Over the last few years, a quiet but powerful alliance in Mississippi of African-American lawmakers, immigrant rights advocates and labor unions had successfully defeated a series of punitive bills aimed at the state's fast-growing Latino and new immigrant population.

But last month, that string of victories came to an end. Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law a bill with the most far-reaching employer sanctions in the United States. David Bacon reports:

The Mississippi bill, SB 2988, requires employers to use an electronic system to verify immigration status, called E-Verify. That system has only recently been developed by the Department of Homeland Security, and by the department's own admission, is not a complete record. Its accuracy is unknown, but by comparison, the Social Security database of U.S. workers, compiled since the 1930s, contains millions of errors.

The Mississippi bill goes much further, however. Employers are absolved from any liability for hiring undocumented workers so long as they use the E-Verify system. But it will become a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job. Anyone caught "shall be subject to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years, a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1000) nor more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or both." Anyone charged with the crime of working without papers will not be eligible for bail.

Behind the scenes, the bill was considered not just a defeat for immigrant rights advocates, but was also a blow to the progressive coalition that was just beginning to blossom in Mississippi:

In the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, University of Mississippi journalism professor Joe Atkins called the law "a new xenophobia ... that threatens once again to lock down the state's borders and resurrect the 'closed society' that once made it the shame of the nation."

According to the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, the bill got the support of many Democratic state legislators because party leaders "wanted the house to bring out at least one bill dealing with immigration to relieve the political pressure being put on members (i.e. white Democrats), by right-wing forces in their districts. Many Black Caucus members were persuaded to go along. Unfortunately the bill they brought out was the worst of the six the Mississippi Senate passed."

The Black/Brown/progressive alliance had defeated 29 pieces of anti-immigrant legislation in 2007, and 19 such bills in 2006. But it broke down this year:

The 2008 legislative session was different, however. [Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance director Bil] Chandler describes three factions in the party -- the Black Caucus at one end, white conservatives hanging on at the other, and "liberals who will do whatever they have to do to get elected" in the middle.

When white Democratic moderates began caving in -- paving the way for the bill's final passage -- Chandler wrote a letter to Howard Dean of the Democratic National Committee, which concluded:

"State party leaders who "would go along to be accepted, rather than show the courage necessary for positive change... are peddling racist lies against immigrants that violate the core of the party's progressive agenda."

The bill is slated to go into effect July 1.

Labels: haley barbour, immigration, mississippi, mississippi immigrant rights alliance

At a luncheon for Mississippi's Capitol Press Corps, state Attorney General Jim Hood (D) spoke out about the growing influence of corporate media:

"Something that worries me more so than the war and Iraq and money in politics is freedom of the press," Hood said. "Is our press free anymore? The corporate ownership of the press nationally is a concern to me." [...]

He said he worries that newspapers’ editorials are dictated by out-of-state corporate offices.

Big Media execs don't have to worry about seeing Hood in court anytime soon. As the AP clarifies, "[Hood] said he was not threatening litigation. He simply wanted to express his frustrations."

Labels: jim hood, media, mississippi

Last week Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law a measure that renews the state's ban on hog-dog fighting, first passed in 2006. Also known as "hog catching," "hog baiting," or "hog-dog rodeo," the practice involves setting loose trained attack dogs -- usually pit bulls or American bulldogs -- on trapped feral pigs who often have their tusks removed to leave them defenseless. The law imposes a maximum fine of $1,000 and a six-month prison sentence.

"We applaud Mississippi lawmakers for rightly continuing the prohibition on hog-dog fighting, a vicious blood sport that has plenty of animal cruelty, but no socially redeemable value," said John Goodwin of the Humane Society of the United States.

The HSUS believes hog-dog fights regularly take place in at least 10 states, most of them in the South: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The practice grew out of traditional hog hunting, which also led to so-called "hog baying" trials in which dogs compete against each other to corner hogs but are penalized for biting. One of the most famous of these hog baying trials is Winnfield, La.'s annual Uncle Earl's Hog Dog Trials, named for native son Earl K. Long, a Louisiana politician and avid hog hunter. While Louisiana banned hog-dog fighting in 2004, Uncle Earl's was exempted since the hogs involved are not mutilated or killed.

Another major blow to hog-dog fighting came in 2006, when authorities arrested leaders of the International Catchdog Association in South Carolina. They were accused of organizing hog-dog fights that took place two years earlier on Florida's Seminole Indian Reservation.

(Hog-dog fight photo from the Humane Society of the United States.)

Labels: animal cruelty, friday dogblogging, hog-dog fighting, mississippi

More than 100 guest workers carrying signs that said "I Am a Man" and "Dignity" walked off the job at a Mississippi shipyard last week to protest conditions they liken to slavery.

The shipyard workers, who are from India, have filed a class-action lawsuit [PDF] against Pascagoula, Miss.-based Signal International, one of the largest marine and fabrication companies in the Gulf of Mexico. The suit also targets recruiters in the U.S., India and United Arab Emirates, as well as New Orleans immigration attorney Malvern Burnett and the Gulf Coast Immigration Law Center.

Filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Louisiana, where many of the defendants are based, the suit says that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina more than 500 Indian men were trafficked into the United States through the federal H2B guest worker program to work for Signal at shipyards in Pascagoula and Orange, Texas. Lured by promises of permanent work and a chance at legal immigration, the men gave up their jobs in India and went into debt to finance fees as high as $20,000 each. They then allegedly had their passports and visas held by recruiters who told them that changing their minds about working for Signal could bring legal action and even physical harm.

Once in the United States, the men were forced to live in guarded, overcrowded and isolated labor camps, the suit charges. After several of the plaintiffs spoke out against conditions in the Pascagoula camp, Signal security guards allegedly tried to forcibly deport them. One of the workers -- Sabulal Vijayan -- became so distraught by the threat of deportation that he attempted suicide and had to be hospitalized. The guards locked three of the other men in a room for several hours, refusing to provide them with water or bathroom access. The abuse left Signal's immigrant workers terrorized, the suit says:

Deeply fearful, isolated, disoriented, and unfamiliar with their rights under United States law, these workers felt compelled to continue working for Signal.

Filed by the Louisiana Justice Institute, Southern Poverty Law Center and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the suit charges the defendants with violating the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, among other laws. Five of the plaintiffs are also bringing individual claims of false imprisonment, assault, battery, and infliction of emotional distress. The workers are also asking the Department of Justice to investigate. Signal says the charges are untrue and that most of its guest workers are satisfied with their living conditions.

During last Thursday's walkout, the workers threw their hardhats over the fence in protest as they left the shipyard and sang "We Shall Overcome." Saket Soni of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, who served as an interpreter, said the workers talked of living "like pigs in a cage."

"The U.S. State Department calls it 'a repulsive crime' when recruiters and employers in other parts of the world bind guest workers with crushing debts and threats of deportation," Soni says. "This is precisely what is happening on the Gulf Coast."

(Photo by Ted Quant courtesy of neworleans.indymedia.org. To see more images from the protest, click on the previous link or the photo above.)

Labels: guest workers, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, H2B program, Hurricane Katrina, louisiana, mississippi, workers' rights

With only 33 pledged delegates to offer, the media is playing down Sen. Obama's victory in the Mississippi primaries -- a quick rest stop on the bigger electoral road trip to Pennsylvania.

Mississippi may be written off as an "expected" win for Obama, thanks in part to the fact that over 50% of the voters in the primaries were African-American (and as former Pres. Clinton is probably tempted to point out, Jesse Jackson won Mississippi, too).

But as MeteorBlades -- a veteran of Freedom Summer in the 1960s -- reminds us in a fascinating memoir at DailyKos, thousands of Mississippians who voted yesterday grew up when the victory of an African-American candidate in Mississippi was far from "expected" -- indeed, it wasn't even an option:

Like the bus strikes, and diner sit-ins and Freedom Rides that had begun 10 years before, the tactics of Freedom Summer had both a real and symbolic value. Our job was to persuade black Mississippians to register to vote. The presence of outsiders, especially white outsiders, was seen as a way to focus more attention on the situation from parts of the nation – and the media - where Jim Crow’s consequences were more likely to be viewed with distaste, disgust, or rage.

Every day, two-by-two, we went door to door cajoling black men and women to gather up the courage to come with us and demand their constitutional right to cast a ballot. We didn’t get many takers. Some people wouldn’t let us in their house. Others wouldn’t let us on their property. They were scared, and justifiably so. After the summer, most of us were going back where we came from and they were staying in Mississippi, no longer officially accounted for as 3/5ths a person, but legally kept from being whole.

His account also is a cautionary tale for those who invest too much hope in a Presidential candidates as an agent for change. As he observes (and Sen. Clinton got in trouble for not appreciating -- remember that comment way back in January?), civil rights were won in spite of -- not because of -- support from Washington:

The Kennedy Administration had its own reasons for trying to keep the Freedom Rides of 1961 from going forward. But when it became apparent the riders would not back down, the FBI was ordered to become involved. Instead of doing something public, transparent and pre-emptive of the Southern establishment’s violent response to any challenge of Jim Crow, [FBI director J. Edgar] Hoover took the secret police’s usual approach and spied on the dissidents. Nothing was done to stop Freedom Riders from being beaten up, firebombed and generally terrorized.

Yesterday's Mississippi primaries were only a small chapter in this decades-long struggle for progress, but an important one nonetheless.

UPDATE: Well, maybe not enough progress:

In the sharpest racial divide seen yet in the Democratic campaign for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama saw overwhelming support among black voters, while whites lined up strongly behind Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Nine in 10 blacks were backing Obama, while seven in 10 whites were voting for Clinton, according to interviews with voters leaving polling places. That gave Obama the edge because those who were voting split about evenly between the two races.

Labels: barack obama, bill clinton, civil rights, dailykos, Election 2008, freedom rides, hillary clinton, mississippi

Mississippi voters head to the polls today, their 40 delegates -- 33 unpledged, seven supers -- suddenly important thanks to the tight Democratic race.

In a state where 55% of the Democratic primary electorate is African-American, Obama is heavily favored. If he wins, it will be Obama's fifth Deep South victory (he's taken Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina; Clinton succeeded in the periphery states of Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas).

Obama's ability to run up huge primary victories in the Deep South leads to a bigger question: could he make the South competitive for the Democrats?

