Here in New Orleans, the politics of class was never more evident than post Katrina efforts to rebuild our city.
And I'm not talking about class as in "classy". I'm talking about the upper, middle and not very often mentioned, lower class in this country.
In New Orleans, there has been a concerted effort to rebuild, and exclude, the lower class, the working poor, and those teetering on the edge of poverty, in our city.
City, state and federal leaders have been blunt in what they hope will be a "new" New Orleans.
John Edwards, in defiance of the "agenda", has visited twice to the lower ninth ward here, hammer in hand, to pound some nails, and make a point.
Edwards returning to what is the vast emptiness of the lower ninth ward, drives home the point of class in this country. The ninth ward is street after street of emptiness, its lower class residents now displaced. Most were homeowners. Compare that neighborhood to all others in New Orleans, and the politics of class, and race, were never more evident.
Edwards may have come more often than that, but twice in my memory, I saw him take on the issue of the working poor, the right of return, and the right to rebuild in your community. Those kinds of issues may be taken for granted by many, but they aren't here, in a city whose homeless population is exploding post-Katrina, where native sons and daughters of New Orleans are sleeping beneath the Canal and Claiborne overpass, some still greiving and traumatized by their losses, and in shock from being forced into homelessness.
Remember, Mayor Nagin invited people to come back. Many recount that message when I speak to them under the bridge. They don't feel welcomed back.
Many are working at temporary jobs; many are cleaning the Superdome after special events. It's difficult to get and hold a decent job when you are homeless. But the Superdome seems to welcome their labors, at $8 per hour, or $12 per rack of beer or peanuts sold. The Saints had their home back just one year after Katrina.
The tragic irony of homeless residents working in the Superdome is not lost on many of us.
The New Orleans City Council, in an illegal meeting in which they locked out public housing residents and community supporters, and tasered and pepper sprayed those who raucously didn't agree with that action, voted unanimously to tear down over 4500 units of strongly built public housing, buildings that have outlived several hurricanes, buildings built like storm bunkers.
Those buildings, if replaced at all, will be replaced by cookie cutter buildings that might last 60 years. Public housing here was built during the New Deal, and would have last another 100 years.
The Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), knowing full well many in New Orleans, a majority, relied on rental housing prior to Katrina, has vastly short-changed the rental restoration program, and even tried to raid the funds and add them to a home ownership program.
The home ownership mantra is never more sickening than now, at a time when people are losing their homes due to bad mortgages. The LRA, though promising to make homeowners whole after Katrina, has let everyone down through the ICF, the corporation hired to mismanage Road Home Funds, and make a vast profit in the process.
Edwards is not a perfect candidate. I wish there were more talk of the working poor, and those who are, in huge numbers, falling out of the middle class. So much attention is focused on the middle class, it's no wonder lower income folks tend to not vote. No one takes up their issues to any great extent.
But Edwards, hopefully, will succeed in driving the Democratic platform to the left, and stoking the fires for populism.
I've always felt that Daily Kos sells itself cheaply. There is much political power in this location on the net. And the fire for populism starts below, not with our leaders. Edwards has tapped into a vein that was already there, and there will be much more of this before it is all over with.
There should be much more pressure on the candidates to address the real issues. That would mean, of course, far fewer diaries of my candidate is better than your candidate.
All of the candidates ought to be addressing issues of class in this country, but for the most part, they aren't. How long can we continue to allow the hoarding of wealth by a very few, while the rest of us struggle, and some of us die for lack of health care, lack of housing, suffer for lack of decent schooling?
Edwards is one of the few policians willing to discuss issues of class. For that alone he has my vote. Am I completely satisfied with his platform? No. But it's a start.