Following the lead of some nearby parishes, the New Orleans City Council voted Thursday to continue using 2006 advisory base flood elevation maps to determine minimum construction elevations in Orleans Parish until at least 2011.
The vote was 5-0, but Councilwoman Stacy Head used the occasion to denounce eastern New Orleans and Lower 9th Ward "activists" who refuse to look at the good of the city as a whole and insist on special treatment for their heavily storm-damaged neighborhoods, she said.
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She then compared her willingness to "do the right thing" with what she depicted as the selfishness of "activists" in eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward. She said they demand preferential treatment for their parts of the city as "a perceived right" because those areas suffered heavily after Hurricane Katrina, even though many other parts of the city also were flooded and badly damaged.
Head did not include any council members in her criticism, but Councilwomen Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who represent the areas to which Head referred, have in the past complained that their districts have been treated unfairly in the distribution of post-Katrina aid.
Totally inflammatory and 100% unnecessary.
Guess what? Eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward DO deserve preferential treatment. They do! They do! They totally do!
I don't want to have to go into a long rant about privilege and victimization before, during, and after Katrina right now. I really don't. I hope that my position has been consistently clear.
But even if you've never understood it or still don't buy it, you have to recognize how out-of-touch or intentionally mean-spirited this kind of language is.
The words and tone are explicitly evocative of Reagan-era Republican arguments against helping inner cities and emblematic of why Stacy Head has become such a magnet for criticism from the African American community. "Activist" and "perceived right" are especially insulting code words when used in this context.
I would have thought someone as sharp as Stacy Head would have picked up on this by now.
It's infuriating.
And of all the times for Cynthia Willard-Lewis to hold her tongue...
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