A recent Wall Street Journal piece pointed out that even if Democratic prospects for winning Deep South states was low -- "White voters in Mississippi don't vote Democratic. They just don't," the oft-quoted Charlie Cook said -- Obama could still change the 2008 election dynamic.

Obama's high African-American voter turnout and cross-over appeal to independents -- combined with John McCain's questionable relationship with Southern evangelicals -- would at the very least force Republicans to invest precious resources in states that haven't been on their radar for years:

If Mr. Obama wins the nomination, it is far from certain that he could claim even a single Southern state. But even making the race there competitive would be a victory of sorts by forcing Mr. McCain to spend time and money defending states that other Republicans, including President Bush, were able to take for granted.

UPDATE: MSNBC's First Read adds this:

In fact, Mississippi is one of those rare Southern states that might be in play in the general election if Obama becomes the nominee. One Dem statistician tells First Read that there are three red states that could swing if African-American turnout was ever maximized (both in registration and in actual turnout): Georgia, Louisiana and, yes, Mississippi.

Labels: barack obama, Election 2008, john mccain, mississippi

March 15 is the deadline for Mississippi residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina to apply for assistance for a home rebuilding and replacement program. But at a legislative hearing today in Jackson, some testified that the program denies aid to homeowners who need help the most.

Held by the state Senate Housing Committee, the hearing included testimony from advocacy groups including the NAACP, Oxfam American and the Mississippi Interfaith Disaster Task Force. The Associated Press reports:

John Joplin of the Mississippi Center for Justice Katrina Recovery Office said estimates show 18,000 storm-damaged homes aren't eligible for any of the federally funded programs being administered by the Mississippi Development Authority.

"It is very apparent the goal of affordable housing remains a distant mirage," Joplin said.

The program's first phase provided up to $150,000 each to homeowners who lived outside the federal flood plain. The second phase offers up to $100,000 for low-income homeowners who had storm surge damage, regardless of whether they were insured or whether the property was in a flood zone.

But homeowners who had wind damage don't qualify for either phase -- one of the concerns raised at the hearing. The advocacy groups asked the state to develop an assistance program to help homeowners with wind damage. However, Gov. Haley Barbour's administration is reluctant to do that since Congress didn't provide funds for wind damage, and since such damage extended far beyond the state's hardest-hit coastal communities.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, haley barbour, housing, Hurricane Katrina, mississippi

Just when it looked like former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's stock was going up, the Wall Street Journal reports his legal troubles may be just beginning (sub req'd for full piece):

Federal agents are investigating whether former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott knowingly played a role in an alleged conspiracy in 2006 to influence a Mississippi judge presiding over a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against famed plaintiff attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, according to people familiar with the situation.

Mr. Scruggs and several associates are scheduled to stand trial March 31 on charges that they offered $40,000 in bribes to State Court Judge Henry L. Lackey in return for a favorable ruling in a lawsuit against Mr. Scruggs over $26.5 million in legal fees.

Facing South covered this case last November, as well as the possibility that this is the real reason Lott abruptly quit the Senate last fall.

Labels: mississippi, richard scruggs, trent lott

Why did Mississippi's Trent Lott decide to bid adieu to U.S. Senate before year's end? Of the many theories out there, Slate's Timothy Noah deserves credit for being the first to look at an intriguing possibility -- his ties to now-indicted attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs (Noah posited the theory before the indictment; read Sue's post here at Facing South yesterday for more on the case).

(Sidenote: Noah incorrectly labels me as promoting the "Still Clueless About [Strom] Thurmond" theory to explain Lott's exit, based on my Wednesday post -- in reality, I said Lott is worn down by a whole series of affronts to his career since his "gotcha" moment glorifying segregation. But I digress.)

The connection between Lott and Scruggs is unclear, but it makes more sense than the notion that Lott is resigning early to escape an extra year of "cooling off" time before he can rake in millions through direct lobbying. Lott clearly wouldn't be the first to spin through Washington's revolving door between the Capitol and K Street -- you can find a nice long list of lawmakers cashing in on their political connections here -- but the lobbying restrictions are too weak to explain Lott's abrupt walk.

As for Scruggs, the Los Angeles Times has a good piece on his bribery indictment here. Scruggs has a storied history as a trial lawyer, taking on big guns like the tobacco industry. Scruggs could face up to 75 years if convicted, but the Times points to potentially bigger losers: the Mississippi homeowners depending on Scruggs' class-action lawsuit against State Farm Insurance for their alleged negligence after Hurricane Katrina.

Labels: mississippi, Southern Politics, trent lott

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, the Mississippi attorney who became rich and famous by taking on the asbestos and tobacco industries, has been indicted on federal charges of bribing a judge in a lawsuit over Hurricane Katrina insurance claims, the Clarion-Ledger reports.

Scruggs and four associates -- his son Zach, attorneys Sidney Backstrom and Timothy Balducci, and former State Auditor Steve Patterson, who works for Balducci's firm -- allegedly paid Lafayette County Circuit Judge Henry Lackey $40,000 in cash to resolve a dispute over $26.5 million in legal fees in favor of Scruggs' firm, according to the paper. Lackey reported the proffered bribe -- which was to eventually total $50,000 -- to federal authorities and cooperated with the FBI in the ensuing investigation.

