This is a scene as Jamaican as a plate of calaloo and salt fish, with one exception: all the revellers are male. There is a reason why this party is up in the hills - it would be too dangerous to stage a gay party in town. There is a reason, too, why we have arrived in a small convoy - for security. One man said he was chased and had his car stoned after he left a gay club. Others tell tales of police stopping cars full of men at night and harassing them with homophobic insults.

Black, poor, female and isolated. Soon to be released data from Zogby International has shed some light on the New Orleans evacuees who are concentrated in Houston.

The one thing both sides seem to agree on is that neither wants the city to return to the way it was before the hurricane. The people of New Orleans, most of whom are black and many of whom are poor, want schools that will educate their children, jobs that will pay a living wage, and neighbourhoods where capital investment matches the large pools of social capital created by their churches and close-knit communities. Organised money has something else in mind: the destruction of many of those communities and permanent removal of those who lived in them, a city that follows the gentrification patterns of racial removal and class cleansing that have played out elsewhere in the US.

"There are two types of power," said Linda Jeffers, addressing an accountability session of New Orleans mayoral candidates at the city’s Trinity Episcopal Church. "Organized money and organized people." Since Hurricane Katrina the battle between those two forces has shaped the struggle to rebuild New Orleans. Now it is set to intensify.

Over recent weeks, Hispanic migrants have been flocking to another call - not to work, but to arms. Throughout America millions of Hispanics, in big cities and small towns, have taken to the streets to protest against anti-immigration legislation and for their right to stay in the country. Half a million came out in Los Angeles and also in Dallas, 300,000 in Chicago, 200,000 in Washington DC - right down to 3,000 in Garden City, Kansas (population 30,000).

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson is actively seeking to break away from the Democrats and support an independent candidate in future elections.

In her book, "Volunteer Slavery" African-American writer and novelist Jill Nelson confesses that:

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday April 6 2006

As New Labour prepares for its own regicide, it is vital to make a distinction between people and principle. The desire that many in the party have to march Tony Blair to the guillotine is entirely understandable. For the past nine years he has shown his contempt for both the principles on which the party was built and the institutions that built it. It makes sense that some of those who hold those traditions dear would seek to respond in kind. What is not so clear is the haste for the next coronation. The issue has been framed as if what Labour needs is another king, rather than a thoroughgoing discussion about whether the regal tendencies that have emerged in the past decade serve either party or country well.