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The Real Reasons New Orleans is so Poor
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
09/10/05 "AlterNet" -- A year ago Total
Community Action, an anti-poverty activist group in New
Orleans, issued a devastating white paper that warned that poverty
in the city had reached epidemic proportions. This was not another
anti-establishment grouse by a fringe group of activists. The
figures on the city's poverty were appalling. The poverty rate was
nearly triple that of the national average. More than 40 percent
of public school kids were illiterate, and half would drop out
before graduation. Many of them would wind up in Angola state
prison, an antique facility that in a throwback to an Old South
plantation forced inmates to do manual farm labor at peon wages.
The abominable scenes of poor blacks mobbing the New Orleans
Superdome to escape the ravages of Katrina, and the relentless TV
shots of looting and mayhem, firmly embedded the image of New
Orleans in the world's eyes as a poor, destitute, and mostly black
city. Racism and Bush's tax and war policies were fingered as the
major reasons for the squalor. They are, but they're not the only
reasons.
The oil and shipping industry bust in New Orleans in the
mid-1980s raised the first alarm that the city's economy was
headed toward crisis. City and state officials ignored that alarm.
A report on job growth in New Orleans in the 1990s ranked the city
at near rock bottom in comparison to other big cities in
attracting industries with that paid higher wages and provided
benefits. Even if city and state officials had managed to bag auto
plants and manufacturing firms to plug the hole left by the flight
of the oil, and shipping companies, there were too few skilled,
trained and educated workers to fill the jobs. More than
three-fourths of city residents did not have a college degree. The
city banked that sprucing up the traditional tourist havens,
Bourbon Street, and the French Quarter, and building casinos would
boost tourism, and provide thousands of new jobs.
But the jobs were mostly low-pay service and retail jobs. The
increase in low-end jobs fed the illusion that New Orleans was a
bustling, prospering city that had virtually eliminated poverty.
The relentless tout of Bourbon Street tourism reinforced New
Orleans reputation as a happy-go-lucky party and fun city. New
Orleans was a good place to plop a new casino or strip club, but
not an auto, petrochemical, or steel manufacturing plant.
While city officials bet their economic cards on the tenuous
tourism industry to lift the city's poor, it was rocked by school
board and police scandals. For decades, endemic corruption in the
police department tagged New Orleans police as a poster agency for
police malfeasance. This time, however, cops weren't accused of
taking bribes, and shakedowns, but of engaging in a murder for
hire scheme. Meanwhile, federal auditors found that $70 million of
the school budget couldn't be accounted for. The budget shortfall,
graft and mismanagement resulted in the elimination of nearly 1000
school jobs and the forced closing of five schools. The scandals
further added to the public perception that New Orleans was a
lawless city run by clueless officials. While two-term mayor Marc
Morial got high marks for cracking down on police corruption, and
burnishing the tourist business, he was also slammed with charges
that he feathered the nest of his cronies at City Hall.
His successor, Ray Nagin, ran into similar roadblocks. A
political novice, bankrolled by corporate interests, Nagin won
election with less than a majority of the black vote. This stirred
black suspicions that his administration would tilt heavily toward
business interests and ignore the city's escalating numbers of
poor. Even if Nagin proved a champion of the poor, he could not
reverse the set in stone reliance of city officials and business
leaders on tourism, and gambling as the city's economic balm.
Total Community Action screamed loudly that the city's blind
pursuit of tourist and casino dollars to keep the city afloat was
a prescription for economic disaster, and that these industries
could not alleviate city's grinding poor. The group demanded that
city and state officials draw up a comprehensive program to
improve education and job training programs. Louisiana Governor
Kathleen Blanco, stirred by the city and the state's out of
control poverty, urged anti-poverty activists to come up with a
plan for poverty reduction. The plan was piece meal, and sketchy,
and did not spell out what or how the state would pay for a
program to reduce poverty. It was yet another paper promise by
officials to do something about poverty that was not kept.
Katrina was their and our jarring wake up call. The sight of
thousands of poor blacks making a mad dash for their lives blew to
bits the delusion that New Orleans had improved things for the
poor. For that, there are more than enough culprits to blame
for that failure.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the
author of 'The Crisis in Black and Black' (Middle Passage Press).
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