As consistent readers are well aware, I've been writing a lot recently about the now impending demolition of the four largest New Orleans public housing projects.
Since City Council unanimously approved the demolition plans last Thursday, I've kept on thinking about how this whole process unfolded.
I've got a bad taste in my mouth. Let me try to rinse and spit.
Way back on December 5th, I wrote a post called "ENTIRELY UNRELATED HOUSING NEWS" in which I called on progressive New Orleanians to be supportive of advocate efforts to halt the demolition process. My argument was that given the high rent crisis, the homelessness epidemic, and the impending eviction of thousands of FEMA trailers in May, the city needed to reevaluate the demolition plans given that redevelopment blueprints promised a net decrease in the number of public units. I encouraged people to get involved and put up numerous links to defendneworleanspublichousing.org, the website of the Coalition to Stop Demolition, a network of housing advocates and residents.
On December 11th, the day after the HCDRC (the rubber stamp demolition committee) hearing on the public housing units, I wrote another post, called "Mobilization Tactics Thwarted By Crazy." In it, I was extremely frustrated. It seemed that so much media/blog attention that should have been paid to the hearing and to the issues being raised by opponents to the demolition plans was instead going toward something else entirely. Instead, people got caught up in a mainstream media-driven hysteria. I'm talking of course, of the "threat" posed by a poster around City Hall that pledged to destroy condos in retaliation for any public housing demolitions. I outlined how politicians, talk radio, and the two mainstream daily papers seized upon the "threat" to drive a wedge between everyday New Orleanians and housing advocates by making the advocates seem like a primary danger while the legitimate questions they raise about the nature of HANO's plans were brushed aside. The poster became the story of the day not just because the T-P, talk radio, and City Business went wild with it, but also because so many New Orleanians and so many bloggers went for the bait.
It was at this point that it became clear that the direct action protest tactics of the Coalition to Stop Demolition were becoming counterproductive in the face of the public outcry encouraged by the authorities. The next day, December 12th, I wrote another post about the back and forth on public housing. In it, I discussed the unnecessarily diametric nature within the rhetoric being used by issue partisans. I even apologized for the part my own passion played in creating improper perceptions regarding the position of those that oppose the demolition plans. I tried to debunk this sense among many pro-demolition pieces I came across that those in the opposition were trying to restore the projects as they were before Katrina. Within that post, I brainstormed some alternative proposals to prove that some kind of affordable housing game plan with vision could forge compromise on this issue.
The stop the demolition movement seems to be much more about forcing government to somehow address the housing crisis BEFORE going ahead with demolition plans, given that many argue these projects could be viable short-term emergency housing options. There is no reason there can't be compromise on this issue. Why not increase aid vouchers to give people a better chance of finding market apartments? Why not quickly remodel one or two of the project complexes and while taking down the others? Why not force developers and HANO to have a redevelopment contract in place before beginning demolition so that we can guarantee that these land tracts will not sit empty (like Magnolia)? Why not begin a program in which salvageable homes slated for demolition are distributed to working families so that our city is not dismantled into empty lots? I mean have you read what Karen Gadbois has been saying?
Yet the perception that demolition opponents wanted to restore the projects to their pre-Katrina form continued to perpetuate as if it were a fact.
Something else happened too. The demonization of the public housing advocates themselves by everyone from progressive bloggers to reactionary right-wingers further served to undercut debate on whether or not these demolition and redevelopment plans ultimately serve the interests of New Orleans residents. Stacey Head's historically loaded "outside agitator" label proved to have a powerful adhesive. (It was ironic how angrily people insisted that this was not a racial issue while still using that exact language, but I'll let that go for now)
Of course, this had a lot to do with the tremendous short-comings of the coalition and its leadership. Their inability to adjust their tactics to respond to media coverage, political backlash, and the public speaks volumes about their larger inability to mount resistance to the demolition plans.
As a result, many bloggers began to question the direct action advocates more than HUD, HANO, and the private developers. After a Sunday T-P devoted several pages and a full headline to HUD and HANO's position on the matter, Oyster hit advocates hard:
Either call HANO/HUD on its claim about the 300+ available units, and/or divert some protest energy towards immediately filling them up! Either you catch HANO/HUD in a(nother) lie, or you help 300 families who are suffering from this crisis, and demonstrate the urgency of the situation. You just got thumped by a front page Sunday morning feature titled: "FAR FROM FULL: Lost in the debate about the demolition of N.O. housing developments is one fact: There are hundreds of units available right now". What's the response to that? "They're lying"? "We don't believe those numbers"?... That's not going to get it done.
