The Redstar Perspective

Or so politics is known.  And yes, I’m not looking my best at the moment.  But the cherry on top of this week’s political activity was sitting two rows behind Gov. Deval Patrick on the US Air shuttle home from Washington today.  If I hadn’t been so fried and thus buried in a People magazine, I might have noticed him before we disembarked.  Whatever, I’m so cool.  (and starry-eyed, apparently!)

in the same suit two days in a row, since this grad student only owns one good one! 

I’m in DC all week, on my first advocacy trip to Capitol Hill, for an equitable recovery in the Gulf Coast - long overdue, now two years after the storm.  I’ve discovered my favorite brand of activism: getting spiffed up, arguing over policy, turning up the heat on our alleged leaders, and working with an extremely diverse coalition of folks in the process (race, class, gender, region, skills, etc. etc. etc.).

Please read more about this work here.  Some excerpts:

…some 40 community leaders from four states in the Gulf Coast region will be in Washington DC this week to meet with congresspersons…that two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thousands of people continue to suffer from the consequences of the storms and they continue to wait for Washington and state leaders to keep their promises.

The Gulf Coast delegation of grassroots organizations from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas will demand that the Senate move swiftly to pass the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act (S.1668) and supplemental thereby releasing the flow of billions of dollars dedicated to the region’s recovery from the storms of 2005.

While members of the multicultural delegation intend to raise issues and concerns that are specific to their communities, they are of one voice in calling on Congress to support their civic efforts to ensure accountability and transparency in the spending decisions made by state and local officials.”

Yesterday, the NYT ran an editorial about the on-going housing challenges in Mississippi wrought by Katrina and unjust, discriminatory local government action since the storm.   Just one example of thousands of the same sad story from AL to TX.  If you want to know where to target your own efforts against a major obstacle to the passage of this targeted and smart housing bill (S.1668), just read this incendiary and inaccurate editorial.  (Tough to rally the nation when you can’t rely on your own officials for support!)

Believe me, in my commutes b/w Boston and the Gulf, I know all about “Katrina fatigue.”  I was nothing but tears last week as I fully internalized the toll of racial and economic injustice that I see and feel through this work.  But as my regional colleagues shouted down an obtuse legislative aid yesterday, those of us policy advocates outside the region may be “working on this” issue everyday, but they are “living this everyday.”

Please, support S.1668 and bringing much needed funding for affordable rental housing and homeownership in the Gulf Coast!!! 

and support the preservation of affordable housing in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast! 

From an email from Advancement Project:

“On Tuesday, Sept. 25 from 9:30 am - 3:30 pm, Advancement Project in collaboration with Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, will host the FEMA Trailer Experience in the Nation’s Capital.  You can tour the trailer; and there will be a press conference at noon with residents of New Orleans. 

Also participating:  Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, Katrina Information Network, Louisiana Justice Institute, and others.

THE FEMA TRAILER “EXPERIENCE” COMES TO THE NATION’S CAPITAL 

Two years has passed since Hurricane Katrina and thousands of families in the Gulf Coast region lost their homes. Due to government inaction many of these families have spent two years living in desperate conditions-FEMA trailers.  On Friday, September 21, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development formally authorized the demolition of the 4 major public housing developments in New Orleans-Lafitte, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper.   The demolition will be the largest demolition in the City’s history. It would effectively deprive thousands of public housing families of the ability to return to New Orleans.

In the face of an extreme shortage of affordable housing, the government should not demolish perfectly habitable affordable housing.  HUD plans to replace 7,100 units of housing with 3,100 units, many families will be displaced for years, others forever.  In the meanwhile, many families languish in FEMA trailers.

A FEMA trailer is coming to the nation’s capital, so that members of Congress and the general public can “experience” how gulf coast families of 4 persons or more live on day-to-day basis.  The FEMA trailer is meant to create a chronicle - a living, breathing, and continuous consideration of an event that still hasn’t fully resonated with the citizens of the United States. By giving individuals the proper perspective of how truly terrible the situation is for thousands of gulf coast families, we can keep the flames of blame against the federal government fully fueled and burning bright.

