By: Wajid Jenkins
November 28, 2005
PREPARATIONS: Farmers Leave the Farm
Harvest season in the Midwest is hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. Late August is a busy time in our gardens, with tomatoes to process, corn to pick, and compost to turn. Alongside dedicated friends and family, I help run an organic farm on the city limits of Madison, Wisconsin. This August, 2005, our small collective was working beautifully, canning sauce and husking ears into the night. Satisfied and exhausted by each day’s labor, I was almost oblivious to the rest of the world; but on August 29, the radio in the greenhouse announced that Hurricane Katrina had made landfall 60 miles east of New Orleans, Louisiana. Within days, the government and economy of the region had collapsed, New Orleans was under water, relief was tangled in negligence, and the US military had been deployed in combat operations in the city. We listened to the darkening news in astonishment as we dried cherry tomatoes and shelled walnuts, wondering what we could do to help.
The decision to deliver aid to the Gulf Coast was not easy to make. We had responsibilities here, we debated, and wouldn’t we just get in the way? None of us had done “relief work” before, and it was difficult to get good information about where to go and what was needed. We discussed whether or not it was worth the fuel, time and effort. We got word from people who established bases of operation and were in need of supplies. After making dozens of phone calls, it was clear that grassroots groups were filling a crucial role, and they needed food, water and helping hands right away. By the end of the first week in September, we had decided to go and were working day and night both in the gardens and in our makeshift relief office in the greenhouse.
Harvest season means great abundance in the Midwest, and we decided our biggest priority was to solicit donations from local farms and deliver them to the Gulf Coast. Our first task was to find vehicles to carry the supplies. I have a small school bus, and we put out the word we were looking for another vehicle. In no time, John Kinsman sent his friend Taave McMahon to us with a full-sized bus and time to make the trip. John Peck in the Madison office of Family Farm Defenders offered to act as a sponsor of our efforts and The Peoples’ Relief Caravan was officially underway. We made phone calls to growers throughout the region, trolled farmers markets for surplus, and sent out dozens of emails requesting donations of medicine, tools and supplies. We may have been the only relief effort organized from the middle of a farm, and our crowing rooster provided rural ambiance in the background of the phone calls as we coordinated the caravan.
Our deepest support came from a close community of friends and family here in Madison. It was an all-volunteer caravan on a threadbare shoestring, leaving town on short notice. We were compelled to leave behind kids, loved ones, a garden harvest, cats, chickens, and many important tasks. We could only do that thanks to friends who supported us from here, tending pepper plants, feeding the kids and such. Government help comes from anonymous distances, while mutual aid draws on the strength of entire communities. I am thankful to live amongst people who have been willing to extend and share our limited resources.
We received donations from many generous people here in the Midwest. More than four dozen people sent money to the FFD office, and donations are still arriving. The Madison Infoshop and the Freewheel Community Workshop opened their doors as storage and staging areas. In Madison, local businesses like Community Pharmacy, Nature’s Bakery, Mifflin Street Coop and Cedar Grove Cheese contributed food, insulin, medical supplies and more. The farmers of the Eastside Farmers Market and Hilldale Farmers Market gave very generously with the help of Susan Young who picked up and delivered the donations to our warehouse. Vermont Valley CSA and Tipi Produce of Madison both sent many wax boxes of food. Farm Aid funded the fuel costs for both vehicles to and from the Gulf Coast. Many other people volunteered time and money to help us sort, organize and pack the vehicles and get on the road.
Both vehicles are diesel buses, and we were able to run a portion of the trip on biodiesel made in the Midwest. Taave had 110 gallons of biodiesel on board and drove to Epes, Alabama on that fuel. The Freewheel Workshop has a small processor in which we make fuel from waste vegetable oil; my bus has run on 100% “homebrew” biodiesel for three years. Sadly, we had no stockpile ready on short notice and were forced to make much of the trip on petroleum diesel. Thanks to Great Lakes Biofuels here in Madison and Earth Biofuels in Meridian, Mississippi for help fueling the caravan.
