Justice After Katrina!
• Peoples Forces Strengthen Organizing Work
• Report from Common Ground: Small Victories Bringing Hope Back to New Orleans
• Public Support Stops Eviction of Welcome Home Kitchen
• Food Not Bombs: Help Feed the Survivors of Rita and Katrina
• Evolution of Common Ground
• No Place to Call Home: People of the Dome Revisited
• Many Rescue and Relief Efforts Effective: Katrina: Direct Action vs. Government Guns
• Rescue Came from the Grassroots: The People, Not FEMA, Saved Themselves
• The People’s Hurricane Fund Presents: JUSTICE AFTER KATRINA
Peoples Forces Strengthen Organizing Work
Converge in New Orleans in a Showing of Solidarity! Come lend a hand from November 20-27th. The folks at Common Ground Collective invite you to join an estimated 300 volunteers from around the continent converging in New Orleans the week of Thanksgiving. We want to encourage those in attendance to arrive with building and cleaning supplies, donated equipment and, if possible, funds that we can apply directly to help rebuild and the 9th Ward. All volunteers coming in for the Road Trip For Relief are asked to go to the Convergence Space at 2831 Marias Street first! We are calling for Solidarity, not Charity!
Upon arrival, we will orient you to the long history of neglect and oppression in this area and offer tips on how to connect with the community in a respectful and effective manor. Then we will plug people into community projects in the 9th ward where we have just opened a new distribution center and where we are helping to coordinate efforts to challenge unjust city, state and national governments' policies and commercial exploits.
Common Ground Collective will supply basic shelter and food, as well as evening events throughout the week. Each day we will divide into working teams and focus on clean up and rebuilding projects. Each evening we will show films, provide entertainment and opportunities, at several locations around the city, for you all to debrief your daily experiences. We will also offer a huge Thank You Feast on Thanksgiving Day, with great surprise performances from guest musicians and artists.
We are asking all participants to:
Come prepared. We are expecting around 300 people and will need your skills of self-organizing to orchestrate our powerful and effective week of work here!
Please check in here (www.commongroundrelief.org) for an online registration form. We would love to confirm that you are coming, so we can better prepare for your arrival. Below are both a sample checklist for your own supplies, and a bigger list of the donations we need to make this project a great success.
We also need help with specific skills: electricians, mechanics, plumbers, mold abaters, roofers, construction workers, carpenters, tree workers, lawyers, cooks -- and people who can train other volunteers and residents in these skills.
Write commongroundvolunteers@gmail.com with questions or to make special arrangements. For questions relating to donations, please write cgcdistribution@gmail.com. Call 504-339-5885 to contact Kerul Dyer, Roadtrip for Relief Coordinator. Thanks for all of your support.
What to Pack:
Bring a sleeping bag, a pad, flashlight, work clothes, closed-toed shoes, hand sanitizer, toiletries, specialty needs, and insect repellent. If you can, bring a N95 or higher respirator, tyvek suit, work gloves, rubber boots, a box of 3 mm. contractor plastic bags and a camera. If you cannot afford protective gear, it will be provided for you.
We are asking folks to arrive in New Orleans on November 20th and work through the Thanksgiving week until November 27th. Of course, volunteers are needed continuously and can arrive anytime.
If you cannot get down here, you can still help!
You can organize vehicles, Donate $$$$, or supplies (see the list below). Help raise funds, plan a fundraiser, ask your network to donate. Help spread the word.
Monetary donations. Please write and send tax-deductible checks to Common Ground’s fiscal sponsor: Community Futures/ Common Ground Collective, 221 Idora Ave.,
Vallejo, CA 94591, (707) 644-6575
Supplies:
needs list: (please donate supplies in good condition that are ready to use, see www.commongroundrelief.org for complete list):
Tarps (for roofing, 30x 20/50)
Electrical supplies for rewiring houses (wire, outlets, breakers, etc.)
12 Amp, 100-foot extension cords
Sheetrock
Good quality tools
Hammers and nails
Sledgehammers
Drills and thick screws
Tents (12x 20/30), Domes
Computers ready to run
Generators (we prefer diesel, so we can run biodiesel)
Trucks/Tractors (also prefer diesel)
Mobile Kitchens
Liquid vacs (wet/dry vacs) and pressure washers
Chainsaws
Respirators
N95 facemasks
Shovels
Brooms
Mops
Rakes
Contractor trash bags
Batteries
Dollies
To send supplies directly to Common Ground, please mail to:
Common Ground Relief Center
331 Atlantic Ave
New Orleans, LA 70114
Medical: To support Common Ground’s Free Medical Clinics, please refer to: www.commongroundrelief.org/2005/09/info_for_volunteers_at_common.html#more
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Small Victories Bringing Hope Back to New Orleans
When Bertha Dugas went to the FEMA center set up at the shopping center near her home in Terrytown, she did not expect much. FEMA had never given her the promised relief money, or any help at all. But this time, she was in tears, about to get kicked out of her apartment, and came to the desk worker with no hope in her heart, but with nowhere left to turn.
The FEMA worker, a 'volunteer' from Massachusetts getting paid $700 a week by FEMA, did not know how to help, what to do. FEMA had given her no instructions or provisions for how to help people who were losing their homes due to post-hurricane evictions. But she remembered hearing about the grassroots work of Common Ground and gave Ms. Dugas our number. Within a day, Common Ground's anti-eviction team was on the scene at Ms. Dugas' apartment complex [Louisburg Square] beginning a campaign that would stretch over a week, involve dozens of people in several cities, national media, and lawyers, and which would eventually result in a tenant victory in court.
