Why Don't They Quit Calling Themselves Evangelicals and Put their Kluxxer Hoods Back On

They are tearing down the projects in New Orleans this week. These are old, barracks like neighborhoods, with names like Calliope, Magnolia and St. Bernard. They housed maybe 5,000 families, every one of them black, most headed by women. The residents were evacuated during Katrina and never allowed back. The white developers say that the projects were too damaged by Katrina to be repaired. They will be replaced by "mixed use" developments. There will be some residential, some commercial. There will be some rental units available, none will be government subsidized. It's unlikely that any of the former residents will be able to afford any of the units their housing is being replaced by, nor would the new landlords want them.

Although the ladies that head the families of the projects are poor, life in the projects has made them politically active. They vote. They organize and attend community meetings. They make their impact felt. These are exactly the kind of black citizens, that the white racist Republican rebuilders of New Orleans, do not want back in their fair city. This is a clear case of economic genocide against the predominantly black population of New Orleans. In the "new" New Orleans, there will be no place for these black women and their families. No place for them to live. No place for them to work. Most important of all, no place for them to vote.

This is no different than the displacement of the residents of the 9th ward and other black neighborhoods of the city, except for one small and inconvenient fact. None of the projects sustained any damage from the flooding or hurricane. They were evacuated, the utilities were cut off, services ceased but they sustained no damage. HUD, which runs the projects, simply never let the residents move back in. Now they have given the land over to the developers bulldozers. The new populations of these neighborhoods will include few , if any, holdovers from the old.

The redevelopment of the projects in New Orleans exposes the lie that the rebuilding of the city is simply the inevitable change brought about by the repair of the damage wrought by the flood and not a carefully choreographed program, carried out by the racist Republican infrastructure, to build a white city in the deep south. It's all right. Those people will have their own places. They will be happier. Everybody needs to know their own place.

Good times there are not forgotten.