On the evening of Thursday September 15, Taave and three others rolled out of town, with the springs on his big purple bus nearly flattened. It was packed with over 10,000 pounds of potatoes, and we filled in the gaps with other produce, diapers, medical supplies, school materials and personal hygiene items. After picking up more donations, a second group of four of us drove out two days later and we all met up in the low hills of western Alabama.
KATRINA AND THE RURAL SOUTH: Food Sovereignty and the Farmers
Hurricane Katrina was the third most powerful storm of the 2005 season, behind Wilma and Rita. It first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just north of Miami, Florida on August 25, 2005, then again on August 29 along the central Gulf Coast near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana as a Category 4 storm. It spawned 175 M.P.H. winds and hit the coast from New Orleans to Gulfport with storm surges up to 40 feet high. Katrina’s impact was felt over 300 miles of coastline and some 200 miles inland.
Driving southeast into Alabama, we could tell we had arrived in the hurricane region. Torn and damaged billboards lined the roadside, and metal roofs were peeled off like tin cans. In the young pine forests, we saw tree after tree snapped off and piled in brown jumbles. We left the Interstate and turned onto county roads leading toward Epes, Alabama. Soft light from the sunset put a friendly glow on the scene and people leaned on fenders to visit at corner stores in towns like Giles and Gainesville. The air was heavy and hot, and I tried to imagine a week with no power or ice or deliveries of basic supplies.
Our destination was the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Rural Training & Research Center in Epes, Alabama. The Federation was formed over thirty years out of the struggle for survival in low-income farming communities in the southern U.S. In 1985, the Federation joined forces with the Land Assistance Fund to help Black farmers save their landholdings. Now there are over 70 cooperative member groups, with a membership of more than 20,000 families working together across ten southern states. Through democratic organization, the cooperatives strive to build self-supporting communities, foster economic self-sufficiency and assist in land retention and sustainable development. Thanks to contact made through FFD and Farm Aid, we had the pleasure of helping the Federation/LAF get supplies to a community in great need.
From the news in Wisconsin, I never would have known that rural Alabama needed help two weeks after the hurricane. We discovered that storm damage was very widespread and the government response was sluggish and limited. Throughout the area family farmers had their homes, farm buildings, equipment and crops destroyed by winds and rain. In many cases, especially in isolated rural communities, power and phone service was not restored until weeks after the storm. A sheriff in nearby Hattiesburg, MS shared a story with me that I heard echoed by others in the area. He said that he didn’t see any government aid for ten days, and it took him two days to cut his way out of his own driveway. As the days passed and no help arrived, he had been compelled to break into a military base outside of town and commandeer trucks to get water and ice to desperate people.
Farmers also lost major direct and commercial marketing outlets that were destroyed in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. The Crescent City Farmers Market in New Orleans that served as a lucrative outlet for Mississippi farmers was totaled. Casinos in Biloxi, Mississippi, that were also good marketing outlets for our farmers, were completely destroyed. Many Federation buildings and Coop facilities in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama were also damaged. The support network built by the farmers and the Federation had suffered a big hit with Katrina, and the Federation had mobilized a massive effort to receive and distribute donations.
The Federation/LAF set up six Disaster Relief Distribution Centers in three states, and from what we saw in Epes, they were very effective. The Federation was able to reach thousands of people that FEMA and the Red Cross didn't even know about yet. We unloaded our donations into cool storage the night we arrived. We backed up to the door and a dozen people appeared to help ferry boxes inside. A meeting and dance for community elders was happening in the big hall and people were dressed in fine clothes, despite the muggy night air. We had a happy reunion with the rest of our caravan and heard the grim news of a catastrophic breakdown with Taave’s purple bus. But the good news was that almost all of the many bags of potatoes and supplies they had delivered the day before were already gone. The Federation was getting it right into the hands of people who needed it. The following day, we saw everything we had brought picked up by dozens of people from the area. We heard abundant gratitude and appreciation for our efforts. Strong handshakes, tearful thank-yous, and many embraces told us we were doing the right thing. Any doubts we had on the journey south faded away, and our arguments over how to be useful became unimportant.