In addition, on Tuesday, September 25, congressional hearings will be held on a bill [S. 1668] sponsored by Senators Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La) that has the potential to provide housing relief for thousands of gulf coast families.  Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) took the lead with this legislation- Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007- passing it early this year in the House.   

Residents are fighting back! They are inside the fatal fray and on September 25 will share their sentiments by demanding answers from elected officials.  Why weren’t they able to just go back when the flood waters subsided and the rest of the city’s residents went home?  Why did the government spend millions of dollars boarding up their homes instead of repairing them?  Residents are issuing a call to action for the public, politicians, and all justice-minded people to support their right to return home.  

Who:                New Orleans Residents
What:               Press Conference 
When:              Tuesday, September 25, Noon (press conference)

FEMA trailer will be on site from 9:30-3:00 PM

Where: The 900 block of 17th Street

(between I and K on the park side of the street).”

To Redstar readers:

Support S. 1668: The Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act!!

A more-conservative-than-Redstar reader emails to ask why I’m not covering Ahmadinejad’s visit to NYC.  My only guilt over ignoring this story is if by doing so I’m not living up to my legacy as a scholar trained by the American Jewish community (i.e., a Brandeis grad). 

As I wrote to her - and as regular readers can probably gather - foreign relations, foreign policy, and diplomacy are not issues I spend much time on here.  I simply cannot take the macho-heads-of-state-chest-bumping requirement of national politics, particularly as its come to pass under post-9/11 Bush in our so-called “War on Terror.” Indeed, the reason I don’t read the mainstream “progressive” (also, alleged, as far as I’m concerned) blogosphere more often, is because the predominantly male white authors expend an awful lot of hot air on the diplomatic disaster that passes for our foreign policy these days (though I was totally into Yglesias’s post on Olive Garden - who wasn’t, it turns out). 

I tried tonight to read the NYT coverage of Ahmedinejad’s talk at Columbia, but ended up closing the webpage in dismissal.  I remember at Deis when The Justice student newspaper sold ad space to Holocaust deniers, and the backlash that followed.  I just can’t take such charlatans seriously, even though I know that their statements cause very real pain for people.  And though I’m a card carrying member of the intelligentsia, I find obnoxious and smug the empty provocation of a cocooned place like Columbia allowing that guy to come and speak, which does little more than piss people off without providing much legitimate space for productive debate - not least because his sensationalist rhetoric and comparatively weak political power doesn’t give those of us looking to confront the “enemy” much to work with.  (Although, Andrew Sullivan - among others - takes on his denial of persecuting gay Iranians while scoffing at Columbia’s set up.)

Truth be told, if you want to hear me talk about Iran, you’d suffer a conversational mix of its politics from five to ten years ago and my desire to visit it because of its amazing art, history and hot men - all based on my dating an Iranian-American* in NYC on and off for a few months - before I moved into ranting about Bush and our current “mode” of international relations.  To save myself at this bedtime hour the ire that immediately flares up when I think about (or see or hear) Bush, I’ll let Ezra do the talking for me now:

“From [CBS’s Scott] Pelley’s interview with Ahmadinejad:

PELLEY: I asked President Bush what he would say to you if he were sitting in this chair. And he told me, quote, speaking to you, that you’ve made terrible choices for your people. You’ve isolated your nation. You’ve taken a nation of proud and honorable people and made your country the pariah of the world. These are President Bush’s words to you. What’s your reply to the president?

Wow. Pot, meet kettle.”

Now, if we want to talk about keeping alive the history and lessons from the Holocaust, or protecting human rights and preventing hate crimes, I’m your woman.

*Based on these credentials, I’m actually an expert on international and cultural relations.

It wasn’t me, mom.

A protest rally expected to draw thousands is happening today in Jena, LA, in response to the racist (and excessive) criminal charges and wrongful conviction brought against six black teenagers accused of beating a white teen.  The beating occurred as one of several racially charged confrontations in the tense aftermath of nooses found hanging from an unofficial “whites only” tree on the high school campus after black students attempted to sit there.  People around the country are urged to wear black to show their solidarity with the demonstrators. 

