It is interesting to note the blatantly racist comments of the Parish President Craig Taffaro. He is willingly spreading false rumors of an insane conspiracy theory, rather than admit racism amongst the development's opponents. He concocts a story which conveniently blames the development's advocates for the racist graffiti, and implies it was an attempt to make the opposition look racist. It's hard to believe a seasoned political operative like Taffaro is an just ostrich trying to keep his head in the sand about the racist nature of this opposition, more than likely he is one of the arch-racists trying to keep people divided from one another for his own political gain.
Rather than spreading fear and rumor-mongering about blacks moving in to Chalmette like Taffaro in the news story, anti-racist whites in Chalmette should be explaining how these multi-unit buildings will help stop landlords from raising the rent on tenants as easily. If there are less people competing for market-rate rentals, landlords can't charge as high of a price for them because the demand is lower. These buildings ease that competition among renters. The real struggle is between property owners in Chalmette, who want their property values (and ability to charge higher rents) to increase at all costs, even if it means poor white families are priced out of neighborhoods, kids have to sleep in cars with their parents, homelessness increases, and renters of all colors have to pay more just to have a roof over their heads.
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| A poster you can put up in Chalmette (how to put up posters) |
For many of the homeowners and small-time landlords in St. Bernard Parish, they've come to this position that attacks renters because of the pressure they feel to maintain their property values because of the mortgages they still owe to banks. This pressure forces them to turn against their renter neighbors instead of fighting the banks over their mortgages. It's up to anti-racist whites in St. Bernard Parish and white renters to unite with non-white renters and demand that they not be forced to pay the price in the form of higher rents for maintaining landowners' property values in St. Bernard.
Excellent piece!
ReplyDeletei would have loved a little more explanations about the multi-family housing concept though..
They are mixed-income apartment buildings being built behind the Wal-Mart in Chalmette. And thanks for the feedback!
ReplyDeleteRents in Chalmette are already lower than the "Low Income rental rates this developer is advertising. What upsets St Bernard Parish landowners ia that this project is being built with $60+ Million tax dollars and the low income people of St Bernard, as well as the taxpayers if this rent is subsidized, will be gouged by this developer again.
ReplyDeleteThis whole project is a fraud on the American taxpayer perpetrated by greedy Texas developers.
I don't have one of those accounts so I guess you will callnme anonymous. .
BtW there is 4 locations. One behind Wal Mart, One across the street, one across from the Chalmette Battlefield and one by the funeral home off Paris Rd. This is an extremely large project in scale within a very small parish.
Oh, is THAT what people meant by "no niggers"? No taxpayer money? And I thought it might have been a racial thing!
ReplyDeleteI totally understand your concerns about some shady developer getting tax $ to build these apartments, and I don't doubt it is a give away to him in that sense. But, don't you know that is what the government DOES? That is all they do all the time is give away tax money to rich people. Seriously. I'm sure every corporate chain store and large employer in Chalmette is getting some kind of tax breaks or subsidies. Where are the protests against that?
I think people genuinely concerned about the issues you raise should not be hoodwinked by racists into fighting alongside them against this project. If you are fighting this project without first fighting the racists, you are working for them.
First, you have to get rid of the racists who are fighting it by denouncing them and making it clear that low-income, Section-8 housing for people of color is something you support. THEN you can make the arguments about wasted tax money (which is money that is supposedly for helping low-income people, but really just fills developers pockets, so you should be fighting alongside low-income people to demand better uses of the money that is supposedly allocated for them). When you say it gouges the taxpayer to fill the developer's pockets, you are right, but it more *specifically* gouges the money allocated to help low-income people have stable housing in order to fill developer's pockets.
Since developers have lobbyists, they are able to craft bills that make it sound like the government is helping poor people, but really the developers are just USING poor people as a vehicle to pass money from the government straight through to the developer's pockets via high rents in subsidized apartments, because it sounds better for the government to say the money is going to poor people than just giving it straight to the developer. It also conveniently makes it so the poor people take all the anger of "the taxpayers" who are outraged at the money wasted in subsidizing the inflated rents charged by the developers, who know they can get away with it because they know the government is helping the poor people pay the rent, so they know renters won't fight the high rents. Developers win, the politician buddies win, taxpayers and low-income people lose and taxpayers are tricked in to attacking the low-income people for "receiving" government subsidies.
