Democratic Underground - There are public schools, but most have been taken over by the state

under the grandiose name of the "Recovery School District". In the process, as Palast correctly notes, the teachers' union has effectively been busted. A number of other schools have reopened as charters, but it's not, as Palast says, "all vouchers" -- not yet, anyway.

More on the Common Ground evictions mentioned in the article:

In fact, I show an example of a group called “Common Ground” which is rebuilding homes with the residents with their own sweat equity and a few bucks for materials. And this week, they’re being evicted.

You have a group which has already put 115 families into homes that they’ve built themselves, and now they’re being evicted this week. And by the way, all the money — the million dollars of material and the hundred thousands of hours of sweat equity — are all being stolen away from them by developers who are saying “Oh, you didn’t have the right to rebuild those houses, we own them.” And they’re literally stealing their houses. That’s what’s happening.

Common Ground tells the rest of the story:

http://www.commongroundrelief.org/taxonomy/term/48

On December 14 City Council member James Carter committed to facilitate the scheduling of a meeting between Common Ground and HANO representatives. The purpose of the meeting was to secure housing vouchers for Woodlands families facing eviction.

HANO set a meeting with Common Ground for today, December 19. However, since making the initial arrangements for this meeting, HANO has not been willing to return Common Ground’s phone calls, nor send a representative for a meeting....

Since then Common Ground has provided approximately one million dollars in labor and material improvements to the complex. While rents across the city have skyrocketed, Common Ground management froze the rents at the Woodlands to pre-Katrina levels, fostered a strong tenants union and ran a workers' cooperative with paid skills training.

It was our goal to make The Woodlands an environmentally sustainable, attractive, safe and affordable home for hard working New Orleanians. The families now face a January 4th eviction deadline after the owner, Anthony "Reggie" Regginelli, sold the complex to Johnson Properties, a Baton Rouge-based group that is unwilling to house the tenants while renovations take place in sections of the complex.

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