Civil Rights Groups Call White House Response to Hurricane Katrina a Trojan Horse
Leading the effort with nearly 60 other major civil rights and advocacy organizations, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition, today called on the president to rescind efforts to gut federal civil rights rules, and on Congress to conduct an investigation into, and hearings on, these attempts.
“Whether or not by design, the administration has used the tragedies of hurricanes Katrina and Rita to waive, bend, and break federal laws that protect our civil rights, worker rights, public health and safety, while suspending rules that help small and minority-owned businesses,” said Wade Henderson, executive director of LCCR. “With hurricane Wilma threatening the Florida coast and hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents still reeling from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is vital that Congress not only investigate the administration’s immediate response to Katrina, but also subsequent actions that are doing additional harm to the very people who most need the help.”
The letter, sent to the Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee as well as the House Committee on Government Reform and the House Committee on Homeland Security, calls for an investigation into the administration’s waiver of several federal civil rights and worker protections in the name of rebuilding the Gulf Coast. It sites nine specific areas of concern, including:
Cutting wages for construction workers in the Gulf states by indefinitely suspending the Davis- Bacon Act, which guarantees workers are paid the region’s prevailing or average wage. Suspending wage protections for Gulf Coast workers allows all contractors, regardless of whether or not the work relates to cleanup and reconstruction, to pay as little as $5.15 hour.
Ignoring federal procurement practices, which has resulted in the award of several multi-million dollar no-bid contracts that hurt local small, minority, and women owned businesses.
Denying equal opportunity employment initiatives for workers in the Gulf states through an exemption from some existing Affirmative Action Program (AAP) requirements for new federal contractors dealing with Hurricane Katrina relief.
Exploiting the hurricane to create a private and religious school voucher program that could allow federal money to be used to promote employment discrimination
Allowing a temporary waiver of environmental protections in the Gulf Coast region and supporting additional environmental suspensions at the expense of the health and safety of Katrina survivors, particularly the poor, disabled, and minority populations.
“Instead of directly meeting the rebuilding challenges created by Katrina, the administration has chosen the moral equivalent of a Trojan Horse,” Henderson said
Letter calling on President Bush to rescind efforts to gut federal civil rights laws