Following Ash-Lee's post about Barnes & Noble, we've been curious just how widespread the exploitative endcaps are. A commenter on Ann's Weekly Feminist Reader at feministing said they've got the same endcaps in Tallhassee, FL.
If you've sighted a Barnes & Noble encap like the one Ash-Lee described in her post, leave a comment on this post and tell us where you saw it. If you've talked with Barnes & Noble about it, we'd also like to know whom you spoke to and what they said.
I posted previously on MS Governor Haley Barbour's support for the plan divert federal Community Development Block Grant funds to a port expansion in Gulfport.
The following is section III of the comment to the MS Development Authority and HUD, by Gulf Coast and national advocacy groups:
MISSISSIPPI HAS FAILED TO ADDRESS THE HOUSING CRISIS
ESPECIALLY THE DIRE NEED FOR AFFORDABLE RENTAL UNITSThe State's hurricane recovery strategy has played a major role in the rental housing crisis. Only $358 million of the $5.4 billion emergency CDBG grants, or 6%, has been allocated to rental housing, i.e. the public housing program and the recently approved small rental assistance program. Such a small percentage of the allocation of CDBG funds for rental housing cannot be justified when the impact of the storm fell so disproportionately on rental housing and low and moderate income persons.
Moreover, the State has sought and been granted waivers of the CDBG requirement that 50% of the funds go to the benefit of low and moderate income people for 80% of the CDBG hurricane funding. Even putting the best light on all programs of the State plan for meeting the rental property needs (which includes programs beyond the CDBG money), its strategy will restore at best only 51% of the known rental need. Only 11,730 rental units are forecast to be built by the Small Rental Program and the GO Zone Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program. When one adds 316 destroyed public housing units and a projected 1,275 units under the MS HOME Corp. set-aside the total of rental units projected is 13,321 which only meets 51% of the reported rental housing loss -- the 26,037 damaged units reported in the July, 2006 FEMA/HUD report. As for units severely damaged, the small rental program will restore only 43% of them.
The State is fully aware of this shortfall. Advocates have urged the State to enlarge both the Small Rental Program and to increase funding sources for other rental programs, including making CDBG funds available in combination with GO Zone tax credit funds for affordable housing projects, but these requests have been rejected. For example, the State rejected proposals to enlarge the size the Small Rental Program.
The State's recovery plan also leaves out Mississippians who suffered wind damage to their homes. This includes almost 34,000 households who suffered severe to catastrophic wind damage, including 10,300 who had no insurance. Costs to repair for major damage range between $33,000 and $53,000. Costs to repair for catastrophic damage range between $70,000 and $201,000. Insurance settlements did not cover the full cost to repair: The average wind insurance settlement along the 3 coastal counties was $15,869, and did not cover the full cost to repair the full cost of repair.
For wind-damaged households, subtracting out $15,000 in insurance, the unmet need starts at $17,000 for moderate damage and $54,000 for catastrophic damage and goes up. Lower income African American households in many coastal Mississippi communities suffered exclusively wind damage because segregated patterns of settlement placed them on the north side of the railroad tracks which functioned as a levee. Many of these residences were of older construction, with greater deferred maintenance and greater vulnerability to more severe windstorm damage than residences generally. Unlike Louisiana, these Mississippians are left out of the so-called "comprehensive" recovery plan. The State is aware of this unmet need for it has rejected repeated calls to include wind-damaged households in the home grant programs.
In sum, the continuing housing crisis is to a great extent caused by the failure of the State's plan to address it.
The signing groups are:
Research was provided by:
Mississippi Center for Justice, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Fair Housing Allliance, and National Low Income Housing Coalition, and Oxfam America
Download the full comment:
When I was reading Daisy's post about Pfc. LaVena Johnson, I got stuck on one of the details. The indications of possible rape and other physical violence and murder all were troubling enough. But then there was this one detail (originally posted by Anne):
Indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire
I immediately hear Billy Holiday:
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
I wouldn't necessarily think I should share this association as something for public consideration, except that I am also remembering something I first learned about on David Neiwert's blog: the military has become infested with Neo-Nazis.
According to a devastating Southern Poverty Law Center report (echoed in the New York Times), it's happening at an alarming rate. And it's happening because of the way the military is being handled at the very top:
Ten years after Pentagon leaders toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel -- a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division -- large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world's best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.Neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core," Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," he added. "That's a problem."The armed forces are supposed to be a model of racial equality. American soldiers are supposed to be defenders of democracy. Neo-Nazis represent the opposite of these ideals. They dream of race war and revolution, and their motivations for enlisting are often quite different than serving their country."Join only for the training, and to better defend yourself, our people, and our culture," Fain said. "We must have people to open doors from the inside when the time comes."
