Posted on 12/10/2005 3:30:51 PM PST by Crackingham
With jazz music, prayer and offerings to the gods, hundreds of Hurricane Katrina survivors on Saturday demanded the government move faster to rebuild the city and provide evacuees with more disaster assistance. Shouting "We're Back," protesters said they feared the city's poor would be shut out of reconstruction after being dispersed far across the United States since the storm. City officials estimate more than 300,000 New Orleans residents have yet to return since Katrina flooded the city, reducing entire neighborhoods to a rubble-strewn wasteland.
In one of the largest rallies in New Orleans since the hurricane, survivors marched to City Hall from Congo Square, a centuries-old meeting place where African slaves once gathered to trade, play music and dance. African drummers and a brass band dubbed the "Soul Rebels" set the carnival-like tone, while a tribal priest made an offering of rum and watermelon.
"I lived in my house for 45 years -- my mother died and left it to me," said Gloria Brown, 70, an evacuee living in San Francisco. "I swam seven blocks in filthy water with my dog Queenie to survive. I want to come back but I can't pay for it."
The federal government is providing varying amounts of assistance to evacuees to cover temporary housing and living expenses. But some evacuees said they have not yet received any money.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has held meetings with evacuees living in places like Alabama or Mississippi to gather their ideas about how to rebuild the city. City and state officials have yet to determine how to rebuild a faulty levee system that created the flooding, a key decision for insurers and lenders financing the reconstruction. Some hurricane evacuees said there should be less talk and more action.
"Right now they're treating us like refugees," said Mervin Lucas. "They're worried about health in Afghanistan, the cold in Pakistan. They're giving folks in Iraq better things than they're giving us."
Rally organizers accused the city of discriminating against black residents by moving slowly on rebuilding, particularly in low-income areas that were hardest hit, after failing to rescue them quickly in the days following the storm.
"It's no secret the rich white folks uptown don't want us back," said Malcolm Suber, a protest leader with the grass-roots People's Hurricane Relief Fund. "This government left us to starve and to die."
I'm not trying to put Pryor down he had a grasp on who and what he was. On the other hand, just how are they going to keep a mike out of Bubba's hands when he can tell you how it was all about him and how he almost burned up with Richard, just like he did for Rosa Parks (I'm not trying to put her down either).
They're giving folks in Iraq better things than they're giving us."
OMG That just totally frosts me!!!!
Free 2K Debit card, free hotel rooms, free charter bus rides, free apartments, free food, free room service.
And last I checked the US is fighting the Taliban and AlQada in Iraq.
I am so glad I stopped giving to the Katrina Fund very early on!
No. Bush's dump of taxpayer money to the tsunami victims and the reaction and rhetoric of Katrina victims and politicians cured me from EVER donating to a charity for disasters ever again. They take enough in taxes from me and just give that away, anyway. That's my charity, my taxes --which was over $30,000 last year. Anyone else just goes to my local church. I now contribute to NOTHING else.
Ray Nagin has held meetings with evacuees
Shouldn't he be woo-ing large corporations to move in and build businesses? So people have employement to come back to?
Oh wait, maybe they don't want employment, just a free house somewhere else? In a better climate than Utah maybe?
Oh, I get it now! Sorry.
welp thats as far as I got
damn... I'll count my blessings about being a truck driver!!!
I'm glad I am not the only one who feels that way. There's a fine line between charity and entitlement, and that line was crossed long ago.
Get a frikkin job and build your own life. It's no wonder if people don't want you back. Bunch of loud mouthed, violent leeches!""
Wherever you got shuffled off to doesn't want you there, either, sucking off the taxpayers.
I realize that the statement "GET A JOB" is something foreign to your ears. Learn what it means and do something about it. Meanwhile, get out of my pocketbook.
Ms Conservababe
Do you realize it takes TIME when you have a storm of the century?
Can you wait while the rest of the country does the best they can do?
Or is your name a misnomer, and you're one of the people who think we owe you something just because you breathe.
And I know the post you are talking about; and I have said repeatedly that I did not read that post carefully enough when I agree with THE STATEMENT he made. Of course, apparently that wasn't good enough for you.
That I am a racist is a pile of crap; there are plenty of people on this forum that will say just the opposite.
But I'll tell you one thing, there is something really creepy about people who bookmark other people's remarks and use them years later in an argument like this.
Obviously you've been waiting to use it, since what I said on this thread is not as bad as the other posts on this thread.
That in itself is kind of sick.
Get a frikkin job and build your own life. It's no wonder if people don't want you back. Bunch of loud mouthed, violent leeches!""
Wherever you got shuffled off to doesn't want you there, either, sucking off the taxpayers.
I realize that the statement "GET A JOB" is something foreign to your ears. Learn what it means and do something about it. Meanwhile, get out of my pocketbook.
In case you have'nt read ..babe most if not all of the city sewer, water and public utilities have been restored to all but some corners of the 9th ward. So know what you are talkng about before you troll here with the monicker of Conservbabe.
Yes, I do realize that it takes time to recover from a once in a lifetime disaster. That is why it makes me fume to hear other posters on FR calling them lazy welfare bums just wanting to live on government handouts.
A lot of these evacuees are home owners who want to get back to their homes that they are still trying to make mortgage payments on, but are unable to live in because the city is still not livable without services.
The five people you refer to at the congressional hearings were hand picked by Cynthia McKinney, the nutcase congresswoman from Georgia. She picked them soley to further her own racist agenda. We down here in Louisiana certainly don't claim those five as our spokespeople. They are hardly representative of the vast majority of the people down here. There are some nuts and troublemakers down here, no doubt, but there are also a lot of hard working, honest people just like anywhere else. We can't control what the media puts out for the rest of the world to see.
No kidding. But they were there to represent the people of New Orleans.
Those are the very people who sat by for years and let the powers that be in New Orleans and Lousiana trash that state.
Now that they're in a bind, they rush to the nearest journalist and attack those of us who have NOTHING whatsoever to do with the situation they're in, other than the fact that they EXPECT us to pay for it.
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