I am a barely audible voice in the blogosphere that’s been instrumental in bringing this story to national attention.  And if I was at the rally I’d most likely be standing on the sidelines and furiously scribbling notes.  But I am in a black t shirt and sweatpants now, and will do my part tomorrow by not changing out of them. 

Even from this distance, it is amazing to see this kind of energy and activism.  Now if we can just expand the public eye’s peripheral vision south towards the Gulf Coast…

Unsurprisingly, the pretentious creeps at that other Cambridge school fail to realize the hotness of MIT chicks.  (So what if I’m a sample of 1?)

Anyone who’s spent any significant time in Gifted & Talented or other accelerated settings (or watched Napoleon Dynamite multiple times), knows there’s nothing more smoldering (and kinda nasty) than a little geek love. 

As we say at the Institute, if the lab’s a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’.

On my third straight day of shopping (it’s Redstar’s “buy my fall wardrobe” weekend), Weboy and I headed to the new Natick Collection.  “Eh,” is all I really have to say. 

I second Adam at Universal Hub re: the vertigo of standing in the old “Natick Mall” section at the doorstep of the suburban retail nirvana that is the new hall of shops.  Readers above the age of 22, beware the second story, where it’s one Abercrombie or their competitor after another.  I asked Weboy, when did we decide that the upscale wardrobe of today consisted essentially of sweatshirts and flip flops?  (If you do make your way out to Natick, check out Ruehl of Greenwich Village.  It’s as if Disney added a Village facade to Epcot, and let fans of shows like The OC and Gossip Girl decorate it according to what they’ve been told is fancy - that’d be fake fireplaces, college basement-party quality lighting and framed photos of half naked boys leaning against the walls.) 

The first floor feels more mature, definitely more pricey, and not quite at full throttle, given about one-third of the stores still are not open. They also need many more pushcarts to fill the dead space in the middle.  (I wonder if they’ll have the one where my dad can have his face emblazened on mugs for Xmas gifts for my stepmom and me.  You know, to go with the one I already have.)

As someone who lives closest to the Chestnut Hill mall, but about equidistant between Back Bay and Natick, I don’t foresee too much siphoning off from these other retail destinations due to Natick.  (I would be worried if I was the Atrium, which is the most generic of all the neighboring upscale spots, lacking the anchors of Bloomingdale’s, Barney’s, Saks, Louis Boston, etc., and having the most stores that I saw replicated at Natick.)  Boston should still have its international set and folks who prefer to shop downtown, and Chestnut Hill still has Jasmine Sola and Bloomingdale’s for the Newton/Brookline crowds.  Given that our parochialism means few of us like to drive further than 15 minutes to get what we need, I only see the Natick Collection adding to Boston’s fragmented retail market, rather than acting as a consolidator of sorts.  If anything, Natick should be avoided as it will bring together the over-caffeinated, hell-on-wheels rich suburban moms that roam the grounds of Chestnut Hill with the more slow-moving, easily confused, thick suburban crowds.

Ultimately, it’s about the kind of atmosphere in which you want to shop.  For the M.A.S., the perfect atmosphere is my living room with a beer in hand as I deliver packages I picked up for him that day at the outlets.  For me, it’s obviously a more sedate, preferably weekday experience where I can wander in peace and still find some deals.  Space and air matter; Newbury St., most outlets and the pseudo-downtowns of places like Mashpee Commons and the one in Hingham that my cousins love - all these are outdoors and offer varying degrees of “street life” and space.  In contrast, I hate “high-rise” malls like Cambridgeside and Providence Place where the stores are narrowly stacked and closing in around on you and the families and adolescent crowds.  Lighting is also key.  The Chestnut Hill Mall and Copley Place have pleasingly resisted the garish lighting that ultimately leaves the Natick Collection feeling stupifyingly similar to its traditional mall roots (or, as Adam at U. Hub put it, like the duty free section of an airport).   

