REBUILD GREEN / NEW ORLEANS
2nd Anniversary Update
September 2, 2007
Stanley Covington, O. C. Draughan and Don Paul at the house of Structural Concrete Integrated Panels that's under construction for Robert and Elaine Legier at 2521 Piety Street in New Orleans' Upper 9th Ward.
Dear Supporters and Other Readers,
"You know it's your birthday!"
It's now the month of the second anniversary of Rebuild Green / New Orleans.
Rebuild Green was formed on September 2, 2005, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States, by Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and myself. We wanted to provide at least an Internet means of channeling aid to our friend Malik Rahim as Malik strove to meet survivors' needs in the flooded, neglected and chaotic streets of New Orleans, his home city.
Over the first seven months of its existence Rebuild Green moved all donations to it--more than $50,000--to the organization that Malik, his partner Sharon Johnson, and Austin, Texas activist Scott Crow founded on September 5, 2001--Common Ground Relief. And for many months Common Ground Relief and its hundreds unto thousands of volunteers accomplished spectacular feats in Wards of New Orleans that were strewn with wreckage, largely depopulated, and dark as ruins at night.
C G R Distribution Centers provided food, clothing and water; Common Ground Clinics provided medical treatment to thousands more; and C G R Volunteer Centers in the Upper 9th Ward gave room and board to wave after wave of students and and long-term volunteers whose grand achievement was the gutting of more than 1200 houses for would-be returnees to New Orleans. I moved to New Orleans in January 2006 and between June and December of that year most of my waking hours were taken up with serving as Operations Coordinator for Common Ground Relief.
Rebuild Green began to do renovations of houses in November 2006. Photos of our work along Congress Street in the Upper 9th Ward are in earlier updates.
We've now begun to build new housing that we believe will be safe, strong, and sustainable--housing suitable for semi-tropical, coastal environments in this
21st century of ongoing storms and and floods due to climate-change.
Volunteer Jaime Hazard of Ithaca, New York stands beside the sign that she painted (with no little difficulty) on M2-USA panels' recycled styrofoam. Jaime named the 2521 Piety building "the strong house."
In March of this year Rebuild Green / New Orleans started our first new construction, a house to be made of Structural Concrete Integrated Panels (S.C.I.P.s) on a site seven blocks from Common Ground's St. Mary's Volunteer Center and two blocks from the Florida Street Canal, a site that sat under more than 10 feet of water in September 2005 after U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' levees broke, a site that remains surrounded by deep devastation and neglect
and a relative handful of families' determined reconstruction.
The couple for whom we're building this house, Robert and Elaine Legier, were born and raised in the Upper 9th Ward. Married for 49 years, they lived in Tacoma, Washington and then Los Angeles, California (where Bob drove Public Transit buses for 27 years) before returning to New Orleans in 1996, their three children grown. They "rode out" the post-Katrina flood's 12-foot-high "locomotive" of a surge in a School across Piety Street, waiting 60 hours to be rescued through third-floor windows.
S. C. I. P. housing appealed to the Legiers and to Rebuild Green for several reasons:
•Houses built of Panels made by the manufacturer that was supplying us, M2-USA, had withstood 210-miles-per-hour Caribbean Hurricanes with no structural damage;
•S.C.I.P. houses were said to absolutely resist mold and termites;
•S.C.I.P. houses were said to be more sound-proof and to be 40% more energy-efficient than houses framed with 2'-by-4"s ("stick-frame houses");
•M2-USA Panels' styrofoam insulation was said to be at least 40% recycled.
On Memorial Day, May 26, 2007--following considerable delays in
sub-contractors' driving of piles and laying of plumbing due to their repeated encounters with concrete debris left underground in the Legiers' lot by a Demolitions' company--we had the slab poured for the house at 2521 Piety.
Since then we've been working to get it built.
The core-crew of O. C. Draughn and Stanley Covington are native to New Orleans
and ex-offenders. Both O. C. and Stanley were raised in or near Public Housing and both spent tough, long stretches in Angola State Prison for crimes committed when they were young men.