The problem, as the report explains, is the extreme pressure military recruiters are now under to fill their recruitment quotas:
Now, with the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military under increasingly intense pressure to maintain enlistment numbers, weeding out extremists is less of a priority. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Department of Defense investigator Barfield."Last year, for the first time, they didn't make their recruiting goals. They don't want to start making a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military, because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists."Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, said he has identified and submitted evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year. "Only two have been discharged," he said. Barfield and other Department of Defense investigators said they recently uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis who are active duty Army and Marines personnel spread across five military installations in five states -- Fort Lewis; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," Barfield said. "Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq."
Okay, now back to Billy Holiday.The "sudden smell of burning flesh" ought to be as evocative of lynching as the nooses in Jena, LA. Lynching, after all, is extra-judicial execution of an accused person, usually Black, and it often involved burning the victims and otherwise mutilating them. Lynching does not need to involve a noose at all. In some cases, the lynch rope was only a means of displaying an already dead body. A google images search on "lynching" will get you a number of infamous photos of burning or burnt Black bodies (I'm not linking them).I am not claiming that LaVena Johnson was lynched. But indications that someone attempted to set her body on fire should raise our suspicion levels about the nature of this crime, just as we would be further alarmed if there had been a noose involved.Should I be connecting the dots this way? I don't know, but it is a possibility that will beg investigation until the military stops stonewalling LaVena Johnson's father and makes a commitment to uncover the truth and seek justice.Back to David Neiwert:
To what extent, really, does the spread of white-supremacist attitudes in the military bring about atrocities like the recent murder of a 14-year-old girl and her family, or the Haditha massacre? It isn't hard to see, after all, attitudes about the disposability of nonwhite races rearing their ugly head in those incidents.The larger political question, however, is a matter of accountability --- the avoidance of which has proven to be the Bush administration's most remarkable skill. Yet at some point, both the public and the military are going to have to ask: What is this administration doing to our armed forces?
(This guest post is reprinted from Daisy’s Dead Air with Daisy’s kind permission. h/t to Ampersand)
From the blog BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS comes a case that I have heard NOTHING about, which is pretty amazing, news-hound that I am.
Thus, the fact that I didn't know, makes me instantly suspicious.
Private First Class LaVena Johnson, died near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005. The first woman soldier from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq, she was only nineteen years old.
Dr. John Johnson, Lavena’s father, was initially told by an Army representative, that his daughter “died of self-inflicted, noncombat injuries,” but initially added that it was not a suicide. The subsequent Army investigation reversed this finding and declared LaVena’s death a suicide, a finding refuted by the soldier’s family. In an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dr. Johnson pointed to indications that his daughter had endured a physical struggle before she died - two loose front teeth, a “busted lip” that had to be reconstructed by the funeral home - suggesting that “someone might have punched her in the mouth.”
KMOV (St Louis) eventually aired a story which revealed details not previously made public: Parents question their daughter’s mysterious death in Iraq.
News 4’s Matt Sczesny took a close look at the evidence gathered by the military and asks the question, “was it murder or suicide?”
Among the thousands of graves at Jefferson Barracks cemetery there are stories of bravery, heroism, and proud service.
Among the thousands is the grave of Private Lavena Johnson, whose story is clouded in mystery and according to her parents, marred by murder and cover-up.
Lavena’s father, Dr. John Johnson, has waged his own personal crusade to find out what really happened to his daughter in Iraq on July 19, 2005.
The army ruled her death a suicide, the victim of a gunshot wound to the head.
In documents and autopsy photos obtained by the Johnson family and shared with News 4, more questions are raised than answered.
One strange fact was that Lavena was apparently abused, physically, and the autopsy didn’t address the physical trauma to her body.
Military documents also show no apparent indication of suicide, her company commander wrote that Johnson was clearly happy and healthy physically and emotionally, something her mother knew by a phone conversation the day before she died.
Johnson’s parents also question how their daughter at 5’1”, could handle a 40 inch M-16 to kill herself while sitting.
In fact, a military laboratory even concluded that based on a gunshot residue test, Johnson may not have even handled the weapon.
Additionally, Johnson’s military debit card was never found, even though she used it two hours before her death to buy candy.
No bullet was ever found where she died, and a trail of blood is seen in photos outside the tent. Even stranger, it appears as if someone tried to set her body on fire.
So if it wasn’t a suicide as the Army maintains, then how did Lavena Johnson die?
Based on the autopsy photos, her father believes that she was raped.
The military is unconvinced and consider the case closed.
A Pentagon spokesman says that the case was investigated thoroughly and that there is no evidence to reopen.
News 4 tried for weeks to get the Army to say more about the death of Private Johnson, but they’re only response is that the investigation is closed.
Certainly the documents military investigators have gathered seem to say a lot more.
Johnson’s father is now trying to have her body exhumed at Jefferson Barracks to have an independent autopsy performed.”
From BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS:
[Official]documents provided elements of another scenario altogether:
* Indications of physical abuse that went unremarked by the autopsy
* The absence of psychological indicators of suicidal thoughts; indeed, testimony that LaVena was happy and healthy prior to her death
* Indications, via residue tests, that LaVena may not even have handled the weapon that killed her
* A blood trail outside the tent where Lavena’s body was found
* Indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire
The Army has resisted calls by Dr. Johnson and by KMOV to reopen its investigation.
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! Why haven't we heard about LaVena?
... it takes moral outrage, family vocalization, and community involvement to the government, to bring to bear upon the Army to find the truth, to tell the truth, to honor the men and women who put on the uniform to serve their country, says alot about the callousness of this country which saw fit to send these young women and men into a war with a country which has done no aggression against America. No huge outcry has yet come to bear in the case of LaVena. There are no loud chorus of voices demanding that the military be held accountable for their actions, or lack thereof in the mishandling of this young woman’s case. Anyone, and everyone, can and should, speak for her. It may seem that the comparision between the cases of LaVena Johnson and Pat Tillman may seem unrelated, but both cases are the same. In both cases, the death of a young soldier in a dangerous place, in an unjustly declared rogue war, was not explained to the families they left behind, the families that gave them up to go halfway around the world to fight a war for oil, to put their lives on the line for those of us here in America. The Army should not be so cold and heartless in how it disregards its soldiers. It is not too much to ask that the Army take into consideration all evidence of this young woman’s death. (The attempt to set her body on fire; the trail of blood found outside of her living area.) That her family has many unanswered questions surrounding her death, and the inept handling of Lavena’s case (judging by the evidence left at the scene of her death )by the military, speaks volumes to military injustice in how it treats, or rather, mistreats its soldiers.
Please do not let this young soldier’s death be in vain. She took it upon herself to serve her country, with honor. Let her be honored by not letting her story fall into silence.
1. Sign the online petition to the Armed Services Committees in Congress asking them to direct the Army to reinvestigate the death of LaVena Johnson.
2. Find your Senator or Representative on the Armed Services Committees list and contact them directly about LaVena. (Thanks to the blogsite, http://www.lavenajohnson.com for outstanding work to keep Lavena in the public’s mind.)
3. For background on Lavena Johnson, please view the KMOV-TV news report from 02.21.07.
Please do your part, and again, thanks so much to BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS for truth-telling in this matter!
BRING THEM HOME NOW!
~
Photo: Pfc. LaVena Johnson, from Essence.
Ash-Lee sent me this update to her original post on Johnson City, TN Barnes & Noble and the exploitative books it is pushing as African American literature.
A friend of mine that is currently an employee at Barnes and Noble read this blog (specifically where I write about the store management being ok with taking the endcap down if they could) and remembered something that occurred at our store very recently. Two wealthy white women came into the store, and happened to run into our "Love and Sex" bay (a bay being a large section of bookshelves), that has karma sutra books and stuff like that. When the two women complained, the bay was immediately shifted to books that dealt with those subjects that didn't have "offensive" cover art.
Question: If they can change a bay that was and is mandatory and given to them by the corporate office, why can't they take down or modify an endcap??
(It seems some of the words in the original post were tripping the spam/security settings on my webhost's servers, making it difficult for people to post comments. Comments should work better on this post.)
You can help raise money for the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership by sponsoring my good friend Jesse on his run in the Dublin Marathon.
Jesse Edsell-Vetter of Somerville will run the 26-mile Dublin Marathon Monday, Oct. 29, and has pledged to raise $4,000 to support Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership's efforts to end homelessness.
Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, a local nonprofit agency, is the state's largest regional provider of rental assistance and housing supports, serving more than 15,000 homeless, elderly, disabled, and low- and moderate-income residents of greater Boston.
Edsell-Vetter is a three-year employee at MBHP and works as a property owner liaison in the Inspections Department.
"I've been homeless," said Edsell-Vetter. "I know what that's like, and what's needed beyond having a place to live to break that cycle. I'm running to help others the way someone helped me."
He is no stranger to marathons. He ran the Boston Marathon twice as part of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team, and regularly participates in races of all lengths. The fact that he is able to run at all is something of a miracle.
"I was walking with a cane four years ago," he said. After 14 knee surgeries, his surgeon told him that he was cured. "He said, ‘Do anything you want - go run a marathon.' I don't think he expected me to actually do it, but I wanted to see how far I could push myself."
When I first met Jesse, he was walking with the cane. On the bad days, short distances were a big challenge. It is so inspiring to see him doing this now. Please help if you can.
J was out biking in Jamaica Plain, MA (part of Boston) on September 11:
I joined The Club. I took a header on South Street, the tire of my bicycle caught in the groove of the unused trolley track.
I tried to keep control of the bike, and managed to hang on to the handlebars until I had planted the bike sideways, skidding another good ten feet or so. I landed on my right side, bruising my right knee, right hip, and right elbow. I also have some hard to describe muscular pain under my right wing, so my shoulder is somehow involved as well. In addition, I have massive bruising in the knuckles of my left hand - I think that the handlebar came smashing down across my hand. I managed to ice it down pretty quickly, but it swelled a nasty amount nevertheless. There's a bruise in my left instep - I think the pedal poked me there pretty hard.
