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Help
Displaced Gulf Coast Residents Return Home
Two and a half months after Hurricane Katrina
struck the Gulf Coast, the Bush Administration is doing
little to create the conditions needed for the region’s
low-income African American, Native American, and immigrant
residents to return home.
With the region’s infrastructure, housing stock, and economy
badly damaged, few of those displaced can return to the
Gulf Coast without assurances that basic needs will be
met. At a minimum, they need decent, affordable housing;
well-paying jobs; services like electricity, clean water,
and health care; and a voice in determining how their
cities are rebuilt. But according to local organizers
and media reports, when it comes to helping the region’s
low-income communities of color, the federal government
is continuing the same pattern of inaction and delay it
exhibited when Katrina first struck.
One eyewitness said: “White New Orleans is steadily coming
back, and Black New Orleans is moving out. A grassroots
organizer with New Orleans Network tells me she has been
speaking to people in every moving truck she sees. She
reports that in every case, 'they’re Black, they are renters,
they’re moving out of New Orleans, and they say they would
stay, if they had a choice.’” Civil rights lawyer Bill
Quigley points out, “The longer the poor and working class
of new Orleans stay away, the more likely it is that they’ll
never return.” (See below for links to background information.)
While the federal government neglects its responsibilities,
grassroots groups rooted in the Gulf Coast’s African-American
communities have launched efforts to rebuild the Gulf
Coast from the ground up. United for Peace and Justice
urges you to support these efforts.
From United
for Peace
Movers
across the US
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