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Keep Federal Health Centers Free for All Residents

The federally qualified health center, or FQHC, is a vital component of the U.S. healthcare safety net. The FQHC model was developed, in part, here in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960’s to combat structural racism. The centers were signed into law and expanded nationally within the same decade as the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid. Today, this government designation enables community health centers to provide affordable, and, in many cases, free doctor’s visits to 28 million people every year. This is an invaluable service for the more than 59 million Americans who have inadequate health insurance coverage (both uninsured and underinsured).

Despite vicious federal cutbacks over the years since their inception, the FQHC has remained effective in reducing health disparities while also bringing jobs and economic opportunities to the country’s most structurally impoverished communities. These centers continue to serve as medical homes for 8.4 million children, 1.4 million homeless persons, and half of all people living in poverty in the US. (National Association of Community Health Centers Factsheet 2018)

Here in Louisiana, where undocumented refugee children and families do not qualify for Medicaid, FQHCs are the only option for healthcare for thousands of New Orleanians. These families are covered under FQHC’s federal mandate to “operate in a manner such that no patient shall be denied service due to an individual’s inability to pay” (HHS/HRSA Health Center Program handbook, p. 37).

Tragically, over recent months, several New Orleans’ clinics have implemented a minimum $40 fee for clinic visits, resulting in downstream effects such as parents canceling long-awaited pediatrician visits. No family should ever have to choose between putting food on the table or taking their child to the doctor. Physicians working in one particular clinic group have witnessed patients being turned away for not being able to provide proof of income. These practices are blatantly in violation of the FQHC mandate- services must be affordable, and no patient is to be turned away from health care services. Such attacks on the human right to health care fall squarely on vulnerable families such as those who have endured unimaginable trauma and risk to their lives to seek a safe haven here in the US.

In a country known for its shoddy safety net, the FQHC system is a legacy we can be proud of. As physicians and community members, we must fiercely guard the integrity of this vital institution. No center under the designation of the FQHC banner has the right to turn patients away based on income or any other criteria, and it is our duty to bring the illegal and cruel behavior of these corporations to light. To quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.”

– Dr. Virginia Byron

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Peoples Assembly Women’s Dinner: Black August, Solidarity With Prisoners

By Shera Phillips

I am increasingly more and more excited for each Women Dinner’s Wednesday. This past one set fire down in my soul. August is famous for solidarity with the incarcerated in the form of black august. There have been prison strikes all over the country in which the incarcerated demand to be regarded as human beings.

I learned a great deal and we had a host of dynamic speakers educate us on various topics from mass incarceration and its connection to slavery and racism, the enormous capitalistic gains of private corporations and individuals made by the prison complex, what a world could look like without prisons and a powerful testimony of how the prison industry has affected the institution of family made by Fox Rich, as well as spoken word.

The power in the room moved many to tears. We sang, we shouted and we cried. We found community, empowerment and ways to engage in this much needed work for liberation of all.

Join us in our next Women’s Dinner Wednesday where will be hosting a community sing. Singing negro spirituals fuels us, encourages us, purges us, and rejuvenates us. We are reminded of the state of being and passion of our ancestors as they endured and fought for non-negotiable progress.

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Sewerage and Water Board Continues Assault on Orleans Parish Residents

Rate-Payers Have No Voice in Board Decisions

The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) continues to add insult to injury. The latest moves include granting retroactive pay raises of $20,000 – $45,000 to S&WB managers. Protest was so loud, even by the daily ruling-class papers, that the recipients of the raises were forced to resign on August 20. Mayor Cantrell had acting Executive Director Jade Brown Russel demand the resignations. Then on August 21, Russell was forced to resign and was replaced by retired US Coast Guard Rear Admiral David Callahan who will run the S&WB for two weeks until Ghassan Korban, former Milwaukee Public Works Commissioner, arrives in the first week of September.

Meanwhile the S&WB ordered the resumption of water cut-offs on August 13 despite knowing that the billing system has not been fixed. They claim that more than 7000 people are more than a year delinquent and that the S&WB desperately needs money. Yet they have money to grant raises to the big wigs and to hire legal teams to fend off lawsuits stemming from the August 5, 2017 flooding.

