Dear mayor,
in the office
hear my call
my people are dying
while you having a ball,
with death lingering
under our feet
for years
y’all refuse to hear us speak,
people had to die more can come
but you sit and play games
like this is for fun
filling us with broken promises
covering us up with ash
y’all created prisons
and police cameras instead
and say that is that,
this is not fair
I’ll tell you the truth
you would not like it if this was you,
all we ask is to be removed
from the cancerous place called
Gordon Plaza you fool,
from the pain to the tears of the ones we lost
this is not us this is your fault
how can you do this? it’s easy to do
you do have the power
but instead you use it you cater to others,
take your time make sure they’re fine
but now is our turn as victory is mine
you will hear our voice; you will see us speak
and at the end of this fight there will be peace,
remove us from this toxic land or forever
we will make you understand,
may your guilty conscious haunt
you at night with the darkest
of your mind that you reside – we will win,
until then mayor – goodnight,
sincerely,
ryan jones
Protesters picket outside SASOL, a billion-dollar industrial chemical company polluting Mossville, LA.
From South Africa to Louisiana, Mossville to New Orleans
By Sanashihla
Saturday, October 19, Residents of Mossville, LA, and Gordon Plaza, New Orleans, LA, had an opportunity to learn about each others struggles against the environmental racism that the capitalist system uses to divide, exploit and extract the labor, resources, and land of workers. This exchange occurred during a documentary screening of Mossville: When Great Trees Fall in New Orleans.
Mossville is a small Black community on the outskirts of Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish. The residents have been fighting against SASOL, a billion-dollar industrial chemical company.
SASOL got its start in South Africa. Rather than the people of South Africa benefiting from the abundance of resources that the land offers, the country has been a haven for white supremacist capitalists who exploit and pollute with complete disregard for the harm done to the Black indigenous people of the land.
A report about the harm done in South Africa, “Burning Coal,” stated that, “Under colonialism and apartheid, black South Africans were deliberately put in the way of pollution: at work and at home, as is evident in the experiences of both workers in the dirty industrial area of Ferrobank, South Africa and residents next to it in Ackerville, South Africa.” This is the same approach that capitalist chemical industries take right here in the state of Louisiana.
Despite SASOL forcing a $21.2-billion-dollar expansion upon the people, they only offered Mossville residents crumbs to move. Residents were forced to leave their “paid off” homes to incur debt in the process of finding another place to live. Some residents were even left homeless because of the ever-increasing cost of homes.
Residents are fighting illnesses, having been subjected to extreme pollution from the 14 petrochemical plants surrounding them already.
New Orleans is facing its own case of environmental racism. New Orleans East faces a $700 million polluting gas plant, and in the Upper 9th Ward Desire Neighborhood, the City of New Orleans built homes in Gordon Plaza on the Agriculture Street Landfill.
Mr. Jesse, a resident of Gordon Plaza, let the audience know about the residents’ fight for fully funded relocation. He explained that according to the Tumor Registry Report, the Gordon Plaza neighborhood— New Orleans’ own Cancer Alley— has the second highest cancer rate in Louisiana.
Residents are fighting for a long overdue fully funded relocation and cannot afford to be compensated with crumbs. The residents have put their working-class life savings into their homes; they bought into the so-called American Dream only for it to become a horrific nightmare.
From Gordon Plaza and Death Alley to South Africa, communities around the world are teaching each other about their struggles and learning we must band together to fight the common enemy of the capitalist class that exploits and oppresses workers and residents wherever they rule. We must say NO MORE!
Residents are asking for your help by telling everyone you know about this injustice. They invite you to hit the streets with them. You can call Mayor LaToya Cantrell at (504) 658-4900 and (504) 658-4945. You can email her at mayor@nola.gov to express support for the residents’ demands and REMIND the mayor that when she was running for office, she PLEDGED to use the city’s resources to ensure the residents of New Orleans would live in a safe and healthy environment. Now is the time!
Finally, because the Residents of Gordon Plaza are determined to fight for their lives and educate others about how their situation connects to the rest of the city, state and world, they have an exhibit up at the Newcomb Art Museum located at the Woldenberg Art Center #202 Newcomb Circle New Orleans, LA 70118. “The American Dream Denied: The Residents of Gordon Plaza Seek Relocation” is running concurrently with an exhibit about the water crisis in Flint Michigan, titled “Flint is Family.” Both exhibits demonstrate the way government officials have turned their backs on their residents in order to serve the rich ruling class that preys on the people.
