[StBernard] Jarvis DeBerry: Whether in New Orleans or St. Bernard Parish, the poor aren't welcome anywhere

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Sun Aug 23 00:11:37 EDT 2009


Jarvis DeBerry: Whether in New Orleans or St. Bernard Parish, the poor
aren't welcome anywhere
Posted by Jarvis DeBerry, Columnist, The Times-Picayune August 22, 2009
8:00PM
Categories: News Impact Page
"Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city
of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be
crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.... Let us be
dissatisfied until the slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and
every family is living in a decent, sanitary home."
-- Martin Luther King Jr., addressing the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, Aug. 16, 1967


Martin Luther King Jr. was a child of privilege. The one slum he lived in,
he chose voluntarily when in 1966 he moved into a Chicago tenement to draw
attention to the conditions faced by the poor.

But King made poor people's issues his own, and at the time of his
assassination, he was planning to lead a Poor People's Campaign to
Washington, D.C. There, he would try to force the government to address
poverty just as he had forced it to address racism.

The issues of the poor often intersect with those who are racially
oppressed, but not always. We see the conflicts between the two groups when
black people with money wage campaigns against those who are without.

Eastern New Orleans has often been a battleground for this kind of
intra-racial class warfare because that part of the city has included
beautiful mansions and huge unsightly apartment complexes -- one of which I
used to call home. Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis gave the impression
soon after Hurricane Katrina that she spoke for the entire area when she
trumpeted the phrase "right to return."

She's fought mightily for homeowners -- that is, those who have already
acquired some semblance of wealth. However, she has shown herself to be
indifferent -- if not outright opposed -- to the interests of low-wage
residents who require affordable-housing options to return to the city.

In leading the opposition against a developer looking to build 36 affordable
single-family houses near Lake Carmel at an average cost of $200,000,
Willard-Lewis said the interests of current residents are her chief concern.
So much for everybody else returning.

The City Planning Commission voted 6-2 to approve the legal subdivision
developer Harold Foley needs to start his project. The New Orleans City
Council, however, voted 5-2 against the project. The only two members to
show Foley support were James Carter and Shelley Midura.

In voting against the project, the City Council isn't showing itself to be
any different than the St. Bernard Parish Council, which has twice been
scolded by a federal court judge for violating the Fair Housing Act.

The judge found that St. Bernard officials have withheld a routine
re-subdivision request for a developer planning to build apartments because
parish officials are trying to keep out black people.

The City Council is employing the same strategy St. Bernard officials have
used. It's difficult to imagine a judge looking any more kindly on the
city's blockade of this project. The federal court would be unfairly
punishing St. Bernard if it allowed New Orleans to do the same thing.

Foley said he anticipates renting his houses and eventually selling them to
teachers, police officers, office workers and others who are important to
the city's recovery but make little money. That argument has failed to
persuade his opponents, who apparently equate a low income with a bad
person.

King was most famous for his attempts to integrate the races. He died before
he could make as forceful a push for the integration of the classes.

Maybe that's why so many black people with money can work against the
interests of the poor and feel no shame.




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