TPMMuckraker has posted the indictment from the U.S. attorney for Mississippi's Northern District to its Web site here. Among the damning allegations the indictment contains is this account of a conversation between the judge and Balducci, an attorney who Scruggs allegedly hired for $10,000 to carry out the actual dirty work:

"On or about May 9, 2007, TIMOTHY R. BALDUCCI had a conversation with Judge Henry Lackey wherein BALDUCCI stated that 'my relationship with Dick [Scruggs] is such that he and I can talk very private [sic] about these kinds of matters and I have the fullest confidence that if the court, you know, is inclined to rule ... in favor ... everything will be good ...' 'The only person in the world outside of me and you that has discussed this is me and Dick [Scruggs].' '... We, uh, like I say, it ain't but three people in the world that know anything about this ... and two of them are sitting here and the other one ... the other one, uh, being Scruggs ... he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where ... where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same.'"

The case has raised new questions about the resignation of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) -- Scruggs' brother-in-law -- who made his announcement the day before the indictment was handed down. The feds said at a news conference earlier today that Lott wasn't involved in the affair. But as the New York Times points out, Scruggs represented Lott and U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) in settlements with State Farm after the company refused to pay claims on their homes, which were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Lott and Taylor then championed legislation to investigate how State Farm and other insurers handled claims following the storm.

The insurer denies wrongdoing and has sued the Mississippi attorney general to block a criminal investigation into its post-Katrina operations. But just one day before the surprise indictment against Scruggs was handed down, his firm filed paperwork with the court charging that engineering firms involved in claims work for State Farm were financially beholden to the insurer and thus had motivation to minimize the company's losses, the Sun-Herald reports:

The amended complaint proposed by the Scruggs team says State Farm essentially acted as a "mob boss," with the vendors serving as "hit men" in a scheme to make money. It alleges destruction of documents, perjury, obstruction of justice and fraud.

Labels: criminal justice, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi

Speculation is rampant about what caused Mississippi's Trent Lott to up and announce his plans to depart the Senate by the end of the year.

The leading theory -- and one of the best -- is that, for Lott, being in the Senate just hasn't been as fun as it used to be with Republicans out of power and future prospects grim.

The other suspected motive -- put forward by liberal bloggers like Christy Harden Smith at Firedoglake and Ari Berman at The Nation -- is that Lott stands to make a bundle as a lobbyist on K Street, and wants to get out before new lobbying rules go into effect which double the "cooling off" period before ex-Congressfolks can lobby their former colleagues.

Maybe -- although as the Los Angeles Times points out in an editorial today, the new lobbying rules hardly have enough teeth to affect the ability of seasoned deal makers like Lott to buy friends and influence people:

If you think the new ethics law will curb such activities, you haven't been reading the fine print. It's true that the law will ban lawmakers-turned-lobbyists from personal contacts -- letters, telephone calls and meetings -- for two years after leaving office. But nothing prevents them from sitting in a conference room and telling subordinates exactly how to play their former colleagues. True, lobbyists won't be allowed to buy congressmen so much as a $25 lunch. But that's a surmountable problem when they are allowed to bundle millions of dollars in contributions to the lawmakers' re-election campaigns.

Lobbying law or no, Lott will be making millions. That can't explain the sudden departure.

My take: the 2000s have been hard on Lott. The GOP's recent decline in the Senate caps a disappointing five-year run, that started with Lott being outed for waxing nostalgic about the Southern Confederacy in 2002, and seeing his oceanfront home demolished by Hurricane Katrina -- and getting very little help from Washington -- in 2005.

Quite a fall from grace for a man legendary for his political clout and who had eyes on being ringmaster of the Senate. He had enough.

But back to that "innocent and thoughtless remark" Lott made in 2002, when at an event honoring former arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond, he declared that our country "wouldn't have had all these problems over the years" if we'd just kept the races separate. In his 2005 autobiography, Herding Cats, Lott was still bitter about the episode -- and his subsequent dethroning as Senate majority leader -- saying Congress had "sunken to a level that really bothers me."

And in a way, he had a point. As I pointed out in an editorial at the time, that wasn't the first time that Lott had revealed his less-than-enlightened views about race in America -- the only difference was that, this time, his Senate colleagues turned on him. But the pattern was always there:

In 1992, Lott was keynote speaker at the Council's national board meeting, ending his speech by enthusing that "the people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy." Throughout the 1990s, Lott maintained his intimate relations with the CCC, hosting a private meeting with Council leaders in 1997, writing a column for the CCC magazine Citizen's Informer for eight years, and attending at least two CCC banquets in his honor.

In a comical and disturbing move, when confronted with evidence of these close associations, Lott claimed he had "no firsthand knowledge" of the CCC. CCC officials curtly responded that Lott was a "friend" and a "paid-up member."

It doesn't stop there. There's also Lott's 1984 address to the Convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi, in which he claimed "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform." The statement was covered in the winter 1984 issue of the right-wing Southern Partisan magazine, in which Lott also explained that he opposes civil rights legislation, and said that the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday is "basically wrong."

The Jefferson Davis reference was telling. Lott has something of an obsession with the former President of the breakaway Confederate States of America. In the late 1970s, Lott spearheaded a successful campaign to have Davis' citizenship retroactively restored. More recently, Lott fought to gain custody of the desk Davis used during his Confederate reign, so that it could furnish Lott's Senate offices in Washington.

