THE EXPERTS CATCH UP
Evidently I'm not the only person wondering if we should evacuate some of the Gulf Coast permanently rather than just for the duration of any particular emergency. According to the NY Times News Service, several scientists, developers, and environmentalists are urging politicians to give serious consideration to identifying "those sections of shoreline that are clearly so vulnerable to storm damage that they should no longer receive any federal subsidy...[and] should be yanked out of the flood insurance program." (That's Robert S. Young of Western Carolina University, who studies coastal development.)
At the same time, the owners and managers of the celebrated Antoine's restaurant in New Orleans have realized that, aside from the flood and wind damage to its physical building, their major problem is going to be the loss of most of their lower-level staff. Most of their busboys, janitors, and other basic food workers lived in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was almost totally wiped out. These are the folks who have the least resources to move back. Antoine's, of course, is just one major hospitality venue among many with this problem. The hospitality industry runs on--let's not mince words--poor people.
The development mavens who were building their fantasy new New Orleans over the last few weeks were dreaming about being able to do it without poor people, kind of like a Disneyland version of a great American city. They had been operating on the same assumption most of us have, that poor people are really unnecessary, like pigeons. If you're building, or rebuilding, a city from scratch, you simply don't include them, and the city will be a neater, cleaner place.
They had ignored the experience of places like Saudi Arabia, which had been able to use its oil revenues to pretty much eliminate poverty among native citizens--and then discovered that they had to import a whole population of poor people to do poor people's jobs. You know, street cleaning, child care, garbage pickup, bussing tables, stuff that nobody with enough money to choose any other job (or no job at all) would do.
For some reason, we and the Saudis, and maybe most people everywhere, would rather have imported poor people doing those jobs than the home-grown variety. So I'm betting Antoine's and the rest of the new New Orleans hospitality industry will start lobbying for a bracero program for busboys. You heard it here first.
At the same time, the owners and managers of the celebrated Antoine's restaurant in New Orleans have realized that, aside from the flood and wind damage to its physical building, their major problem is going to be the loss of most of their lower-level staff. Most of their busboys, janitors, and other basic food workers lived in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was almost totally wiped out. These are the folks who have the least resources to move back. Antoine's, of course, is just one major hospitality venue among many with this problem. The hospitality industry runs on--let's not mince words--poor people.
The development mavens who were building their fantasy new New Orleans over the last few weeks were dreaming about being able to do it without poor people, kind of like a Disneyland version of a great American city. They had been operating on the same assumption most of us have, that poor people are really unnecessary, like pigeons. If you're building, or rebuilding, a city from scratch, you simply don't include them, and the city will be a neater, cleaner place.
They had ignored the experience of places like Saudi Arabia, which had been able to use its oil revenues to pretty much eliminate poverty among native citizens--and then discovered that they had to import a whole population of poor people to do poor people's jobs. You know, street cleaning, child care, garbage pickup, bussing tables, stuff that nobody with enough money to choose any other job (or no job at all) would do.
For some reason, we and the Saudis, and maybe most people everywhere, would rather have imported poor people doing those jobs than the home-grown variety. So I'm betting Antoine's and the rest of the new New Orleans hospitality industry will start lobbying for a bracero program for busboys. You heard it here first.
posted by WiredSisters at 8:52 AM
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