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.Recommended reading: Modernism, empathy and history for the summer
Zeitoun – Dave Eggers This is an account of Abdulrahman Zeitoun who stayed behind when hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. He travelled about in his canoe to rescue neighbours and see the drowned city.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 2006New 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 2005Letters
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.
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
Socialist Worker appeal launched: help us raise £150,000
17 September 2005We 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 2005Halliburton 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.
New Orleans, divided city
10 September 2005The 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
Hurricane will be used to drive out the black poor
10 September 2005I’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.
The price of Bush's war: black, poor — left to die
10 September 2005The hurricane that hit New Orleans was a natural disaster. But what followed was pure criminality on the part of George Bush and his administration.
America’s cultural heart
10 September 2005Imagining 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.
New Orleans — a black city left to die
10 September 2005New 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.
The legacy of slavery laid bare
10 September 2005I’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.
The brutal results of Bush’s callous policy
10 September 2005The 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.
Class and race decide who lives and dies in New Orleans
10 September 2005Life had a price in New Orleans last week. The rich survived. The poor — and especially the black poor — were abandoned to their fate.
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