The entire point of the way that con-game works is to get people like those in Chalmette angry at low-income people and black people instead of at developers. But that does not excuse their actions when they fall for it!
We have to blame the people at the top of this system for how it works, not the people at the bottom. The people at the top are the ones making all the money off of it!
So basically, demand the racists go straight to hell (such as Taffaro). Demand more REAL low-income housing that is affordable even without subsidized rent, and an end to developer swindles (you could even demand this project be taken over by the parish and run as a non-profit). Another good demand, if you are concerned about the size of this new construction, would be that every unoccupied house be seized and used for low-income housing FIRST before new developments are built. Those demands would be how to fight for what you seem to be against.
And, if you genuinely are against the things you mentioned, and are not using those things as excuses to sound less racist, we are on the same side in this fight, and you should keep me update about what's happening with it!!!
Thanks for your thoughts!
I'm glad to hear you agree with me. The only thing you have wrong is the motivation of the people who oppose this development. Read that sentence carefully. They oppose the development. Not the people moving in to it. First I disagree with the assumption that only people of color will be renting these apartments. The majority of the low income people have been white. There is no shortage of of poor white people in St. Bernard Parish.
ReplyDeleteThere are ample opportunities for poor people of all colors to rent singe family homes and sometimes duplexes in established neighborhoods for SUBSTANTIALLY LESS, from early publishing it looks like 30%+ less than this developer charges.
As far as the government wasting money being what government does in no way shape or form acceptable. The taxpayers can not affordF it. The good people of St Bernard don't mind giving someone a hand up. Believe me the citizens of St Bernard know exactly what it means to be knocked on your ass by circumstances beyond there control. But stealing the money while doing it is unacceptable and has to change. This economics of this development is as ridiculous as the $10k trailers that FEMA paid a few politically connected companies $80k to furnish and maintain for 18 months. Then paid them extra if it went beyond 18 months. The good people of St Bernard know what it means to be ripped off in the name of taxpayer help. To have to listen to polital pundants beat there chest about haw they gave Katrina victims $80k+ in temporary housing and some of the people are not satisfied, when some of the people were given a 19 foot travel trailer for a family of 4, is very tough to listen too. The citizens are far more humble than you think.
Next let's talk about the "NO NiGGERS" grafitti. I, and my circle of friends can assure you that we find that as offensive as you do. I would also like to ask you to look at this realistically. These developments are gaurded 24/7 by guards the Texas developer hired. In my experience, racists are never the smartest people in the room. Yet this developer would have you believe some cat burglar racist snuck in like Navy Seal Team Six and defaced this property right under their noses. I find this a real stretch. Is it possible some kid snuck in and did it just to make a headline? Possible? Probab? No. The only people with anything to gain from this is the Texas developer. They have something to take to the Judge as evidence that the people of the community are racist. The developer is playing this judge like a Stratavarious at the expense of honest hard working people.
Lastly, let's talk about fighting the racist. I can assure you racism is not acceptable to the overwhelming majority of the people of Chalmette. As for Mr. Tufaro he and everyone in parish elected office will face the voters in a few short months. Even with all the advantages of incumbency, the current crop of elected will face a very upset crop of voters.
Come back next year and see what the next crop of elected officials looks like. The landscape is sure to look different. The voters of St Bernard do not appreciate being made to look like racist.
Please excuse the typos. It is tough to typt a long comment on a phone and the spell checker is possessed!
ReplyDelete"They oppose the development. Not the people moving in to it."
ReplyDeleteYou keep saying this, but I'm not convinced SOME (not ALL) of the people are opposed to the development because of who is moving in (hence the law they had passed about only renting to blood relatives). With the passage of that law, it was clear that at the parish council is opposed to it because of who is moving in, and I'm sure if they are that racist, they have their supporters who elected them who feel the same way.