Malik Rahim, who helped found the Common Ground collective 2 months ago said that their humble group has "provided material aid to over 16,000 people, including food, clothing, supplies, assistance in finding shelter and job training. The Common Ground Health Clinic has also provided free healthcare to over 36,000 patients since Katrina. The government has not given us support for this work on any level, they prefer to organize a culture of violence where police can shoot to kill and hurricane survivors are being unlawfully evicted from their apartments."
Now, moving from basic relief into the next stage - rebuilding and reclamation, Common Ground has taken on a number of new projects. From fighting mass evictions to challenging police brutality and harassment, the efforts of Common Ground and other grassroots organizations have already had some successes. We managed to get the management to back down and agree to the tenants’ demands. The tenants of Louisburg Square, the home of Bertha Dugas and many others, won their court battle but continue to face an uphill struggle against a landlord that wants these modest-income tenants OUT in order to build high-priced condos. And the November 7 March on Gretna, of which Common Ground was a part, was successful in marching across the Mississippi River Bridge despite police promises to arrest everyone who tried [At the time of Katrina, the Gretna bridge, one of the only means to escape, was blocked by police who refused to let those trying to escape the hurricane to leave.]
The successes are small, and the challenges are many. But the people power mobilized when Common Ground and other organizations and individuals come together to fight the existing power structures that are currently trying to re-assert dominance over this broken city has thus far proven successful, and has brought a glimmer of hope into the lives of people who, in many cases, had lost all hope when they lost everything in the flood.
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Public Support Stops Eviction of Welcome Home Kitchen
A massive show of public support including a rally, march and call-in campaign has temporarily staved off the eviction of the "Welcome Home Kitchen" in Washington Square Park in New Orleans. The Kitchen serves free, fresh, nutritious meals to the people of New Orleans east of Canal St.
Although the immediate threat of eviction seems to have been stopped, the 'Welcome Home' kitchen remains under the imminent threat of closure by a city that is providing no similar service of its own for returning New Orleanians.
The kitchen was founded in late September by a group of volunteers from the 'Rainbow Family of Living Light', best known for their yearly 4th of July Rainbow Gatherings. The Rainbow Family, along with Food Not Bombs, has been instrumental in the relief effort following Hurricane Katrina. The kitchen they founded in Waveland, Mississippi, the area hardest hit by the storm, has been consistently serving 2,000 people a day since its inception in early September.
The "Welcome Home Kitchen," funded entirely by donations, has been serving well over 700 people each day for three meals a day, as well as providing free medical care, a distribution center of clothing and supplies, a community bulletin board and information table, and a sense of camaraderie that has brought smiles and hugs from people in the most desperate of circumstances. A few blocks away is a facility with huge tents and serving areas set up by FEMA, but it is for FEMA contractors only, and large signs posted outside say "No public services available."
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Help Feed the Survivors of Rita and Katrina
November 4 2005 – PLEASE CONTINUE TO HELP! We are in need of volunteers and food to help the people displaced by Katrina. Food Not Bombs is serving hot meals everyday at Washington Square Park, east of the French Quarter. We provide hot fresh food shared on a daily basis in New Orleans. Food Not Bombs opened a Community Center on Desire Sreet in the 9th Ward. We sent several truck and busloads of food and clothing to New Orleans and other communities hit by Katrina. We have been working with Vets for Peace, Common Ground and Rainbow kitchens throughout southern United States.
Food Not Bombs groups all across the southern United States are feeding families displaced by Katrina. Help us get food and supplies past FEMA. We need clothes, cooking equipment, food, cooks and money to provide for thousands of hungry homeless people. We have no overhead, rent or salaries so every donation goes directly to helping people. Many affected by Katrina are familiar with Food Not Bombs because we have been sharing free food in communities through the area for many years. Because we are independent we can take food and supplies to areas where no other agency can reach.
Hundreds of people all over America have been calling Food Not Bombs asking what they can do to help the people made homeless by Hurricane Katrina. Food Not Bombs will continue organizing buses, vans and truckloads of food, kitchen equipment and clothing to the people fleeing the disaster. It's a real honor that so many people are looking to Food Not Bombs to help.
We will continue to get food and clothing past FEMA. So far we have had busloads of material support and volunteers from Arcadia, Washington DC, Chicago, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia, Oberlin, Boulder, Madison, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Dayton, Hartford, Tucson, Panama City, Miami and Saint Petersburg. Volunteers from the west are meeting in Houston and people from the east are meeting in Baton Rouge and Covington, Louisiana.
We have a kitchen located at the Corner of 28th and Tyler in Covington. The Baton Rouge kitchen has been feeding hundreds of people. There are Food Not Bombs kitchens outside the Houston Convention Center and other areas. Volunteers with Houston Food Not Bombs set up an FM radio station in the Astrodome and handed out radios to 10,000 people but FEMA shut down the station after two days. Please let us know if you can help.