My bus got a flat tire pulling into Epes, and a day for repairs gave us all a chance to build strong connections with the people at the Federation’s Training Center. The staff at the Center did their best to find help on a Sunday afternoon. Thanks are due to Debra Eatman and Amadou Diop who both went out of their way to host our stranded crew. Our people got busy helping to distribute supplies, tend goats and plant collard starts. Meanwhile I toured the farms and towns around Epes in search of a used tire for my hobbled bus.
Abe Harris and I drove twisting roads through hills and valleys covered in patches of oak woods and pine forests. Mr. Harris talked about his family’s history as small farmers. In a region rich with farms, Alabama faces a crisis familiar to family farmers around the world. Families that once lived off their farms have been pushed out of the market by cheap imported produce and rising expenses. In addition, Mr. Harris explained, younger generations have been migrating to cities like Memphis and Jackson, leaving family land untended. Mr. Harris sees young people looking to urban jobs as a way to escape a rural life that still carries a stigma left by the repression of the sharecropping system of years past. Many farmers now depend on the sale of timber from their land and some others have turned to livestock. At the Federation, Amadou has been helping develop goat herds in an impressive program to create a niche market for local farms.
In storm-ravaged communities, with government aid slow to arrive, the issue of food sovereignty comes to the fore. Mr. Harris spoke about how smaller hurricanes of the past would rarely leave such a crippled local infrastructure. He lamented the loss of food sovereignty in his own family, reflecting on his childhood when the only food his family bought at a store was flour and sugar. I thought a lot about that as we sweated to unload such staples as onions and potatoes for whole communities of ex-farmers and children of farmers. In a Wal-Mart economy, many local stores are out of business and we all rely on shipping and retail networks for our very survival. When one storm on an August night can disable a whole region and threaten the lives of millions, it makes me wonder how we can call our food system secure. Total economic breakdown is a harsh reminder of the importance of the basics, and of our vulnerability if we give away the power to feed ourselves to the free-market.
After a hot Sunday afternoon of work, the bus was ready to drive again and we prepared for departure. We had delivered close to 15,000 pounds of food and supplies and learned much from our new friends in Epes, Alabama. Unfortunately, Taave’s bus had made its final journey for the time being. A gaping hole in one of the cylinders had forced a change in plans. Amadou towed it to a nice parking spot and Taave vowed to return with an engine rebuild in the works. The rest of us set our sights on a grassroots effort underway in coastal Mississippi where friends from Wisconsin had been working hard to feed survivors.
Federation of Southern Cooperatives
http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/index.html
Farm Aid
http://www.farmaid.org/
THE NEW WAVELAND CAFÉ: The Rainbow Family F Inds? a Home
South from Meridian, Mississippi, Interstate 59 cuts through the heart of the territory hit by Katrina. We passed our first checkpoint entering Mississippi, telling a highway patrol officer that we were doing relief work on the coast. As we got closer to Gulfport, we felt like we were entering a war zone. Three weeks after the storm, only the main roads were completely cleared, and highway signs along the interstate were still toppled and lying in tangled heaps. Most billboards were torn off or bent over, and almost every building was damaged. Huge trees were snapped and thrown into houses and vehicles, and long stretches of forest along the road looked like the proverbial matchsticks. The sounds of thousands of breaking trees and twisting metal must have made for a long night. It didn’t look like there was any safe place to go on August 29.
Night overcame us as we turned west on Interstate-10. Military vehicles and convoys of police cars passed our little bus racing into the night. We exited the freeway and drove south toward the coast on Highway 607. We took a wrong turn in the dark, and crossed a railroad track into the center of ground zero of Katrina's landfall. In the dim headlights, all we saw was wreckage with no structure standing. Police cars found us and told us to turn around, as the area was still closed. As we navigated a u-turn, the smell of death poured in from the broken world around us. Katrina brought a storm surge of seawater said to have been over 30 feet deep that pushed 5 miles inland with a 4 knot current. Cars were piled in heaps and whole houses picked up and smashed into bits. The railroad tracks we drove across were twisted like taffy in some places. In the middle of this were over 10,000 residents in half a dozen small towns. The storm surge caught people in the middle of the night and the survivors have countless harrowing tales.