As Lott's "racism-gate" gains steam, more questionable antics will certainly surface. The onset of the Reagan era, for example, seems to have excited Lott's bigoted passions. We know, for example, that at a 1980 Republican campaign rally for Reagan, Lott -- in a statement eerily similar to his "lighthearted" musings last week --announced that if the country had elected the segregationist Strom Thurmond "30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." The rally and Lott's statement were covered by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger on Nov. 3, 1980, and again by the Washington Post this week.

Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle also highlighted Lott's well-known fight in 1981 to restore the non-profit tax status of South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which the IRS had revoked due to the school's prohibition of inter-racial dating. At the time, Lott issued a "friend of the court" brief arguing that "racial discrimination does not always violate public policy."

It will keep coming -- how he voted to de-fund the Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday commission in 1994 and opposed the King holiday in 1983; how he voted against extending the Voting Rights Act, designed to ensure ballot access for African-Americans, in both 1982 and 1990; on and on.

The pattern is clear: Republican Senator Trent Lott has done more than flirt with racism-it's a long-term relationship. And such a love affair with bigotry is intolerable for one of the most powerful political figures in America.

Labels: mississippi, Southern Politics, trent lott

The Washington Post published an excellent report in yesterday's paper on the deep divide in the post-Katrina recovery along the Mississippi coast, where beyond the bright lights of the newly built casinos working-class neighborhoods remain in darkness and more than 10,000 displaced families are still stuck in FEMA trailers. The story also examined the controversy we've reported on here over the state's plans to divert $600 million in federal housing aid to pay for improvements at the Port of Gulfport.

The Post story was just the latest in a series of recent reports and other media coverage on Mississippi's recovery and the the state's plan to divert housing funds to the port. On Nov. 16, Bill Moyers' Journal profiled the Steps Coalition, an alliance of South Mississippi community leaders and social justice advocates that's heading up the People Before Ports campaign. Also that same day, the New York Times ran an article examining how the poor are lagging in recovery aid in Mississippi, the only state where the Bush administration waived the rule that 50 percent of Community Development Block Grants be spent on low-income programs. And on Nov. 20, the NPR talk program "Tell Me More" aired a segment on how recovery funds are being spent in Mississippi.

For more details on the problems facing Mississippi's rebuilding, read the Step's Coalition's recent report titled "5 Barriers to Recovery" (PDF).

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi

Leslie Eaton of the New York Times follows up on a story we covered last August -- that despite billions of dollars spent on post-Katrina recovery, few dollars are reaching those most in need. Eaton looks at Mississippi:

Like the other Gulf Coast states battered by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi was required by Congress to spend half of its billions in federal grant money to help low-income citizens trying to recover from the storm.

But so far, the state has spent $1.7 billion in federal money on programs that have mostly benefited relatively affluent residents and big businesses. The money has gone to compensate many middle- and upper-income homeowners, to aid utility companies whose equipment was damaged and to prop up the state’s insurance system.

Just $167 million, or about 10 percent of the federal money, has been spent on programs dedicated to helping the poor, mostly through a smaller grant program for lower-income homeowners.

And while that total will certainly increase, Mississippi has set aside just 23 percent of its $5.5 billion grant money — $1.25 billion — for these programs. About 37 percent of the residents of the state’s coast are low income, according to federal figures.

Remember that this is Mississippi, site of Gov. Haley Barbour's much-heralded "miracle" recovery -- but which we showed this spring has been failing many of the state's residents all along.

UPDATE: Reader RM gives us a heads-up that Bill Moyers Journal tonight will feature a piece on the Mississippi recovery, including a look at the grassroots efforts of the STEPS Coalition.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi

A report released this week by the Government Accountability Office is critical of the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency administered an alternative housing program for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

The methodology that FEMA used for the Alternative Housing Pilot Program deviated from most competitive grant programs run by federal agencies, and as a result unfairly funneled $275 million of the available $388 million to Mississippi. By taking a different approach, the GAO said, FEMA could have directed more than $140 million to three separate housing projects in Louisiana rather than the $74.5 million directed to one project that's still not underway.

The findings confirm charges made by Louisiana officials -- and that my colleague Chris Kromm and I reported on earlier this year for Salon.com -- that the politicization of the post-Katrina aid allocation process resulted in Republican-controlled Mississippi receiving disproportionately more money for the damage it suffered than its Democrat-led neighbor. As we reported then and as others have also noted, the irony is that Mississippi's recovery has been moving at a painfully slow pace for the neediest residents despite the fact that the federal government has assisted the state so generously.

This is what Adam Sharp, a spokesperson for the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), told the New Orleans Times-Picayune about GAO's findings:

"We saw something that walked like a duck, talked like a duck and now other branches of government are telling us it's a duck," Sharp said.

The GAO report comes on the heels of another study (PDF) released last month that also documents disparities in post-Katrina aid for Mississippi and Louisiana.

That study -- part of the GulfGov series from the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana and the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government -- examined funds allocated through FEMA's Public Assistance program as well as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant program. It found that the amount of federal aid provided to Mississippi and Louisiana through those programs has not been proportional to the amount of damage each state suffered, and that what it called the "sluggishness" of aid distribution continues to be the primary concern of state and local officials.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, louisiana, mississippi, politics

Poor New Orleanians are not the only Gulf Coast residents whose post-Katrina housing needs are being treated with disregard by their government: Low-income residents of Mississippi are also facing dire problems that have been exacerbated by the actions of Congress, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and state authorities.