Because this disaster may last 6 months to a year or more we intend to set up Food Not Bombs field kitchens throughout the region. Food Not Bombs is encouraging the hurricane survivors to participate in cooking, serving and collecting the food. Their participation may be one of the most therapeutic things we can provide. It is possible that as many as a million people will be homeless for the next 6 months or more as a result of this disaster. Even if you cannot go to the disaster area we need lots of help from your community. The number of people we need to feed is growing all across America as survivors are taken away from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. We are trying to share food every day in your community. Please call to see how you can help in your area.
Many Survivors are now considered regular members of America's homeless population. In 1989, Food Not Bombs fed the people made homeless by the earthquake and after a few weeks the working class victims were forgotten and faced the same problems as those who were homeless before the earthquake. Because this could be such a long crisis it may be better for us to teach people how to organize their own local Food Not Bombs group so they can provide long-term support.
There are some things you can do that can help us respond effectively to this disaster.
Organize a meeting this week - calling, emailing and posting flyers about the need for people to help and the day, time and location of the meeting.
At the meeting organize groups to call for food donations, another group to call for propane stoves, tanks of gas, tables and cooking equipment. Ask another group to get more volunteers.
Choose a time date and location of where your vehicles will gather to take the trip to the disaster area.
Collect 25 and 50-pound bags of rice, beans, black-eyed peas, lentils and any other large amounts of dry goods, pasta or non perishable food. We can also use propane stoves, kitchen equipment, toothpaste, soap, shampoo and other personal items.
Stay in touch by emailing Katrina@foodnotbombs.net or calling 1-800-884-1136. The Houston Kitchen can be called at 713-802-9642 The Baton Rouge Kitchen can be called at 713-802-9642.
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The Common Ground clinic in New Orleans faces new challenges as it continues to grow and evolve into a long-term community institution.
The Common Ground Collective, born in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, continues to grow and evolve. The main clinic - housed in a mosque in Algiers, on the unflooded bank of the Mississippi River – opened in early September.
The clinic, open seven days a week and staffed by volunteer healthcare providers, offers vaccinations, examinations, and basic medical care. For the past few weeks, it has seen as many as 100 patients per day. Clinic workers do not deal with many direct storm-related injuries or illnesses, but rather see more chronic illness – such as high blood pressure and diabetes – and other unmet medical needs due to long-term lack of access to health care.
The clinic continues to draw many volunteers, who connect with Common Ground via a variety of channels including activist networks, online volunteer matching databases, and even the California Nurses Association – so many, in fact, that there’s not enough room to put them all. In late October there were about 60 clinic staff, and organizers started trying to schedule and limit new incoming volunteers.
Common Ground has attracted many nurses and medical students, but has an ongoing shortage of MDs and nurse practitioners that can write prescriptions and supervise students. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals recently agreed to extend credentialing for out-of-state medical personnel until the end of the year. The clinic could also use more administrators (like unit coordinators), social workers, and volunteers - who need not have medical training - to do random stuff like kitchen work and driving (using their own vehicles).
After asking the clinic to move by early November, members of Masjid Bilal mosque generously agreed to allow Common Ground to stay at this site until the end of the year. Clinic organizers are currently evaluating potential new locations, including the unused Catholic school next door and a nearby apartment complex.
Common Ground also operates several mobile clinics. One has been offering vaccines and first aid at a site in the lower 9th Ward near where residents board buses to view the remains of their homes; north of this point, the National Guard strictly prohibits entry. (The 9th Ward is divided by the Industrial Canal; the east side - the lower 9th – experienced the worst devastation.) This mobile clinic sees some residents, but mostly relief and construction workers.
The collective has also experimented with other mobile clinic sites as determined by need, including one at a Vietnamese church in East New Orleans (also a hard-hit area) and one at a church serving a Spanish-speaking community in Kenner, west of New Orleans.
On November 4, a satellite clinic opened in a former day care center in the upper 9th Ward. The once-flooded building required extensive cleanup by a team of dedicated volunteers, including removal of sheetrock and mold abatement; this neighborhood was still without electricity in early November. The satellite clinic sees maybe 30-50 people per day, mostly returning residents; the goal is to make it a full-time clinic.
The same site also houses the Common Ground Distribution Center, were residents can get food, water, cleaning supplies, legal aid, and other forms of assistance. The bulk of the collective’s operations have relocated here from Malik Rahim’s backyard in Algiers. The collective is devoting increased attention to eviction and housing issues, adding political advocacy and protests to direct service provision.
The devastation in New Orleans and throughout the gulf region is hard to describe, and not fully conveyed by the news. Common Ground volunteers have done some reconnaissance and outreach in areas further away, including the Mississippi coast and Louisiana bayou towns to the south.
The Four Directions Relief Project (www.intuitivepath.org/relief.html) is working with Native American tribes in this area. Common Ground has made connections with other grassroots relief efforts, including Mama Dee and the community center that sprung up around her home in the 7th Ward, the Barefoot Doctors Academy, and the Rainbow Family (www.welcomehome.org/rema), which opened the New Waveland Café in Mississippi soon after Katrina, and later the Welcome Home Kitchen in Washington Park in New Orleans; the city’s attempts to close down the Washington Park encampment were recently rebuffed thanks to community and activist support.
Common Ground volunteers have also established working relationships with members of the National Guard, individual Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers, and medical personnel re-establishing or creating replacements for pre-storm medical infrastructure. (I, for one, have never worked in such proximity with so many soldiers, government officials, and conservative religious people.)
