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The Color of Change has an excellent proposal to help rebuild New Orleans and other areas still devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Here's the proposal as laid out by Prof. Myers-Lipton:
The Proposal:
The GC Civic Works Project will hire 100,000 Gulf Coast residents to rebuild New Orleans and the surrounding region. The residents, who will be given subsidized tickets back to their neighborhoods, will build and repair houses, schools, parks, and other civic buildings and spaces.
The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project accomplishes 4 things:
1. provide our citizens with living wage jobs,
2. make housing available for themselves and their communities,
3. restore a sense of personal empowerment and hope, something which has been stolen from our people, and
4. restore faith among our citizenry of the government’s ability to respond to the needs of its people through a public-private partnership.
Projected Cost:
Based on a ratio of labor to materials of 80-20, and a wage rate of $12 per hour, the total cost of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is $3.125 billion. The projected cost of wages is $2.5 billion, while the cost of materials is $625 million.
Contact Congress to Support This Important Project
I'm confused~ are you willing to invest money in a city's rebuilding, when said city is below sealevel, and is so crime-ridden?
Would you move, live there?
Thought not.
I thought you would like to know that 300 students, Katrina survivors, and community members held a march and rally in San Jose, CA, calling for a modern-day Works Progress Administration (WPA). Click here to see 1-minute You Tube video of the event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7vXXm3Fnh0
Incredibly, the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project march and rally was the lead or second story at 5 pm on EVERY news show in the Bay Area (i.e.,
CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox). Check out a news clip from ABC-TV at http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5617486.
If you want to help bring survivor and students (and community membes) together, to struggle for this federal action, contact us at (510) 508-5382 or smlipton@sjsu.edu. We have over 40 colleges pushing for the GCCWP, and we have been orking closely with LA ACORN and All Congregations Together (ACT) in New Orleans.
Please contact us if you are interested.
best, scott ml
-----------------------------------------
Scott Myers-Lipton, Ph.D.
Associate Professor,
Sociology Department
Community Change Concentration
San Jose State University
smlipton@sjsu.edu
www.SolvingPoverty.com
(510) 508-5382
The comments from the localmalcontent make zero sense. There are tens of thousands of people who used to live in New Orleans who want to come back. That is a fact.
As for New Orleans being "so crime-ridden," the main cause of street crime is poverty. Reduce the poverty, and you reduce the street crime.