Conditions were not good at the time: it was dusk, and it had rained earlier, so the pavement was slick. The rails were slicker than the pavement, of course, and I think it was my rear tire that got caught in the groove....
I knew I had to at least get between the right rail and the left rail in order to be in place to make the turn. There were no cars behind me or in front of me for about a block, so I decided I had the time to make an attempt. I recall seeing my front wheel skidding sideways left and right before I went into my slide - this is how I've deduced that it was my rear wheel that got caught.
I lost all traction, veeered from side to side, went over to my right and ended up sliding into the oncoming traffic lane, which would have been a very hazardous issue if there had been oncoming traffic. As it was, there was a car approaching about a block away when I went in to my slide, and the woman driving it stopped well before me and asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I got up off the pavement and quickly dragged my bike to the sidewalk, mentally checking my limbs and trying to determine if anything was broken. Two other passers-by were asking me if I was alright, and I asked for a moment to keep checking myself out. My left hand was beginning to swell, and felt pretty useless....
I'm thankful I'm alive.
Me, too, J. I'm thankful you are, too. I ride to work most days and can totally imagine it. And yeah, I'm with you. Say no to bringing back the trolley.
The tracks need to be paved over. End of story. They're a danger to cyclists, they're contributing to the deterioration of the pavement on South and Centre Streets, and the city has been promising to do something about it but sitting on their duffs for too long....
I was lucky. I hope nobody else gets seriously hurt.
This public service announcement was brought to you by Cyclists for Non-Lethal Roads.
By Ash-Lee W. Henderson
A little over two weeks ago, a fellow Barnes & Noble employee at our Johnson City, Tennessee store informed me that our store would soon display an "endcap" African American fiction promotion. An "endcap" is a set of small, plastic book holders layered on the end of one of our long bookshelves. If our customers bought the books being promoted, my co-worker explained, our corporate office would enlarge the African American Fiction section. Not only would it promote the purchase of books by Black authors, but it would also give our corporate office an idea of where the demographic is for said product.
Imagine my surprise, rage, and utter sadness upon the arrival of the endcap display: by "African American Fiction" Barnes & Noble's corporate office meant, exclusively, titles such as Bitch, Candy-Licker, Thong on Fire, Thug-a-licious, Thug Matrimony, and Girlz in Da Hood. Not only were the titles offensive, the cover art was as well. For instance, on Thong on Fire the cover depicted the backside of a young woman, from the waist to the backs of the knees wearing an extremely short skirt, with the lower part of her buttocks showing along with the thong underwear she happens to be wearing.
I immediately began voicing my opinion about the promotion to my fellow employees, who were also shocked and, many, appalled by the endcap. They informed me that if, given a choice, they would not allow the promotion; but the corporate office made the endcap and all the titles on it mandatory. My co-workers are wonderful people who support me in spirit if nothing else but feel helpless to do anything because either as young people (college students and otherwise) the Barnes & Noble paycheck is their means to pay bills, or as older people they depend on their job to support and provide health benefits for their families. They would talk about it to an extent, but weren't willing to put themselves at risk for dismissal.
I also voiced my opinion to store management who encouraged me to put my thoughts on paper and present it to our district manager who would be visiting the very next day. It is important to note that if it had been up to store management, the endcap would have come down in our store; however, that, alone would not have remedied the situation, considering the promotion would be up in countless other Barnes & Noble stores across the country.
When I spoke with the district manager the next day, I told him why I was offended by the endcap, informed him that by keeping the endcap up Barnes & Noble was blatantly perpetuating racism and sexism in their stores. I told this district manager that Barnes & Noble was reinforcing negative stereotypes that Black people, such as myself, have been trying to erase for years. I said it might remedy the situation to include literary authors---Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Ernest Gaines---on the endcap, along with the authors like Zane and Omar Tyree and Eric Jerome Dickey. The district manager let me know that he "understood" why I was upset, and would roll the issue up to higher management.
It seems the district manager's take away was that the signage is the biggest problem. The next time I came to work, half expecting to see Their Eyes Were Watching God or Giovanni's Room on the endcap, I found that the only thing changed was that the sign had been taken down. The Barnes & Noble management seems to believe that if they don't classify it as "African American Fiction" and just sell it without a sign, people won't be as mad.
Facing South reports on the latest development in Mississippi's road to non-recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
A Mississippi agency wants to divert $600 million in federal funds from a housing program created to help low-income homeowners who suffered losses in Hurricane Katrina and use it to spruce up the State Port at Gulfport, the Associated Press reports.