Mayor Cantrell is attempting to show concern and decisiveness in dismissing the latest mis-leadership team while taking no responsibility although she is the President of the Sewage and Water Board. This is same way Mayor Landrieu tried to duck responsibility. This is just for show as we know that the root of the problem is the lack of local control of the S&WB. True leadership would admit and denounce the dysfunction and refuse to cut-off anyone’s water until actual meter reading is done and exorbitant bills resolved.

Also on August 21, the S&WB refused to attend a scheduled meeting with the Public Works sub-committee of the City Council where they were to present a progress report. Since the S&WB is an independent state agency there is little the council can do but complain. Facing more public anger, it finally appeared at a Council meeting. The Council had passed a resolution (which has no teeth) against cutting anyone off. The new Board members arrogantly dismissed this demand.

The S&WB must come under popular control of the residents who struggle to pay bills, not the rich who are there to sniff out opportunities for their friends to have an inside track to lucrative S&WB contracts. It must also pay reparations to the victims of the Augusts 5, 2017 floods who suffered damages. This of course will not happen unless we organize and force these changes

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Department of Public Works Employees Walk Out!

“IF YOU WORK IN NEW ORLEANS YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO AFFORD LIVING HERE.”

On August 13, Department of Public Works employees said enough is enough. They left work and marched into City Hall and demanded a meeting with Mayor Cantrell. These workers are underpaid and overworked. No matter the weather, they are out there trying to do whatever they can with a limited workforce to patch potholes and clean drains.

The important city workers were demanding $18 an hour, hiring more workers, safety and training. They pointed out that residents suffer too with unfilled potholes and clogged drains.

Toinette Johnson, a dump truck operator for DPW, told WDSU: ““That’s why our streets are not being repaired. That’s why they constantly complain about the drains and the water. We don’t have enough manpower to (do the work).” Kennan Mitchell operates a vacuum truck for DPW. He said contractors are hired to do the same work that he does, cleaning catch basins, for more than twice the pay.

Johnson further explained how while they are required to live in Orleans Parish, they don’t make enough to afford the rising rents. “I think if you want to work for the city of New Orleans, you should be able to afford to live in the city of New Orleans.”

The city spends 63% of our tax dollars on prisons and cops but is ignoring the fact that these workers and other city workers are not making enough to get by. With rents, taxes, food, utilities, and cable costs rising, studies have shown you need to make $19 an hour to get a two bedroom apartment in Orleans Parish.

The city has given out grants and tax exemptions to real estate developers and other companies while ignoring how the important people who keep everything running are making out. The city has allowed $140 million in city mandated hotel taxes to be given to big capitalist-controlled commissions. But city workers, like these Department of Public Works employees, are ignored. Salaries of the executives in this and other departments like Sewage and Water Board keep going up, while hiring and workers salaries and benefits are inadequate. The Mayor and City Council should make it a priority to immediately give living wages to all city workers, rather than outrageous salaries and perks to commissioners and executives

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Gordon Plaza Residents Demand “Fully Funded Relocation Now!”

Support Gordon Plaza Residents in their Fight

By Sanashihla

On August 23 residents of Gordon Plaza and community supporters held a press conference in front of city hall to demand a meeting with Mayor Latoya Cantrell. At the press conference the residents put on display 15 jars full of toxic soil dug up from Gordon Plaza. On each jar was the name of a Gordon Plaza resident that has died from cancer. Residents have reached out to Cantrell through multiple channels, but have yet to receive a response.

The horrific environmental racism in New Orleans by publicly elected officials, and the legal system, leads to the increased demand for a fair and just relocation for the Residents of Gordon Plaza.

In 2018, the Residents of Gordon Plaza CURRENTLY live on some of the most toxic soil in all of the United States of America. They live on land that the federal government has designated as a Superfund site, with nearly 150 toxicities, many of which are cancer causing. It is egregious and shameful that at least 4 mayors and their administrations have allowed this issue to continue, as residents of New Orleans lose their lives, get diagnosed with illness, and suffer financially due to their homes no longer being worth even what they bought them for. The “Workers Voice” asked residents to share their stories. Here is part of the struggle of one of the residents:

“My name is Jessie Perkins. I became a homeowner in a Gordon Plaza sub division on top of landfill in March 1988. I lived 7 blocks away in the Desire housing project, and I thought I had an opportunity to move my mother out of the housing project and put her in a home that she can call her own, a safe clean environment. I found out shortly after moving in, a year or two, of exactly what I got myself into and I thought to myself this was supposed to be my American dream, but like all of us, in Gordon Plaza, our American dream turned into a nightmare.