As James Perry of the Louisiana Housing Alliance testified earlier this week before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, of the $16.7 billion that Congress appropriated for post-disaster needs in the form of Community Development Block Grant money, only $1 billion was designated to repair or replace affordable rental housing, including public and assisted housing, he told the committee. At the same time, Congress gave the states what he characterized as "unusual flexibility" in who could be served by CDBG funded programs. While the standard CDBG requirement is that 70 percent of funds should benefit low-income people (defined as those earning at or below 80 percent of the local median income), Congress required only 50 percent of the storm-related CDBG funds to serve this population -- and then gave HUD the authority to waive even the 50 percent requirement for "compelling need."

This has had an especially big impact on Mississippi, Perry told the committee:

Almost 92% of the $5.4 billion Mississippi CDBG allocation has now received waivers from this requirement. Additionally, the recovery allocations that Mississippi has dedicated towards housing recovery have been disproportionately skewed towards homeowners and away from rental repair programs.

But at the same time, Gov. Haley Barbour has proposed diverting $600 million of the CDBG housing recovery funds to expand the Port of Gulfport -- a plan that has provoked a firestorm of opposition, including an editorial in today's New York Times calling on Congress to revisit the waiver process "to make sure that states aren't using it to evade the income restrictions clearly laid out in federal law."

And now there's yet more evidence of the formidable barriers confronting low-income Mississippi residents trying to rebuild their lives after Katrina. The first comprehensive study examining the impact of the storm on housing in the state's three hard-hit coastal counties was released today by the RAND Corporations' Gulf States Policy Institute, and it found that affordable housing recovery lags behind the pace of the rest of the housing market in the region -- and that in turn is impeding the overall pace of the recovery, according to a release announcing the report:

This gap has seriously worsened the pre-Hurricane shortage of affordable housing in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, researchers say. The problem makes it particularly difficult to attract the construction laborers and other workers needed to rebuild the region's devastated infrastructure, the report says.

"The challenge for the region is to develop a balanced growth plan that provides housing for people at every income level," said Kevin McCarthy, the study's lead author and a senior social scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "There needs to be more affordable housing to create diversity in the economy and build a new, better Gulf Coast."

For a full copy of the RAND study, titled "Post-Katrina Recovery of the Housing Market Along the Mississippi Gulf Coast," click here.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi

A Mississippi agency wants to divert $600 million in federal funds from a housing program created to help low-income homeowners who suffered losses in Hurricane Katrina and use it to spruce up the State Port at Gulfport, the Associated Press reports.

The MDA claims that the housing program has more than enough money to meet demand, making the diversion possible. "This funding will be an important part of helping the State Port Authority restore and enhance port infrastructure for economic development initiatives that will create jobs and improve quality of life for the citizens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Gov. Haley Barbour said in a recent statement.

Oxfam America, the Mississippi NAACP and the Mississippi Center for Justice oppose the plan, however. "It's just unfair," Reilly Morse of the Center for Justice told the AP. "We've been told affordable housing was supposed to be a priority. Don't rob the displaced to build a port."

As we here at the Institute for Southern Studies documented in our recent report Blueprint for Gulf Renewal, there's still a serious post-Katrina housing crisis on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Homeowners found the MDA's grant application process to be difficult and time-consuming, and many are still waiting for checks. In the meantime, there are few affordable rental units available in the region, another barrier facing internally displaced persons trying to exercise their right of return.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must approve the MDA's proposal, which is open for public comment until Sept. 24. Comments may be e-mailed to actioned@mississippi.org, faxed to 601-359-9280 or mailed to Mississippi Development Authority, Attention: Disaster Recovery, P.O. Box 849, Jackson, Mississippi, 39205.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi

With all the attention on Election '08, it's easy to forget that there are important elections underway in '07, such as state-wide contests in Mississippi, where the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is still being felt in state politics.

In primary elections this week, Mississippi Democrats drove out Insurance Commissioner James Dale, largely because of his failure to challenge widely-hated insurance companies after the storms:

Hurricane Katrina can be largely blamed for removing Dale from the office he has held for 32 years.

His acceptance of contributions from insurance companies he regulates and the perception from many Katrina victims that he wasn't fighting hard enough for them appeared to be key issues in the campaign.

But we can't ignore the advertising campaign largely financed by Dickie Scruggs' law firm that viciously attacked Dale and supported his Democratic challenger, Gary Anderson.

Hurricane Katrina is leaving its mark on the 2007 elections in other ways. During our recent trip to the Mississippi coast, we met with leaders from groups like Coastal Women for Change and the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance.

They reminded us that for many, the Mississippi coast is still a disaster zone, with people's minds focused on FEMA trailers, lost jobs and shatter lives. How does one even think about elections and politics when you're struggling for survival?

Ana Maria from the A.M in the Morning blog -- "dispatches from Katrina's ground zero" -- offers a moving first-hand perspective which reminds us of our country's failure to help the Gulf Coast recover:

Two days ago, Mississippi voters in the Democratic Primary ousted Insurance Commissioner George Dale, whose cozy relationship with Big Insurance became his electoral albatross. Surely less than a year ago, Dale anticipated his re-election bid to retain the normalcy he had experienced over the last three decades of running for office.