I’m curious to see how the Natick Collection fares.  It’s not too often you see a Sears and Neiman Marcus sit side-by-side as you search in vain for a parking space between them.  It’s a long walk between JC Penney and Neiman Marcus, where the former has bi-lingual English-Spanish signage* and the latter’s snooty customers nonetheless ask for “Stella McCaHTney.”  I’m well aware of the $$ in the suburbs; visitors to the Natick Collection can browse the adjacent opening-in-2008 Nouvelle condos sales office as they wander from Nordstrom to Neiman’s.  But though I felt momentarily like I was in Soho as I passed the same chains that now consume that neighborhood, I thought I’d feel a lot more like I was in our version of Manhasset.  All I can say is, shame on this Masshole for being disappointed in our failure to measure up to Long Island luxury. 

*I’ve noticed many stores like Sears, JC Penney, and Best Buy now have bi-lingual signage, but at what I think was a Nine West I saw my first bi-lingual hiring sign today.

…also known as the shopping experience that is H&M.

I’m sitting on my couch with a cup of tea and my feet up.  Three straight days of intensive retail immersion - Newbury St. on Friday, the Wrentham outlets on Saturday, and the Natick Collection (don’t believe the hype) today.  I achieved my goal of filling out the fall/winter wardrobe (though shoes, as always, continue to allude me.  I LOATHE shoe shopping, contrary to the conventional wisdom.), but any gaps likely will be completed on-line.  I am done with the crowds, the schlepping, and the faux lifestyle marketing assault that overwhelms the average consumer these days. 

Shopping for me is a constant battle between procuring quality, muted luxury and a functional if stylish look without exceeding the arbitrary price points I’ve set in my head.  I am proud that this weekend I bought absolutely everything at the outlets, rather than on Newbury or in the “lux” section of the Natick Collection, but that still means I’m buying discount Barneys Co-op, Tahari and Theory, with a LOT of Banana Republic rounding out my closet. (The frequent discounts of BR are a much more significant driver for me than a true appreciation of their clothes, which I find highly unpredictable in terms of quality and, especially, fit.  But after awhile, it feels like they’re giving it away in there.)

Yet, despite the desire to save $$ and not look too flashy nor trendy in my search for quality clothes, I am not a bargain shopper in the traditional sense.  I’m mourning the loss of the original Filene’s Basement in Downtown Crossing as much as the rest - including my mother, who fondly reminisced while I was paying for my Off 5th Tahari pants yesterday about picking up her own pair on her lunch break in the late ’60s, when she was a skinny 19 year old working downtown.  But I miss it mainly for this enduring connection to my family, and not because I was a regular there, like an MIT friend of mine who knew the place so well she led the M.A.S. through and out with 3 shopping bags of his own duds one Friday afternoon in his first year in Boston. (Though she was still alive to grieve for the loss of Jordan Marsh, at least my grandmother passed away before this latest retail blow to our Boston roots.)

I have a pretty low tolerance for bargain hunting.  Blame it on my allergies, my easily irritability, my fastidious Virgo nature, but I hate shopping at places like H&M or Filene’s Basement, where the low, low prices come at the cost of hunting through bins or other people’s mess in the search for that perfect find.  I hate overheating in the lines for the too small, forever crowded, dressing rooms, or checkout, and I can’t blame but don’t want to deal with the snappish attitudes of the sales people (there’s few jobs I’d rather not have than to work in retail).  I’d rather pay more for clothes that I can find on my own, reach easily, not have to hip check someone out of the way for, and not want to wipe my nose on when I’m having an allergy attack in the dusty dressing room. 

I wish I loved bargain shopping like this.  I do; I’d be one of those cool chicks who could tell you how I got this Prada shirt for 75% off, or who’d be wearing the latest trends because my entire H&M outfit was only $70.  Instead, this weekend, the retail victory came in doubling back for a final loop through Off 5th after seven hours at the outlets, to finally find the deeply discounted midnight blue velvet Theory pants that go with the rather expensive Mark Jacobs shirt I guiltily purchased at the Barney’s Outlet earlier.  My victorious smile looked perfect atop the rather 80s-rocker-outfit I modeled for the M.A.S. later that night, who was no doubt conjuring Debbie Harry while I strutted around my apartment - in bare feet, given I still need those shoes!