“Also, as an employee of New Orleans sewerage water broad, I had the first hand opportunity to see during the excavations, the nasty stuff that was down under the surface. It was mind blowing! I was like what is this stuff? It was stuff that you can’t even identify with bottles, broken glass, car fenders. The ground was even smoldering in some cases, and I knew it wasn’t good.

“Eventually we learned that the land fill that I used to play on as a child, when I left home my mother didn’t know where I was going. I thought it was just a landfill okay? As a kid playing on it, I had no clue whatsoever that I was playing on top of the landfill that contain over about 149 contaminants that was cancer causing, carcinogens, okay, some pretty nasty stuff.

“Me being the type of person that I am, an avid runner, I try to eat well, I take care of myself. I became very concerned about what the stuff was, the impact that it could have on not only my health, but the health of my mother, my neighbors, my family that visited often. It became a really big concern of mine. It was at that point we knew that we were in trouble, but what could we do?

“We went forward with our lawsuit, thinking that we had people that was going to act in our best interest, and maybe in the beginning that’s what supposed to have happened, but things didn’t turn out very good. We won the law suit. However, the compensation we received was literally a slap in a face. It was something you could do nothing with, so I really feel what the city did was exploitation of people of my community. Essentially what they did was they hid behind the laws so they legally knew we won this lawsuit claiming diplomatic immunity, okay, so they legally knew we won. We won this lawsuit but morally, physically, and economically, they didn’t stand up and do the right thing so here we are stuck with this thing.”

This is a horrific case of environmental racism in New Orleans! So here is what YOU can do to support the Residents of Gordon Plaza in their demand for a fair and just relocation:

  • Join the FIGHT for a fair and just relocation for the residents of Gordon Plaza. Call Mayor LaToya Cantrell at (504) 658-4900 OR (504) 658-4945 to demand a fair and just relocation for the residents of Gordon Plaza E-mail Mayor LaToya Cantrell at mayor@nola.gov to demand a fair and just relocation for the residents of Gordon Plaza.
  • Follow The New Orleans Peoples Assembly Phase 2 on social media to stay up to date on actions pertaining to this issue.
  • Join the Residents of Gordon Plaza on Sunday, September 9th at 3:00pm for a Healing Circle in Congo Square to do at least three things: honor the lives lost due to toxicity at Gordon Plaza, support the residents in their demand for a fair and just relocation, and learn about the organizing efforts to fight for this issue to be resolved. Get actively involved!

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Katrina Anniversary: “If I Knew Then What I Know Now”

By Sally Jane Black

If I knew then what I know now…

Hurricane Katrina, the failure of the levees, the subsequent violence, negligence, and opportunism, all look different through class conscious eyes. What once looked like incompetence now looks like predation. What once looked like mistakes now look like intentional actions. What once looked like a lack of resources now is understood to have been an intentional allocation because of callous disregard for working class people. What once looked like racist bias now looks like white supremacist propaganda.

Seeing history repeat itself in Puerto Rico (most notably) only verifies the intentional nature of the “disaster capitalism” that comes after these storms. It’s a misleading phrase–this is just normal capitalism. It’s white supremacist. It’s patriarchal. the vast majority of the people affected by the storm were black, but the recovery money mostly came back to white neighborhoods. The media called black people looters and white people concerned parents. The police murdered and covered up the deaths of black residents. The disproportionate denial of resources to cis women, queer, and trans people led to disproportionate obstacles for us after the storm–many of them fatal. It’s capitalist. The working class bears the brunt of the exploitation and negligence.

