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Follow up on John LaBruzzo’s Plans to Sterilize Poor Women

5:07 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · New Orleans · 6 Comments

29 Sep 2008

VL reported here last week about Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo’s efforts to create legislation that would pay poor women $1000 to have their tubes tide. At the time, a commenter noticed that many women of color and poor women may actually want the sterilization, to which I replied that it is frustrating that “help” for poor people always comes in the form of sterilization rather than challenges to economic structures (such as $1000 scholarships for school, more jobs, raising the minimum wage, etc).

Women’s Health & Justice Initiative and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (both located in Louisiana) put out talking points to address LaBruzzo’s plans. The address the issue of “consent” in a very important way:

“Chocolate City” turning brown

6:05 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Culture|Immigration|Labor|States · Comments Off

8 Mar 2006

s.latinbeat.jpg Remember “Fear of a Black Planet”? How about “Fear of a Brown New Orleans”? I’m not sure if it’s mainstream media’s antagonistic reporting that’s fueling public paranoia or vice-versa, but how many article like this can we read in a week? ABC News muses:

At a New Orleans construction site, the breakfast of choice is no longer coffee and beignets but coffee and tortillas.

Hurricane Katrina, as devastating as it was, has created great opportunities for many. After all, somebody has to tear down, clean up and rebuild this city. And by and large, the people doing the dirty, dangerous work are not native New Orleanians but Hispanics who have flocked in to fill the void left by hundreds of thousands who fled the storm.

Chocolate New Orleans: Anti-Latino rhetoric?

6:56 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|race|society · 4 Comments

17 Jan 2006

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is at it again. He’s surfacing now to promote not just the rebuilding of New Orleans (I thought he had moved to Dallas?), but the rebuilding of a “Chocolate New Orleans”.

WTF?

“I don’t care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day,” Nagin said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. “This city will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be.”

“Losing” New Orleans to Mexicans: the debate goes on

12:00 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|Politics · 1 Comment

25 Oct 2005

solidarity new orleans.jpg San Diego Tribune writer Ruben Navarrette has something to say about Mayor Nagin’s distress over New Orleans being “overrun by Mexicans” as a result of an influx of migrant workers to the area for clean-up efforts post-Katrina:

Before Katrina, New Orleans was only about 3 percent Latino. Now, demographers say the city’s Latino population could swell to four or five times that amount.

That comes as a bolt of bad news for black leaders nostalgic for a city and a culture that for all practical purposes no longer exists…Nagin told reporters that his new worry is how he is going to “ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers.”

The thing is, many of the city’s former residents say that they have no desire to go back.

So why is he looking a gift horse in the mouth? Here Nagin is having trouble getting people to move to New Orleans, and there’s one group that’s already doing it. They’re ready to work hard, pay taxes and build a new New Orleans.

I, as a native Louisianian, will be the first to say that I would be saddened by the loss of any piece of New Orleans’ culture, and as person of color would be doubly saddened by the disappearance of the black community’s contribution to the richness of the city. But why does the influx of Latino workers have to necessarily mean the disappearance of black culture and the “real” New Orleans?

While I agree with Navarrette’s fury over comments by Mayor Nagin (that I myself have qualified as racist on this blog), I disagree with him on the fact that black culture in the city “for all practical purposes no longer exists”. The essence of New Orleans will exist forever, no matter who occupies the city. Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, boasts cultural and historical richness unparalleled by any other state in the nation, and a huge part of that has to do with people of black and creole heritage. In my opinion, people may leave New Orleans, but that will remain, and the call for prodigal sons to return will continue. A recent New York Times article talked about the “exiles” of Katrina, mostly working-class blacks who, forced to migrate to be able to sustain themselves, have found that life outside of the state is very different. It’s because Louisiana is a special place. It has its own culture and people will return. I believe this.

Beyond my own predictions, why is it so hard for Nagin and Jackson to swallow the fact that Latinos will inhabit New Orleans? The same thing has happened gradually in every state in the country and none of these places have “lost their identity” as a result.

Via / Newsleader.com

Katrina cleanup brings work and racism

3:00 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|mexico|Politics · 9 Comments

18 Oct 2005

Throughout the Katrina ordeal, America’s eyes were opened to two ugly realities of our country’s Gulf Coast region: poverty and racism. We’ve come to know that in many cases, these two things go hand-in-hand. Community leaders were vocal about the link between the goverment’s slow response and the fact that the affected area was largely populated by poor black people.

Now Katrina is over a month behind us. Cleanup is moving along, slowly. New Orleans is getting back to normal, but there is still a lot to do. So much, it seems, that FEMA isn’t able to find enough workers to keep up with the demands of the job.

Enter: Mexican immigrants. Hundreds of Mexican workers have arrived to New Orleans to do the job that no one else can do or wants to do. This is nothing new. Hard labor is no fun, and few us of would sign up for this kind of a job. We aren’t signing up. In the meantime, Mexicans are picking up the slack, and the Mayor of New Orleans screams “invasion”:

The new norm for New Orleans in terms of demographics is what concerns some city officials. Earlier this month, both Nagin and City Council President Oliver Thomas weighed in on the topic. Nagin was widely quoted as asking local business people, “How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?” But the mayor later sought to distance himself from that remark. His comments were focused on the question of whether Louisiana companies were getting their fair share, Nagin said.

“Overrun by Mexican workers”. Words that evoke images of chaos. Words charged with racism. Ironic.

Workers, Mexican or not, will be responsible for restoring New Orleans and giving Mayor Nagin (who, incidentally, won’t have to worry too much about the invasion, since he’s purchased a home in Dallas) back his once non-Mexican city. But for those who’d rather not hear Spanish in the streets or see brown faces on their block, life just isn’t that simple. After the reconstruction of the city is behind us, Latino workers will be in New Orleans. They will be in Mississippi and in Georgia. They will be everywhere because their labor is what is behind that glass of Chardonnay you are sipping and that faux French meal you’ll be sitting down to later tonight. Like it or not, Latinos are here to stay.

Via / Nola.com and Hispanic Tips

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