocated monies. What's a poor voter to think.
The worst problems that non-profits will face, in assisting with relief and rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, will be the regulations and the oversight that have been placed. The same ones that are not keeping fraud from happening will cripple and frustrate the real humanitarians. It is always this way, especially now.
"Pet" interests are always placed in control, so that they can be the ones to reap any profits that might be available.
I'm starting to wonder if there is oil under New Orleans.
So our tech on these problems might as well get warmed up on the New Orleans case study.
You can see in this map of Manhattan that most of that land is swamp and landfill originally. It doesn't make the city less valuable, and it doesn't mean that with the prospect of rising sea levels we should decide not to rebuild any damage to New York due to fire, storm, terrorism, flooding or whatever befalls her.
The fact is that if the same sort of disaster hit any coastal city in California or the northeast seaboard -- for example, say, an earthquake in SF or LA -- and it turns out that the public safety folks had neglected earthquake safety measures (the equivalent of neglecting the levees), then the authorities responsible would be bleeding out their ears, resigned, and it would be far more visibly an international scandal.
As it is, NOLA is a city whose value is largely cultural rather than directly financial. The authorities were far more freaked out by the damage to the offshore platforms than the 9th Ward. Damage to poor (and largely but hardly exclusively poor black) neighborhoods is just considered to be nature's way of instituting urban renewal.
As a result, there's a tension between the authorities -- they want to be seen to provide relief, but every delay contributes to the "urban renewal" potential of Katrina's impact.
But a city's life is in all her people. My fiance was a street performer in New Orleans -- we're both in Boston now -- and the diaspora of the arts and the tight community of New Orleans is something that will never be fully recovered.
Poor folks away from the centers of power, poorly organized and at a disadvantage due to the obvious setbacks of disaster and diaspora -- these folks can't stand up for themselves. They need to have a voice via every one of us who cares. The issues need to stay alive in the media of our attention-span deficit society.
Little Ferry, NJ (mike e.'s home) is 9 feet above sea level. It's protected by storm surge barriers. If those storm surge barriers failed, would you refuse FEMA money, mike? Would you be irate at the folks who let the storm surge barriers decay? Would the people of NY and NJ cry bloody murder?
Or would you write your community off as a disaster waiting to happen?
So you are less protected than New Orleans was. As the article quoted above says, "Professional scientific and engineering societies, environmental groups and the City of New York should take advantage of the shocking images of the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to start planning protection for citizens and services in a climate-changed future. The question is not if a catastrophic hurricane or northeaster will hit New York, but when."