Since the storm, everything has changed. The landlords and other parasites have raised housing prices alarmingly. The jobs are paying the same or barely more than they were 13 years ago. There are still people who yearn to come home but can’t; there are still 800 people without names, buried anonymously. Stories like the charity hospital being abandoned, despite being perfectly functional, in favor of an expensive new hospital that displaced hundreds of black residents are not uncommon. This has happened many times over.

13 years ago today, the vultures began circling. They have taken away everything they can from the working class people of New Orleans. They are attempting to make a playground for rich tourists, ignoring the fact that as they price the working class out, there will be no one to serve them. They have changed the landscape of the city, and while they would have been trying some version of this anyway, their callous disregard for the working class opened the door to this.

Meanwhile, the united states continues to fight wars around the world and spend trillions on weapons while levees, schools, and hospitals remain underfunded. The united states was at war in Afghanistan 13 years ago, too. The united states was occupying Iraq back then, too. In New Orleans, we’re still holding our breath every time a storm enters the Gulf.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have somehow been angrier, but I would have understood who was responsible, why no one was helping, why the pumps didn’t work and the levees failed, why the police committed murder instead of rescues, why charity was closed, why Gretna barred its doors, why the media seemed to demonize working class (especially black) New Orleanians, why it happened the way it happened. If I knew then what I know now, I would have known about who was fighting it, too. If I had known then what I know now, I would have still felt lost, trapped, grief-stricken, confused, but I would have known, too, that the source of our pain was not incompetence. I would have known who the enemy was, and I would have known I could fight. We can fight

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Pride Is More Than a Fight for Love, It Is a Fight for Liberation

By Sally Jane Black

There is a rich history of LGBTQ resistance in New Orleans. The Gay Liberation Front first held a “gay in” in City Park in 1971. The funeral-goers at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church refused to sneak away from the press after the Upstairs Lounge arson attack, inspiring people worldwide with their defiance. LGBTQ groups here have fought for decades, from the AIDS epidemic up through recent episodes of violence.

However, the spotlight has fallen on an organization—New Orleans Pride—that has strayed from its militant roots. At N.O. Pride, a select few pay to march and celebrate their own exploitation. They pander to corporate interests, the U.S. and city governments, and business owners. It is a tourist attraction.

Meanwhile, discrimination prevents queer and trans people from getting jobs, finding housing or receiving medical care. LGBTQ youth (especially black, brown, and indigenous people) are bullied in school and harassed by police. Trans people, especially black trans women, are murdered at a rate far higher than non-trans women. Queer people still face homophobic violence. The suicide rate for trans people is more than double the national average. Trans and queer prisoners (including immigrants) face abuse in for-profit prisons. Worldwide, LGBTQ people are violently oppressed by U.S. imperialism.

THEY WANT TO CONTROL OUR BODIES
Oppression of LGBTQ people is part of the capitalist drive for disposable and cheap labor. Capitalism relies on a low-wage workforce, ensured by millions of people remaining unemployed. It relies on gender roles that draw free labor in the form of childcare, housekeeping, emotional support, etc. Capitalists profit by defining “family” strictly as non-transgender man and woman plus children. Hence, they attack reproductive rights, marriage rights and benefits, and attempt to make transgender healthcare inaccessible.

DIVIDING THE WORKING CLASS–WE MUST BE UNITED
LGBTQ oppression benefits capitalists by dividing the working class. By couching these attacks in terms of “religious freedom” or “family values,” they pit working class people against each other. They divide LGBT people by turning events like Pride into corporate events promoting the police, military, and other oppressive institutions. Pride becomes another celebration of homophobia and transphobia, by excluding most LGBTQ people who do not feel safe surrounded by police, do not feel represented by corporate logos and do not want to be tourist attractions.

In the U.S., homosexuality was legalized in 2003. Without those laws, police evolved their tactics. E.g., under NOPD Chief Warren Riley, LGBTQ people (especially black trans women) were profiled as sex workers, no matter what they were doing. Despite being “legal”, we still do not have full protection of the law. The same-sex marriage victory in 2015 brought millions of LGBTQ Americans access to spousal benefits. The current administration is rolling back that victory by allowing employers to deny benefits to same-sex couples. They continue to keep medical care and jobs out of reach for us through insurance policies and right-to-work laws. The end result is the same: a limited definition of family is reinforced and unemployment remains high. Their profits are safe.

