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The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans
Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that one of the most shameless examples of disaster capitalism has been the attempt to exploit the disastrous flooding of New Orleans to close down that city's public housing projects, some of the only affordable units in the city. Most of the buildings sustained minimal flood damage, but they happen to occupy valuable land that make for perfect condo developments and hotels.
The final showdown over New Orleans public housing is playing out in dramatic fashion right now. The conflict is a classic example of the "triple shock" formula at the core of the doctrine.
- First came the shock of the original disaster: the flood and the traumatic evacuation.
- Next came the "economic shock therapy": using the window of opportunity opened up by the first shock to push through a rapid-fire attack on the city's public services and spaces, most notably it's homes, schools and hospitals.
- Now we see that as residents of New Orleans try to resist these attacks, they are being met with a third shock: the shock of the police baton and the Taser gun, used on the bodies of protestors outside New Orleans City Hall yesterday.
Democracy Now! has been covering this fight all week, with amazing reports from filmmakers Jacquie Soohen and Rick Rowley (Rick was arrested in the crackdown). Watch residents react to the bulldozing of their homes here.
And footage from yesterday's police crackdown and Tasering of protestors inside and outside city hall here.
That last segment contains a terrific interview with Kali Akuno, executive director of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund. Akuno puts the demolitions in the big picture, telling Amy Goodman:
This is just one particular piece of this whole program. Public hospitals are also being shut down and set to be demolished and destroyed in New Orleans. And they've systematically dismantled the public education system and beginning demolition on many of the schools in New Orleans--that's on the agenda right now--and trying to totally turn that system over to a charter and a voucher system, to privatize and just really go forward with a major experiment, which was initially laid out by the Heritage Foundation and other neoconservative think tanks shortly after the storm. So this is just really the fulfillment of this program.
Akuno is referring to the Heritage Foundation's infamous post-Katrina meeting with the Republican Study Group in which participants laid out their plans to turn New Orleans into a Petri dish for every policy they can't ram through without a disaster. Read the minutes on my website.
For more context, here are couple of related excerpts from The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism:
The news racing around the shelter [in Baton Rouge] that day was that Richard Baker, a prominent Republican Congressman from this city, had told a group of lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans' wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment: "I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities." All that week the Louisiana State Legislature in Baton Rouge had been crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportunities: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers and a "smaller, safer city"--which in practice meant plans to level the public housing projects and replace them with condos. Hearing all the talk of "fresh starts" and "clean sheets," you could almost forget the toxic stew of rubble, chemical outflows and human remains just a few miles down the highway.
Over at the shelter, Jamar Perry, a young resident of New Orleans, could think of nothing else. "I really don't see it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown. People who shouldn't have died." He was speaking quietly, but an older man in line in front of us in the food line overheard and whipped around. "What is wrong with these people in Baton Rouge? This isn't an opportunity. It's a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?"
A mother with two kids chimed in. "No, they're not blind, they're evil. They see just fine."
...
At first I thought the Green Zone phenomenon was unique to the war in Iraq. Now, after years spent in other disaster zones, I realize that the Green Zone emerges everywhere that the disaster capitalism complex descends, with the same stark partitions between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned.
It happened in New Orleans. After the flood, an already divided city turned into a battleground between gated green zones and raging red zones--the result not of water damage but of the "free-market solutions" embraced by the president. The Bush administration refused to allow emergency funds to pay public sector salaries, and the City of New Orleans, which lost its tax base, had to fire three thousand workers in the months after Katrina. Among them were sixteen of the city's planning staff--with shades of "de Baathification," laid off at the precise moment when New Orleans was in desperate need of planners. Instead, millions of public dollars went to outside consultants, many of whom were powerful real estate developers. And of course thousands of teachers were also fired, paving the way for the conversion of dozens of public schools into charter schools, just as Friedman had called for.
Almost two years after the storm, Charity Hospital was still closed. The court system was barely functioning, and the privatized electricity company, Entergy, had failed to get the whole city back online. After threatening to raise rates dramatically, the company managed to extract a controversial $200 million bailout from the federal government. The public transit system was gutted and lost almost half its workers. The vast majority of publicly owned housing projects stood boarded up and empty, with five thousand units slotted for demolition by the federal housing authority. Much as the tourism lobby in Asia had longed to be rid of the beachfront fishing villages, New Orleans' powerful tourism lobby had been eyeing the housing projects, several of them on prime land close to the French Quarter, the city's tourism magnet.
Endesha Juakali helped set up a protest camp outside one of the boarded-up projects, St. Bernard Public Housing, explaining that "they've had an agenda for St. Bernard a long time, but as long as people lived here, they couldn't do it. So they used the disaster as a way of cleansing the neighbourhood when the neighbourhood is weakest. ... This is a great location for bigger houses and condos. The only problem is you got all these poor black people sitting on it!"