Back over the tracks we drove down a main street lined with junk cars and wreckage, dotted with police and military posted to parking lot entrances. Monday, September 19, we arrived at parking lot of Fred’s department store, 790 US Rt. 90. It was full of debris and supplies, piled in jumbles from many days of activity. Since a few days after Katrina hit, church groups and other volunteers had been carving out a warm and generous atmosphere in which they worked day and night to organize donations and cook food for thousands of locals, laborers and government officials.
The area came to be known as the New Waveland Café and Market, mainly a collaboration of the Rainbow Family and the Bastrop Christian Outreach Center from outside of Austin, Texas. Originally, a day after Katrina three people from Bastrop, Texas drove here with a truckload of supplies and found a deserted town. As they unloaded their small truck of food and clothing, people came out of the forest in a daze. The force of the storm surge ripped their clothes off and many were literally left wandering in the woods in a wasteland of floodwaters, wreckage, petroleum and sewage. In the following days as the dedicated people from Bastrop struggled to ferry supplies in, other groups made their way here. Still no FEMA in sight. The Red Cross arrived and briefly set up a supply depot, but left soon after. In a few more days, The Rainbow family caravan arrived and they set up a big kitchen and tents in the parking lot. In a short time, they were serving meals to over 2,000 people a day, and they have continued each day since, with the numbers growing to over 4,000 people as more workers and residents returned to the area. The operation included a free medical clinic that offered vaccinations, check-ups, and other services. In another example of farmers coming to the aid of hurricane survivors, Organic Valley from LaFarge, WI has been providing a lot of food and logistical support for these crucial kitchens. The New Waveland Café is a unique model of grassroots relief and collaboration across cultural divides. I have included links to news reports and web logs below for more detailed histories and ongoing stories of the New Waveland Café. It will continue to serve the people of Waveland until a final blowout party over Thanksgiving weekend.
Our crew of volunteers worked well in Waveland, and we stayed for a week, cooking, cleaning and providing support. We sautéed fresh organic vegetables, scrambled eggs, blended fruit smoothies, grilled pork chops, and washed salads. We played music and shared stories with locals. We sorted endless piles of bottled water, batteries, diapers, toiletries and clothes. Some of us spent the week in the medical clinic helping provide care to dozens of locals. In a week’s time, we saw the kitchen crew turn over and get replenished by new volunteers streaming in. A Waldorf school in Viroqua, Wisconsin managed to send teams of 8 capable volunteers down every week. People from around the country responded to calls put out in the Rainbow Family networks.
On Friday September 23, we rode out part of Hurricane Rita, and worked hard to batten down for landfall. The entire operation, including huge tents and piles of donations had to be broken down, tightly tarped and relocated in a small tent set up behind the shelter of two Rainbow buses. As Rita’s outer bands passed overhead, we contemplated which ditches to dive in during the tornado warnings and scoured the sky for signs of funnel clouds. FEMA, the military, the Red Cross, the mobile hospital down the road all evacuated. By the morning of Saturday September 24, the New Waveland Café was the only relief operation that stayed put as Rita made landfall at the Texas-Louisiana border.
Waveland became a huge distribution center for donations, and despite filling a need for many locals, the abundance proved overwhelming. With no functioning government services and many organizations vying for a stake in the relief work, it was often unclear who was responsible for receiving and organizing donations that arrived by the truckload. Rainbow people processed donations for the kitchen, and Bastrop volunteers organized the free store and these efforts worked over the long term to shape a chaotic scene into an efficient supply depot. But in the interim we saw many valuable supplies go to waste as clothes got soaked in the rain and boxes of apples went unclaimed. We decided to move on and try to distribute supplies from Waveland to other areas that were still not receiving aid. We packed up the bus and drove west into New Orleans.
