New Orleans

Protests show a shift in US class consciousness

Some 400 people marched with Occupy New Orleans last Saturday. Mostly young, about 50 of them were African-American.

Unlock Your Mind - Soul Rebels Brass Band

The Soul Rebels Brass Band are a New Orleans marching band. They infuse this traditional style with soul, hip‑hop, funk and R&B, throwing the genre into the 21st century.

Treme: A community using jazz and carnival to survive

Treme exposes New Orleans’ corrupt legal system and the despicable political response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. It explores the rich culture of the city and its deep inequality through a multitude of interlocking stories and characters.

New Orleans: five years after the flood

They call it "the storm" here, like there never was any other storm—but also like you don’t say the other word, just in case.

Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke – the lost voices of New Orleans

All respect to Spike Lee. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, he felt he had a political duty to make a documentary about it, to make it long – and to make it for television so as many people as possible saw it.

New Orleans: they used the deluge to 'clean' the city

02 September 2006
New Orleans is still broken. There is a "beauty strip" along the river in mainly white neighbourhoods, where "les bon temps" are still celebrated, but the heart of the African-American metropolis, middle class as well as working class neighbourhoods, remains a ghost city. Vast areas of the city are still without power and bodies are still being discovered in the toxic rubble.

Letters

24 September 2005
Letters

Who says?

17 September 2005
"I’m going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night’s sleep."Michael Brown, resigning from the US department in charge of the New Orleans rescue when his lack of experience was discovered

New Orleans: melting pot for the soundtrack of the century

17 September 2005
"Fats Domino is saved," was one of the headlines that came out of the New Orleans tragedy.

Socialist Worker appeal launched: help us raise £150,000

17 September 2005
We live in a world where the US had to send troops into both New Orleans and Baghdad to try to keep control.

New Orleans briefs

10 September 2005
Halliburton poised to profit Earlier this year US multinational Halliburton confirmed that it had hired the former head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Joseph Allbaugh, as a consultant on issues including disaster relief and homeland security.

The price of Bush's war: black, poor — left to die

10 September 2005
The hurricane that hit New Orleans was a natural disaster. But what followed was pure criminality on the part of George Bush and his administration.

The legacy of slavery laid bare

10 September 2005
I’m originally from New Orleans. I know my immediate family there is safe after a few anxiety ridden days of not knowing their situation. The fate of members of the more extended family is not known and we hope for the best.

Hurricane will be used to drive out the black poor

10 September 2005
I’m surprised that in all of the press coverage of Hurricane Katrina there is no mention of Hurricane Ivan, which hit New Orleans, Louisiana, about a year ago.

New Orleans — a black city left to die

10 September 2005
New Orleans will not be forgiven. It is a turning point in history. Today tens of millions of Americans hate George Bush with an endless, ragged, bleeding rage. I am one of them.

Class and race decide who lives and dies in New Orleans

10 September 2005
Life had a price in New Orleans last week. The rich survived. The poor — and especially the black poor — were abandoned to their fate.

New Orleans, divided city

10 September 2005
The population of New Orleans is 67 percent black. 35 percent of black households do not own a motor vehicle, compared to 15 percent of white households.The city has the second highest rate of child poverty in the US. It is the tenth poorest city in the US. The population of the devastated Lower 9th ward has an average household income of £14,600. A quarter of the households there survive on less than £5,400 a year.Across the state of Louisiana, where New Orleans is located, the equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of education every day. Many young black men from New Orleans end up in Angola prison, a former slave pla

America’s cultural heart

10 September 2005
Imagining 20th century music without New Orleans is like imagining painting without Picasso. The city has a rich and varied musical tradition, but it is above all the birthplace of jazz.

The brutal results of Bush’s callous policy

10 September 2005
The US 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to New Orleans last weekend, the first time it had been sent into an American city since the Los Angeles rising of April 1992.