By early July we completed erection and tie-downs of wall and floor (ceiling) M2-USA panels. We next "got into the concrete"--Stanley the mix-master,
O. C. and I with 7-inch wide scoop-guns and variously sized trowels--O. C. and I moving our wheel-barrows of the heavy, wet, vaguely sweet-smelling mix, shooting scoop-loads onto the wire-mesh of wall and ceiling surfaces and then flipping and smoothing trowel-loads of the said wet, heavy, vaguely sweet-smelling mix onto the same walls and ceilings--getting soaked with sweat and spackling--from 8:00-something each morning till the high, sweltering heat of mid-Summer southeast Louisiana mid-afternoon.
You can see from their smiles the kind of energy that Stanley and O. C. have.
By mid-August we'd poured the second-floor slab and erected the exterior walls for this floor that will be the Legiers' main living quarters.
THE ADOPT-A-WELL / ADOPT-A-BLOCK PROGRAM
Many of you already know about the efforts by Rebuild Green / New Orleans to push a program for installation of earth-energy systems in lots owned by low-income residents of New Orleans.
An e-mail about these efforts went out to R B G supporters last May.
The basic thought is to use person-to-person aid or investment to provide means of renewable energy, sustainable living, and sensible employment that arms of government (City, State and Federal) are, u'hm and a'hem, overlooking.
In even more basic terms, the thought is: Make Your Own Government.
Or: Join a Humanitarian Government.
Or, in lengthier terms: Forget about Governments that Don't Care About You and Do What's Right and Righteous for Mutual Survival and Prosperity.
The proposition of Rebuild Green's Adopt-a-Well / Adopt-a-Block program is that individuals and organizations can help low-income residents of New Orleans by supplying the capital (as either donor or investor) for installation of an earth-energy system for every such resident who wants one in his or her yard. The investment would be more than reimbursed through residents' monthly savings
on their utility-bills. Much of the thought behind this investment/reimbursement
exchange came from Jeremiah Johnson and Christope Hugenin of Earth-Cool,
introduced to you as partners of Rebuild Green in the last Update.
The capabilities of an earth-energy (sometimes called a geo-thermal)system are particularly suited to the warm, moist earth of southern Louisiana. Using a 1/2"=diameter tube of hard plastic known as "the ground loop', the "well" of an earth-energy system will descend about 250 feet underground, where the earth's ambient temperature sits close to 70 degrees year-round. The "ground-loop" will draw this temperature upward to a "heat-pump" that sits aboveground next to
the customer resident's home. Canada's Natural Resources agency has plenty
of information online about earth-energy systems--check out 'An Introduction to Residential Earth Energy Systems' for a summary.
The anticipated savings in costs of air-conditioning and heat for southern Louisiana are monumental. The U. S. Army at Fort Polk in Leesville, Louisiana (less than 100 miles from New Orleans) estimates that it's now saving $3 million per year from the 4000 earth-energy units it installed for troops' quarters in 1997.
The table below shows how each resident of New Orleans who installs an earth-energy system can expect a total saving of more than $80,000 over the subsequent
30 years. 
With very little outreach over the past two months--covering less than one square mile of the Upper 9th Ward--Rebuild Green / New Orleans has signed up more than 40 residences interested in having this natural source of renewable energy be part of their homes.
You can see the entire four pages that relate to earth-energy systems and the
Adopt-a-Well / Adopt-a-Block programs of Rebuild Green / New Orleans here.
Volunteer Charles Craig of Houston, Texas
on the 1900 block of Gallier Street on Saturday,
August 25, into the third week of 100+-degrees
heat-index day in New Orleans
THE SUSTAINABLE BUILDING CENTER
&
THE DANNY BARKER PLACE
Plans for the Danny Barker Place were part of last May's Update from Rebuild Green / New Orleans.
You may remember renderings of visions for the Danny Barker Place that the New York City office of Perkins + Will created, just after Perkins + Will devoted
part of its "retreat" in New Orleans to considering how the firm might help in general with recovery here and with prospects for the D B P in particular.
As you can see, the architectural team arrived at spectacular designs whose
environmental and societal advantages we've only begun to explore.