The campaigns for newly-elected Democratic nominee Gary Anderson and his Republican opponent will recuperate from the primary, then redirect their efforts for the usual hustle and bustle of a general election, which will be held this November. Even inside the chaotic nature of every election campaign, there is a sense of normalcy to that chaos -— at least for those of us who’ve been in a few.

Here inside the Katrina-ravaged region, we’re still struggling to return to a sense of normalcy. At Katrina’s ground zero, we still have Wal-Mart as our only grocery store for at least a 30 minute ride in any direction. Insurance companies continue to low ball, delay, and fight tooth and nail to break their legal contracts to pay on legitimate wind damage claims. Reliable, solid, and reasonably priced contractors to repair homes are still miraculous to find. FEMA continues to jerk around municipalities.

Jobs are scarce. More scarce are employees. More scarce still? Housing. [...]

A sense of normalcy. That is what everyone here yearns for. Anytime some small effort is put forth, all one has to do is take a drive down beach boulevard in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss., then cross the bridge and continue down highway 90 from Pass Christian through Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Ocean Springs. The stairs leading to no where represent homes that have not been able to be rebuilt. Same with the slabs that are cleared of debris but overgrown with weeds. And the steel beams standing erect waiting for the walls to be returned to their pre-Katrina place.

For all of us here, a sense of pre-Katrina normalcy is long overdue.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi, Southern Politics

A courageous media voice in the Deep South passed last weekend. Charles Tisdale, editor of The Jackson Advocate -- a feisty black newspaper in the Mississippi capitol -- died at the age of 80 on Saturday.

Tisdale didn't see any boundaries between his life as a newspaper editor, radio commentator on Jackson's WMPR, and bold civil rights activist. He was a bold voice for racial justice -- but he was uncompromising in his willingness to challenge all people, black or white, who abused power and violated the public trust. When I first ran across Tisdale, he was hounding the Jackson city government for its misguided plans to privatize vast sections of public services, including the city police force.

Tisdale also paid dearly for his tireless advocacy. When I first met him, he had just coming off a violent attack on the Advocate's offices, as the AP describes:

Tisdale faced repercussions for his outspokenness. Tisdale often said he was the target of death threats. His newspaper office near downtown Jackson was firebombed at least twice. The latest was in 1998, when gasoline was poured over the furniture and molotov cocktails were thrown through windows.

The 1998 attack caused $100,000 in damage. Clinton Moses, of Jackson, later pleaded guilty to the crime and told authorities that a member of the Jackson City Council had paid him $500 to commit the firebombing. Then-council member Louis Armstrong was never charged in the case.

Labels: civil rights, mississippi

Over at DailyKos, MeteorBlades -- one of my favorite bloggers -- offers an insightful account of the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were killed while registering voters in Mississippi, 43 years ago this week.

As someone involved in the movement's voting rights drives, MeteorBlades offers a level of insight and nuance in his telling of the story that one doesn't find in the sound-bite hagiographies that surround many movement martyrs. For example, he places the three men's deaths in the context of the movement's strategy and violence that ran throughout the region:

Like the bus strikes, and diner sit-ins and Freedom Rides that had begun 10 years before, the tactics of Freedom Summer had both a real and symbolic value. Our job was to register black voters in Mississippi. The presence of outsiders, especially white outsiders, was seen as a way to focus more attention from parts of the nation – and the media - where Jim Crow’s consequences were more likely to be viewed with distaste, disgust or rage.

Long before our arrival, a number of blacks had been murdered in Mississippi for trying to do exactly what we were preparing to do. Herbert Lee was one of them. A farmer who was nearly 50 years old when SNCC tried unsuccessfully to register him, Lee was shot on September 25, 1961, in Liberty, Mississippi, by E.H. Hurst, a local white politician. At trial, he claimed self-defense, and the all-white jury agreed. Lewis Allen, another African-American, said later it wasn't self-defense. He, too, was murdered.

Before him, and before SNCC, there was the Rev. George Lee, no relation, a minister, grocer and printer, who started a local chapter of the NAACP. He persuaded nearly 100 blacks to register and got the feds to intervene so he could vote after he was refused that right in Belzoni, Mississippi. On May 7, 1955, Lee was driving home when someone shotgunned him from a passing car. The Humphreys County sheriff said Lee was killed in a traffic accident, and claimed the lead pellets in his face and head were probably dental fillings. The coroner ruled Lee had died from "unknown causes." No one was ever arrested in the case.

He also helps us understand how -- both symbolically and literally -- the Mississippi murder case isn't "old news" -- they're part of the struggle for racial justice today:

Two years ago today, [Edgar Ray] Killen was convicted of planning and orchestrating the killings of the three men. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced him to 60 years in prison, 20 years for each of his manslaughter convictions in the case. The jury said there was reasonable doubt as to whether this Klan "kleagle" intended for the Klansmen to kill the three.

Some say justice delayed is justice denied, and while there's often truth in that, it can also be an excuse for letting bygones be bygones. But our legal system, whatever its flaws, doesn't take that view, which is why there is no statute of limitations on murder.