Common Ground continues to face challenges as it evolves into a long-term project. In early November, “Radio Algiers” - a community radio station operating out of an ad hoc computer center in Malik’s garage - was shut down by the FCC. Some volunteers have been harassed by police, including an African-American community member arrested earlier this month (as expected, police are less concerned about the white volunteers). Due largely to dismal Internet connectivity, news and communications from Common Ground are sporadic, and the collective is rather cut off from the larger activist community outside New Orleans. (I had to wait until I got back to San Francisco to post reports and photos.)
The hours are long, the work is often hard, and some of the long-tem “core” volunteers appear to be on the verge of burnout, since procedures are not yet well enough established to let others smoothly rotate in and out of these roles.
There is a bit of “culture clash” between long-time activists – some of whom distrust the medical establishment – and healthcare professionals who may have little or no experience with antiauthoritarian activism and working on a non-hierarchical basis. The clinic collective does not consistently employ consensus decision-making, relying instead on informal discussions, charismatic leaders, and long-term “core” volunteers who are aware of local conditions and concerns. Some of the many short-term volunteers who stay for 1-2 weeks have thus ended up feeling “out of the loop.” (I felt like I had barely gotten oriented and started to contribute to projects when I had to leave after two weeks.)
The clinic now has a bank account, tax-exempt nonprofit status, and a board of directors - whose role is far from clearly defined. With considerable financial donations coming in, there are decisions to be made about how best to spend the money and whether to compensate some of the “core” volunteers to enable them to make a longer-term commitment (suggestion: the mobile clinics sure could use a reliable vehicle!).
As Common Ground moves forward, the biggest challenge is how to make it a true, participatory community effort. The clinic has attracted a few local healthcare workers, but the majority of volunteers still come from as far away as California and Canada. There is also a question of what community Common Ground serves: the neighborhood immediately surrounding the clinic in Algiers, the disenfranchised communities of New Orleans as a whole, or all hurricane survivors who could benefit from mutual aid.
Finally, as the Common Ground clinic moves toward becoming, perhaps, a permanent community institution, it is impossible to ignore the long-term, unmet medical need that also exists from Washington, DC, to Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco. Hopefully, the New Orleans effort will prove to be a model that provides inspiration – and gives activists the valuable experience – to start many more Common Grounds.
(Liz Highleyman is a member of the Bay Area Radical Health Collective who spent two weeks at Common Ground in late October-early November)
For more photos of the Common Ground clinic, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liz_at_blackrose/sets/1312530
For an overview of relief efforts (from the Rainbow Family to the military), see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liz_at_blackrose/sets/1312888
For an overview of the destruction people are dealing with in New Orleans, Slidell, the bayou areas, and coastal Mississippi, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liz_at_blackrose/sets/1321157
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People of the Dome Revisited
"I'm sick to death of hearing things from uptight narrow-minded pig-headed politicians. All I want is the truth. Just give me some truth." – John Lennon
As Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf States, many organizations kicked into high gear to send relief to local groups in Mississippi and Louisiana, with no help from the government or formal relief agencies. Among them was the Malcolm X Grassroots movement, with whom the Brooklyn Greens shares an office on Atlantic Avenue. Tons of donated supplies poured into the office and were trucked to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were distributed through community-based efforts.
I spoke daily with Les Evenchick, a Green who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I was also in touch with New Orleans residents Malik Rahim and Mike Howell; the areas in which they live were dry and they were holding out as long as they could. The story they tell is shocking: U.S. and local government officials refused to allow water or food relief into New Orleans. They also turned off the drinking water. Hundreds of people died unnecessarily as a result.
And yet, there was no shortage of water or food being sent – it was just not allowed into the city! When Green Party activists tried to donate water for the people in the Superdome a few days after the levees broke, armed soldiers pointed rifles at them and prevented them from delivering supplies. Even three Wal-Mart trucks loaded with drinking water were denied entry and turned away. No water was allowed into New Orleans. Evenchick says, "This was a brazen attempt to starve people out."
Attempts to starve civilians into leaving an area are war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. Who gave the order to block water and food from entering New Orleans? Who ordered the drinking water inside the city to be turned off? No one has yet answered those questions.
On Thursday of that first week, volunteers whose makeshift boats had rescued over 1,000 people were ordered to stop, under the pretext that it was too dangerous. The volunteers wanted to continue rescue operations. They said there was little risk, that desperate people had been welcoming them with open arms. The military "convinced" the volunteer rescuers at gunpoint to "cease and desist." They did the same to a state senator who had led a flotilla of hundreds of boats and rafts all the way from Mississippi to rescue people.
Who gave the order to block the volunteer rescue teams in New Orleans? No one has yet answered that question.
Officials claimed that people were trying to shoot down the rescue helicopters. In actuality, a couple of people shot into the air to signal helicopters to pick them up. Yet officials repeated this lie over and over, as justification for shutting down voluntary rescue operations and sending in thousands of fully armed military troops, along with private Blackwater mercenaries fresh from Iraq under orders to "shoot to kill."
Two U.S. military helicopter pilots plucked 110 people from the roofs of their flooded houses. We saw them on T.V. and cheered. When they returned to base they were called into the commander's office. They thought they were going to be given medals. Instead, as reported in the NY Times, their commanding officers reprimanded them and removed them from helicopter duty for "violating orders." Who gave the order not to rescue people?