Rainbow Emergency Relief Assembly
http://www.remarelief.net/
Organic Valley, One Organic Way, La Farge, WI 54639
tel. 888-809-9297 http://organicvalley.coop/
NEW ORLEANS: Mutual Aid in the Occupied City
We crossed the 30 mile long Lake Ponchartrain Causeway into New Orleans on September 25. It was sunny but still windy with bands of clouds moving across the sky the day after Rita passed through. The highway wasn’t busy as the city of New Orleans was still officially closed to returning residents. Many had been told they could return and then ordered to stay away again during Rita’s wandering approach. We shared the road with semi trucks and military vehicles. The city came into view, magically rising from the lake in the hazy distance. Many helicopters crowded the air over the city, including the twin-rotor military transport Chinooks. The causeway ramp leading into the city revealed a surreal urban landscape of debris, tangled power lines and broken everything. High rise towers that once glittered with privilege looked haggard and defeated with countless broken panes and fabric fluttering in the empty windows. I had half-expected to find a city on the mend, but instead saw wreckage that again reminded me of war-torn cities in other countries.
We headed across the Mississippi River to the neighborhood of Algiers, which sits on high ground on the West Bank and never flooded during the aftermath of Katrina. I had received a call from Scott Crow, an activist friend from Austin, the week before we left Wisconsin. He was working with New Orleans organizer and politician Malik Rahim to establish a base of operations for grassroots relief in the Algiers neighborhood. They named their fledgling organization Common Ground Collective and put out a call to social justice activists around the country to come help. Crow, Rahim and others had ridden out the storm and were then forced to weather the violent aftermath during which white power vigilantes and unrestrained police teams patrolled the neighborhoods shooting civilians on sight. Bodies were left to rot for weeks in the streets near Malik’s home, and a military perimeter sealed off the survivors in the city from shipments of aid.
Reinforcements arrived in Algiers during the week our group had stayed in Waveland. Activists from Food Not Bombs and Mayday DC braved the checkpoints and began to build infrastructure to supply relief. They were working to do what the government wasn’t: providing food and supplies and medical care to the people of New Orleans. Malik’s home on Atlantic Avenue was to become the collective hub and supply depot, and a mosque on Teche Street offered up its building to house a free medical clinic. Their slogan was spray-painted on plywood in front of the clinic: “solidarity not charity.”
We spent a week camped out with the Common Ground Collective. We made three trips back to Waveland and returned with much-needed supplies. We donated our kitchen gear to the backyard camp that housed dozens of volunteers who came to help. And we joined in on many other projects coordinated by activists at Common Ground. Some of us helped nail tarps on damaged roofs, while others worked to set up free computer access for community centers in other parts of town. I helped establish a low-power and internet radio station that aired independent news and community announcements.
The scene in the city remained tense and led to taut nerves and fragile emotions. Volunteers worked under the gaze of countless law enforcement agencies from around the country, in addition to all branches of the military. A young volunteer from the neighborhood was arrested the night we arrived and was beaten and threatened during the ride to jail. The city shut down every night at dusk when curfew began. We were urged to stay on Malik’s property and couldn’t even walk the sidewalk to a neighboring house. Helicopters hovered over the backyard camp blasting tired volunteers with rotor wash and the glare of the searchlight. If anything, the government’s efforts at maintaining order kept us from helping in many ways: we were hindered in our movements by checkpoints and curfews, and the constant police attention amounted to official harassment of overtaxed volunteers.
Two of our people spent the week taking supplies to rural parishes south of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina had inundated bayou fishing communities in Terrebonne Parish, and Rita brought even more floods to the area, submerging whole villages that had survived Katrina. These rural communities are very diverse, including African-americans, Vietnamese immigrants, and native people of the Houma Nation and other coastal tribes who still await federal recognition. After Rita swept through, the bayou communities didn’t see FEMA or the Red Cross for close to two weeks after the storm. Common Ground volunteers brought some of the very first aid deliveries those communities received. See the links to the Houma Nation and Four Directions Relief for more info about these communities.
