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Inside/Outside Update
PDA Staff Report
February 13, 2006
The Inside/Outside Update is a PDA staff report to our supporters. We will send this every Tuesday. We want to make sure our grassroots supporters know what we, at the staff level, are doing each week. If you find this information useful, please consider making a small donation.
Please see our latest field update here.
Five months have passed since Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans and displaced thousands of Black and poor families. Local and federal officials are now working to permanently displace these folks through federal legislation. Ultra-conservative Congressman Richard Baker of Baton Rouge has introduced HR4100 Louisiana Recovery Corporation Act. For the text of the bill, visit here.
The proposed bill would create an $80 billion fund to pay off mortgages, and restore public works. The bill calls for buying large chunks of property ruined by Katrina, to clean it up, and then resell it to developers. It will pay the property owners up to 60% of the "current" value of their homes.
Together, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission plan and the "Baker Bill" will put a heavy burden on displaced residents. A critical mass must prove they can come back and rebuild their neighborhoods within the next four months with no help, or the government will receive an option to buy and then sell their property to developers. The developers will then build new more expensive homes, pricing out the original residents, and reaping huge profits as they do so.
This is unacceptable. Read more and take action to oppose HR 4100!
For additional information:
Dr. Robert Kozma lives in San Francisco and has been a member of PDA since the January 2005 PDA Summit in Washington D.C. He started his political activism in the 1960s as a member of the Student Peace Union at the University of Michigan, where he was an undergraduate. For the past twelve years, he has worked with the Democratic Party's grassroots. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Bob and his wife, Shari Malone, co-directed an effort to mobilize their fellow San Franciscans to work with Democratic grassroots efforts in the swings states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to defeat Bush. In the wake of the Bush victory, Bob rededicated himself to working on national and grassroots efforts to advance the progressive agenda. Read more.
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