Full LGBTQ liberation will not be possible under capitalism. Until the white supremacist, anti-queer, anti-trans billionaires who fund every initiative to roll back our rights, who literally write the laws that exclude (and kill) us, who wish to see a divided working class, remain in control, every victory will be temporary. The only way forward is to unite against them, to stand in solidarity with all working class and oppressed people, and to fight against every attack on LGBTQ people all over the world. Our liberation depends on the liberation of all.

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Transgender Prisoners Face Brutality

Recent changes to the Bureau of Prisons’ Transgender Offender Manual will lead to increased violence against trans prisoners. The changes will sort trans people not by the gender they are, but the gender they were assigned at birth. Trans women will be sent to men’s prisons, and trans men to women’s prisons, except “in rare cases.” Under the guise of “safety concerns,” they have endangered trans people’s lives, despite the fact that trans prisoners are nine times more likely to be sexually harassed or assaulted.

In many places across the United States, the previous rules, which recommended serious consideration of trans prisoners being placed with those of their own genders (i.e., trans women with other women), were often ignored; now trans prisoners do not even have the meager protections of these rules. Over a fifth of trans people have been in jail or prison, many of them targeted by profiling (such as in New Orleans, where black trans women are routinely profiled as sex workers by NOPD) or arrested for acts of selfdefense (as in the case of Cece McDonald, a trans woman charged with manslaughter for defending herself and her friends against attack).

The recent changes by the Justice Department will also bring an end to the tracking of LGBTQ victims of crimes. The collection of statistics on these crimes have been a useful tool in the past, helping to highlight homophobic and transphobic hate-crimes and showing the need for action against oppressive policies. These new rules will mean more and more trans people will face harassment, assault, rape, or even murder in prison.

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Student Letter: Serving Others

By Rachel Ramos, High School Contributor

When Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach said, “Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed,” he meant a lot more than the surface of this statement.

Within our society, people live in an era where social tension and fear is an aspect of everyday life. There may never be a moment where we can sit and ‘lay back’ We live in an era where mass shootings become less of a surprise every day. We live in an era where weapons that can kill people in a matter of seconds, are more accessible than ever before. Not only are they accessible, but they are pushed to be accessible by major corporations and politicians because they profit from the demand. In order to make the difference, we have to expose ourselves to this tainted society and embrace it with our knowledge so that we may find a way to understand, accept, and control it. With this in mind, we do this work not for ourselves, but for the ones who are unable.

We live in a society that determines wealth based on your race and privilege. There are people who want their voices to be heard, but they are not heard because of the shallow values those in power may possess. For the ones who are able to be heard and make a difference, they must do it for others as well as themselves. It is imperative that we think of those who need a voice. If we have the ability to make differences or make changes, it is our ethical duty to do for everyone. In order to solve problems, we have to meet the conflict face to face, comprehend it to make a judgement and then act accordingly.

Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach also said, “when researching and teaching, where and with whom is my heart?” When we are trying to find others, why are we doing it? What is our purpose? We do these things with the thought in mind that someone else could possibly benefit from our intellectual gain. As I look forward to attending Loyola University New Orleans, my heart is in the future with the individuals. My career goal is to become an orthopedic specialist in sports medicine. There will be adversity throughout my journey, but it will be worth it in the end. The classes will be strenuous, and the courseload will be excessive. However, I am ready. I will possess the gift to give an athlete their second chance after an injury. I may not be able to fulfill my dreams as a professional athlete, but my life ambition is to be the one who makes that dream survive for others. I want to live my life in service to others.

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Lobbyists: Campaign Donations or Bribes?

Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s Budget Director, Admits He Spoke Only To Lobbyists Who Paid Him

Mulvaney, former congressman in South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 said “We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” to the American Bankers Association conference in Washington, according to The New York Times. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.” Mulvaney collected $63,000 from loan sharking PayDay Lenders. Since being named acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last year (in addition to running the Office of Management and Budget), he has eased regulations on payday lenders. Meanwhile a candidate for the West Virginia House of Delegates was dragged out of a hearing after listing the donations received by state lawmakers from fossil fuel companies. She was testifying on a bill on oil and gas drilling rules.