Recently, The Wall Street Journal chillingly described plans of the "power elite" to rebuild New Orleans "in a completely different way: demographically, geographically, and politically." Unless we insist upon an inclusive, cooperative, localized approach to the planning of restoration of New Orleans, that narrow power elite will have their way. They will do so by conspiring with the companies that currently feed at the federal government's trough with massive, no-bid contracts for "redevelopment" abroad, and which may already have received some contracts for the "new" New Orleans.
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(T)he "new" New Orleans should take account of the racial impacts of demolition and reconstruction. A model for this could come from the racial justice movement in the environmental field. Though the movement has typically focused on challenges to the location of undesirable industrial plants in poor and minority neighborhoods, it provides mechanisms for assessing the racial impact of changes - even those deemed "gentrification" by the developers -- on a particular neighborhood.
Unfortunately, I never got the chance to take a class from Gelfand when I was there. I could say that about a lot of the professors, though... I wasn't "there" that much.
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