Tell Time Magazine about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project!
http://time-blog.com/talkback/neworleans.phpTIME.com is asking readers for their suggestions for how New
Orleans can be rebuilt.
This is an opportunity for Gulf Coast Civic
Works supporters to have their voice be heard in the mainstream media.
Please visit the link above and tell TIME.com displaced residents
need to be able to return home to jobs rebuilding their communities
through the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project!
Below is a sample entry. Feel free to cut and paste this and possibly edit with your own thoughts before submitting:"Two years since Hurricane Katrina and the failures of the
federally constructed levee system devastated the lives of hundreds of
thousands of Americans, as many as 250,000 from New Orleans alone are
still internally displaced. Federal dollars remain strangled in
the red-tape of slow moving programs built to respond to much
smaller disasters while schools, hospitals, and homes continue to lay
in disrepair. Its time for a "New Deal" for New Orleans and Gulf Coast.
Gulf Coast residents are developing a bold, realistic plan to
help Katrina survivors realize their human right to return and
rebuild their communities. The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project (
GCCW) calls
the federal government hiring 100,000 Katrina survivors to rebuild
their homes and communities, similar to the New
Deal's WPA. It would
provide them with temporary housing, services and job training to help
them build and repair houses, schools, parks, flood protection and
other public works projects determined by local officials and communities.
The program would be an investment not only in rebuilding hard
hit communities in a manner that would allow all of this
national disaster's survivors to be able to return home but also an
investment in working families which would be empowered with the necessary
skills for high wage work helping to rebuild local economies and the
middle class.
Louisiana alone suffered $31 billion in damage to infrastructure
and public facilities. New Orleans saw 79% of its affordable
housing whipped out by the levee breaks. Recently Louisiana predicted it
will need 90,000 additional skilled construction workers.
Underfunded hands-off federal efforts to date have not sufficiently tackled
the many interrelated issues threatening the future of displaced
families who want to return and courageous returning families whose
communities need additional help. This provides a ripe opportunity for
bringing displaced people home and employing them to do this necessary work
to rebuild a better Gulf Coast. The United States has not met its human rights obligations to
help displaced survivors return and participate in rebuilding
their communities.
In other countries across the globe the United
States funds similar programs helping displaced people to return to
their communities and find work to rebuild their lives and communities
after a disaster.
In Iraq the United States' international aid agency,
USAID, currently has a program hoping to employ 100,000
displaced Iraqis in temporary public work projects.
Why can't we do the same
in for our own displaced citizens?" --Jeffrey Buchanan