On Monday, February 13th, the New Orleans homeless population will skyrocket, and the survivors of Katrina will be victimized again. FEMA's short-term hotel program expires for most of the 26,000 displaced hurricane survivors and most of these evacuees have not been provided with long-term, or even transitional housing solutions. The National Guard is even on call to evict these survivors at gun point.

Four of Louisiana’s coastal Native American tribes issued an urgent appeal for support in the aftermath of Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita. Despite the buzz of recovery activity in New Orleans and on other parts of the Gulf coast, tribal leaders say they have been forgotten and their people continue to suffer:

Talk show hosts, right wing radio ‘shock jocks’, newspaper editorialists, and a host of other local and national pundits lampooned and attacked New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s comments at the city’s truncated January 16th Martin Luther King Jr. parade. At the march, whose Mayorial appointed organizers abandoned the traditional starting point of the city’s battered Lower 9th ward, Nagin exclaimed that New Orleans should remain a “chocolate,” that is a majority Black, city. The superficial, and absurd commentary following the Mayor’s speech, such as former Louisiana Senator John Breaux comparing Nagin’s comments to Trent Lott’s lauding of Strom Thurmond’s defense of Jim Crow, has obscured the real insights into the workings of post civil rights class and racial domination that Nagin’s comments provide.

Apache Nation members, transported to a largely-immigrant workers’ camp by a “herder” or “labor coyote” who brokered a deal with New Orleans officials, are now told they owe money to the City, and are faced with eviction. Other groupings of immigrant workers in the camp report that they have also suddenly been approached with demands of payment and threats of eviction.

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“For a lot of people, people of color from New Orleans and the south, we’re all trying to put our lives together. If we had the means, if we had the same privilege, we would be here too, we would be organizing and fighting for our community. It’s important for people to realize the privilege they have and others don’t have.”