A LA appeals court judge reversed the aggravated second-battery assault conviction of Mychal Bell, the first of the “Jena 6” to be convicted.  From the Chicago Tribune:

With the prospect of a major national civil rights protest looming next week in the central Louisiana town of Jena, a state appeals court on Friday abruptly vacated the felony conviction of a black teenager accused of beating a white student in a case fraught with racial tensions.

Louisiana’s Third Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on an emergency defense appeal, reversed the aggravated second-degree battery conviction of Mychal Bell, 17, ruling that the youth had been tried improperly as an adult in a case that has raised allegations of unequal justice in the small, mostly white town.

Click on the “reversed” link above for more insidious details.

This is great news; now brace yourselves for the appeal.

Story of my life!! (See checkbox: “working from home.”) 

* WPG2 Plugin Not Validated *(click to enlarge)

Via.

Credit: “Tale of Mere Existence: Isolation” - Levni R. Yilmaz Esq

This just in, via text from my cousin Jane, recent BC grad and NYC transplant:

“Women on the [Upper East Side] with strollers = running of the bulls…”

True ‘dat, Janie, true ‘dat.

Slept in this morning for the first time in weeks, after an evening flight home from an intense two days in New Orleans. Slow to get working as I sit on my couch in a fleece and sweatpants.  Apparently I took the sweltering heat with me on Sunday morning and left it behind in the Gulf Coast.

As my mind and soul slowly recover from the whiplash of traveling back and forth between my peaceful New England life and my heated, urgent political organizing work down South, I’m welcomed home by some nostalgic chatter in the Boston blogs.  VA transplant Gift of Green offers a Top 10 list of MA things that stump the locals south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Some of my favorites: the fluffernutter sandwich (invented in Lynn, it seems, and actually I’ve never been a fan of fluff, but it was always in my aunt’s cabinets), the triple decker apartment building, home to generations of Redstar kin…and a bunch of other working-class and ethnic families in Boston, and radiators (though in my two-family house, we had floor vents that opened and shut, that I’d stand on to warm up at the end of a freezing winter school day). 

Her list reminds me of my own regional “wha???” when I was down in New Orleans two weeks ago.  Dining with a table of Southern women, white and black, young and old, at a nouveau Southern restaurant (the local version of trumped up comfort food places here that charge us $12 for mac ‘n cheese), I responded to a dish incl. turnip greens that the only time I ate turnip was at Thanksgiving, and it was mashed, like potatoes.  Well, me and my bland Irish palate were practically run out of town.  I told them about Whoopie Pies, another New England treat (thanks, Amish peeps??), they were intrigued, though ultimately heads were shaken in pity at the dishes I clearly considered cuisine.

While I head out for a needed long walk this afternoon, the M.A.S. is off to a MA Historical Commission meeting for some networking.  He has his car with him, as the High Holidays commandeer all the parking spaces around his apartment building that sits next door to a synagogue.  As Rosh Hashanah begins tonight, I proudly display my own multi-cultural “roots,” hanging up the pic of a Deis friend’s daughter that decorates the Jewish new year card I receive every year.

L’Shanah Tovah to all my M.O.T. friends and peeps!  May your new year be filled with the delicious happiness of Whoopie pies, fluffernutter, turnip greens and ice cream with jimmies!

Walking back to the Renaissance Arts Hotel just now, I was taken aback by a horde of funky, decked-out young women spilling down the street in various directions.  Turns out the hotel is the site for an upcoming Ryder Make-Up Labs training.  For more on why this run-in with the “most popular make-up artistry workshops in the nation…” is an ironic coincidence, click here.

And we’re live in New Orleans in 5!

From a study I co-authored on gender bias at the boundary of academia and industry in the life sciences/biotech field, here are the 5 KEY FINDINGS:

FYI: We interviewed 56 life scientist professors at one elite university (22 women and 34 men, out of a possible total of 30 women and 118 men) from 2004-06 on their entrepreneurship, what we call “commercial science” (e.g., filing patents, starting companies, sitting on corporate scientific advisory boards, etc. The beauty of this study is in its generational cohort design: We divided faculty into cohorts based on when they received their PhD (”distinguished” faculty prior to 1975; “senior” b/w 1976-85; “mid-career” 1986-1994; and “junior” 1995-2001). We used these cut-offs based on the emergence (c.1975) and establishment (c.1985) of biotech as a new and legitimate field for faculty participation. This allowed us to compare across generations gendered commercial science experience as it “started-up” as a new field for faculty participation. N.B.: It also is an almost entirely white and Asian faculty sample, and race/ethnicity is not treated here.

