Stephanie
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- Jul 11, 2004
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Jesse Jackson Plans Katrina Protest March :shocked:
NEW ORLEANS - The Rev. Jesse Jackson is planning a march this spring to protest post-hurricane policies he fears will marginalize the black community, the civil rights leader said Monday as he toured one of the city's hardest-hit areas.
The march on April 1 will cross the Crescent City Connection, a major Mississippi River bridge that was blocked to keep people trying to flee flooded New Orleans from going into cities that weren't as heavily damaged, Jackson said. Officials across the river in Gretna said they blocked the bridge because they had no more room for evacuees.
As he squatted in a patch of mud, Jackson called the barge that came to rest on debris in the lower Ninth Ward a symbol of the government's neglect of many of the storm's hardest-hit victims.
His visit was just his latest to the lower-income, mostly black neighborhood that still showcases some of Katrina's worst damage.
Many of its residents remain scattered in temporary housing across the country, while workers from Eastern Europe and Latin America have taken rebuilding jobs, Jackson said.
"Why must people here look at people coming in from out of the country to do the work? That is humiliating," he said. "There are no jobs that cannot be done by the people who once lived here."
The government's failure to quickly provide temporary housing closer to New Orleans not only has prevented the displaced from getting jobs at home, Jackson said, but also has made it more difficult to follow campaigns and vote in already-delayed elections, now rescheduled for late April.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060131/ap_on_re_us/katrina_jackson
NEW ORLEANS - The Rev. Jesse Jackson is planning a march this spring to protest post-hurricane policies he fears will marginalize the black community, the civil rights leader said Monday as he toured one of the city's hardest-hit areas.
The march on April 1 will cross the Crescent City Connection, a major Mississippi River bridge that was blocked to keep people trying to flee flooded New Orleans from going into cities that weren't as heavily damaged, Jackson said. Officials across the river in Gretna said they blocked the bridge because they had no more room for evacuees.
As he squatted in a patch of mud, Jackson called the barge that came to rest on debris in the lower Ninth Ward a symbol of the government's neglect of many of the storm's hardest-hit victims.
His visit was just his latest to the lower-income, mostly black neighborhood that still showcases some of Katrina's worst damage.
Many of its residents remain scattered in temporary housing across the country, while workers from Eastern Europe and Latin America have taken rebuilding jobs, Jackson said.
"Why must people here look at people coming in from out of the country to do the work? That is humiliating," he said. "There are no jobs that cannot be done by the people who once lived here."
The government's failure to quickly provide temporary housing closer to New Orleans not only has prevented the displaced from getting jobs at home, Jackson said, but also has made it more difficult to follow campaigns and vote in already-delayed elections, now rescheduled for late April.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060131/ap_on_re_us/katrina_jackson
