In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures plans for the rebuilding of New Orleans favored the redevelopment of some communities over others. Where residents of vulnerable communities, in particular the Lower Ninth Ward, protested the erasure of their communities, they have been largely socially abandoned as a retaliatory measure for not acquiescing to the elite plan of “Katrina Cleansing.” The implementation of this social abandonment as social policy and the various policies and conditions that have collectively punished residents of the Lower Ninth Ward who are trying to rebuild their community should be seen as uneven racialized capitalist development and as an important extension to what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” In this article, I conceptualize these policies and conditions as secondary violences and through three vignettes I provide a brief description of life in the Lower Ninth Ward where these violences permeate the warp and the woof of the community.
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