The first finding is that women were explicitly denied entry into this new field, when venture capitalists visited campus and invited only male faculty to participate in potential biotech ventures. Their actions mirrored current gender bias in academia, a field established in the “male” image of the rational, impartial scientist. The numbers demonstrate this; there were only 4 women and 46 men in the “distinguished” generation.

The second finding is that this early exclusion of women contributed to the new field of commercial science also being structured in a “male” image, and that this shaped gendered, cognitive interpretations of who was a credible entrepreneur (answer: men): repeatedly in our interviews, both men and women described men as being more entrepreneurial, more willing to take risks, more suited for commercial science. Even the majority of the women (and there were few) participating in commercial ventures did so in partnerships with men that they described as men taking the lead with them following behind. (Prof. Cecilia Ridgeway has a great book chapter on how gender bias shapes emerging fields in The Declining Significance of Gender?).

The third finding is that this sharply constrained opportunities for women as the commercial landscape evolved over time, mainly through a lack of role models/mentors and fewer entry points into commercial science. Even as the field became established and opened up for broader participation from all faculty, younger women effectively had only senior male faculty as entrepreneurial mentors; in fact, senior women often were negative role models in this case. Mentorship and role modeling not only offers younger people a guide to practice and behavior, but also access to the networks that build up around the collegial relationships essential to academic - and commercial - collaboration (see especially McPherson et al.’s “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks” ($) in the 2001 Annual Review of Sociology for more on the concept of homophily and connections bred through similarity).

The fourth finding is that - thirty years into the contemporary practice of commercial science - gender bias is shrinking and commercial opportunities for junior faculty are becoming more equal. The important caveat here is that women continue to face additional barriers to access based on their disproportionate responsibility for childrearing, esp. (and obviously!) childbirth. Though working towards tenure tempers all junior faculty’s enthusiasm for commercial ventures (given, for example, the comparable ambiguity of patenting as a relevant performance metric versus the established importance of publication rates), junior women faculty are also often considering childbirth or raising young children during this time. This leads into all of the existing realities of gender inequity in balancing work and family, the challenges for working mothers (see Correll’s recent research on the “motherhood penalty“), and circles back to my earlier point about the lack of strong role models for these young women. It was striking in interviews the cognitive dissonance for young, entrepreneurial women starting families listening to their senior, male mentors - whose typically non-working or part-time employed wives had raised their children, leaving them free to pursue their external commercial activities in addition to academia - encourage them in their pursuits. (See Xie and Shauman’s “Sex differences in research productivity: new evidence about an old puzzle,” in American Sociological Review, 1998, 63(6) for more on the characteristics of spouses of male v. female faculty).

The fifth finding is that institutional support can facilitate women’s entry into commercial science. Technology licensing offices, for example, offer all faculty guidance, training and assistance on taking their research to market. Yet, the persistent lack of institutional clarity and transparency on performance metrics leads to confusion for junior faculty over what matters in building their careers. The racially charged fallout over MIT’s denial of tenure for African-American professor James Sherley, and its past failure to equitably promote and support female faculty, demonstrate some of the worst outcomes from such an opaque, political process. But a more subtle influence is the lower likelihood of women and/or minority candidates to take risks - such as pursuing commercial ventures - if they are unsure of the payoff and already cognizant of uneven barriers to success in their field. (Prof. Mary Frank Fox’s research goes deeper into the need for clear and established performance metrics to ameliorate gender bias in academia.)

This study illustrates in detail the emergence and evolution of gender bias in one professional context over time. It’s a small sample in a atypical environment, but it straddles a range of venues - academia, science and entrepreneurship - and offers many parallels to women’s experiences in other areas, such as medicine, law or business.

