A note to city leaders
12th April 2021 · 0 Comments
For nearly a century, The Louisiana Weekly has spoken out and stood up for New Orleans’ African-Americans citizens. We have documented the seminal moments of Black history, Black achievement, and the community’s collective struggle for equality, voting rights, civil and human rights and the quest for justice.
On paper and sometimes monetarily, we have championed the cause of our fellow brothers and sisters and have spoken truth to power at every instance, especially when that stubborn thing called “injustice” emerges from the darkness, whether intentional or not.
In 2021, we see injustice waving like a wind-torn flag over City Hall, where some city leaders, who have the wherewithal and creativity to take the knee of injustice off of the necks of certain citizens, are whistling past these citizens’ potential graves, closing their ears to their cries for help and shutting their eyes to the urgent need to move citizens from the toxic land on which they live.
It is for these residents, our sisters and brothers, who, unknowingly bought homes that were built on a city dump, the Agriculture Street Landfill, in a subdivision called Gordon Plaza, that we demand justice.
The Louisiana Weekly is calling for the New Orleans City Council and Mayor LaToya Cantrell to step up and dispense real justice to the Gordon Plaza residents. While it is true that our current city leaders did not cause the residents’ trauma and the resulting health threats that living on a dump continues to pose to the Gordon Plaza residents, it is still the city’s leaders’ responsibility to fully fund the relocation of those who want to live in safe neighborhoods with houses built on clean, non-toxic soil.
If we’re being gracious, we can assume that city leaders in the late 1970s and early 1980s, who planned and financed the development of Gordon Plaza’s “affordable” homes with federal dollars, didn’t realize that building housing on a toxic waste site could lead to illness and death.
Or, if we’re being cynical, we could surmise that the developers and city leaders were involved in a lucrative land development deal that enriched those at the top.
However, we choose to believe that those city leaders were altruistic in their desire to create a novel affordable homeownership program, where homebuyers could rent to own or lease to own their first homes. Indeed, many of the surviving Gordon Plaza residents were thrilled to get the chance to live the American Dream.
That their American Dream turned into an American Nightmare was not their fault. Fast forward 40 years and several deaths and lawsuits later, and 57 Gordon Plaza families are still living on an EPA-designated Superfund site, with toxic fumes emanating from toxic soil, making them sick and causing them physical and emotional distress.
Clearly, they could never get fair market value for their homes. Who wants to buy a home and live on a Superfund site?
Not only are some Gordon Plaza residents dealing with illnesses, but they all are being subjected to taxation without representation. Surely, they must pay property tax, homestead exemption notwithstanding.
Through it all, the Gordon Plaza residents have been petitioning the City of New Orleans to fully fund a relocation for those who want off the dump, including enough money to purchase a home in a safe neighborhood, furnishing and all.
Recently, Mayor LaToya Cantrell sent a questionnaire asking residents for input about the possibility of new developments on the property. The survey also asked residents to choose from a slate of options that included relocation funding.
Mayor Cantrell’s action is good news but residents who want to be relocated are taking a wait and see attitude.
However, this is not just a matter for Cantrell to handle. The City Council sanctioned the development of Gordon Plaza, back in the day. So, today’s City Council is also responsible for righting a grievous wrong perpetrated on New Orleans citizens by their predecessors, altruistic or not.
To do nothing is to be complicit in the potential deaths of more Gordon Plaza residents. By 2018, at least 16 residents had succumbed to various illnesses, including cancer. In 2020, three more Gordon Plaza residents died.
City leaders, you have the power to save Gordon Plaza residents’ lives.
Not only should you fully fund the residents’ relocation from the toxic ground that has killed or sickened them, made women lose the babies they carried, made others undergo surgery to correct the damage done by the poisons they inhaled, but the City of New Orleans should also give residents the fair market value of a comparable home that is located in a safe and upscale neighborhood.
The Gordon Plaza residents definitely deserve compensation for the pain and suffering they have endured for 40 years, help with mounting medical bills and reimbursement for the taxes they’ve paid while living on the second highest cancer-causing Superfund site in the state.
The Louisiana Weekly stands with the Gordon Plaza residents’ and we support their demand to be fully relocated without hesitation.
Our City leaders must stand up and help the Gordon Plaza residents move to higher and safer ground.
This article originally published in the April 12, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