For more than two weeks, hundreds of volunteer doctors and fire personnel – including a squad from New York City – were denied entry to New Orleans. They were dispatched, instead, to provide backdrop for Bush's photo-ops in other areas. The medical personnel were kept twiddling their thumbs, as people were dying.
A commanding officer of a police squad complained that his 120 cops were provided with only 70 small bottles of water. Hospitals were supplied with nothing. Could FEMA and local officials have forgotten to store bottles of drinking water in the Superdome, Convention Center and hospitals?
The only FEMA official on the scene in the early stages, Marty Bahamonde, has testified to Congress that he begged FEMA director Michael Brown for water, food, toilet paper and oxygen, saying, "many will die within hours." Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, responded that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that [sic] 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote. "Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise [sic], followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc." Let them eat gumbo.
In an interview by WWL-TV, Mayor Ray Nagin complained vociferously that Louisiana National Guard Blackhawk helicopters were being stopped from dropping sandbags to plug the levees soon after the breech. No repairs were allowed until long after the poor areas of New Orleans were totally flooded.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Cuba's President Fidel Castro offered millions of dollars and hundreds of doctors to help save lives in New Orleans. They were turned down. Millions of concerned citizens wanted to send assistance as well. FEMA recommended that they send contributions to "Operation Blessing," a front group for rightwing evangelist Pat Robertson. Robertson had recently televised a speech calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Can all of these be explained by simple incompetence and negligence, or is there something more sinister going down?
Les Evenchick is an independent Green activist who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans in a 3-story walkup. He points out that people were told to go to the bus depot to evacuate, but the bus station had closed down the night before. Unless you owned a car, Les continued, FEMA and state police would not let you leave.
Hundreds attempting to walk out of New Orleans were forced off the road and ordered back to the Coliseum or Superdome, where no water or food was available. As a consequence the vast majority of the so-called looters were simply grabbing water, food, diapers and medicine. "It’s only because of them that old people, sick people, small children were able to survive," Les says. "But the 'anti-looting’ hype was used to militarize the area, place it under martial law and disperse the population, mostly Black people, mostly the poor."
These were the people who had twice voted in huge numbers against the candidacy of George Bush, the only area in the state to have done so. The previous year, they also fought off attempts to privatize the drinking water supply, battled Shell Oil's attempt to build a Liquified Natural Gas facility, and tried to prevent the teardown of public housing – battles in which Mayor Ray Nagin, who had contributed funds to George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2000 and who was a registered Republican until a few months prior to the 2002 mayoral election, sided with the oil companies and wealthy developers.
Some tourists in the Monteleone Hotel pooled their funds and paid $25,000 for 10 buses to get them out. The buses were sent (there was no short-age of available buses – why didn’t the government use this bus company?) but the military confiscated them for its own use. The tourists were not allowed to leave and were ordered to the Convention Center.
How simple it would have been for the government to have provided buses before the hurricane and throughout the week. AMTRAK says it offered free rides out of town but that City officials never got back to them to finalize arrangements. Evacuating 100,000 people trapped in the city should not that be that difficult, it’s only 3,000 buses, fewer than come into Washington D.C. for some of the giant antiwar demonstrations. Even at $2,500 a pop – highway robbery – that would only come to a total of $7.5 million for transporting out of harm’s way all of those who did not have the means to leave.
Thousands of New Orleans residents refused to evacuate. Some didn’t want to leave their pets or their homes. Most have no money or place to go. Green activist and former Black Panther Malik Rahim, who lives in the Algiers section – which, like the French Quarter and several other areas above sea-level, remained fairly dry – points out that the government could have and should have provided water and food to residents of New Orleans but intentionally did not do so in order to force people to evacuate by starving them out. This is a crime of the gravest sort.
French Quarter resident Mike Howell adds that the capability had been there to drive water and food right up to the convention center, as those roads were clear – it’s the same road the National Guard used to drive into the city.
The evidence is overwhelming that the government intentionally did not allow food or water into New Orleans.
I recently emailed Governor Kathleen Blanco (a Democrat) asking, who ordered the turn-off of the drinking water? There was no health reason to turn it off at the time, as the water is drawn into a separate system from the Mississippi River, not the polluted lake, and filtered through self-powered purification plants separate from the main electric grid. If necessary, people could have boiled their water – strangely, the municipal natural gas used in stoves was still functioning properly as of Thursday night of that first week! I have not received a response from Gov. Blanco.
MSNBC interviewed dozens of people who had managed to get out during the first few days. Every single one interviewed was white.
The people who are poor (primarily Blacks but many poor Whites as well) were locked in the Superdome and not allowed to leave – five days of hell. Those who survived the first dome were then bussed out of the area to another stadium, the AstroDome in Houston.
Call them "People of the Dome."
The Grassroots Organizes Itself
Gulf Coast resident Latosha Brown reports that the first group to send emergency supplies was TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, a prison ministry in Dothan, Alabama founded and staffed by ex-offenders. They organized food, pooled their money for additional goods and brought the supplies to a second organization of former prisoners in Mobile who distributed them, while they went back to Dothan for more. "That's why we tell everybody now that it was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need, the first to get up and do something. They didn't wait for permission or for a contract. That's real leadership." (See "Rescue Came from the Grassroots: The People, Not FEMA, Saved Themselves," by Bruce Dixon, in The Black Commentator.)
