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April 3, 2007

First Draft weekend, Israeli defense, and the state of housegutting

Writers and readers from First Draft were in town last weekend to see K-ville up close and to put in a day of work. We hooked up with ACORN to finish gutting a house right next to the west levee of the London Avenue canal. Details and a few pictures in Athenae's post here. (I remember lots of pictures being taken, does anybody know who has the photo mother lode?)

Athenae talks about the neighbor, Mr. Victor, who wanted everybody on the crew to know every detail of what is wrong with the world post-Katrina. One thing he told us was that the Israeli army was guarding Dillard right after the storm (right across the canal from where we were working). Everybody I've asked has said that's crazy talk, and that just because the guy was super sweet and bought us all chicken doesn't mean you should believe everything he says. Israeli army? Indeed, it sounds farfetched.

So I turned to Google. And it turns out that Mr. Victor knows what he knows:

A few miles away from the French Quarter, another wealthy New Orleans businessman, James Reiss, who serves in Mayor Ray Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority, brought in some heavy guns to guard the elite gated community of Audubon Place: Israeli mercenaries dressed in black and armed with M-16s. Two Israelis patrolling the gates outside Audubon told me they had served as professional soldiers in the Israeli military, and one boasted of having participated in the invasion of Lebanon. "We have been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives," one of them tells me. "Here in New Orleans, we are not guarding from terrorists." Then, tapping on his machine gun, he says, "Most Americans, when they see these things, that's enough to scare them."

The men work for ISI, which describes its employees as "veterans of the Israeli special task forces from the following Israeli government bodies: Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Instructors of Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, General Security Service (GSS or 'Shin Beit'), Other restricted intelligence agencies." The company was formed in 1993. Its website profile says: "Our up-to-date services meet the challenging needs for Homeland Security preparedness and overseas combat procedures and readiness. ISI is currently an approved vendor by the US Government to supply Homeland Security services."

ISI is Instinctive Shooting International. More information here if you feel like pursuing it.

As for the housegutting itself, I have to admit I'm somewhat conflicted about it lately. It does seem like the gutting era is coming to an end. Common Ground has finished all the houses on their list. Arabi Wrecking Krewe has shifted from a volunteer labor model to more of a grant coordination role. ACORN's web site says that they will be gutting through next August, but in talking with the coordinators there, they are already starting to wind down and may be done by the beginning of summer.

To be honest, as much as I want people to get back into their homes, I'll miss this. It's been as much therapy for me as anything else. It helps me a little with my (admittedly nonsensical) survivor's guilt over being in Austin when all this happened, and with stress relief from my job which seems to consume so much of my time that I'd rather be putting to use doing something for my city.

So what's next? Rebuilding. And that is so much harder to get off the ground. Rebuilding requires skills, insurance, and licensing. Even simply hanging sheetrock requires a level of thought and care and precision that ripping out sheetrock does not. Face it, if you make a mistake gutting a house, nobody is going to make you put it back up and gut it over again, so gutting is uniquely suited to throwing armies of unskilled spring breakers at in a way that reconstruction is not.

Habitat for Humanity has the construction thing down to a science, and massive resources to bring to bear, but their model is putting new homeowners (who qualify financially) into new homes. If you're one of the tens of thousands of New Orleanians who own a gutted home but can't scrape together enough money from insurance and Road Home to rebuild it, then Habitat can't help you. What we need is an organization like Habitat, with a different goal. We need Rehabitat for Humanity.

Mardi Gras Service Corps has put a couple of people back into their homes. ACORN and Arabi Wrecking Krewe are wrestling with how to do the same. Common Ground is focusing on other worthy causes.

There is a gap here, and I don't really know how to fix it.

In the high tech world, when a company develops a technology or a market that is outside of the business they're in, sometimes they spin off a new company. I wonder (and maybe I'm talking out my ass here) if there is some way that Habitat could spin off a small portion of their infrastructure and their expertise into a new Rehabitat organization, that would focus on the unique issues in the storm zone where people need to rebuild existing homes, not just build new homes. Give people like MGSC and ACORN a leg up rather than letting them struggle trying to build whole organizations from scratch while Habitat continues to follow its traditional model which doesn't exactly match the problem down here.

Posted by ray at April 3, 2007 7:40 AM |
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Comments

A couple of close friends who stayed back for the storm and flood told me about this a few days into the debacle. Someone also told me that a couple of Freeport higher-ups hired them.

Shell simply got Blackwater :-)

Posted by: Maitri at April 3, 2007 9:11 PM

I found, via JoeJoeJoe, some building techniques that I mentioned here.

Basically, we can build a house here, an almost hurricane proof house, for about $15k. It will require a relaxation of the building code, but it can work.

Posted by: ashley at April 3, 2007 9:15 PM

Hmmmm.....you think we could hire ISI or Blackwater to be our mercenary force for the Republic of New Orleans?

Posted by: ashley at April 3, 2007 9:17 PM

I saw Blackwater guys up on the Northshore, as well. (I was in line at a store behind some.) People were calling them the CLECO Ninjas - one set was guarding a powerline worker tent camp.

Posted by: candice at April 3, 2007 9:23 PM

I had heard about the Israel troops helping out..I don't remember when or where however. I am with you, the end of an era on the gutting? Now it seems the really hard part is just starting! Glad to hear you are still involved with AWK! :)

Posted by: stacey at April 4, 2007 7:41 AM

Actually, I am not really involved with AWK any more, but I run into Sheik out in public every once in a while and he fills me in.

Posted by: Ray at April 4, 2007 7:48 AM

When we were down there for Spring Break the group we were working with told us they were pulling out at the end of March because they were running out of homes to gut. I found that incredulous since there seems to be so many ungutted homes? I know tons have been and will be demo-ed but it still seems like there could be plenty of gutting opportunities. If it were the case that every home had been gutted I think it would be cause to celebrate..but it somehow seems sad? I know for my own selfish reasons I like knowing there is something for me to do to contribute to the effort when I come down. I can swing a sledgehammer, I can haul debris. I hope there will be more opportunities to help with the REbuilding too.

Posted by: Lisa at April 4, 2007 12:38 PM

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