Jordan Flaherty Reports from New Orleans

Long time activist, union organizer, and Left Turn editor Jordan Flaherty remained in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina hit on August 28, 2005. He returned to New Orleans soon after being evacuated to set the history straight and report on what was really happening on the streets of New Orleans, particularly to the poor, black communities that were most effected by the hurricane and the government's so called relief efforts.

Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana
by Jordan Flaherty
added Nov 15, 2007

Tallulah is a small town in Northeastern Louisiana, one of the poorest regions in the US. It is about 90 miles from the now-legendary town of Jena, and like Jena it is a town with a large youth prison that was closed after allegations of abuse and brutality. Also like Jena, residents of Tallulah are involved in a modern civil rights struggle. Their town has become a battleground in the national debate on whether to spend money to educate or incarcerate poor, mostly Black, youth. read more...

K-Ville
by Jordan Flaherty
added Sept 13, 2007

Next Monday the Fox network unveils a new television show called K-Ville. Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, K-Ville promises to highlight the heroism of New Orleans cops. Unfortunately, the true story of policing in New Orleans is unlikely to be told by Fox, or by anyone in the corporate media. read more...

Two Years Post-Katrina:
Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added Aug 29, 2007

Two years after the devastation of New Orleans highlighted racism and inequality in the US, the disaster continues. New Orleans' health care and education systems are still in crisis. Thousands of units of public housing sit empty. Nearly half the city's population remains displaced. A report released this week by the Institute for Southern Studies reveals that, out of $116 billion in federal Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding—and half of that 30% remains unspent. read more...

Justice in Jena
by Jordan Flaherty
added May 9, 2007

Speaking to demonstrators in front of a rural Louisiana courthouse last week, Alan Bean, a Baptist minister from the Texas panhandle, inveighed against injustice. “The highest crime in the Old Testament,” he declared, “is to withhold due process from poor people. To manipulate the criminal justice system to the advantage of the powerful, against the poor and the powerless.” As he delivered his message to the crowd, officers from the state police intelligence division watched from the side, videotaping speakers and audience. read more...

Mississippi Forgotten?
by Jordan Flaherty
added April 26, 2007

Post-Katrina, New Orleans received the headlines. The government response was a glaring example of the heartlessness and incompetence of the Bush administration, and the neglect and devastation of the city remains a powerful symbol of US racism. In struggles around issues such as health care, education, policing, environmental devastation, voting rights and more, New Orleans is on the front lines. read more...

New Orleans Community Spaces in Crisis
by Jordan Flaherty
added March 7, 2007

Community centers have long been central to New Orleans organizing, serving as a gathering location for people, culture and ideas. One activist recently explained, "organizing here looks like neighborhood get-togethers, potlucks, block parties, and conversations on a neighbor’s porch. Its about culture and community." But 18 months after Katrina, many of New Orleans’ community spaces, vital resources in the reconstruction of the city, remain shuttered. Traditional sources for support, such as foundations or charities, often miss this aspect of New Orleans' community, and many of these spaces have received little outside assistance. read more...

Community Justice:
Interview with Robert “Kool Black” Horton
by Jordan Flaherty

Raised in New Orleans’ St Thomas Public Housing Development, Robert “Kool Black” Horton is a dedicated community organizer and father, as well as a former hip-hop artist and current gospel choir singer. He began his organizing career as a founder of Black Men United for Change, a grassroots community-based organization that initiated local responses to community problems. For fifteen years, he has been a trainer with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a New Orleans-based anti-racist training organization. He is currently Campaigns and Project Director for Critical Resistance, a national prison-abolition organization. read more...

Catastrophic Failure:
Foundations, Nonprofits, and the Continuing Crisis in New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added December 16, 2006

Fifteen months after New Orleans became an international symbol of governmental neglect and racism, the city remains in crisis. Students are still without books, healthcare is less available to poor people than ever, public housing is still closed, and infrastructure is still in desperate need of repair. In an open letter to funders and national nonprofits released yesterday, a diverse array of New Orleanians declared, “From the perspective of the poorest and least powerful, it appears that the work of national allies on our behalf has either not happened, or if it has happened it has been a failure.” read more...

Rebuilding Resistance: Organizing Lessons From One Year After The Devastation of New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added August 25, 2006

It has been a year since Katrina. Half of the people of New Orleans remain dispersed around the US. Vast stretches of the city lie empty. Bodies are still being found in the devastation of the lower ninth ward. Suicide rates have tripled. The national guard is still patrolling the streets. Most schools and hospitals—especially those serving poor people—are still closed. read more...

The Katrina Anniversary
by Jordan Flaherty
added August 21, 2006

“I want as many people to come visit here as possible,” a lower 9th ward resident named Calvin told me as we walked past the infamous breached levees and destroyed homes of his neighborhood. “The national media has forgotten us, the politicians in DC have forgotten us. I support anything to get the word out.” read more...

