Connecting New Orleans and Atlanta — how gentrification makes people refugees of the only place they know
This line hit me hard as a Louisiana native, Lafayette to New Orleans. In 2005, the floods of Katrina displaced millions and the term “refugees” started to be used, as well as other designations, such as “internally displaced.”
Yet, the reality is that natural disasters are not the only things that push people into this displaced status or feeling.
We hear people talk about “gentrification” but I think too many people continue to NOT fully understand the LIVED experience of it for black and brown communities.
So let’s get into it now.
First of all Solomon Hillfleet wrote a brilliant examination about Atlanta’s own history with gentrification, so be sure to check that out.
What follows is some insight into New Orleans and a call to all Melanated People to unite on this front.
Stay tuned to see if this is a call you are prepared to answer.
Gentrification did not begin in 2005 but it was amplified and multiplied in the aftermath of flooding in New Orleans. The floods damaged homes and displaced generations of native New Orleanians, with deep roots and a vibrant culture that was the foundation of everything that New Orleans is:
from a tourism hub, a trade hub, and a business hub and the thruway for over 1/3rd of the United States goods and produce.
New Orleans has long been dubbed a violent and unruly place, and while there is some truth to it, there is also a lot of dishonesty in that assessment. Prior to 2005, there was a crime rate equivalent to the level of poverty in the city. That tends to be true everywhere you go. The higher the rate of poverty, the higher the crime rate.
Nevertheless, this was a thriving city, the same as any other, with many homeowners, landowners, businessowners, and a well-connected community of support.
2005 everyone was forced to leave until the destruction could be sifted through and made safe for their return.
What they found upon returning was not an opportunity to take the lead on rebuilding. Instead what they found was an aggressive attempt to overtake the city, and as Winston Duke stated,
Gentrification “is violent because it is an erasure of people. It is an erasure of culture. It is essentially making people refugees to some degree of the only place they know. There’s a violence to that. It’s emotional.”
The thousands of school teachers who returned ready to prepare for the youth of the community were fired. The public school system was replaced by aggressive and greedy charters, hungry for the profits they’d receive from all that FEMA money and tax dollars.
FEMA paid for the construction of new schools and wrote over ownership to the private charters. Now the city lost a substantial portion of its infrastructure to private companies, who never paid a dime for it.
Next, the charters brought in a very young and very white and very Northern and Midwestern teaching force, freshly picked out of the nation’s universities. These very unexperienced teachers, were not what the youth needed.
The youth, as their families too, were in a state of trauma.
What they needed were the momas, dads, aunts and uncles that had led those schools for decades. They did not need an eager 23 year old, who looked at them as a neglected child without support.
Some homeowners rebuilt with insurance money or disaster relief. Sadly, contractors maxed out bids knowing the federal government would approve them, instead of just getting proper work done.
But other homeowners sold and out-of-state interests prevailed, as one after another a family home was sold to someone who might never live here or care for this city.
As more Northern and Midwestern people moved in, property values raised, and so did property taxes. With higher property taxes, rents went up. As a result, people who owned their homes, but didn’t have a large income, were losing their homes because the taxes were too high for them. People who rented couldn’t keep up with the increases either, so again, more of the black community had to relocate to other parts of the city.
As I said…
Making people refugees of the only place they know.
These were neighborhoods that were home to families for generations. In some parts of the US, that’s a foreign concept, but rural people probably know what that feels like. You live in the same space that your grandparents did and there’s a power in that, and a warmth to that. Seeing outside interests change your world, your family home, without your consent is once again robbing a community.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are many within the city who have stood strong and firm and maintained their work and impact all the same.
This is not a city of pushovers. Ashe Center, People’s Assembly, Tekrema Center, Son of a Saint, The Ohm Well, RAE House, several community centers, PITS Movement, Cafe Istanbul Nola and Nola Nobles are just a few examples of the empowered and determined native sons and daughters of New Orleans.
Gentrification did not dampen their resolve, but it has pissed several of them off.
Some people say “Well that’s just the nature of business” To that I say , “No that’s the nature of colonization.
and Gentrification is just the modern-day word for Colonization.”
Think about it?
How is it really different? A group of outsiders move in during a time of need, espouse altruistic endeavours to save others from their woeful ways or situation, consume property, rebuild in their own interests, and when the natives of the space are relocated, they gloat about the glorious results of their actions.
I mean look how pretty it all is. You revitalized that space right?
No you just displaced others and never helped a damn person.
Revitalization can happen without outside intrusion if a community is simply given the opportunity to take care of themselves and if you want to help, give the funding and infrastructure resources and exit. Your presence in any environment that is not your native one is innately altered by you.
At a conference in New Orleans, a woman from New Jersey bragged about how greatly they had improved a neighborhood in her area, suggesting the same could be accomplished in New Orleans.
After she finished her presentation I asked flatly, “How many people who lived there before you arrived, still live there now?”
She had no answer. She had not even factored that into her presentation.
So I answered for her, “Let me guess. Many of them moved because they could no longer afford the rent. Outsiders brought in business, instead of letting the locals open up businesses of their own and helping them fund it. The teaching staff has probably been overhauled, and you think you’ve helped those people? You helped to displace them.”
She still had no answer for me and only said, “We can talk after the meeting.”
That talk did not go well, but I’ll leave that out to save time.
The point is clear I am sure.
Solomon Hillfleet ends in a different way than I did because maybe the paths to the present were somewhat different.
Here’s where the call to action comes in:
Many have already been in the action, but for those who are still seeking their place within it:
Outsiders, make space for locals to lead and put down your privileged way of thinking “you know better.”
Outsiders, what you call “progress” looks like “destruction” to someone else. Again, let the locals take the lead on designing what progress looks like.
Locals, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITY.
ADVOCATE in city councils for a freeze on property tax increases.
CO-OP purchase a space for business and living space.
JOIN an existing organization or call them for information on resources.
MAP OUT your vision for the future of New Orleans and DEMAND that it be so.
EMPOWER your household with financial growth. See the link at the bottom of the article for more information.
I want to leave you all with this:
We often protect native rights to those on islands or in the middle of the rainforest, but why are the rights of native citizens to a city not given the same respect?
The answer is the same reason an “Internally displaced person’ was provided less support than a “refugee.” Your land is free to be taken by someone else in our nation and it’s just called “business as usual.”
SO TAKE IT BACK as business as usual.
