Feb 12th: Planning, Privatization, and Public Works: Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and the People’s “Silver Lining”
Please mark your calendar for the next LiPS lecture, which will take place on Tuesday, February 12th at 1pm in Avery Hall 114.
CUNY Professor Jay Arena will present on the topic of “Planning, Privatization, and Public Works: Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and the People’s “Silver Lining””.
In New Orleans, more than seven years after Hurricane Katrina, public services have been systematically dismantled and privatized, union contracts have been summarily abrogated, and 100,000 people, disproportionately black and poor, have not been able to return to the city. A similar corporate-made disaster is underway in post-Sandy New York City, as corporate and state officials use the storm as a pretext to close public schools, hospitals, and housing and spur further gentrification along the city’s waterfront. Jay Arena, a Katrina and Sandy survivor, housing activist, and author of the recently released book, “Driven From New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization”, will discuss an alternative, people-centered, rebuilding agenda that New Orleans’s public housing and right of return movement demanded in the wake of Katrina—and one that has even more resonance in the aftermath of Sandy and the post-2008 economic disaster that is wrecking havoc from Manhattan to Madrid.
The talk is open to all. Refreshments will be served, and there will be an opportunity to meet with the speaker and discuss questions one-on-one after the presentation. We encourage you to share the event details with your networks. If you belong to a mailing list that you would like us to add to the LiPS distribution list, please email us at
lipscolumbiaplanning@gmail.com <mrc2186@columbia.edu>.
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