bryanjazz

There are those times when a story or news article resonates with your past, highlights certain aspects of it. Even more powerfully when it's your recent past...the past several months.

From my trip to Ghana, to my recent visit to New Orleans, via Birmingham, Hurricane Katrrina has sharply recalled much of what I've learned and experienced this year: the joys of culture and sense of home I feel for New Orleans; the experience of being an African American travelling abroad/home to the source of my people in Africa; my road trip through the Southern US, which deepened my sense of race and place in the American South. Katrina brings it all together. Similar to the underdevelopment of Africa, New Orleans is a place whose rich cultural resources are exploited to create wealth mostly for those other than the local inhabitants. And it is stories like these, in which we can clearly see the monied interests versus the people's interest, largely lining up along racial lines, that remind me that W.E.B. DuBois stated problem of the 20th century, color, may be with us well into the 21st.

Rebuilding plans confront turf wars, political strife
Racial tension mars initial discussions

By Robert Travis Scott
Capital bureau

BATON ROUGE - Twelve days after Hurricane Katrina, as the worst of the storm's physical perils subsided, about 60 business people and public officials from New Orleans gathered in Dallas with Mayor Ray Nagin to discuss the future of the city.

...For a city suffering an almost total exodus of residents and standing on the precipice of historic change in its population size and demographic makeup, the challenge of Marsalis' message struck deeply, according to people who attended the Dallas meeting Sept. 10. One huge concern is the potential loss of a disproportionately large number of African-Americans whose neighborhoods endured some of the most damaging flood waters and whose low incomes hinder their return.

What will New Orleans become, and who will determine that? That is the question that many are now thinking about. Of those who I know from the city with a long history of advocacy and activism for local people, not much is expected from Nagin. From the article:

Still, the event fed Nagin's reputation as an aloof leader indebted to the white business establishment that helped elect him. Nagin himself is a businessman with no prior experience in elected office. Few have forgotten that Nagin, a Democrat, endorsed conservative Republican Bobby Jindal in the 2003 governor's race over Kathleen Blanco, the Democrat who won. His relations with Blanco - and hence relations between New Orleans and state government - have been cool ever since.

And that is another challenge that New Orleans has faced throughout its history. The state of Louisiana has an unusual amount of contorl over the cities affairs and finances:

But the city has long been limited in determining its own affairs and revenue base. For example, state commissions own the Superdome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and the Legislature ultimately decides how much room tax New Orleans hotels will charge to pay for the buildings. The state, represented by the governor, is the primary negotiator in deals with the New Orleans Saints. Local sales and property taxes are capped by state law.

...The state at times has been possessive of the city's revenue. For example, the state is the main tax collector for Harrah's New Orleans Casino downtown. Blanco has refused to release millions of dollars of Harrah's tax money that was supposed to be passed on to the city, and pleas from city officials and lawmakers have not convinced her to let it go.

So what will New Orleans become? And what of the city's poor, who existed unnoticed and neglected for years by those generating wealth and filling their private coffers? Another DuBois quote (found here) comes to mind:

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk