Gulf Coast Update (May '07)

Although New Orleans received far more media attention after Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi—by many measures the most impoverished state in the US—received the brunt of the storm damage. In the three hardest hit coastal counties, 64,000 homes were destroyed, and more than 70,000 received damage. Many of the poorest residents still have received no federal assistance, and tens of thousands remain spread across the U.S.

For those who have not returned to their homes, reports Monique Harden of the Gulf Coast organization Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, “displaced residents are subjected to a complex and historic interplay of race, class, and the lack of access to housing, healthcare, education, and economic opportunities.” In Gulf Coast cities, immigrants and other people of color have been for the most part left out of reconstruction funding, and for communities most affected by the storm, rebuilding seems to not be on the government agenda. Schools, health care, and criminal justice systems are in crisis.

“We had our ‘Ninth Ward’ in East Biloxi,” Jaribu Hill, executive director of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights explains, referring to the poor, mostly African American and Vietnamese coastal community that was leveled by Katrina. “The government has been slow to clean up, slow to provide resources, slow to respond. Even now, people have yet to receive aid. Not only is there widespread poverty, there is widespread displacement.”

ColorLines Magazine, May/June 2007

Full article: http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=208