Amid the schools, the homes, the hospitals, the transit system and the lack of clean water in many parts of town, New Orleans' public sphere was not being rebuilt, it was being erased, with the storm used as the excuse. At an earlier stage of capitalist "creative destruction," large swaths of the United States lost their manufacturing bases and degenerated into rust belts of shuttered factories and neglected neighbourhoods. Post-Katrina New Orleans may be providing the first Western-world image of a new kind of wasted urban landscape: the mould belt, destroyed by the deadly combination of weathered public infrastructure and extreme weather.
Since the publication of The Shock Doctrine, my research team has been putting dozens of original source documents online for readers to explore subjects in greater depth. The resource page on New Orleans has some real gems.
Naomi Klein is the author of many books, including her most recent, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which will be published in September.Visit Naomi's website at www.naomiklein.org, or to learn more about her new book, visit www.shockdoctrine.com .
© 2007 Huffington Post
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52 Comments so far
Show AllA well meaning out-of-town friend referred me to this article. I stopped reading when I came to this obvious falsehood.
but they happen to occupy valuable land that make for perfect condo developments and hotels
This is only remotely true for Iberville, which is not slated for demolition.
An article based upon an obvious untruth is not worth my time to read.
There are a number of Dick Cheney inspired actions to destroy New Orleans (one subtle one is that the Postal Workers are picketing because Washington will not give them the resources to properly deliver the mail, a Federal responsibility under the US Constitution. An ingenious means of destroying a city, do not deliver the mail properly). Proceeding with this demolition is not one of them.
Several hundred units are available and empty because no one on public assistance has applied. Two years ago many units should have been quickly renovated and given to police, fire fighters, health care workers, etc. instead of forcing them into tiny trailers, but that has almost passed.
There are not former public housing residents lining up to return, (hundreds of units are empty and ready to rent) and quite frankly we do not have the health care system, social workers and much else to support them in any case.
Alanfrom Big Easy -
Perhaps the Iberville Housing area may look good to you from your point of view and favorite areas of the city. But the C.J. Peete is down the street from St. Charles Street and Magazine and LA street which is becomming a pretty hip area, with its easy access to the SuperDome it makes an ideal property for privatization. And by the by, Home Depot is just opening up a new Home Depot by a soon to be demolished housing area (where people are living in the units) at the end of Claiborne by the recycling yard by the Super Dome.
Then there is the Lafitte - not a far driving distance from the Quarter at all. It's amazing the Lafitte buildings are in the best conditon of all of the housing units and they are still determined to raze them. I have watched people struggle in this area as their medical buildings were not re-opened, the local stores, the grocery market - etc. That is what the pattern seems to be down here - monied areas get more money to pretty things up - get the trolley running and the tourist activities going - and the poor? What about Charity hospital?
The more I drive around various parts of the New Orleans and photograph and meet people, the more I see how these buildings respresent $$$$ - it is shocking how whole neighborhoods - still look shell shocked. Many of them are around public housing. The stores around them, not opened, the schools boarded up. No hardware stores. Often no drug stores in walking distance.
I had driven a woman I know who had always lived in the 8th Ward and didn't venture much out of it - around the city. As we were driving around and we enetered areas that were clearly not as affluent she suddenly exclaimed - "How did it get so black around here?" And she is a black woman. It is that clear too often in this city.
"Black" areas in New Orleans? Where people have been for the most part, except for the help of awesome volunteers, left to rot with their houses and empty buildings and streets around them.
It reminds me of what was done to the Black man and woman in the past - how society would them they couldn't go into certain places or do certain things - they would be blocked out - locked out.
Well I see a similar thing happening on the streets of New Orleans and the selective re-building process - the working poor and poor, the elderly, are being locked out of their lives, their neighborhoods and then blamed for not coming back to rebuild. The housing units that have been rebuilt - well Bill Quigley has been writing on this, (he has been involved as a lawyer with public housing since 1971 in New Orleans)then you would know that there is a crazy process that HUD/HANO has set up that makes it pretty darn hard to even get in to those "hundreds" of empty apartments. Then there is coming up with the money for the extraordinarily high Entergy gas and electric bills and the deposits. You as well as I know that there are really, really, poor working people who are struggling to survive living in New Orleans - many are still living in devastated conditions. Go through the "black" neighborhoods - and measure it to the living standars in your neighborhood.
And on using the argument about former housing residents - what about the 8ooo on the Section 8 waiting list? I believe there are another 6000 (I may be off on the number 5-6-7-thousand)who are waiting on Katrina lists to get into Public Housing. (These stats from Bill Quigleys testimoney at the city council meeting December 20, 2007 - televised for us locals)
Then we have 11,500 (let's say this week Unity was able to get 500 people off the streets from tent city, etc) there is still another estimated 11 thousand who are homeless. The public housing units could have been used for transitioning the homeless and help the people whose lives were already marginalized before the storm recover.
