Hi.
On October 1st I sent you a hugely favorable Washington Post
review of "Freshwater Road," Denise Nicholas' novel of 1964's
Freedom Summer and added some personal reflection about Denise.
I've attached notice of her book-signing in Los Angeles on Thursday.
Ed
The Nation (October 24, 2005 issue)
Building a New Table
David Dyssegaard Kallick
An open letter from New York civic groups to Gulf Coast
residents, with more detailed lessons from the post-9/11 reconstruction, is
available at www.goodjobsny.org.
As New Yorkers marked the fourth anniversary of the September 11
attacks, our television screens flickered with ghastly images of devastation
on the Gulf Coast. Even after what we'd been through, it was hard to grasp
the scale of this disaster. But when members of Congress began to talk about
modeling reconstruction on post-9/11 programs that ended up gentrifying New
York and hurting the poor, those of us who worked to bring community
perspectives into that process couldn't help feeling that our experience
might yield some lessons for folks in New Orleans, Biloxi and other ravaged
communities.
Progressives sometimes talk about not just having a seat at the table
but building a new table. In New York a fragmented civil society came
together after 9/11 and, to a significant degree, built a new table.
Immediately following the attacks, the Fiscal Policy Institute, where I
work, and the New York City Central Labor Council called together all the
groups in our Rolodexes. We had no clear plans, but at a time when attention
was focused on disaster relief, we wanted to begin the conversation about
rebuilding. Several other clusters of discussion merged with ours, and
around December 2001 we gave ourselves a name: the Labor Community Advocacy
Network to Rebuild New York (LCAN).
Our organizing principle was that we were a network, not a coalition.
We didn't want to be naïve about the difficulty of bringing like-minded
groups together in one big happy family. After several months of
discussions, we put together a draft document that focused on our key
issues: jobs, housing, environmental justice and linking lower Manhattan to
the rest of the city. In the end, more than fifty groups signed on to the
LCAN agenda, including unions, immigrant rights groups and neighborhood
organizations.
At the same time, other networks were evolving in the city, bringing
together planners, architects and neighborhood activists. A small number of
networks, including the umbrella Civic Alliance, was able to reach into all
corners of city life. Hundreds of organizations were in regular
communication, allowing us to see quickly where there was a "civic
consensus"--and where there wasn't. Meanwhile, several thousand community
members became deeply informed and extremely articulate about the
staggeringly complex issues involved in rebuilding.
Could something similar take shape on the Gulf Coast? It will be no
small challenge, with the population so widely dispersed and the devastated
area so massive. But broad networks can give people a voice in discussions
that are usually limited to real estate developers and government officials:
Will the rebuilt economy be all tourism and oil? What kinds of
infrastructure investments make the most sense? And--enormously important
given the economic inequities laid bare by Hurricane Katrina--who benefits
from the rebuilding funds already starting to stream in?
In New York we saw program after program that heightened inequality
rather than reducing it. Residential "Liberty Bonds," for instance, gave
tax-exempt financing to super-luxury apartments, pushing low-income people
out. When real estate interests were lined up together, even a strong civic
consensus was usually not enough to overcome them. But when commercial
interests were divided, our networks managed some impressive victories.
After a four-year campaign, the governor and mayor recently proposed that
$500 million go to parks, affordable housing, support for local arts and
cultural institutions, and local economic development--all designed to
improve living standards in poor and working-class communities.
A word of caution: When Washington starts talking about $100 billion
or more coming to the Gulf Coast, don't be fooled. Building faith in
government requires spending public funds the right way. In New York public
officials have wasted billions of dollars on tax incentives, tax-free
financing and grants to large corporations like Goldman Sachs. What's
important to economic development is making sure public dollars are spent on
public goods. Sound infrastructure--good transportation, water supply,
cultural institutions, affordable housing, parks and schools--is key. But
not all infrastructure investments are equal. In New York, real estate
interests are currently pushing for a massively expensive commuter train
that would go nonstop from the suburbs to the doorsteps of their fancy
office complexes. Similarly, on the Gulf Coast, infrastructure that serves
casinos and tourism will not always benefit neighborhoods and local
businesses.
There have already been discouraging reports of crony capitalism on
the Gulf Coast. But that kind of corruption is not the only concern. In New
York the worst abuses happened right out in the open, with billions of
dollars in public funds subsidizing huge companies and gentrifying
neighborhoods. It would be a further tragedy if this were the result on the
Gulf Coast.
***
NY Times Editorial
Published: October 19, 2005
Abolishing the Poll Tax Again
Critics of Georgia's new voter-identification law, which forces many
citizens to pay $20 or more for the documentation necessary to vote, have
called it a modern-day poll tax, intended to keep blacks and poor people
from voting. A federal judge supported these claims yesterday and blocked
the law from taking effect. Instead of continuing to defend the statute in
court, Georgia should remove this throwback to the days of Jim Crow from its
lawbooks.
Georgia Republicans, who get few votes from African-American voters, pushed
a bill through the Legislature this year imposing the nation's toughest
voter-identification requirements. When it was passed, most of the state's
black legislators walked out of the Capitol. Coretta Scott King, widow of
Martin Luther King Jr., urged the governor to veto it. Under the new law,
voters with driver's licenses were not inconvenienced. But it put up huge
obstacles for voters without licenses, who are disproportionately poor and
black. Most of them would have to get official state picture-identification
cards and pay processing fees of $20 or more. Incredibly - beyond the cost
imposed on such voters - there was not a single office in Atlanta where the
identification cards were for sale.
Republicans claimed the law was intended to prevent fraud, but that was just
a pretext. According to Georgia's secretary of state, Cathy Cox, in recent
years there have been no documented cases of fraud through voter
impersonation. There have been complaints about the misuse of absentee
ballots, Ms. Cox says, but the new law actually loosened the antifraud
protections that apply to them. Clearly, Georgia Republicans supported the
law because they believed that making it harder for blacks and poor people
to vote would help their electoral chances.
The League of Women Voters of Georgia, the N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights
and voting rights groups sued. In a lengthy and hard-hitting opinion, Judge
Harold Murphy of Federal District Court enjoined the state from enforcing
the law. He relied in part on the 24th Amendment, which banned the old
racist requirement that citizens pay poll taxes before being allowed to vote
in federal elections.
At least one Georgia state senator is vowing to appeal, if necessary, all
the way to the Supreme Court. That would send an ugly message about the
state of American democracy. In the civil rights era, Southern states had to
be told again and again by federal courts not to try to stop their black
citizens from voting. It is shameful that in 2005, Georgia needs to be told
again.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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