After a week with Common Ground, our group decided to move across the river into the Seventh Ward of New Orleans. One of our group had spent a couple of days helping at another neighborhood supply center working to provide community relief, and we all decided to join the effort. We set up camp at the house of Mama Dee, on Dorgenois Street just off of St. Bernard Avenue. Mama Dee is a 60 year old community organizer who resolved to stay through Katrina and be on hand to help her neighbors. It was here that we heard the chilling tales from the flooded city. According to Mama Dee and her friends, Katrina was followed by a string of human rights abuses inflicted by all levels of government. They list three basic rights they demand be respected: the right to rescue, the right to return to their homes and the right to rebuild.
Mama Dee and her friends lived through Katrina and after the levies broke, they found their neighborhood under six feet of water. The days passed as their community struggled to cope with the flood while stockpiles of food and water dwindled. In a short time, they had organized their friends into a neighborhood rescue team they called the “Soul Patrol”. Some thirty or so brave folks took the rescue effort into their own hands. Paddling boats and wading in chest-deep water, they brought over 2000 people to safety in abandoned public schools and other areas of high ground. They recovered bodies of friends, lost family members and helped their community through untold personal tragedies.
Instead of delivering rescue, the military and the police engaged New Orleans in a city-wide raid. On Wednesday August 31, city officials withdrew law enforcement from search and rescue and ordered them to security operations. Right to rescue: denied. Reggae and Merc, two locals from the Soul Patrol, tell of disturbing horrors during the two weeks after the streets flooded with water. Merc saw countless helicopters pass overhead, yet none landed in his neighborhoods with deliveries of water or food. Instead, the news helicopters filmed the tragedy from above, and military helicopters disrupted the survivors own rescue attempts. Reggae recounted how his boat kept getting blown around in the rotor wash. As people struggled to survive, they became targets for indiscriminate shooting, arrest and beating. Reggae lost his 15 year old son in the aftermath of the storm and went to search for his body in the water. Instead of finding his son’s remains, he was arrested at gunpoint and shown as a looter on the evening news. Vigilantes bent on “protecting property” perched atop buildings and rode with police in pickup trucks. SWAT teams from various agencies descended on hot spots of “resistance” (like the Convention Center) with paramilitary force. In the course of this repression, untold numbers of innocent people were killed in the city. Most residents know the official body count is low and tell stories of bodies floating off down the river or being eaten by dogs and alligators. Body recovery was limited and most were left to rot, so evidence of the killing is left to anecdotes from survivors.
For weeks, the right to return was denied as residents were turned away at roadblocks. Residents returning home to look over the destruction have been subjected to beatings, arrest, imprisonment and verbal abuse. Close to 100 people were arrested each day for bogus charges and curfew violations. The detainees were housed at a makeshift prison camp at the Amtrack Station, where abuse and violations of basic rights were rampant. City government is a long way from recovered and most employees are still housed on Carnival Cruise ships anchored on the River. There is no trash collection, mail delivery or street repair being done in areas like the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Wards. Humvees with armed soldiers sticking out the roof patrol most areas of the city and truckloads of soldiers can be seen cruising the empty blocks. The only cars visible in the streets after dark were police cruisers, and Mama Dee’s home was harassed every night by cars and helicopters raking their searchlights across the empty neighborhood.
Three months after the storm, much of the city has no electrical or phone service. The majority of homes were underwater for over two weeks. Even more homes also suffered roof damage in the 170 M.P.H. winds. With roof tiles and shingles missing, later rains during Rita again soaked the homes with water. Tree debris still covers the city, with huge trunks smashed through walls and roofs and laying atop vehicles. Areas of the city that had been flooded are now stained with rings from the receding water. Cars rest at odd angles, covered with flood scum. Trash from gutted homes, rotten refrigerators, and rubble from storm damage line the streets and punctuate the air with the stench of rot. Some neighborhoods face total destruction from floodwaters and chemical contamination. The infamous Lower Ninth Ward looks like the beachfront in Waveland, with broken piles of sticks and rubble where houses stood. Neighboring Chalmette and Meraux were covered in 1 million gallons of crude oil spilled from storage tanks at the Murphy Oil refinery that floated on storm surge and broke wide open.