The MDA claims that the housing program has more than enough money to meet demand, making the diversion possible. "This funding will be an important part of helping the State Port Authority restore and enhance port infrastructure for economic development initiatives that will create jobs and improve quality of life for the citizens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Gov. Haley Barbour said in a recent statement.
The outrageousness of this proposal needs some elaboration.
Facing South has previously noted that of the $16.7 billion dollars of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money set aside by Congress for the Gulf Coast "only $1 billion -- just 6 percent -- had been spent, almost all of it in Mississippi" (emphasis added). This and other comparisons of the respective federal funds allocated to hurricane recovery efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi lead well intentioned social justice advocates to buy a false picture, of Mississippi's recovery. The implicit logic seems to be that if Mississippi is getting so much more federal money than Louisiana, then it stands to reason that "recovery 'is well underway' in Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula."
There is a recovery underway in Biloxi and other parts of coastal Mississippi, but it is a recovery for casinos and resorts, not for people and communities.
Standing inside the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in downtown Biloxi, Mississippi, you'd never guess that you are at the epicenter of a town that lost over 5,000 homes in the flood. In the crowded lobby, guests drift past lush banks of flowers toward the retail promenade, where a store called the "Jewelry Box" displays Rolex watches, gold chains and flashy rings. Inside the gaming rooms, business is booming: Players pack the high stakes poker rooms and the aisles lined by 25 cent slot machines.
Just blocks away, the working class neighborhood of East Biloxi is still a wasteland of bare concrete slabs, where homes were washed entirely off their foundations. On many lots, front steps lead to nowhere. Local activists say that government assistance has been very slow in coming to this community, which was primarily populated by low-income African-Americans and Vietnamese.
Across the Gulf Coast, examples of the uneven recovery are everywhere. In most towns, families and businesses with private resources are rebuilding, while the poor are often still waiting for the government assistance they were promised. Nowhere is this contrast more glaring than in Biloxi, Mississippi....
The Biloxi casinos have made record profits in the past year, as contractors with money to burn spend their evenings at the new Hard Rock Casino, or the deluxe Beau Rivage. But the industry clearly thinks there's still plenty of room in the market. In mid-August, construction workers broke ground on the new Margaritaville casino and resort, a 46-acre complex of shops, restaurants and entertainment facilities. The project, which is expected to cost upwards of $700 million, is a joint venture between pop star Jimmy Buffett, a favorite son of Mississippi and Harrah's Entertainment. Based in Las Vegas, Harrah's earns billions in revenues from casinos, hotels and golf courses around the country. According to the company website, the $700 million Margaritaville Casino and Resort project "is the first phase of a development that will represent an investment of more than $1 billion when completed."
Margaritaville is going up in East Biloxi, at the foot of Oak Street, the heart of Biloxi's Vietnamese community, and home to both its Catholic Church and its Buddhist Temple. Yet Biloxi city council members and Harrah's officials have recently discussed the possibility of closing Oak Street to cars, in order to offset the new traffic brought in by the casino.
Bui says the small businesses along Oak Street don't know how much energy they should put into trying to rebuild. "They want to stay, but the signals they're getting from the government is, "We're waiting for Harrah's, which will be our savior. Don't talk to us,'" he says. Bui says most small business owners are waiting nervously to see if the new, rebuilt Biloxi still has a place for them.
While some might argue for the trickle down approach that prioritizes industries and the tourist economy, neoliberal economic theories cannot justify Haley Barbour's gross misappropriation of federal CDBG dollars. CDBG funds by definition are supposed to support low-income housing. Yet, as noted by the Mississippi Center for Justice [PDF]:
Over $3 billion of the $5.4 billion Congress gave Mississippi has been granted waivers from the requirement to serve the needs of low and moderate income residents. Only $1 billion has been devoted to programs that serve these same residents. Two years later, less than $100 million from those programs has been paid out.
With over 17,000 households (close to 50,000 persons) still in FEMA trailers and others doubled up with relatives or friends, Mississippi’s housing recovery is far from complete two years after Hurricane Katrina.
Less than $100 million has been paid out to address the needs of low and moderate income hurricane survivors in Mississippi. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities [PDF], it will require at least $700 million to restore public housing and HUD-subsidized housing damaged during Katrina. The Mississippi Center for Justice estimates over $900 million worth of needs unmet for low and moderate income residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Even if there were good reason to believe that the port expansion proposal will "improve quality of life for the citizens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast" (I am hardly convinced it will), how long will the project take and when will the supposed benefits reach the 50,000 Mississippians currently living in FEMA trailers?
This slide show from the Steps Coalition details Governor Barbour's criminal misuse of CDBG funds.
I am critical of Facing South for using Mississippi as a foil for Louisiana's problems post Katrina (and Rita) and thereby contributing to misconceptions about the needs of coastal Mississippians. Nonetheless, the Facing South blog provides important reporting and analysis of the post-Katrina/Rita crisis in the Gulf Coast region. Facing South's recent two-year report profiles a diverse array of Gulf Coast activists, organizations, communities and issues and should be read.