Your idea about using the units to house the fire and police was an excellent idea also. These buildings could be used for transitioning until more afforable housing is made available. Then each area could be evaluated and then decisons made for razing - which some of the buildings need to be razed.
Here's another thing - there are NO plans for redevelopment. NONE! Contracts have not been awarded. What's the rush to demolish so many buildings all at once? One police officer stated the reason he belived they city council and the government were set on doing so to me succintly - "if you destroy the homes of the people who once lived there you take away their hope of returning."
No, Naomi's assertions that the goverment was waiting in the wings for just such an opportunity that manifested in New Orleans, is in my opinion right on the $$$. Just like the sudden manifestation of the Patriot Act. The government seems to want to downsize and privatize. And we have already seen the first fruits of the governments idea of privatizing - just ask our soldiers. Or the Iraqi citizens and those who are at the mercy of our "private" mercenary army.
The people who need the support of the public system the most right now are many of the people who suffered to worst effects of the flooding, who lost everything - especially in public housing where their unprotected belongings were left to rot and be vandalized. Many of the people who suffered the most sat for days on roof tops, in trees with their families, listening to people die and scream out. I have spoken with them, and inevitably, these are the population who are still living in areas that are devastated.
I was at a family's house today in Violet, LA down the road a bit from the city - the family I was with lived together on the same street all their lives - they had 11 family residences on the street. They all lost their homes. They are still living in cramped FEMA trailers. Some told the stories of black people who saw the planes and helicopters fly over them and their neighbors days upon days, so many times and days that people in their desperation and frustration of being ignored whilst they went and picked up people (they believed) from wealthier affluent neighborhoods. They told me of a neighboring area where people began to shoot as they passed them. These families, elderly, children, teens, the sick, spent days on on their roof tops waiting for help without food, without sanitation, without water except for the Katrina water laping up at their roofs, without hope, watching the planes and helicopters fly by them, ignoring them.
We all saw it on tv it was a majority of Black New Orleanians who suffered the greatest. And it is the same population now who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, truama, who are going untreated because we can't open Tulane/DePaul psychiatric hospital even though it suffered minimal damage and the building is in good enough condition to "film a movie about someone with a mental illness getting treatment at the closed facility".
New Orleans doen't have the public service systems we need because those in power don't want certain New Orleanians back. It is a way to lock certain portions of the pre-Katrina population out of their city. Brand New Orlean$ is inclusive but only to some - those who can now afford it.
As far as affordable housing? I am putting together a series of photo's on affordable housing - it usually has a very high percentage of empty housing in a neighborhood that has been abandoned by businesses and city leaders. There are so many abandoned buildings in New Orleans and so little being done to utilize them for those in need.
I disagree with your premise of a falsehood on the land not being interesting to developers - brand New Orlean$ is in full throttle - I don't think you are going to recognize this city in 10 years. The housing projects sit inside the city limits and they are juicy tidbits that can be developed like the Saulet apartment complex on Tchuopotoulis by the convention center(sorry about my spelling) where 1 bedrooms start at the $1000 mark. They are building these box apartment complexes faster than they are building affordable housing. New Orleans is going to be a shell of itself - a Disneyland-LasVegas-MallofAmerica - tourist trap. $$$ for developers. Whilst there is a standstill in the rest of the country when it comes to building - Brand New Orlean$ offers up the spoils of the public housing lots and the surrounding areas to private industry for "redevelopment". Which wouldn't be so bad but we all know when it comes to making a buck or an ethical business decision based on the common good and benefit for all - privatized companies are obligated to their stockholders to make them money. They are not obligated to serve the needs of the public sector. That is why we have a government remember? "By the People, for the People". "We" the "People"???
I invite you to go out with me as a fellow (transplanted albeit), New Orleanian when I photograph... Or perhaps under the Claiborne bridge to speak with some of the homeless? Perhaps a drive on St. Claude in the Lower 9th?
Wow. I guess I had a lot to say.
It is so hard to be around social and encomomic injustices and stay centered.
Sorry if my reply came across personal AlanfromBigEasy. This was not a personal attack on you by any means, it was what and how you said what you did that seemed to trigger my intense and somewhat prolific response.
Especially your last sentence, "quite frankly, we do not have the... or much else to support "them" in any case.
Them?
Why aren't we "supporting them"? Isn't that what we are supposed to do? Support each other in times of suffering and tribulation?
If one persons suffering is over before another's suffering does it make the second person blameworthy for not healing as fast as the first? Especially when the first person most likely has more opportunities for faster healing than the second?