Meanwhile the gleaming tops of the hotels in the French Quarter can be seen rising over the dark houses in the pariah zones. The tourist industry is back in swing, with bars and hotels cleaned up and re-opened in the Quarter. Curfew is extended there and hardly enforced where the barhoppers play. In the French Quarter, the whole affair seems to have faded into the past, and little evidence of Katrina can be seen.
The right of residents to rebuild their city still hangs in uncertainty. After government efforts failed to protect New Orleanians’ rights to rescue and return, FEMA is bypassing residents in their recovery work. So far, the federal government has doled out $18 billion to private contractors doing recovery work. With estimates for total cost reaching over $100 billion, Katrina weighs in as the United States’ most costly hurricane ever. The biggest contracts have gone to debris removal firms and companies supplying trailers to house survivors. Carnival Cruise Lines received a large contract. No-bid contracts for millions have been widely criticized. Contractors awarded deals have been found to be friends of lawmakers or government agencies, and widespread abuses of labor rights have been reported. Low wages, lack of protective gear, non-payment of wages, no housing and illegal dumping are among complaints voiced by workers around the Gulf Coast. With thousands of homes and massive infrastructure to rebuild, there could be abundant paid work for locals, but contractors typically import labor, adding to the woes of desperate residents.
Close to 1 million people were displaced from New Orleans. Many of them still haven’t located friends and family separated or lost during the botched evacuations and military lockdown. Families looking to identify their dead have to submit DNA samples and wade through red tape to open a body bag in a morgue in Baton Rouge where the 1,200 bodies recovered are being stored. Many people lived through terror akin to war and the recovery process is slow. Grief is powerful. Many of the people I saw returning home had tears streaming down their faces as they drove down Dorgenois Street. The city has been devastated by the aftermath of the storm, and hope is hard to come by. In this kind of scene, I found our work especially important -- people didn’t need to be ordered around and treated like criminals, they needed loving support and help without strings attached. Because of this the government relief efforts will continue to fail the people, while grassroots groups meet surprising success.
In the middle of all this, Mama Dee and the Soul Patrol continue to work on behalf of their community. They have a house full of volunteers who work sun-up to sun-down tackling the messy business of cleaning out and rebuilding. They keep a yard stocked with free food, water, cleaning supplies and hygiene materials. They have a list of neighbors who want help and are working their way toward a grassroots revitalization of the Seventh Ward. This means donning respirators and protective suits and gutting mold-covered interiors of flooded homes. It means hauling trash from porches and yards to improvised dumps on the avenue in hopes that the city will someday return to remove it. It means hauling tarps and lumber and nails up on steep rooftops and covering holes before more rain comes. It means getting chainsaws roaring and cutting up yard after yard of downed oaks and cedars. It was amazing to work projects like this without any help from the government. The work is tiring and overwhelming and it looks like help will be needed for months to come. Mama Dee and her household are essential to their returning community: a friendly face in the wreckage and neighborly support for people who have lost everything.
Common Ground Collective
331 Atlantic Ave, New Orleans, La. 70114
Tel. (504) 368-6897 http://commongroundrelief.org /
Houma Nation
http://www.unitedhoumanation.org /
Four Directions Relief Project
P.O. Box 1059 , Bourg, LA 70343
http://www.intuitivepath.org/relief.html
Mama Dee/Soul Patrol Neighborhood Relief
please call for info: Tel: (504) 723-7738
ONGOING RELIEF WORK: Continuing Struggles, More Donations Needed
After a week in the dark and broken city, we packed the bus and headed home to our own communities. We had seen and done enough to leave lasting impressions on all of us. We drove north and returned to cold autumn weather back at the farm. We arrived just in time to dig the rest of our potatoes and plant garlic for next season. As winter approaches, we have tidied up the fields and stowed the tools. The rooster still crows in the yard.