Volunteer medics have now established free clinics with the Common Ground Collective (www.commongroundrelief.org) in defiance of governmental edicts and machine guns. Others, working in solidarity with tribal leaders, have created a dedicated relief effort for Native American communities (www.intuitivepath.org/relief.html). Food Not Bombs volunteers have been feeding people all over the region, with no help from the government or Red Cross (www.foodnotbombs.net/dollar_for_peace.html).
From Day One, huge war profiteering corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel and other private contractors began descending on the region, their pockets stuffed with billions of dollars in government handouts. Currently, thousands of poor homeowners and rental tenants – including those unable to return to New Orleans just yet, having been evacuated to the far away domes – are being evicted, says Mike Howell, who is organizing tenants to resist eviction. The phony "reconstruction" of New Orleans begins with the land grab and with Mayor Nagin proposing gambling casinos, which he says would "rescue" the city (while destroying the remaining wetlands).
Many people are resisting this blatant confiscation of their lands and homes. If the resistance grows, New Orleans may soon become known as the first battle of the new American Revolution.
Mitchel Cohen is co-editor of "G", the newspaper of the NY State Greens.
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Many Rescue and Relief Efforts Effective
Katrina: Direct Action vs. Government Guns
Imagine an alternative Katrina scenario where progressives, firefighters and nurses are in power. They can effectively respond to disaster in ways that the US government cannot. While the natural disaster might not have been avoided, the humanitarian disaster could have been largely prevented.
Firefighters are paid to be trained, supplied, coordinated and ready to jump at moments' notice in anticipation of possible disaster. We even pay them to go to false alarms, which are expensive
Health care workers such as nurses also spend most of their time taking care of simple and non-emergency cases. Yet they are prepared to handle critical emergencies, care for their patients as human beings, and are health advocates - counseling illness prevention.
It is progressives with their principles of equality that work to eliminate poverty and racism as a structural necessity that can prioritize people instead of inequality.
In the dry Algiers section of New Orleans, community activist Malik Rahim demanded opening empty schools, churches and centers to evacuees. His mosque became a first aid clinic. Progressive organization Move On! Called on Americans to open up their houses to evacuees -- a humane and sensible option. Meanwhile the government housed military personnel in luxury New Orleans hotels and spacious “tent cities” with full facilities. They and the Red Cross evacuated poor, homeless survivors across the country and into crowded, dangerous, militarized shelters. Crowded shelters spread more diseases than the natural disaster.
Despite the need for a civil humanitarian response, the government's rescue operation has been a massive show of security forces with New Orleans resembling Baghdad. FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Association), folded into the post 9-11 super Department of Homeland Security, disregarded concrete threats of natural disasters which was its original mandate, concentrating on imagined terrorist threats.
To understand the federal response to Katrina, you need to understand its activity as a continuation of post 9-11 and the Iraq occupation: to militarize and privatize, promote the menace of crime and terrorism, intimidate the population while eviscerating social services, minority and worker rights.
Nevertheless, effective progressive community-based responses have emerged. In the mostly poor black community of Algiers New Orleans, a call-out from progressive community organizers with *Common Ground was met by volunteers providing relief and home repairs to survivors, and by action-medics who established a free health clinic. Public health officials acknowledge that the clinic now staffed by volunteer health professionals, has out-performed other state and private clinics in the storm-battered region. Supported by a variety of national progressive organizations, Common Ground is building a nucleus of community-controlled social infrastructure that is both efficient and essential. Meanwhile, as clinics and hospitals run short-staffed or close for lack of staff, the Feds echoing the Louisiana government now tell volunteer health workers they are no longer needed.
Government agencies and military units organized for terrorism and combat have been ineffective and scary for the hurricane survivors. Security forces occupied New Orleans sweeping the streets with patrols -- but the streets were not swept of fetid garbage. Humvees were brought in while garbage trucks were kept out. They, the Red Cross, the media and the many charities treated the majority black and survivors, as charity problems or even domestic criminal "insurgents" to be controlled, not people to be in solidarity with to be in solidarity with. We have witnessed countless frightening examples of these agencies dominated by middle class white managers treating poor survivors with disrespect and disappearing them across the U.S. without support or identification. Meanwhile, the Red Cross never missed an opportunity to advertise for donations to itself for hurricane relief.
Most of the flooded and destroyed houses of New Orleans are in poor black neighborhoods. Presently, a thinly disguised campaign of ethnic cleansing is being implemented: Damaged houses in New Orleans are painted with X's by FEMA. A Green X means the house is habitable and its residents can stay. If your house gets a Red X, you must be out of it by curfew, and must LEAVE the Orleans Parish if you cannot find another place to stay. Intentionally, the government is NOT providing local temporary shelter for these New Orleans residents forced out of their city.
Various levels of government have committed their share of racist and criminal acts- i.e. The Sheriff's Department of the largely white middle class Jefferson Parish shot over the heads of escaping survivors from New Orleans on a bridge preventing their evacuation into their parish. Yet the same sheriff previously provided busses for people fleeing, but clamped down when a few evacuees committed crimes. Two days after the flooding, the Feds called for a massive boat rescue - then prevented the three hundred volunteer Cajun boaters who were the most efficient water rescuers from launching their boats.
These were not conspiracies - it was business as usual of how America treats black and poor people.