The Danny Barker Place can be a very big deal--can bring very big benefits--
for the 7th Ward and for nearby Wards and for New Orleans in general. 
Since last May we've come up with the concept for an economic engine that would drive both the Danny Barker Place and revitalization of the surrounding Wards.
The Sustainable Building Center would focus on employing New Orleans' working-class natives in transitions to sustainable architecture and renewable energy.
That is, it would be home to firms that installed earth-energy systems, photovoltaic
panels, water turbines, and the like.
A more comprehensive summary of the Sustainable Building Center can be had
at Rebuild Green's Summer 2007 Update.
The Sustainable Building Center is another part of embodying Rebuild Green's fundamental intention of furthering a Circle of Regeneration here in New Orleans.
NOW FOR SOME OLD NEWS
At the end of this Update I have to tell you that each and all of the above efforts is receiving very help little from any Government entity. It's as if there may be some kind of multi-level plot to make sure that nothing of self-help can happen among poor and working-class Black people in New Orleans and nearby. It's as if the daily story of obstructions, broken promises, racism and corruption in the Post-Reconstruction South continues more than a century later.
At the same time, the Federal Government, headed by once-a-year-visitor-to-New-Orleans George W. Bush, repeats through USA Today and other keys of its "mighty Wurlitzer" that it's allocated $116 billion for Gulf Coast Recovery.
That $116 billion may be an authentic amount. The Gov. may have allocated it and even awarded much of it to some people. And igloos may be the most efficient housing for residents of sun-drenched Togo--something that vanishes overnight requires no maintenance.
We hear about lots of billions of dollars--hundreds of billions--even some trillions of dollars--these days. Problem is that such a pitifully scant fraction of those dollars actually reaches the hands of needy people. According to the latest Katrina Index report from the Greater New Orleans Data Center and the Brookings Institution, at least $75 billion of the oft-repeated $116 billion disappeared into 'immediate post-storm relief.' Well, sure, that's a credible outlay: Halliburton and Blackwater must fuel their helicopters; Executives need their jets and Suites; $70,000 per FEMA trailer adds up. $41 billion is still left when $75 billion is deducted from $116 billion. Ah, but the Katrina Index tells us that only 42% of the estimated $41 billion has been spent up till now, two years after New Orleans and much else along the Gulf Coast was ripped by storms, immersed by floods, and left to fend as well as communities could without running water, electricity and sewage.
(By the way, most of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward waited till July of 2006, ten months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, for running water, electricity and sewage services to be restored there. It's as if there was some kind of plot to deny residents' their basic needs.
And now, still, most of the Lower 9th Ward remains depopulated--either rows of vacant houses that still bear marks of flooding and/or FEMA or vast swaths of vacant, grass-grown lots that are sites of demolition by flooding or machine. The Lower 9 looks, in short, as if there's some kind of plot ongoing).
Scene along Tennessee Street in Lower 9th Ward
Let's return to the Federal Government's numbers for 'Gulf Coast Recovery'. Two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the failure of levees only about 10% of the oft-repeated $116 billion--42% of $41 billion equaling $17.2 billion--has been spent toward Gulf Coast homeowners' damages, damages that were conservatively estimated to exceed $100 billion in September 2005!
Claimants from affluent Mississippi (a more Republican, more White State) have received a far larger, proportional share of this very scant piece of the pie that should be available to survivors. The disproportion may look--again--like some kind of plot.
Efforts by the State of Louisiana and City of New Orleans Governments are also 'way short of meeting people's needs.
A small portion of unused Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO)
units, Upper 9th Ward
Louisiana's Road Home Program has closed on about one out of five claims in its first year of operation under the Virginia-based Corporation, ICF International, chosen to administer it. The Katrina Index sums up Road Home thus:
A Review of Key Indicators of
Recovery Two Years After Katrina
By Amy Liu & Allison Plyer
'The program got off to a very slow start, with only 177 closings by January 15, 2007 some six months after the program was initiated. The number of closings per month increased to more than
10,000 by June; but by August 2007, a full year into the program, only 22 percent of applications had gone to closing. According to the most current data, by August 6, 2007 the average benefit
calculated had fallen to $68,734 from a high of $81,000.'
