I’ve spent a lot time in the past few days thinking about New Orleans. Yesterday was the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina – three years ago, major parts of the Gulf Coast were under water, people were stranded, drowning, and dying of thirst, and the government responded with violence and military occupation.
This weekend, Gulf Coast residents are evacuating again ahead of Hurricane Gustav. There’s potential for the storm to blow by, but military are already converging on New Orleans and more troops are mobilizing to re-occupy what is already an aggressively policed city.
I hope that everyone who’s following this website and everyone who’s involved in any social justice struggle is watching events in New Orleans closely right now. Katrina and its aftermath provided a horrible example of the ways that capitalism and racism work together to oppress, displace, impoverish, lock up, divide, and kill people. The storms in 2005 paved the way for mass incarceration, police violence, demolition of thousands of livable public housing units, exploitation of immigrant labor, mass privatization of resources, ongoing environmental injustice, homelessness, and lots of other horrible things that people are continuing to struggle against. Since this time three years ago, when military were ordered to shoot citizens trying to survive in the midst of hurricane Katrina, the government has sent a very clear message that its goal is to protect property, not people.
I’d love to see the U.S. left mobilize now to prepare for this potential disaster. Even if it just means staying consistently informed and ready to respond to calls from the ground in New Orleans – let’s learn from Katrina and do everything we can to prevent Hurricane Gustav from becoming another opportunity for the government and corporations to attack poor people of color.
I want to share a few resources and things I’ve been thinking about this weekend:
1) During Katrina, many prisoners were abandoned in their cells to drown or starve. Others remained incarcerated for months longer than they were supposed to because their records were lost or held up in chaotic bureaucracy. Many families of evacuated prisoners were unable to locate their loved ones after the storm. Critical Resistance New Orleans has issued an urgent national call to demand a full and safe evacuation plan for New Orleans prisoners and information on how to find people after an evacuation. So far, I’ve heard that the prisons have been evacuated but that the other demands (particularly information on how to find people who get evacuated to different prisons) haven’t been met. The call has the information about who to contact and put pressure on, and I REALLY urge everyone to respond – national support and solidarity are as important as ever right now.
2) A lot of you have probably already seen this open letter from New Orleans organizers, written almost two years ago to address the lack of funding for social justice work in the Gulf South. I’m posting it now because it’s still completely relevant, and may become even more relevant in the very near future. I also know that a lot of us are interested in directly supporting organizing in New Orleans, and it can be difficult to do that if we’re far away. It’s also difficult because many smaller grassroots organizations are both under-resourced and frequently in crisis, so fundraising often falls low on their priority lists and we don’t hear about the work that needs supporting unless we’re closely involved. A friend of mine in New Orleans sometimes sends out very specific monetary requests to support grassroots organizers (a local activist is about to have their utilities shut off, public housing residents need funds to travel to an out-of-state housing justice rally, etc), and it feels like a really important way to support the work outside of the typical nonprofit/philanthropy channels. If you’re interested in knowing about these requests when I get them, send me an email and we can build a network of autonomous, revolutionary grassroots financial support for New Orleans.
3) I finally remembered to post an essay I wrote this March while I was in New Orleans. It talks about a Gulf South-focused fundraising project I got involved in and our attempts to address some of the issues raised in the letter from New Orleans organizers I mentioned above – as well as some other thoughts about New Orleans solidarity.
4) Finally: I keep trying to remember to stay grounded and take care of myself and others in times like these. Last night was the launch of Climbing Poetree‘s Hurricane Season tour, and it was amazing to spend the evening with a big group of other people being deeply moved by art that clearly linked the events surrounding Katrina with things like globalization, climate change, worldwide genocide and displacement, and multi-issue grassroots organizing – as well as being heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Alixa and Naima are incredible performers and they’re hitting much of the country in the next few months of their tour. Each show is followed by a “solutions cypher” in which local grassroots organizations share their work and talk about ways to get involved. Go see it and remember how much weaker our movements would be without compassion, art, and love.
Resources for getting/staying informed: nola.com (for up-to-the-minute but politically bankrupt news), Katrina information Network, The Katrina Reader