As super agencies forced emergency crews to wait a week in Atlanta and other far off places before they could arrive, community organizations and residents welcomed help that got through. Independent rescue boaters disregarded authorities and took to the water. Churches used their resources and networks to provide vital support. Members of military units and large bureaucracies sought ways to cut red tape and do the right thing. A pattern emerges of thousands of competent people and groups only able to help by sidestepping official agencies and rules that obstruct and frustrate rescue and relief efforts.
Katrina created an enormous spirit of helpfulness that swept away traditional divisions. Our health clinic works with government and university health departments. Members of the Army 82nd Airborne in Algiers brought patients and medical supplies to the "Black Panther Clinic" as they called us. The California National Guard asked us to staff another clinic they opened up, and offered to protect us from the New Orleans police and shady city councilors. The Sewage and Water Treatment Authority come to us for care, and house our staff at a FEMA-run tent city.
We proved there are principled ways of caring for each other that effectively counter manmade disasters. Progressive, community initiatives strive to maintain a "People-First" principle. We develop collective organizational models that build multi-directional communication networks and flexible decision-making. Moreover, the lesson from Katrina is that despite the reputation of agencies, one always works with individuals and departments within. A little respect goes a long way, and initiative, persistence and direct-action can trump bureaucracy and corruption.
Models and principles that work:
Social politics of equality and dignity for all so that disaster victims do not become doubly class or race victims.
Supporting the communities to survive and rebuild as they see fit.
A simple and effective prevention and rescue model that builds on and mobilizes the voluntarism and good will of intrepid people.
A flexible organizational structure that facilitates networking with autonomous activity.
Selection of coordinators that are competent, not friends of those in power.
Aid to groups and organizations --community, cultural, religious, etc.-- that have a working history and a giving spirit to do the right thing.
Goals:
No one left behind. All treated with dignity. The right of survivors to return and live in a community under their control.
Until we become a society that cares for everyone, then any disaster affecting large numbers of poor people and minorities will always be a humanitarian disaster. We must stop waiting for government to change and take direct action to create the society we need.
Scott Weinstein is a nurse volunteer at Common Ground
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Rescue Came from the Grassroots
The People, Not FEMA, Saved Themselves
From her Atlanta home, former Gulf Coast resident Latosha Brown and a few friends watched the man-made catastrophe unfold in the wake Hurricane Katrina.
"We kept expecting to see the National Guard, the government, the Red Cross, somebody to do something. The idea that our leaders would allow people to fend for themselves two, three, five days with no food, water, medicine or help from outside – we just couldn't get our minds around it.
"People were dying by the hundreds in New Orleans, and more folks we knew in Mississippi, in Alabama were hurt, missing and homeless or hungry. You've got two choices when you see something like that. Choice one is to feel defeated. Choice two is to be pro-active and do something about it. There were about six of us in my living room at that moment, all movement vets. We called around to see what we could make happen ourselves.
"The first folks to send a couple of vans of food and supplies was TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, a prison ministry in Dothan AL founded and staffed by ex-offenders. They organized food from a food bank, pooled their money to get additional goods and moved it to Mobile where they connected with a second organization of formerly incarcerated brothers down there to distribute it while they went back to Dothan for more. That's why we tell everybody now that it was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need, the first to get up and do something. They didn’t wait for permission or for a contract. That’s real leadership.”
The Real Leaders
Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan Alabama and Paul Jackson of Mobile each spent a decade in prison. Both are part of a network of black civic and religious organizations that have fought for years to restore the right to vote to over 200,000 former prisoners in Alabama, most of them African American men. Glasgow and his organization hustled food and got the first vans on the road southbound to the gulf. Jackson and his organization met the vans and guided them to where the need was greatest. “We started going into the projects,” said Glasgow. “We went to Orange Grove and other places, somewhere the water had reached second floor windows, but nobody had seen FEMA or the Red Cross. We just started targeting areas where nobody else was coming.”
The former prisoners found small and medium sized black churches in the affected area who also hadn't been contacted by the Red Cross or any government agency but who'd mobilized their own members to begin feeding their neighborhoods. The ex-offenders began sharing their supplies, their contacts and their information about unmet needs with these community partners. By the second food and water trip south, the former prisoners were bringing families out of flooded and devastated areas back to safety and temporary housing, and soon the ex-felons were driving in shifts with vans moving both ways around the clock.
Abandoned by the Government
Brown and her friends imagined that by their second or third trip south, local or federal officials, the National Guard or someone in authority would be on the scene to feed people, to evacuate the sick, homeless and injured, restore essential services, assess the damage and generally do what governments of modern and civilized societies are expected to do. But in Gulf Coast Alabama and Mississippi, just as in New Orleans, it didn’t happen.
“When we realized this wouldn’t be over in a couple days, we hit the phones again,” Latosha Brown told BC. “We asked for help from community and civic organizations we’d worked with, from churches we knew, from businesses and individuals and doors just flew open. It was amazing. One friend was able to get $10,000 worth of food donated, but it sat there all morning because we had no way to move it. A brother in the community, a truck driver stepped up and volunteered to get it down to the Gulf Coast for gas money. Paul Jackson down in Mobile got us a warehouse to receive goods being sent, and somebody’s supervisor on the job lent a forklift and driver. We found more vans in other places, and on the fourth day our group in Selma working with a local church opened up a shelter for a hundred people. Every truck and van that carried supplies down brought families out on the way back, including a number of Cambodian and Vietnamese families…”
“The black churches tapped their own networks,” said Paul Jackson of One For Life in Mobile. “Donations, supplies and volunteers came from churches all over Mississippi and Alabama. We got help from churches in Minnesota, Maryland and Virginia that arrived in black neighborhoods before anybody from FEMA or the Red Cross. Still, even after the arrival of official help we kept finding pockets of mostly black people bypassed or ignored by FEMA and the Red Cross.