That's how my friend Derrick Evans refers to Hurricane Katrina these days. Here's Trisha Miller to explain a little of what he means by that.
The promise of renewal is fading with each passing anniversary. As a nation, we must lend a voice and a hand to help end the suffering among families who survived the hurricane but cannot find a path homeward.
It is unconscionable that a teenage boy in Pascagoula must crawl into his front door because the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not issue his family a handicapped-accessible trailer. Or that a mother in D'Iberville, whose home was reduced to rubble in the storm, cannot rebuild or reunite her family until she resolves a dispute with FEMA over her right to emergency assistance. Or that the lethargic pace of state recovery assistance means that an eligible Mississippi homeowner may lose his home through foreclosure while awaiting a homeowner assistance grant.
These are but a few examples of a continuing storm that has besieged the Gulf Coast. The road home rests with all of us.
This continuing storm is not a natural disaster:
In Mississippi alone, 70,000 homes were destroyed and 160,000 were damaged by the storm. Low- and moderate-income families occupied the majority of the homes affected by the hurricane. Affordable housing is desperately needed to help families rebuild their lives, but the state and federal governments have failed to deliver assistance to those most in need. Although Mississippi has received $5.4 billion in federal Community Development Block Grants, the Mississippi Development Authority has so far paid only $55 million to 787 lower-income households under the only income-targeted program for homeowners.
Mississippi has strayed far from Congress's goal to spend half this money on lower-income storm victims' needs. A recently released report authored by Mississippi Center for Justice for the Steps Coalition details how Mississippi has underfunded the lower-income population' recovery by $1 billion and what it would take to restore balance. See http://www.stepscoalition.org/news/article/steps_coalition_cdbg_report
More than 2,500 public housing units were damaged or destroyed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Two years later, HUD and the Mississippi Regional Housing Authority have not replaced the damaged public housing or provided a sufficient number of Section 8 vouchers.
16,000 FEMA trailers still serve as homes for many Mississippi families, and even this temporary housing may soon disappear. Local governments have begun the process of prohibiting FEMA trailers without offering housing alternatives to families living on the verge of homelessness.
The storm rages from southeast Texas, through southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Two years and the government still has no plan for the devastated Gulf Coast region.
I became aware of Naomi Klein's work in the first month after Hurricane Katrina, when she had made a remarkable discovery about New Orleans: in neighborhoods that had been declared habitable by Mayor Nagin there were 23, 267 uninhabited apartments that could be rented to evacuees. I said then:
If each unit houses three people, that's 70,000 out of the estimated 200,000 left permanently homeless in the aftermath of Katrina. That's over one third. Bringing them home is only a matter of political will.
Klein argued that there was indeed political will, but it was hell bent on a far different outcome.
"Reconstruction," whether in Baghdad or New Orleans, has become shorthand for a massive uninterrupted transfer of wealth from public to private hands, whether in the form of direct "cost plus" government contracts or by auctioning off new sectors of the state to corporations.
This vision was laid out in uniquely undisguised form during a meeting at the Heritage Foundation's Washington headquarters on September 13. Present were members of the House Republican Study Committee, a caucus of more than 100 conservative lawmakers headed by Indiana Congressman Mike Pence. The group compiled a list of thirty-two "Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices," including school vouchers, repealing environmental regulations and "drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Admittedly, it seems farfetched that these would be adopted as relief for the needy victims of an eviscerated public sector. Until you read the first three items: "Automatically suspend Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas"; "Make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone"; and "Make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations)." All are poised to become law or have already been adopted by presidential decree.
Klein had been developing this theme since before Hurricane Katrina and has now published her book on the subject, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein makes provocative connections between disaster capitalism and US torture policy.
In one of his most influential essays, [Milton] Friedman articulated contemporary capitalism's core tactical nostrum, what I have come to understand as "the shock doctrine". He observed that "only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change". When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, the University of Chicago professor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo". A variation on Machiavelli's advice that "injuries" should be inflicted "all at once", this is one of Friedman's most lasting legacies.
Friedman first learned how to exploit a shock or crisis in the mid-70s, when he advised the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock after Pinochet's violent coup, but the country was also traumatised by hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy - tax cuts, free trade, privatised services, cuts to social spending and deregulation.
It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, as so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman there. Friedman coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment". In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy", has been the method of choice....
Torture, or in CIA parlance, "coercive interrogation", is a set of techniques developed by scientists and designed to put prisoners into a state of deep disorientation.
Declassified CIA manuals explain how to break "resistant sources": create violent ruptures between prisoners and their ability to make sense of the world around them. First, the senses are starved (with hoods, earplugs, shackles), then the body is bombarded with overwhelming stimulation (strobe lights, blaring music, beatings). The goal of this "softening-up" stage is to provoke a kind of hurricane in the mind, and it is in that state of shock that most prisoners give their interrogators whatever they want.