5 Reasons Tomorrow’s Election Doesn’t Matter
by Jordan Flaherty
added May 19, 2006

Local and national media have proclaimed that tomorrow New Orleanians will participate in an historic election. Scores of media from around the world have descended on our city to cover the results, and two mayoral debates have been broadcast nationally. However, in a city where elections are always a major production, many organizers opinions on the candidates begin with a resigned shrug. read more...

Elections Fever
by Jordan Flaherty
added April 17, 2006

The coming days will bring another step towards the new New Orleans. On April 22, voters in the city (Absentee and in-state satellite voting began last week) will choose between 22 mayoral candidates, as well as sheriff, city council, and other positions. If no candidate in a race receives more than 50%, there will be a run-off between the two highest vote-getters on May 20. Elections have always been a big deal here in the state that gave the nation Clinton campaign manager James Carville and Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile, but this election feels more weighted with significance. read more...

The Struggle for New Orleans’ School System
by Jordan Flaherty
added April 1, 2006

Post-Katrina New Orleans has become a battleground in the national fight over competing visions for the future of urban education. Last September, with the city evacuated and all the schools closed, with no parents or students or teachers around, suddenly anything became possible. Instead of making gradual changes to an existing system, there was no system, and virtually no rules or limits on what could be changed. “The framework has been exploded since the storm,” confirms New Orleans-based education reform advocate Aesha Rasheed. “It’s almost a blank slate for whatever agenda people want to bring.” read more...

The People United: Worker’s Rights Organizing in New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added March 30, 2006

According to a powerful new report released today by the Advancement Project, the National Immigration Law Center and the New Orleans Workers Justice Coalition, Black and Latino workers in post-Katrina New Orleans have faced a shocking catalog of abuses, including wage theft, widespread and massive health and safety violations, racism and discrimination, law enforcement violence, and more. read more...

Glossary of the Struggle for New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added March 21, 2006

The flooding of New Orleans has become a defining event across the political spectrum. For concerned people around the world it has become a vivid symbol of the Bush Administration’s misplaced priorities, for developers and corporate profiteers it has been an opportunity to remake the city in their vision and for Gulf Coast residents it has been a continuing catastrophe. read more...

Guantanamo on the Mississippi
by Jordan Flaherty
added March 11, 2006

The continuing debacle of our criminal justice system here in New Orleans inspires in me a sense of indignation I thought was lost to cynicism long ago. Ursula Price, a staff investigator for the indigent defense organization A Fighting Chance, has met with several thousand hurricane survivors who were imprisoned at the time of the hurricane, and her stories chill me “I grew up in small town Mississippi,” she tells me. “We had the Klan marching down our main street, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” read more...

Nothing Stops Mardi Gras
by Jordan Flaherty
added March 2, 2006

In New Orleans’ Central Business District, a prominent billboard advertising Southern Comfort liquor proclaims “Nothing Stops Mardi Gras. Nothing.” The festive ad haunts me, seeming callous and cruel, "you've faced a huge loss, and now we want to use your city and cultural traditions to sell a lot of alcohol." read more...

Imprisoned in New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty and Tamika Middleton
added February 16 2006

When hurricane Katrina hit, there was no evacuation plan for 7,000 prisoners in the New Orleans city jail, generally known as Orleans Parish Prison (OPP), or the approximate 1,500 prisoners in nearby jails. According to first-hand accounts gathered by advocates, prisoners were abandoned in their cells while the water was rising around them. They were subjected to a heavily armed “rescue” by state prison guards that involved beatings, mace and being left in the sun with no water or food for several days, followed by a transfer to state maximum security prisons. Although their treatment brought national attention to the condition of prisoners in Louisiana, and comparison to prison abuse scandals from Attica to Abu Ghraib, local government officials have attempted to dodge accountability and continue with business as usual. read more...

Privatizing New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added January 28, 2006

“I can’t stand it anymore, being lifted up and then smacked down again, just when we were all trying so hard to experience hope,” a friend tells me.

She was one of several people I know who were bystanders to Saturday’s shootings in New Orleans. read more...

Loss and Displacement at the Calliope
by Jordan Flaherty
added January 11, 2006

Rebecca G. Brown has lived at 3317 Erato in the B.W. Cooper Public Housing Complex for 24 years. According to her neighbor, Dorris Johnson Frohm of 3316 Erato, she has "the loveliest house on the block, and always welcomes ya in." read more...