This should have been no surprise. Much of the National Guard was in Iraq. FEMA never demanded that Red Cross officials expand their personal network of contacts across the tracks into Black Biloxi, Black Mobile, Black Gulfport and Black Pascagoula. So well stocked and well-supplied Red Cross operations sat in white churches only a short distance from predominantly black areas which had not been reached by any private or government relief agency before black churches and black ex-offenders and black grassroots organizations took matters into their own hands.
Ex-Offenders Are First Responders
“We didn’t get as much help from the Red Cross as we expected,” Latosha Brown told BC, “and at first we put it down to them just being overwhelmed. But the pattern we saw of them failing to notice the needs in our community when they were just so close, failing to partner with those on the ground doing work in those areas when they have no problem accepting donations from black people was really disturbing.
“I flew down to Gulfport on my own dime, partly to meet with local Red Cross officials. It was a real disappointment to be in a place where all these supplies and resources were concentrated, and see them make very little effort to partner with their own neighbors, with black churches, with the formerly incarcerated brothers and others who were on the ground serving the neighborhoods where we knew the need was so great.
“I never answer my cell phone during meetings, but somehow the spirit told me I should answer it during this particular meeting, this one time. It was some of our people driving the vans. Three of our vans on the way north out of the flooded areas were loaded with evacuees, but no cash and about to run out of gas somewhere in Mississippi. They were calling me because they knew I might have a credit card. I was in a meeting with several Red Cross bigwigs but I couldn’t get any of them to help gas up our guys on the road, not a one. We got next to no help from the Red Cross that day. On the way out they offered us a couple cases of juicy juice and some overripe bananas. I wanted to cry.”
Whether Brown cried that day or not, the coalition of churches, community organizations, business people, former prisoners and others engaged in grassroots relief effort soldiered on. By September 15th they had moved $100,000 worth of food and supplies to affected areas, gained access to eight buses, had evacuated over a thousand people and were helping supply and run four shelters. Through contacts with realtors and builders they were arranging temporary and permanent housing for families, and funneling volunteers from dozens of churches to affected areas to assist in cleanup. A week later, just before this article’s press time, SOS After Katrina had secured the cooperation of the National Medical Association, the premiere organization of African American physicians to provide medical services to some evacuees and persons in affected areas.
“We call ourselves SOS After Katrina,” said Latosha Brown. “That stands for Saving Our Selves, cause if we don’t who will?”
What is a Government for?
Brown and the coalition of organizations that make up SOS Katrina know that taking care of citizens is still the responsibility of government, and they vow to stick around for the political fight to make that happen. But since it did not happen this time, they stepped up. The Red Cross did not fulfill its responsibility to serve the whole community. SOS After Katrina and the black church will continue to struggle with them – not against them, but with them, to help fix this too. Again, if we don’t fight to save ourselves, who will?
The same Thursday night that BC interviewed Latosha Brown President Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans. The president’s hypocritical lip service to the right of the city’s evacuated residents to return and to remain, was followed by a $50 billion dollar pledge and a wage of cost-plus, no-bid contracts to corrupt military contractors that included Halliburton and Bechtel. This, and the suspension of the 70-year-old Davis-Bacon Act, allowing federal contractors to further lower the already low prevailing wages in the region are just the beginning. The good people at OMB Watch put it like this:
“The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has unveiled a vast plan for using the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast as an excuse for broad rollbacks of federal protections, including environmental, worker health and safety, and minimum wage standards….
“The president's recent speech announcing the White House's plan for reconstruction of the region included reference to a "Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone." Though Bush gave little detail of what such an opportunity zone would entail, the Heritage Foundation report using the same language details a vast give-away to corporate special interests and a full-scale repeal of health and safety protections.
If the Heritage Foundation and the Bush Administration have their way the Gulf states will be the scene of more crimes against public safety, health and prosperity in the months and years to come. They are not the least bit ashamed to tell us so, and some of the first legislative proposals along this line were submitted September 15.
We have seen grassroots black leaders in our churches and community organizations answer the call to pull together a people’s relief effort in response to the government’s failure to plan and provide for its citizens in crisis.
The question now is whether members of our established black political leadership are willing to relentlessly expose the root causes of these failures and make sure they never happen again. What will black political leadership do to protect us and the nation from Bush’s cynical “Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone”? What good are institutions like the Congressional Black Caucus if they do not offer real alternative visions, hold public hearings, educate the public, and campaign for concrete remedies. Unity of the caucus would be nice, but clarity and an opposing vision of what the Gulf coast must look like, what America must look like are far more important at this time.
The grassroots leadership has stepped up. Now it is time for members of the Congressional Black Caucus to find their voices. So far, the contrast between the can-do spirit of our churches and community organizations, and yes, our organized ex-offenders and what we hear from most of our black faces in high places is glaring, obvious and a little sad.
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The People’s Hurricane Fund Presents
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