Youths being held at N.O. Study Center
Friday, March 07, 2008
By Katy Reckdahl

U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled Wednesday that the city of New Orleans must give the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana access to their clients at the city-run Youth Study Center, a juvenile jail.

The center started shutting off access to the attorneys in December in reaction to the Juvenile Justice Project filing suit against the city, arguing that teens at the facility were being subjected to "inhumane and unconstitutional conditions of confinement."

Attorneys for the city argued that, by barring access, they were attempting to stop JJPL lawyers from soliciting additional plaintiffs for the lawsuit, which was filed as a potential class-action suit. But Lemelle said that the city's lawyers didn't properly outline "the abuses they fear will result from such communication."

JJPL asked for an emergency motion on the issue, alleging that the city's restrictions were an "act of retaliation." Lemelle agreed, finding that the city limitations on JJPL's access had "apparently come about as a result of the . . . litigation."

The city had no comment on the decision.

"After the city attorney's office denied us access, we continued to receive requests for visits from parents of children held at Youth Study Center," said Dana Kaplan, head of JJPL.

She and her group are eager to resume those visits, she said.

. . . . . . .

Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3396.

by Jordan Flaherty

Its been six days since I left New Orleans, and I miss my home so much. I’m
still in a daze, its hard to hold a conversation or to think straight.
People ask if everyone I know is ok, and I don’t know what to say. There
are so many stories, so many rumors, so many people dispersed around the US.
So many of us may never see each other again. I don’t think any of us are
ok right now.

One friend, a teacher, was searching the Astrodome while holding up a sign,
looking for his former students. Another friend says she fears she’ll never
see New Orleans or her friends from there again. Another friend found
temporary comfort with family in Houston and then got kicked out. A lot of
friends are working in shelters, providing assistance, medical care,

by Naomi Klein

On September 4, six days after Katrina hit, I saw the first glimmer of hope.
“The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering
across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while
federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical
plants…. We will not stand idly by while this disaster is used as an
opportunity to replace our homes with newly built mansions and condos in a
gentrified New Orleans.”

The statement came from Community Labor United, a coalition of low-income
groups in New Orleans. It went on to demand that a committee made up of
evacuees “oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations collecting
resources on behalf of our people…. We are calling for evacuees from our

Malik Rahim, a veteran of the Black Panther Party in New Orleans, for decades an organizer of public housing tenants both there and in San Francisco and a recent Green Party candidate for New Orleans City Council, lives in the Algiers neighborhood, the only part of New Orleans that is not flooded. They have no power, but the water is still good and the phones work. Their neighborhood could be sheltering and feeding at least 40,000 refugees, he says, but they are allowed to help no one. What he describes is nothing less than deliberate genocide against Black and poor people. - Ed.

New Orleans, Sept. 1, 2005 - It's criminal. From what you're hearing, the people trapped in New Orleans are nothing but looters. We're told we should be more "neighborly." But nobody talked about being neighborly until after the people who could afford to leave … left.

More than two dozen youths from detention centers in New Orleans are still searching for family members displaced by Hurricane Katrina, while state officials aggressively work to determine whether another four dozen youths currently in custody should be immediately released.

Nearly 250 male and female detainees were evacuated from detention centers in Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Tammany parishes to the Jetson Youth Center in Baker in the days before and after Katrina hit, said Simon Gonsoulin, the deputy secretary of the Office of Youth Development. After their families were notified, most of the youth — who are between 12 and 20 years old -- were sent to various secure and non-secure facilities throughout the state, or released to their families, he said.

But contacting the relatives of 25 of the youths has proven more difficult, Gonsoulin said. Officials have released telephone numbers and website addresses, and have even begun to go from shelter to shelter attempting to locate family members.

KENNER, La. -- Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000.

Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

Family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat but was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store.

Not even the deli owner wants her charged.

"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them. Instead of chasing after people who were running, they grabbed the old lady was who walking," said Elois Short, Maten's daughter, who works in traffic enforcement for neighboring New Orleans police.

Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future

NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer
stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline
for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and
carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his
home.

The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely
underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the
country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas,
streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered
by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave
New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the

The one thing that David Brooks got right in his NYT op-ed, "Katrina's Silver Lining ," is that the devastation of New Orleans does offer a unique opportunity—indeed, an obligation—to rebuild this American city in a way that reduces endemic urban poverty.

But when he describes just how that should be done, Brooks reveals his real interest. This denizen of the American Enterprise Institute is not so much keen on transforming the lives of poor people as he is in reinforcing the suburban miasma that is essential to conservative political power in America. How? Brooks wants to integrate the poverty-stricken and now displaced residents of New Orleans into middle-class neighborhoods around the country:

In the post-Katrina world, that means we ought to give people who don't want to move back to New Orleans the means to disperse into middle-class areas nationwide.

New Orleans Executives Plan Revival

By GARY RIVLIN

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 9 - The New Orleans business establishment-in-exile
has set up a beachhead in a government annex here, across the street from
the state Capitol. From here, organizations like the New Orleans Convention
and Visitors Bureau have begun to plot the rebirth of the city.

In the cramped offices and hallways of this building, called the Capitol
Annex, and continuing into the evening at bars and restaurants around Baton
Rouge, New Orleans's business leaders and power brokers are concocting big
plans, the most important being reopening the French Quarter within 90 days.

Also under discussion are plans to stage a scaled-down Mardi Gras at the end

Los Angeles Times
Sunday September 11, 2005

Katrina's Aftermath
Justice System Faces a Deluge of Challenges

By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer

It's not just that 8,000 prisoners in and around New Orleans were evacuated in a hurry, often without a shred of paperwork, to 35 different locations. Nor that state and federal courts were shut down indefinitely, court employees and bail bondsmen were displaced and evidence perished.

It's all of the above, plus the fact that Louisiana's criminal justice system was beset by financial woes and other problems before Hurricane Katrina hit land.

To say the system faces daunting challenges in the coming months would be an understatement.

"I can't think of a precedent anywhere near this scale," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, who has been following developments in Louisiana. "Obviously, natural disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes cause a lot of death and damage, but I don't recall an equivalent need to move an entire population of prisoners, coupled with a likely loss of court and arrest records."