And certainly Oyster was correct to take the advocates to task. Why were they chaining themselves to the HANO HQ, as I asked, instead of helping displaced residents to occupy the "ready" units that HANO claimed to have available?
These questionable anti-demolition tactics were a tremendous distraction that became exasperated on December 19th by what was perhaps the most sensational distraction story in this whole series of events. Oyster's post on 64inchtelevisiongate has drawn a whopping 64 comments. Other message boards that lack the traditional skepticism of Right Hand Thief regulars were awash in disturbing commentary decrying all public housing residents, let alone the activists.
Thus, on December 20th, when advocates and residents were locked out of City Council and then pepper sprayed and tasered by police, many were unsympathetic. (Certainly less sympathetic than the national mainstream media as I'm sure you'll find, as I have, if you do a quick survey of their stories and photographs)
It was the housing activists themselves that were decried again and again. The quiet regarding the council's pro-demolition decision of council was deafening.
Even usually thoughtful New Orleans bloggers seemed to be more inclined to attack activists as anarchists, hippies, hipsters, outside agitators, etc. instead of the actual demolition plans.
(Y'all know who you are)
For Instance:
New Orleans is becoming more for the wanna-be protesters than for the natives or locals. At this rate in another few years it will be down to the murderers and the white boys from Portland with their blond deadlocks.....
or
The most frustrating part is that in the sea of protesters I'm seeing, I'd be willing to bet about 90% of them do not presently, and have never, lived in a project. The blind do-gooder mentality can do much more harm than good when misdirected.
(You know, as opposed to this outside agitator... or the equally compelling argument that nobody is allowed to oppose the war because 99% have never been to Iraq)
This type of "criticism" of the protesters is a stark contrast to that offered at YRHT here, though I wish he'd been able to post this four or five days sooner. In that piece, Oyster uncovers a chronology of inconsistent "available unit" numbers offered by various pro-demolition agencies and questions why the Coalition didn't fight back harder against the HUD allegations.
Why didn't activists press hard on this dubious, evolving HUD number upon which the T-P based so much of its reporting and editorial opinion? Wasn't this a politically exploitable "soft spot"? If the T-P was forced to retract its false subheading about the "fact" that "hundreds" of units were available "right now", and if HUD was shown to be lying about the 154 unit number-- a distinct possibility in my view-- wouldn't the activists be in a very strong position to demand a second opinion on, say, HUD's rehab vs. redevelop cost numbers? Couldn't any HUD number be credibly disputed at that point? What if the activists presented 154 displaced families who were willing to fill up the available units, and what if HUD was unable to come up with the 154 units that they claimed? How would that look? How would the T-P look? Wouldn't that be a political winner?
Well right on, Oyster, I just wish you posted this a few days sooner. Notice how he avoids calling them anarchists and hippies.
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My mouth still tastes awful. I can feel bits and pieces of this all stuck in my teeth. Girls don't want to kiss me. I just can't get it out. I still don't think people really get what housing advocates were trying to accomplish. I don't think people understand why the rush to demolish public housing projects has been both suspicious and short-sighted.
More personally, what upsets me the most is trying to think about why the New Orleans "progressive" community whiffed so bad on this issue. So many stayed on the fence. So many failed to see past the sensational nature of the T-P's biased coverage. So many that chose to express outrage at the "outside agitators," the use of the "race card," the "threats" of violence were, at the same time, irresponsibly silent when it came to:
1. The homelessness epidemic
2. The rental property shortage and accompanying rent increase.
3. The ethical questions surrounding HUD chief Alphonso Jackson
4. The ethical questions surrounding HUD chief's no-bid contracts in New Orleans
5. The upcoming eviction of several thousand people from FEMA trailers.
6. Unclear "pledges" for the number of affordable housing units available in redevelopment projects.
7. Questions over displaced residents' ultimate right of return have gone unanswered
8. That these plans were in place before the storm speaks to suspicions that they do not address post-Katrina housing needs and realities
9. Karen Gadbois' exposure of the city's demolition of private homes without owner consent and the HCDRC non-plan to add as many vacant lots to this city as possible
10. The Magnolia projects at C.J. Peete were knocked down ten years ago and the property still sits empty.
11. And so on
13. And so forth
15. I could go all day
77. It's Christmas. I'm glad I live in a house.
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