The exhibit will be featuring Gordon Plaza through December 14th, so everyone can learn more about a local struggle of Black working class residents in their fight for a fully funded relocation off the toxic soil (Agriculture Street Landfill) that the City of New Orleans built their homes on.
Newcomb Art Museum Hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 10 am—5 pm
Saturday: 11 am—4 pm
Exhibit is FREE & open to the public.
A father and daughter attend the climate change protest together on Friday, September 20.
By Jennifer Lin
Energy corporations pillage and destroy the environment for profit, crushing the lives and livelihoods of workers in the process. As the climate crisis worsens, hurricanes and floods will become more destructive. These events have always revealed the intention of rich capitalists to profit from disasters.
After Katrina, the Road Home Program was designed to make it nearly impossible for Black workers to rebuild their homes. Real estate speculators then carried out a land grab.
Even systems that are supposed to protect people from natural disasters are being used against us, because they are the private projects of city officials and land developers based on profit contracts and bank loans. Drainage canals and artificial levees deplete the soil of groundwater and nutrients, causing land to drop below sea level. Worse, the lack of natural outlets for the Mississippi allows pressure to build up around the levees downriver, making the working-class communities that live there particularly vulnerable to flooding.
Of course, this is business as usual for the millionaires on the Sewerage and Water Board, who are now trying to impose a new drainage fee on workers that will push more and more people towards foreclosure and eviction. Meanwhile, the residents of Gordon Plaza continue to wait for a fully funded relocation. They have been struggling to have their humanity recognized for over thirty years since the city colluded with real estate vultures to build their homes on a toxic waste landfill in the Upper Ninth Ward. In Cancer Alley, the highest cancer-causing area in the U.S., people living near industrial plants are protesting the relentless poisoning of Black communities by petrochemical companies.
DEMAND REPARATIONS FROM OIL COMPANIES
Oil and gas extraction account for about 60% of wetland loss and coastal erosion in the Gulf. Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of coast since 1930. Most of that land belonged to the Houma people, who have had their lands stolen and their histories erased for centuries, first by colonial settlers and now by oil tycoons.
Few people today mention the Taylor oil spill. Back in 2004, Hurricane Ivan destroyed an oil rig owned by Taylor Energy Co., which continues to leak 100 barrels of oil into the Gulf every day. Disasters like this and the Deepwater Horizon spill pervade the oil industry, which endangers workers’ lives and destroys entire ecosystems for profit.
We cannot stand for the wholesale destruction of our communities and livelihoods by rich capitalists. We must stop corporations from continuing to poison the land we live on, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the people we love. Under capitalism, only what is profitable is valuable. Until this violent system of oppression and exploitation is completely overturned, the measure of our worth as people and the worth of the planet that shelters us, nourishes us, and sustains us will be dictated by a handful of rich CEOs who will never stop extracting the precious, collective resources of the earth for profit. Calling for an end to capitalist-driven ecological catastrophe is a necessary part of the revolutionary struggle towards liberation. An entire world is at stake, and we have no time to lose.
Residents of Gert Town, a working-class, Black neighborhood, have been exposed to toxic, radioactive waste for years. There has been no action by city government. Leaked emails from 2013 show city officials discovered the radioactive materials underneath the roads on Coolidge Court and Lowerline Street near the site of an old chemical plant. Because of the Super Bowl, the fat cats and politicians, seeing the potential for massive profits, decided to ignore the problem despite concerns from an environmental consultant.
The land, purchased in 1931 when Gert Town was a white working class area by Thomas-Hayward Chemical Co., has been the site of pesticide and herbicide production, which are both notorious pollutants. Many of the toxic chemical byproducts these chemicals produce remain in the ecosystem for years after the source of pollution has been removed. Basically, it doesn’t matter that the company moved from Gert Town in the 1980s; they left their trash.
The radium-226 found in the soil is an unstable chemical compound that decays and emits radiation. Long-term exposure to radiation is known to increase the risk of cancer and can sometimes cause irreversible damage to DNA. Generations of workers have probably spent thousands of dollars on medical complications—all because of a few greedy CEOs and politicians who serve the interests of the rich bosses and never the workers.
Current residents of the area told the Workers’ Voice they had known for years about the radiation and had been complaining about the dust and smell since the 1980s. “There have been folks getting sick because of this,” one resident told the Workers Voice. “The city would have done something if this was a bunch of white folks on St. Charles,” another resident said.
