Welfare Dependency & Katrina's Aftermath

"New Orleans could be reconstructed by and for the very people most victimized by the flood. Schools and hospitals that were falling apart before could finally have adequate resources; the rebuilding could create thousands of local jobs and provide massive skills training in decent paying industries. Rather than handing over the reconstruction to the same corrupt elite that failed the city so spectacularly, the effort could be led by groups like Douglass Community Coalition. Before the hurricane this remarkable assembly of parents, teachers, students and artists was trying to reconstruct the city from the ravages of poverty by transforming Frederick Douglass Senior High School into a model of community learning. They have already done the painstaking work of building consensus around education reform. Now that the funds are flowing, shouldn't they have the tools to rebuild every ailing public school in the city?"
--Naomi Klein, "Let the People Rebuild New Orleans."

CBS News' Sunday Morning program had a very well-balanced look at the issue of poverty this morning. Hurricane Katrina has cast the spotlight on a topic that has nearly been forgotten, even though the numbers of Americans living below the federal poverty level has increased annually for four years running.

I appreciated some of the arguments against simply pouring more money into entitlement programs. I guess one of the things that makes me a moderate is that I believe that welfare programs have by and large led to a multi-generational dependency on the government, rather than the real empowerment. Naomi Klein's recent article for the Nation advocated a different approach: actually involving the poor people of New Orleans in the rebuilding process. "[T]he evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making," Klein writes, and she provides historical examples both from New Orleans and from the effort to rebuild Mexico City after the 1985 earthquake.

"The idea could take hold in the United States, and it must," Klein writes. "Because there is only one thing that can compensate the victims of this most human of natural disasters, and that is what has been denied them throughout: power. "
-G