Newsitem List
President Bush's bankruptcy bill, passed by Congress in April, is taking effect later this month. Four congressmembers are now calling for victims of hurricane Katrina to be exempt from certain provisions of the law. We speak with the Consumer Federation of America....
Posted: Tue, Oct 4, 2005 8:08am PDT
A new study shows that the child tax credit does not benefit almost half of African-American and Latino children - and it turns out that the children who see the least benefit from the credit are in Mississippi and Louisiana. We host a debate with the Children's Research and Education Institute and the Heritage Foundation....
Posted: Tue, Oct 4, 2005 8:07am PDT
We speak with the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Eddie Jordan about the grossly exaggerated reports of multiple murders and criminal mayhem in New Orleans in the days after hurricane Katrina hit. Jordan says, "I'm pleased that there was very little bloodshed, but it seems to me that the national media outlets had an obligation to verify the charges [of violence] being made by some of the evacuees and some of the public officials."...
Posted: Mon, Oct 3, 2005 7:06am PDT
Racism has expanded to incorporate people who thought they were imune, to the suffering of people of color only to be incorporated into the big picture. The question is with unlimited amount of money and a Earth that can not survive will the money save them? And if you are not rich and your expendable income is becoming less do you feel more secure?...
Posted: Sat, Oct 1, 2005 3:57pm PDT
We speak with Richard Walden, president and founder of Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based relief agency. In an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times this week titled "The Red Cross money pit," Walden writes that despite, "Giving so high a percentage of all donations to one agency (The Red Cross) that defines itself only as a first-responder and not a rebuilder is not the wisest choice."...
Posted: Fri, Sep 30, 2005 7:18am PDT
Yesterday I drove to the Algiers Red Cross distribution point which is located in the southern section of the Algiers neighborhood near the middle-class white section of town. As soon as I walked in, I noticed a frowning young man in a khaki shirt and black hat with a sidearm and corporate logo prominently displayed....
Posted: Wed, Sep 28, 2005 11:25pm PDT
The shopping centers that have replaced our communities don't provide shelter from storms....
Posted: Wed, Sep 28, 2005 1:20pm PDT
A month after Hurricane Katrina, serious questions remain about the fate of hundreds of prisoners in New Orleans. Human Rights Watch says there are 517 unaccounted for, while prisoners and their lawyers say many were abandoned in the flooding jails. We'll speak with Human Rights Watch's researcher, as well as a man who was in the Orleans Parish Prison during the storm, and two lawyers fighting to discover what exactly happened inside the jails....
Posted: Wed, Sep 28, 2005 6:38am PDT
As hurricane Rita bears down on the Gulf Coast, we go to Houston to speak with the staff of Pacifica Radio station KPFT - one of the few radio stations still broadcasting in the city....
Posted: Fri, Sep 23, 2005 7:08am PDT
As Katrina's flood waters recede, government contractors are flowing into the Gulf Coast and reaping billions of dollars in pre-bid, limited bid, and sometimes no-bid contracts. We speak with Pratap Chatterjee, managing editor of CorpWatch.org, about his latest article titled "Big, Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans."...
Posted: Fri, Sep 23, 2005 7:07am PDT
In this week's cover story in The Nation, Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill reports on how mercenaries from private security firms like Blackwater USA and BATS are patrolling the streets in New Orleans....
Posted: Fri, Sep 23, 2005 7:05am PDT
We speak with writer and author Naomi Klein about what some are calling the real looting of New Orleans. In this week's cover story in The Nation magazine, Klein reports on how the city's poorest evacuees are being kept out of thousands of perfectly livable empty homes....
Posted: Fri, Sep 23, 2005 7:02am PDT
Repost from LA indymedia...
Posted: Fri, Sep 23, 2005 1:27am PDT
The People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Community Labor United of New
Orleans have issued an Action Plan detailing the formation of a national
coalition for rebuilding the city and a committee structure to implement
the coalition's goals....
Posted: Thu, Sep 22, 2005 11:15am PDT
On September 20, after Vinny and I visited the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, we headed over to the Reliant Arena to find out more information about Katrina survivors being transfered from the Arena to Fort Chaffee, a military base in Arkansas....
Posted: Thu, Sep 22, 2005 3:03am PDT
On September 20, Vinny and I returned to the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston to find out what was happening with the Katrina survivors since the Convention Center was closing it's doors as a shelter. An "Exit Only" sign on the doors made it clear that Katrina survivors were no longer welcome at the Convention Center. According to Anna Holly, Onsite Public Information Officer, it was time to "get back to business, back to conventions."...
Posted: Thu, Sep 22, 2005 1:25am PDT
Most of the first wave of medics from the Bay Area Radical Health Collective have now returned from the Common Ground health clinic in Algiers, New Orleans, with others scheduled to depart soon. Though the situation with Hurricane Rita introduces some uncertainty, Common Ground continues to seek healthcare volunteers....
Posted: Wed, Sep 21, 2005 1:04am PDT
As of yet, HUD has not even offered any temporary Section 8 vouchers to Katrina's victims....
Posted: Tue, Sep 20, 2005 2:22pm PDT
On September 17, I spoke with Josh from New Orleans. He was sitting on a curb outside of Reliant Arena in Houston, Texas. Reliant Arena is a building next to the Astrodome and has been considered a part of 'Dome City.' Our interview begins with Josh explaining that he could get arrestted that night just for talking to me and giving me a recorded interview. (42:22 minutes / 19.4 MB)...
Posted: Mon, Sep 19, 2005 4:47pm PDT
On Saturday September 17, Vinny and I were on our way to the Reliant Arena, but we got a little lost in the sprawling city of Houston, Texas so we made our way to the George R. Brown Convention Center first. This convention center is next to the new baseball stadium where tens of thousands of people were watching an Astros game. Nobody seemed to care that in the building next to the baseball stadium, more than a thousand people are still struggling to survive the aftermath of Hurricane Katrin...
Posted: Mon, Sep 19, 2005 4:04pm PDT