Capitalism will always prioritize profit over people and the environment. From Cancer Alley to Gordon Plaza to Gert Town, the capitalist ruling class has shown time and time again that they do not value the lives of workers. They care more about stuffing their pockets and hoarding the wealth that we, the working class, produce. Residents of Gert Town deserve fully funded relocation. All human beings deserve homes on land that won’t give them cancer.
On a Thursday morning, Shannon R, Lydwina, Marilyn A., and Jesse P., residents of Gordon Plaza, walked out the doors of City Hall to a press conference. The Residents of Gordon Plaza just finished meeting Mayor Cantrell to discuss the next steps towards a Fully Funded Relocation for the Upper Ninth Ward community. Since the Residents discovered that the homes sold to them through a program targeting Black residents of the Desire Project were on toxic soil, they have been fighting for relocation.
Four weeks before the press conference, the Residents of Gordon Plaza, along with the New Orleans People’s Assembly, engaged in a weekend of outreach during Essence Fest, a yearly cultural festival sponsored by Essence magazine that brings in 500,000 people to New Orleans and generates between $10-11 million annually. July’s issue of Essence magazine ran a story about the fight for relocation. After 1 year and 3 months of attempts to get a meeting with the mayor, the Residents took their story to the streets, the meeting rooms, and the stages of Essence Fest.
Throughout the weekend’s events, organizers handed Mayor Cantrell copies of a letter signed by over 40 community organizations who support fully funded relocation for the Residents of Gordon Plaza. After constant pressure from the People, Mayor Cantrell posted a message on all of her social media platforms saying, “my administration is actively working on a solution.”
After this statement, there were 4 weeks of silence. The day before the press conference, the Mayor’s office scheduled a meeting for an hour before the planned event.
At the press conference the Residents restated that any resolution must include: (1) a fully funded relocation; (2) a timeline for when the relocation will happen; and (3) the inclusion of the Residents in planning the relocation process. The Residents reported that Mayor Cantrell promised some movement on the issue in September. They will not, however, be tempered by words; only concrete action will do. The Residents of Gordon Plaza and the community will keep up the fight.
You can hear more about the residents and the fight for relocation on September 5th at The American Dream Denied: Gordon Plaza Seeks Relocation, an exhibit at Newcomb Art Museum on Tulane University’s main campus. The exhibit will have an opening from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. that includes a reception and informational panel. This event is free to the public. The exhibit will be on display through December 14th and is free and open to the public.
On June 12, 2019, the Mayor of New Orleans was proud to announce an award of $12.5 million dollars in FEMA funding that was made available to elevate 52 “historic” homes that have experienced severe flood damage. BUT this celebratory moment proved to be a slap in the face of the Black working class residents of Gordon Plaza, who occupy 54 homes that were built on the toxic soil of a Superfund site (the former Agriculture Street Landfill), and rightly deserve a fully funded relocation.
How is it that the 52 “historic” homes (primarily the property of rich folk or potential tourist attractions) were prioritized over the need for a fully funded relocation of Black working class people that live on dangerously toxic soil?
Just last month, ANOTHER report came out declaring that Gordon Plaza, as a New Orleans neighborhood in the Upper 9th Ward, is within the census tract.
According to the Louisiana Tumor Registry report, Gordon Plaza is found to have the second-highest consistent rate of cancer among all Louisiana census tracts in the entire state.
YET and STILL, the entire city council of New Orleans is silent on this issue.
YET and STILL, the newest mayor, in a line of mayors who “seemed” to care about Gordon Plaza, during election season, is SILENT on this issue.
When will the city of New Orleans really demonstrate an action oriented, resourced investment in Black working class people, with Black working class involvement and community accountability? We cannot wait for that answer!
Collectively, we must demand change! We must organize for what we want! We must organize for what we need! How we gonna make New Orleans rise?
New Orleans, Louisiana– On September 8, tens of thousands of people gathered for a major climate mobilization across the U.S. and the world. People around the world joined more than 830 events in 91 countries under the “Rise for Climate” banner. In the U.S., over 300 events took place in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The “Rise for Climate Jobs, and Justice” events in the US highlighted the need for real climate leadership in the face of intensifying climate impacts and the ongoing assault on climate and communities from the Trump Administration. The actions took place just days before the Global Climate Action Summit in California, demanding a phase-out of fossil fuel extraction and a just transition to a 100% renewable energy economy. Event organizers emphasized community-led solutions, starting in places most impacted by pollution and climate change. Gordon Plaza is a house development that has been designated by the US government as a Superfund site where over 150 toxicities have been documented. Gordon Plaza residents’ only demand for Mayor LaToya Cantrell is: Fully Funded Relocation for all affected residents. Photo by Fernando Lopez | Survival Media Agency
Gordon Plaza residents are fighting for a fully funded relocation from the toxic site the city built their homes on decades ago.