Death, Abundance and New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added December 14, 2005

On Sunday, I drove past streets named Abundance, Pleasure and Humanity to a memorial for Meg Perry, a 26 year old Common Ground Collective volunteer from Maine. Meg died on Saturday when the bus she was in crashed near downtown New Orleans. She had come to New Orleans in September, then left and returned with more volunteers. The memorial was in a community garden she had been working on in the Gentilly neighborhood. All around were empty houses. It was a small moment of mourning, in a city of mourning. Mourning that feels like it won’t end, because the disaster hasn’t ended.
read more...

Community and Resistance
by Jordan Flaherty
added November 25, 2005

A couple months before New Orleans flooded, I remember walking through my neighborhood on a sunny weekend afternoon and hearing music.

I followed the sound a couple blocks, to where about thirty people, all of them Black, followed a few musicians through the streets. They were mourning the death of a loved one, New Orleans-style. Most folks were wearing custom t-shirts with a picture of the deceased. Next to the photo were the words “sunrise” along with the date of his birth, and “sunset,” above the date of his (recent) death - he was 20. Also on the shirt were the words, “No More Drama.”
read more...

Changing New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added November 4, 2005

Its bittersweet being back in New Orleans. Although the architecture is the same, and its a relief to walk the streets and reunite with old friends, already this is a very different city from the one I love. Its a city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other parts are being left far behind. A city where people who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome in a hundred different ways.
read more...

Crime and New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added October 12, 2005

People from New Orleans were not surprised to see video of police beating a 64-year-old man in the French Quarter. The only surprise is the increased attention the incident received due to the continued media focus on New Orleans, although news reports I saw took pains to point out the "high levels of stress" New Orleans police are under. read more...

Race, Relief and Reconstruction
by Jordan Flaherty
added October 6, 2005

The national conversation about New Orleans has shifted from relief to reconstruction. While alliances form among local and national elites, the majority of the city's population faces being shut out of the discussion entirely. New Orleans is less than 30% white, but the white power structure is poised to seize control of the debate over the city's future, while New Orleans' distinct legacies of colonialism, white supremacy and Jim Crow, along with the personal loss and devastation faced by most city residents, has created a cocktail of obstacles in the path of forming a strong and unified resistance. read more...

Fighting for New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 26, 2005

A month later, many of those dislocated and displaced from New Orleans are still trying to reunite with family members, still trying to find out information about their homes and belongings, still grieving over their losses. Parents are still trying to find a school district for their kids, and local schools are over full and some are not welcoming. One Louisiana school suspended all New Orleans students as punishment for the actions of one child.
read more...

Update from Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
by Jordan Flaherty and FFLIC
added September 23, 2005

I spent yesterday in New Orleans, where residents are once again preparing for storm and flooding. In Treme, I spoke with Al, Chief of the Northside Skulls Skeleton Crew, a vital institution of Black Mardi Gras. He hasn't left yet, and says he isn't leaving now. "We're holding on," he says. "I've got plenty of food - I've been feeding people from all over. Let me know if you need anything." I also spoke with the activists from Food Not Bombs, who have set up a food distribution network from a house on Desire Street, and are working on setting up a medical clinic. "We're feeding folks from Central City, Ninth Ward, Treme, all over," said Leenie. read more...

Shelter and Safety
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 22, 2005

Last New Year's Eve, a Black Georgia Southern University student named Levon Jones was killed by bouncers in the Bourbon Street club Razzoo's. The outrage led to near-daily protests outside the club, threats of a Black tourist boycott of New Orleans, and a city commission to explore the issue of racism in the French Quarter. Despite widely-publicized advance warning, a "secret shopper" audit of the Quarter found rampant discrimination in French Quarter businesses, including different dress codes, admission prices, and drink prices, all based on whether the patron was black or white. read more...

Disasters
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 18, 2005

New Orleans was not devastated by a hurricane. From my travels around New Orleans and surrounding areas, its clear that very little damage was done to my city by hurricane Katrina. read more...

Back Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 12, 2005

What actually happened in New Orleans these past two weeks? We need to sort through the rumors and distortions. Perhaps we need our version of South Africa's Truth And Reconciliation Commission. Some way to sort through the many narratives and find a truth, and to find justice.
read more...

Mourning for New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 9, 2005

Its been six days since I left New Orleans, and I miss my home so much. I'm still in a daze, its hard to hold a conversation or to think straight. People ask if everyone I know is ok, and I don't know what to say. There are so many stories, so many rumors, so many people dispersed around the US. So many of us may never see each other again. I don't think any of us are ok right now. read more...

Hurricaine Diary: Don't Let New Orleans Die
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 4, 2005

Its been a day since I evacuated from New Orleans, my home, the city I love. Today I saw Governor Blanco proudly speak of troops coming in with orders to shoot to kill. Is she trying to help New Orleans, or has she declared war?...read more...

Notes from Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
added September 2, 2005

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps. read more...

En Español:
Testimonio desde el interior de Nueva Orleans
por Jordan Flaherty