The shock doctrine mimics this process precisely. The original disaster - the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown - puts the entire population into a state of collective shock. The falling bombs, the bursts of terror, the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies. Like the terrorised prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.
These connections between Friedmanite "shock doctrine" and US torture policy are made quite vivid in this short film, based on Klein's book.
Recent reports say that the Senate is investigating detainee abuses by CIA and DoD personnel. It is therefore all the more important to keep public attention focused on US torture policy to ensure that there is a full accounting of the abuses that occurred and that there is a total ban on the twenty interrogation techniques, reportedly used by the CIA, which amount to torture and are illegal under US and international law. Check out this video from Physicians for Human Rights and use it to help spread the word.
By John Gibson
Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center
Call to Action:
The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, after a long heroic struggle led by D'Army Bailey in its creation, finally opened in 1991. The plan had been to turn the Lorraine motel not only into a museum but also for the institution to serve as a nexus for activities to help carry out the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, especially among youth.
Sadly, as often happens with such worthy endeavors, the vision was compromised, when the institution was hijacked by wealthy, powerful corporate interests. Shortly after the opening, the founder of the museum, civil rights veteran D'Army Bailey, was ousted as president of the foundation that operated the museum. An executive committe of the board was created and an extremely wealthy white conservative Republican, J.R. Pitt Hyde, was named chair of the executive committee. Hyde continues to this day as chair of the executive committee.
National Civil Rights Museum:
What is wrong with this story?
Pitt Hyde is reported to generally make many of the major decisions; for example, who will receive the International Freedom award. Recipients of the National Freedom award have included Hyde's other two long term members on the board. $25,000 goes with the national award. These two recipients have been on the board for many years and are supporters of Hyde.
This year, it is reported that Magic Johnson is to get a freedom award. He has done good work in the cause of AIDS prevention and treatment, but after all, this is also in his self-interest.
How many board members could pass a test on civil rights history and its still living legendary veterans throughout the United States and internationally? Why are there not several of these great movement veterans on the board? Why isn't one of them receiving a Freedom Award this year?
The museum property is owned by the state of Tennessee, but leased, controlled, and operated by the private foundation and foundation's board. Last month, the foundation board attempted to finalize the exercising of an option clause to purchase the museum property from Tennessee for $1. This possible purchase has thus far been stopped by the efforts of local activists and Tennessee Black Caucus leaders. The board has still not responded to the state's request for records and documents concerning the operation of the museum.
The private foundation that controls the museum is now trying to renew a lease with the state of Tennessee for 50 or more years.
Can we afford to let this happen? Do we want private corporate America to rewrite and control civil rights history, programs, mission, and access by All.
If this is of concern to you or you have question, please contact:
State Representative Barbara Cooper
Legislative Office:
38 Legislative Plaza
Nashville, TN 37243-0186
(615) 741-4295
FAX (615) 741-8752
email: rep.barbara.cooper@legislature.state.tn.us
Ms. Cooper is a member of the Tennessee Black Caucus. Please respond quickly, as the Tennessee Building Commission will respond to the lease request from the private foundation no later than the end of this month and possibly as soon as the next few days.
The Black Caucus has asked that a long term lease to the private foundation not be granted, and that instead a short term lease of six months be permitted, so an investigation of documents, operation, and future mission of the museum can be completed, and also so they can respond to the 200-300 citizens who turned out to protest the sale of the museum for $1 to a private foundation dominated by corporate interests.
FURTHER READING
The Honorable D'Army Bailey, "The Troubled Birth of the National Civil Rights Museum" (Black Agenda Report)
Maybe I'm being grumpy, but this Labor Day blog post by Seth Godin (via Matt) really rubbed me the wrong way.
Your great-grandfather knew what it meant to work hard. He hauled hay all day long, making sure that the cows got fed. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about a worker who ruptured his vertebrae, wrecked his hands, burned his lungs, and was eventually hit by a train as part of his 15-year career at a slaughterhouse. Now that's hard work.
The meaning of hard work in a manual economy is clear. Without the leverage of machines and organizations, working hard meant producing more. Producing more, of course, was the best way to feed your family.
Those days are long gone. Most of us don't use our bodies as a replacement for a machine -- unless we're paying for the privilege and getting a workout at the gym. These days, 35% of the American workforce sits at a desk. Yes, we sit there a lot of hours, but the only heavy lifting that we're likely to do is restricted to putting a new water bottle on the cooler.
Godin's post is not really in the spirit of Labor Day: it's an individualistic meditation on the meaning of "hard work" by a wealthy businessman. Godin uses the example of a worker injured on the job as a foil for his musings on how these days "hard work" is no longer risky manual labor but rather readiness of entrepreneurs to take risks that are shrewd and visionary.
Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo.