The New Waveland Café has packed up after a three month effort in the parking lot of Fred’s. They have decided to focus their resources on opening another kitchen in the New Orleans area. Members of the original workforce in Waveland established a kitchen in the Marigny in late October. Dubbed the “Welcome Home Kitchen,” it has been serving hundreds of people from a tent encampment in Washington Square Park. It survived a threatened eviction, but its future remains uncertain. See links for info about how to contribute. The crew from the New Waveland Café has plans to open a kitchen in St. Bernard Parish. Stay in touch via info below.
The Common Ground Collective has expanded their operations and is one of the most established grassroots efforts in the area. They now have distribution centers in Algiers and the Ninth Ward, free medical clinics in both neighborhoods, legal help for tenant struggles and community support. They hosted “Roadtrip for Relief” over Thanksgiving week and coordinated huge amounts of volunteer labor on both sides of the river.
While FEMA contracts go to well-connected corporate interests, New Orleans is eyed by real-estate developers. Tenants and activists have feared that big money developers will gain control of New Orleans since Katrina struck. Section 8 landlords continue to use hurricane damage as an excuse to lock out low-income residents from functional homes and apartments. Forest Park, Louisburg Square, Terrytown and other housing projects have been struggling against illegal evictions for weeks. Residents have returned home to find their belongings on the curb and eviction notices flapping from their doors. But recently, Judge Duval, of U.S. Dist. Court Eastern District of Louisiana, ordered a stay of evictions in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, and FEMA agreed to supply contact information for tenants who live in other locations. This latest court order is good news for a low-income community fighting to return to their homes and rebuild their communities. Crucial legal work, protest marches and demonstrations at housing projects have been organized by the New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (N.O.H.E.A.T.), with support from Common Ground. This work continues.
The major media may no longer report the stories, but the reconstruction goes on. At this time, five of the original eight volunteers on the People’s Relief Caravan are back at work. One returned to Waveland to finish the season there. Four more have gone back to live with Mama Dee and help residents repair their homes. New volunteers have joined the effort and are there with our people. Donations are still needed, and more of us will be returning later in the winter. We need skilled builders, plumbers, drywallers, roofers, arborists and workers of all kinds to go down and lend a hand. Monetary donations can be sent to Family Farm Defenders. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far, and thanks to all who are about to pitch in. Solidarity not charity. Rescue, return and rebuild!
Welcome Home Kitchen
Scroll down http://www.remarelief.net /
St Bernard Parish kitchen
http://www.emergencycommunities.org /
NOHEAT housing advocates
http://www.no-heat.org /
FOR INDEPENDENT NEWS AND INFO ABOUT KATRINA RECOVERY:
New Orleans Indymedia http://neworleans.indymedia.org /
Democracy Now http://democracynow.org /
New Standard News http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_special_coverage&subject=katrina
The Times-Picayune http://www.nola.com /
DONATIONS FOR FUTURE CARAVANS CAN BE SENT TO:
Family Farm Defenders (put “Katrina” in the memo)
PO Box 1772, Madison WI 53701
Tel./Fax: 608.260.0900 http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org /
FFD is a 501 c(3) nonprofit organization, so any contribution is also tax deductible.
FAMILY FARM DEFENDERS TO HOLD NEXT ANNUAL MEETING IN HATTIESBURG, MS, MARCH 30 - APRIL 2, 2006
In addition, Family Farm Defenders will be having its annual meeting in Hattiesburg, MS over the weekend of March 30th - April 2nd, 2006 at the invitation of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives. This will be an unprecedented opportunity for folks from elsewhere to see firsthand the aftermath of Katrina and learn from those who are leading recovery efforts in their own communities. FFD is also planning to repair several small tractors to bring down in March to donate to the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives.
For further information on how you can assist in this solidarity tractor effort contact:
Joel Greeno #608-463-7634 or John Kinsman #608-986-3815