Last weekend in New Orleans and last night at dinner, folks from NY and Boston asked me if I thought “progress” was “really” happening in New Orleans.  Without qualifying what progress means, the answer would have to be yes.  New Orleans does not look as physically stricken as it was two years ago; some neighborhoods, especially those comprising the “sliver by the river” built up on the natural high ground of the city, are high functioning and often seem devoid of Katrina’s impacts, were it not for the psychological trauma of the storm that lingers everywhere, evidenced in part by the Levees.org signs on wealthy, manicured Uptown lawns.

But, and those in Uptown who desire a modernized, Category 5 levee protection system would concur, progress is inadequate, halting, and wholly unequal.  It’s in the many competing frames of reference that reveal where people see recovery inequity.

For the state of LA, the disproportionate amount of federal funds the state of MS received compared to its devastation is grossly unfair and in need of remedy. Across MS, LA and AL, the excessive funds allocated to homeowners versus renters, the failure of state and local governments to conduct needs and impact assessments for their recovery spending plans, and the reluctance of any of the states to provide a transparent account of their allocation decisions has led to regional organizing by Gulf Coast communities and advocacy at the federal level for better oversight of local leaders.   And spurned in part by the weak, abominable yet stridently ideological federal leadership ($) since the storm, local officials’ main strategy is to transfer recovery responsibility to the low-wage service industries of hospitality, gaming and tourism and leave their rental, low-income and disproportionately non-white populations to fend for themselves (or rely on the public assistance of neighboring states - Houston’s population is up 14% in the last few years, in part due to 100,000 Katrina evacuees from neighboring LA who have settled there.) 

For rural, southwestern LA and East Texas communities devastated by Hurricane Rita one month after Katrina, the almost exclusive focus on Katrina has obscured their particular recovery challenges.  And though New Orleans did sustain an incredible amount of physical and social damage compared to many Gulf Coast communities, the national focus on that city’s recovery has distorted the reality of how far and wide the devastastion is across the Gulf Coast region.  Despite its pre-storm population decline, concentrated poverty and overreliance on the low-wage tourism industry, the City of New Orleans has comparatively significant resources to advocate for its own recovery compared to other cities and towns along the Coast.  As described by one activist from Mobile County, AL, where local officials have painted a falsely rosy picture of recovery to lure corporations from neighboring states, “no one died [here] due to Katrina.  But they’re dying now.”  Rates of homelessness, crime, mental illness, poor health and suicide are up anywhere from 50% to 300% in counties all along the Gulf Coast. 

A plethora of studies were released last week to coincide with Katrina’s anniversary.  The Institute for Southern Studies’ Blueprint for Gulf Renewal: The Katrina Crisis and a Community Agenda for Action offers a concise summary of the failure of federal and local leadership to invest in and spearhead an equitable and inclusive recovery process on the Gulf Coast. 

Some lowlights:

Amount that Bush administration says has been spent on Gulf Coast recovery since 2005 hurricanes: $116 billion

Estimated percent of those funds that are for long-term recovery projects: 30

Amount of FEMA’s 2005 disaster relief budget that was spent on administrative costs: $7 billion

Percent of the 2005 relief budget that represented: 22

Of $16.7 billion in Community Development Block Grants earmarked for long-term Gulf Coast rebuilding, percent that had been spent as of August 2007: 30

Of $8.4 billion allocated to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for levee repair in Louisiana, percent that had been spent as of July 2007: 20

Percent of rebuilding costs that Gulf Coast local governments were required to pay up front to receive matching federal funds, due to a Stafford Act provision that Congress has since waived for the region: 25, later reduced by President Bush to 10

Percent that New York had to pay after 9/11 and Florida after Hurricane Andrew, because the federal government waived the Stafford Act’s matching requirement: 0

Amount of additional money for rebuilding now available since the match requirement was waived in the Gulf Coast: up to $1 billion

As of June 2007, value of controversial “cost plus” Katrina contracts given out by three federal agencies, which allows companies to charge taxpayers for cost overruns and guaranteed profits: $2.4 billion

As of August 2006, value of Gulf Coast contracts that a Congressional study found were “plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement”: $8.75 billion

(more…)