Martial Law in America (America!)

Yes. I’m sounding like a broken record with all this Democracy Now! stuff. But the reporting isn’t like this anyplace else.

One of the great concerns right now in New Orleans is businessmen talking openly of wanting to see New Orleans change, to change it completely in a demographic sense, geographically, politically, racially. You have this overt rhetoric. Well, as residents of New Orleans come back in and they try to go back to the apartments they were rent stabilized, the houses they were renting, they face a city that has repressive laws that do not protect tenants. You have an overt agenda to change the racial makeup of the city, the economic makeup of the city, and you have these very wealthy people hiring private mercenary types to guard their property and their interests. Then you also have the National Guard and the Army inside of the city now, and so the potential for conflict with residents coming back in is very great. A lot of people are very concerned now with this Marshal [sic] Law still in effect with the military curfew in effect, that that is going to remain as people come back and live here. It’s one thing to have Martial law when you have a depopulated city. It’s another thing to have it when you have people who want to go about the business of rebuilding their lives, particularly when they are being told by very wealthy, powerful people backed up by men with guns that they are not welcome in the city that they have lived in their whole life. We have a potential, I think, for serious, overt conflict, hot conflict here in New Orleans as people start coming back in.

Read it: The Militarization of New Orleans: Jeremy Scahill Reports from Louisiana