To back that up, however, often requires extra effort. The Killen case wouldn't have returned to the courts had it not been for a journalist [Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger] hammering away. Which is why it's shameful that H.R. 923, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, has been placed on hold by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. But then what's a little justice to someone with his record on civil rights?

As someone said: "The past isn't forgotten ... it's not even passed."

Labels: civil rights, mississippi, race and racism

Tomorrow, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to consider the nomination of Mississippi judge Leslie Southwick for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. As Roll Call reported (sub req'd) this week, to date Democrats have "steadily approv[ed] President Bush’s top-tier judicial nominations."

But Southwick may be the first showdown. Dozens of groups including the Magnolia Bar Association, ACLU, Congressional Black Caucus have voiced opposition; Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice spells out the case against Southwick at Huffington Post:

Leslie Southwick was a Mississippi Court of Appeals judge with a long record of hostility to workers and consumers. In fact, in 180 divided tort and employment cases, Judge Southwick voted against employees, consumers and other victims 89% of the time. When asked by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) in his hearing if he could think of one instance in nearly 7,000 opinions where he made an unpopular decision in favor of the powerless, the poor, minorities or the dispossessed, Judge Southwick responded no. And then there are his troubling rulings on civil and equal rights (These have already been discussed in detail -- for more on the "good ole n*****" and "homosexuality as grounds for losing custody" cases, see here and here).

Southwick's nomination is also notable because it continues a trend of nominees to the Mississippi federal bench that are all white. As the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger pointed out last month:

[S]ome of the acrimony is not really about Southwick. It's about the outrageous reality that of the last 15 vacancies on the federal bench in Mississippi, 14 were filled by white males and one by a white female.

It's about the reality that there is only one federal judgeship designated for African Americans in Mississippi, and President Reagan filled it in 1985 with Judge Henry T. Wingate. That was more than two decades ago!

See the Alliance for Justice's "Justice Digest" blog for more coverage.

Labels: mississippi

Following our coverage in Salon last week about the slow pace of recovery in post-Katrina Mississippi -- "slower than molasses in winter," one resident told us -- Reuters has a piece on small towns struggling to rebuild in the Magnolia State.

Like our piece, the story looks at Pearlington, the small town 40 minutes up from New Orleans that was "ground zero" for Katrina. Reuters describes a scene similar to what we found:

The local school and post office remain closed, few businesses have reopened and only a quarter of its 800 homes have been rebuilt, according to Glenn Locklin of the charity One House at a Time.

"You don't hear about us anymore. They say we're not news," Locklin said. "The one thing people don't realize is that we are just as bad as we were."

The devastation in coastal Mississippi is all the more shocking given the disproportionate share of federal relief dollars Gov. Haley Barbour was able to attract for his state. For example, even though Louisiana suffered 75% of the housing damage from Katrina, Mississippi raked in 70% of FEMA's money for the Alternative Housing Pilot Program. Similar disparities can be found on funding from health care to schools.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi

Since Katrina, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has received heaps of praise for his political savvy -- and ability to use his GOP connections to get a lion's share of federal relief funds for his state.

But with all the honors and money, how is the Mississippi recovery going? My colleague Sue Sturgis and I investigate in a special report published at Salon today.

One eye-opening item we found is just how lopsided Mississippi's take of Katrina relief has been:

Consider the Gulf Coast housing crisis, one of the key issues that has kept nearly half the population of New Orleans from returning to the city since Katrina. More than 75 percent of the housing damage from the storm was in Louisiana, but Mississippi has received 70 percent of the funds through FEMA's Alternative Housing Pilot Program. Of the $388 million available, FEMA gave a Mississippi program offering upgraded trailers more than $275 million. Meanwhile, the agency awarded Louisiana's "Katrina Cottage" program, which features more permanent modular homes for storm victims, a mere $75 million.

It's not just housing. Mississippi is also slated to get 38 percent of federal hospital recovery funds, even though it lost just 79 beds compared to 2,600 lost in southern Louisiana, which will get 45 percent of the funds. Mississippi and Louisiana both received $95 million to offset losses in higher education, even though Louisiana was home to 75 percent of displaced students. The states also received $100 million each for K-12 students affected by the storms, despite the fact that 69 percent resided in Louisiana.

Barbour insists that Congress is "getting its money's worth" for all it's given to Mississippi -- but how is the state's recovery really going?

For the residents of Hancock County, Barbour and Mississippi's ability to capture the lion's share of Katrina relief dollars makes the slow progress in their area all the more demoralizing. The county's 911 system still operates out of a trailer. Damaged wastewater and drainage systems frustrate hopes of a return to normalcy; earlier this month in Waveland, 16 miles east of Pearlington, a 9-and-a-half-foot alligator was found swimming in a drainage ditch next to a bus stop at 8 o'clock in the morning. Mayor Tommy Longo says the creatures freely roam throughout devastated residential areas.

As we point out, even worse is the fact that Barbour won't use Mississippi's recent tax windfall to help devastated coastal communities that are drowning in $79 million of debt. It's so bad, some towns are afraid they'll go bankrupt entirely:

"One thing you continually hear from officials from FEMA to the state level is that -- and they love this phrase -- they've 'never seen a city go under because of a natural disaster,'" [Waveland mayor] Longo says. "But there have been so many firsts in Katrina."

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, mississippi