"There are ample opportunities for poor people of all colors to rent singe family homes and sometimes duplexes in established neighborhoods for SUBSTANTIALLY LESS, from early publishing it looks like 30%+ less than this developer charges."
But with the subsidies the government will be paying towards the rent at the development, will the part of the rent the renters have to pay still be more expensive than other places in St. Bernard? I doubt it. Rent subsidies for developments like this one are usually like 30-50% of the full price. I think you are talking about the full price and not what the renters will actually be paying. Perhaps you picked up this talking point from one of the racist opponents not realizing it is untrue, but is useful to them to strengthen their position. (And also, how many of those places you mention are willing to rent to non-white people? That is also a concern, beyond just the prices.)
"Next let's talk about the "NO NiGGERS" grafitti. I, and my circle of friends can assure you that we find that as offensive as you do. I would also like to ask you to look at this realistically. These developments are gaurded 24/7 by guards the Texas developer hired. In my experience, racists are never the smartest people in the room. Yet this developer would have you believe some cat burglar racist snuck in like Navy Seal Team Six and defaced this property right under their noses. I find this a real stretch ....... like a Stratavarious at the expense of honest hard working people."
I find your conspiracy theory a real stretch. Honestly, judging by the photo, it looks like it was probably some idiotic young white graffiti writer kid (look at the handstyle, look at the graffiti next to the racist slur) from Chalmette who is probably just parroting his racist parents sentiments..... I would bet you $1,000 that I am right. (Only graffiti writers do that little underline with an arrow on it that is under the "no niggers"). So I think you should assume that is who it was. And if some random white tagger kid knows enough about the development to write that on it, I bet the racist sentiment and talk about "niggers" moving in is fairly widespread. So I would say that their IS a racist element that needs to be dealt with before anyone opposing this development can expect to not automatically be assumed to be racist. And again, I ask you, if the motivations for opposing this development are NOT racist, but one of "wasting taxpayer money" then where are those people fighting against tax breaks and subsidies given to corporations, banks, and probably every larger scale capitalist business all throughout St. Bernard Parish????? THAT is what is fishy!
I am an anarchist, therefore I never hold out hope for "the next crop of politicians" to be any better than the ones we have now. They are all the same. They run for office because of the same motivations, the think they know better than everyone's collective voice on how to decide what happens in the community, they are often narcissistic, they crave power and ego boosts, and they kiss the rings of the people with the money they need to run for election, making all of them beholden to the same rich people. The next politicians won't be any different, we have to organize ourselves to create the world we want without them.
You said "And again, I ask you, if the motivations for opposing this development are NOT racist, but one of "wasting taxpayer money" then where are those people fighting against tax breaks and subsidies given to corporations, banks, and probably every larger scale capitalist business all throughout St. Bernard Parish????? THAT is what is fishy!"
ReplyDeleteMost people do oppose those things and that waste is what many in the Tea Party are in the street protesting.
You also said, " I am an anarchist". That is the difference between you and the good people of St. Bernard, if just one person opposin the developments was an anarchist he would have burned them all down.
The good people of Chalmette and St. Bernard are honest, hard working people and will handle things within the law. No burning, no rioting, no graffiti. Did you notice the riots when the Saints won the Super Bowl? Me either! And yes Chalmette landlords do rent to blacks.
And lastly I ask how did that son of a racist get past the 24/7 on site security anyway.
And please don't tell me there isn't one person on that construction site knows how to paint like a tagger. I would compare it too the other grafitti in Chalmette but I couldn't find any. Chalmette doesn't have a graffiti problem.
I fear our agreements are diverging as your positions become clearer....
ReplyDeleteCan you point to people actively opposing tax breaks for Chalmette corporations? Just link to 1 article, blog, anything....
One sleepy security guard is easy for a graffiti writer to elude at a massive development. If I could see the whole tag next to the "no niggers" i could tell you who wrote it, and you would probably see other tags of theirs around chalmette. It starts with STO or SCO...
And, I don't view graffiti as a problem, I view oil refineries, wal-marts, and dollar stores as more of a blight on our communities than some artistic scribblings, as long as they aren't doing it on people's personal property, like on their houses, but it is kept to public property like highway walls or corporate property like the back of a strip mall or something. Graffiti has been called the largest populist art movement in the entire history of human kind. It can't be all bad.