The City of New Orleans fired all but 500 of its 14,000 of its Public School teachers in November 2005. (By the way, Public School teachers in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana formed one of the most unified, effective blocs for electoral politics in the State pre-Katrina. The dismissal/removal of all but 3% of them may look like some kind plot against working-class people's return and recovery.)
The Katrina Index of August 2007 notes:
'St. Tammany, Jefferson, and Plaquemines parishes have succeeded in re-opening all or almost all of their public schools since Katrina, while St. Bernard still has only three of 15 schools in operation. The most troubling of all, however, is Orleans Parish where only 58 out of 128 schools, or 45 percent, had reopened by May 2007.'
We may note again that lack of employment and education--lack of something productive and affirmative to do--produces violence. The murder-rate in New Orleans is at a pace--137 deaths so far in 2007, 27 in August alone--to make this city again highest in the nation in that category of violence, as it was in 2006. Most of the killed are Black males and most of them are under the age of 30, as O. C.
and Stanley were when they joined the 20,000 or so at Angola State Prison.
And yet--there remains much to appreciate and celebrate every day in New Orleans, this most mixed and therefore most American city of the Americas, this
irreplaceably fertile nexus of histories and possibilities.
Despite all the lacks, frustrations and aggravations here, 74% of the Road Home applicants from Orleans Parish (the City of New Orleans) state that they intend to keep their homes in this city.
Despite all the lacks, delays, obstacles in funding reconstruction, the strong majority of men and women customers whom you can see at Home Depot and Lowe's in New Orleans--lined up with carts of stacked lumber and sacks of concrete, with doors and windows and ceiling-fans, are African-American and native to this city.
And every night, too, this city must play more music than anywhere; it must have per capita the most numerous and active music-venues of any place in the U. S.
So: I and many others still think of what New Orleans could be. We still imagine what a true greening of this city--respectful of its heritage and of all its races and its mix--could bring to the pleasing graces and robust potentialities that are evident here every day and night.
But, again, we need your help. We need your help to help potentialities here flourish. We need funding and commitments. We need donations or investments in the Adopt-a-Well / Adopt-a-Block program. We need support for Sustainable Building Center. We need to increase means by which ex-offenders and young Black males in new Orleans can be employed for the general good and their own satisfaction. We need more means to bring greening to construction in southern Louisiana and all of the Gulf Coast.
From left: O.C. Draughn, Stanley Covington, Winston Legthigh
Contributions and communication from earlier supporters of Rebuild Green have been so scarce that I sometimes wondered if there were, um, some kind of plot--
some kind of COINTELPRO-like interception--that kept the P O Box empty from week to week this past Summer.
Many with Rebuild Green / New Orleans and Common Ground Relief have worked hard to further a sensible future for New Orleans. Programs have begun. Seeds have been planted. Work is ongoing. At least one "strong house" is nearing completion. It should be clear, however, that the only way that these on-the-ground efforts for greening, sustainability and justice can succeed is through Person-to-Person Aid.
We can't rely on any level of U. S. Government to help us. In fact, as a whole, the Guv'ment looks like it may be trying to disempower the great majority of us.
Think of what your hometown group could do to be part of the vitalization of working-class New Orleans. Think of what your local Union's body could do
to Adopt-a-Well or Adopt-a-Block in the 9th Ward. Think of what a great solution
such a combination of People-to-People Aid could produce.
T-shirts and posters by Mac McGill remain available for supporters. New as an immediate, material reward for contributing to Rebuild Green / New Orleans is the monumental volume of Post-Katrina Portraits done by Francesco di Santis--421 pages of individual portraits and statements by survivors and volunteers, rendered and assembled over more a year by Francesco and his associates. The images and words in this very weighty, well-printed book--a Ben Shahn-like record of cataclysmic realities and compassionate responses in the 21st century--may touch you indelibly.
 Front |
 Back |
T-shirt $10.00 Contribution |
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Poster $10.00 Contribution |
Book $50.00 Contribution |
| Donations are tax deductable through Rebuild Greens fiscal agent Global Exchange | |
All best,
Don Paul for Rebuild Green / New Orleans