A new report by the Louisiana Tumor Registry confirms the findings of previous studies: Gordon Plaza has the second consistent highest rate of cancer in Louisiana. The study consistently found between 125 and 406 more cases per 100,000 residents than the state average. Gordon Plaza homes were built on a city landfill containing arsenic, lead and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons—all known or probable carcinogens according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Mayor Cantrell: the time to remedy this injustice is now!
Shannon Rainey, President of Gordon Plaza Residents committee, confronts Beau Tidwell, Cantrell’s PR mouthpiece.
By Star
On March 7 at 9 am, the Residents of Gordon Plaza went to City Hall to meet with Mayor LaToya Cantrell. For 7 months residents have attempted to meet with Cantrell following a decades long struggle to be relocated off toxic soil. They hoped she would honor her campaign promise to use city resources to ensure that residents have a safe and healthy environment to call home. Before going to City Hall, residents tried many times to get a meeting and were rebuffed. Despite the mayor never listening to the residents, she approved a statement from her office indicating that “due to pending litigation, the Mayor’s office is unable to make specific comment at this time. Mayor Cantrell has heard from the residents and will fully explore the possibilities in working toward a positive resolution.”
After that statement was issued, Cantrell texted the residents’ representative to say that if she needed anything, to call her office or e-mail to set up a meeting. As the mayor requested, the residents sent an e-mail in advance of their arrival. At the mayor’s office they were met with her communication director who made it clear that the mayor was not going to meet with the residents of Gordon Plaza.
Since being in office, white supremacists continually state that the mayor meets with them to discuss elevating monuments of white supremacy, and the mayor never denies it. It is not acceptable that the mayor refuses to meet with the residents of Gordon Plaza, while she listens to the cries of white supremacists as they mourn the loss of their monuments to oppression.
The fully funded relocation of the residents Gordon Plaza is long overdue and is the only acceptable resolution. Residents will continue to organize until this is achieved.
I drove to St. James, LA, a slightly rural town 55 miles west of New Orleans along the Mississippi River, to meet up with a local woman born and raised in the town, Ms. Sharon Lavigne. She started RISE St. James, an organization in her living room with 10 people, then increased to dozens. They spend time outside their homes and work life, not getting paid, organizing to fight the oil and gas industry plaguing their parish, polluting the air and causing the citizens to have deadly health issues.
This town was deemed an Industrial Zone in 2014 by Parish Council members without open discussions amongst the townspeople. In September 2017, a couple of local organizations and church groups held a rally and march, ‘Rise for Cancer Alley,” which was a success for the residents. It brought New Orleanians out there to engage in the struggle. We got a firsthand look at these homes, sitting not even a mile from gas plants spewing toxins ‘round the clock.
Burton Lane, also known as Cancer Alley, is currently still waiting for an evacuation route. In the case of an explosion or oil leak, these residents would have no way to escape as the street has only one way in, one way out and is surrounded by oil reservoirs. The latest court hearing for the evacuation route will probably be delayed once again as city officials keep messing with the date, probably to deter angry citizens from being able to attend and demand a route.
Ms. Sharon said the latest news is that a Formosa plastic manufacturing company wants to build a plant two miles from a school! But Formosa does not have a 100% greenlight yet, because residents like RISE St. JAMES are showing up to the meetings between town council members and Formosa board members to state their disgust at the idea of adding another pollution factory to an already over burdened area. The organization put in an appeal to the court opposing the decision to welcome Formosa and are currently awaiting to hear the verdict.
Another resident organizing is Travis London. Travis stated, “The council members say that Formosa is supposed to pay for and build the evacuation route [for Burton Alley residents]. If Formosa wants to build here, Formosa has to agree to fund it. It’s the government getting away with not using their funds, and it makes the citizens think, ‘Ok we need Formosa to put a plant here so we can finally get an evacuation route!’ But residents don’t want any more industry here!” The people organizing in RISE St. James are fighting for their lives, and they have the power to win. They are banding together, and collectively stopping the capitalist oil thieves from coming in any more giving cancer to families and destroying their environment.
Ms. Sharon said, “It was about time someone said NO. HELP (another local group ‘organizing to stop’ the industry) was not doing anything. All they would do is tell us at the meetings when another oil plant would be coming in, and they would say there is nothing we could do about it.” Well, RISE St. James has a separate agenda, to fight the oil and gas industry and keep ‘em out.