Being an anarchist doesn't mean burning things, it means standing up for yourselves and organizing your communities non-hierarchically. Click the link in my profile to find out about anarchism before you talk about it in an uninformed way! This is an anarchist website.
"The good people of Chalmette and St. Bernard are honest, hard working people and will handle things within the law."
This is total bullshit and you know it. How many of the laws the parish council has passed to try and stop this development have been ruled unconstitutional??? ALL OF THEM. So no, laws are made by MEN, men with agendas who try to create laws that are in their interests. And in Chalmette the men in suits passing laws are passing them in disregard of other laws, meaning they are NOT law abiding, even to the very laws **they** proclaim to adhere to like the Constitution.
If you want to read a good writing from anarchists within the Tea Party, check this out: http://zinelibrary.info/files/OfTeaPartiesAndPatriots_online.pdf
Well, now it seems you have some reading to do, and maybe after you do, we can continue this conversation, and I think our opinions might begin to line up more again...
Thanks for the respectful dialogue! I appreciate it. :)
I guess our divergence I based on the definition of "active opposition. " For you it's blogging, for many it's voting and for others it's writing an editorial in the T-P". I suspect if you pay for access to the TP archives a search would find just The kind of thing you are looking for.
ReplyDeleteNo I'm not an anarchist and suspect I never will be!
The respectful dialog is appreciated here as well.
But, you can't point to a website, such as the one that exists to oppose these developments, for anything else, right? Can you point to 1, just 1, article anywhere? A blog post? Come on, give me something! Name one other government subsidy in Chalmette to a business that you oppose?
ReplyDeleteOk here's a list to the largest employer in Chalmette, Exxon Mobil. We also have Murphy oil who is a smaller company that I think is the second largest employer
ReplyDeletehttp://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/big_oil_tax_breaks.html
http://blumenauer.house.gov/images/stories/2011/documents/EBOTS_Fact_Sheet.pdf
Here is another, though as far as imknow we no large corn growers in the parish it effects us and acts in much the same ways that the tax breaks for the developer in question.
It enriches the target, has done nothing to reduce the price of gasoline, has driven up the price of corn which has driven up the price of beef and other food costs putting substantial budgetary pressure on the citizens of Chalmette who can afford it the least.
In many ways this mirrors the Provident Tax breaks. They are enriching the Texas developer, is doing nothing to reduce the cost of low income housing in Chalmette and will devastate the mom and pop landlord in Chalmette and the rest of SBP who returned, and in most cases using their life savings, after getting a severe financial, emotional and sometimes physical ass whipping fron Katrina. In almost all cases the SBP landlord owns less than a half dozen properties and has his life savings invested. And you don't understand why his own government threatening to drive him to bankrupcy might motivate that person to publicly speak out more than on other tax issues? The scalable effect on him is HUGE compared to others tax breaks.
I suspect if a tax break came to town that threatened to personally bankrupt all Nola bloggers you might feel differently.
In closing I submit to you and anyone who might read this that the people of Chalmette and the rest of SBP are hardworking, honest, fair people who want nothing more than to feed their families without financially devastated by this Texas developer using $60M in OUR tax money.
I also submit to you that they are far more informed than your writings imply.
Sorry I forgot the corn ethanol link for the second one. Here it is: http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/09/despite-strong-opposition-ethanol-subsidies-set-to-be-renewed-in-tax-deal/
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/07/affordable_housing_proposals_d.html
ReplyDelete<<"The good people of Chalmette and St. Bernard are honest, hard working people and will handle things within the law."
ReplyDeleteThis is total bullshit and you know it.>>
The problem I have with your posting above is you donot view anyone from Chalmette or St. Bernard Parish as honest, hard working, law abiding citizens. You have a prejuidice towards this community and do not acknowledge that the citizens are separate from the government officials. You also have a prejuidice against white people and your reference to African Americans as people of color is offensive to me.
Now that the security guards have been arrested for drug issues, do you still not think they could have possibly written the graffiti?