You might be wondering why I am even reading this stuff. Back in 2004, when I was an underemployed PhD program dropout trying to parley my activism and my communication skills (blogging, academic research, poetry writing, English teaching) into some kind of professional life, I asked my friend Adina for some books to read that would help me understand trends in internet communications and online activism. One of the books Adina recommended was Seth Godin's highly influential Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers. I learned a lot from the book---and I doubt I'll ever read any other books in the marketing guru genre.
Anyway, there are two things I want to say to Godin's notions of "hard work."
Godin should spend an hour or two reading the archives of Confined Space, Jordan Barab's excellent, now sadly defunct blog on workplace safety. In his farewell post, Barab wrote:
More than 15 workers are killed every day on the job in this country and a worker becomes injured or ill on the job every 2.5 seconds. The overwhelming majority of deaths, injuries and illnesses could have been easily prevented had the employers simply provided a safe workplace and complied with well-recognized OSHA regulations or other safe practices.
And you'll never learn from the evening news that we have more fish and wildlife inspectors than OSHA inspectors, or that the penalties from a chemical release that kills fish is higher than a chemical release that kills a worker. Not many are aware that workers are often afraid to complain about health and safety hazards or file a complaint with OSHA. Almost no one understands that OSHA inspections are so infrequent and penalties for endangering workers are so insignificant that there is almost no disincentive for employers to break the law. Employers are almost never criminally prosecuted for killing workers even when they knew they were violating OSHA standards.
Siobhán McGrath and Nina Martin have written an extensive study (PDF) of this trend in American work. They also published a shorter version of their findings (PDF) in Dollars & Sense Magazine.
While many people are familiar with the conditions faced by garment workers and construction day laborers, the tentacles of unregulated work stretch into many other sectors of the economy,
including workplaces as diverse as restaurants, grocery stores, security companies, nail salons, laundries, warehouses, manufacturers, building services firms, and home health care agencies.We have documented considerable variety in how employers violate laws. They pay their workers less than minimum wage, fail to pay them overtime, refuse to pay them for all hours worked, or
simply don’t pay them at all. They disregard health and safety regulations by imposing unsafe conditions, forcing employees to work without providing necessary safety equipment, and failing to give training and information. The list of ways employers break the law goes on: they refuse to pay Unemployment Insurance or Workers’ Compensation; they discriminate against workers on the basis of race, gender and immigration status; they retaliate against attempts to organize; they refuse medical leaves. Such stories of substandard working conditions may sound familiar—they carry strong echoes of the experiences of workers at the beginning of the last century. At that time, the solution was to pass laws to create wage minimum standards, protect workers who speak up for their rights, and eventually, guarantee workplace safety and outlaw discrimination. That these very laws are now being so widely violated poses new challenges. While efforts to pass new laws
raising workplace standards are still critical, a new battle has emerged to ensure that existing laws are enforced.What Explains Unregulated Work?
The rise of unregulated work is closely tied to many of the same factors that are thought to be responsible for declining wages and job security in key sectors of the economy. Over the last 30 years, for example, global economic competition has been extinguishing the prospects of workers in manufacturing. Local manufacturers struggle to drive down their costs in order to compete against firms located in Asian or Latin American countries where wages and safety standards are lower.Yet unregulated work cannot be explained simply as a byproduct of globalization. It’s true that the competitive pressure felt in manufacturing may ripple through other parts of the economy, as wage floors are lowered and the power of labor against capital is diminished. But we found businesses that serve distinctly local markets—such as home cleaning companies, grocery stores, and nail salons—engaging in a range of illegal work practices, even though they are insulated from global competition.
Declining unionization rates since the 1970’s also contribute to the spread of unregulated labor. One effect has been a general rise in inequality accompanied by lower wages and workplace standards: a weaker labor movement has less influence on the labor market as a whole, and offers less protection for both unionized and non-union workers. More directly, union members are more likely to report workplace violations to the relevant government authority than nonunion workers, as a number of studies have shown. So it makes sense that employers are increasingly committing such violations in the wake of a long-term decline in the percentage of workers in unions.
But even the powerful one-two punch of globalization and de-unionization provides only a partial explanation. Government policy is also instrumental in shaping unregulated work—not only employment policies per se, but also immigration, criminal justice, and welfare “reform” policies that create pools of vulnerable workers. In this environment employers can use a variety of illegal and abusive cost-cutting strategies. Perhaps most significantly, they are deciding whether or not to break the law in an era of declining enforcement, when they are likely to face mild penalties or no penalties at all.
For some related reading, I also suggest another article from Dollars & Sense, "The Rise of Migrant Militancy," by Immanuel Ness.
Folks I’ve got them hungry blues
And nothin’ in this to lose
People tellin’ me to choose
Between dyin’ and lyin’ and keep
on cryin’
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain’t you heard the news
There’s another thing to choose
A brand new world clean and fine
Where nobody’s hungry
And there’s no color line
A thing like that’s worth
anybody dyin’
I ain’t got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
James P. Johnson
Langston Hughes
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