Roadtrip: events, articles, WED. Nov.16, SAVE THE DATE...

Hi there,

Please spread widely…Below is info regarding three
great events related to Common Ground and/or the Bay
Area Caravan to New Orleans. Malik will be speaking at
two of them. If you have not had a chance to hear him
speak, I highly recommend you change that. He’s
inspiring and moving, and along with so many
volunteers at Common Ground he is kicking ass. Please
see attachments for flyers of the events. SAVE THE
DATE: NOV.16th SEND-OFF PARTY!

We’ve scheduled one more volunteer meeting for folks
making a last-minute decision to go. That info is
below the events info.

I’ve also inlcuded very recent articles about Common
Ground.

THIS FRIDAY, NOV. 11TH, 10pm-2am
LITTLE BAOBAB
BENEFIT FOR COMMON GROUND
Live DJ’s and Dancing
Hip-Hop, reggae, latin, and world beat
3376 19th Street @ MISSION
10pm-2am
$3-20 Sliding Scale
All door proceeds go to Common Ground
Flyer Distribution: Flyers will be at Little Baobab
Tuesday night for pick-up by anyone who wants to help
distribute them.
The flyer is also attached.

TUESDAY, NOV. 15TH, All Day & Night
HURRICANE KATRINA TEACH-IN
"Rebuilding on a New Foundation of Justice"
at Jack Adams Hall, SFSU Student Union,
19th Avenue and Holloway
NOON-10PM, ALL DAY, ALL NIGHT
FREE!!!!!
7pm: Keynote speakers
MALIK RAHIM and CURTIS MOHAMMED
Common Ground Table hopefully
See attachments: the schedule and the poster

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 16TH, 7pm
BIG SEND-OFF PARTY for BAY AREA CARAVAN!
MALIK RAHIM
Performers
Spoken Word
Silent Auction
FUN
Location to be announced: SAVE THE DATE!!!



ONE LAST OPPORTUNITY TO ATTEND THE VOLUNTEER MEETING
This SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH AT 1:30PM we are having an
important (and the final) meeting for all volunteers
interested in participating in any way in the Bay Area
caravan to New Orleans (see address below). In order
to make this caravan the biggest success possible, all
volunteers should do their best to make it to this
meeting. If you cannot make it to this meeting please
be in contact me right away.

The meeting location is: The Green Party office in San
Francisco, 1028A Howard Street, between 6th and 7th
Streets.

ANTI –RACIST TRAINING
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH FROM 4:00pm-8:30pm, an
anti-racist training, especially for white folks, will
be held at the same Green Party location noted above.
The training will be led by long-time anit-racist
trainers, Sharon Martinas and Amie Fishman. They both
have a lengthy history of social justice work and are
not professional trainers. Sharon and Amie are
ordinary folks who consider this work an important
part of their responsibility as white activists who
want to strenghthen the social justice work we all do.
Note that it’s BYOB, Bring Your Own Burrito. IF YOU
HAVEN’T ALREADY SIGNED UP FOR THIS TRAINING AND YOU
INTEND TO PARTICIPATE, please contact Sharon at
cws [at] igc.org or 415-647-0921.



RECENT ARTICLES ABOUT NEW ORLEANS
& COMMON GROUND

CHECK OUT this article by Medea Benjamin about New
Orleans residents' struggles to return home
http://www.alternet.org/story/27731/

TIMES-PICAYUNE article about Common Ground & 9th Ward
http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-4/113108828246490.xml?nola

Update on what’s going on down there:
CHANGING NEW ORLEANS
by Jordan Flaherty
November 4, 2005

Its bittersweet being back in New Orleans. Although
the architecture is the same, and its a relief to walk
the streets and reunite with old friends, already this
is a very different city from the one I love. Its a
city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other
parts are being left far behind. A city where people
who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome
in a hundred different ways.

White New Orleans is steadily coming back, and Black
New Orleans is moving out. A grassroots organizer
with New Orleans Network tells me she has been
speaking to people in every moving truck she sees.
She reports that in every case, “they’re Black, they
are renters, they’re moving out of New Orleans, and
they say they would stay, if they had a choice.”

Inequality continues through the cleanup of New
Orleans. Some areas have electricity, gas, and clean
streets, and some areas are untouched. Medical
volunteer Catherine Jones reports that driving the
streets of New Orleans at night, “ I felt like I was
in the middle of a checkerboard. The Quarter lit up
like Disneyworld; poor black neighborhoods a few
blocks over so dark I couldn't even see the street in
front of me.”

The Washington Post reports that although both the
overwhelmingly White Lakeview neighborhood and Black
Ninth Ward neighborhood were devastated by flooding,
“It now appears that long-standing neighborhood
differences in income and opportunity...are shaping
the stalled repopulation of this mostly empty city.”

While Lower Ninth Ward residents are still being kept
from returning to their homes, “Lakeview, where 66
percent of children go to private school and 49
percent of residents have a college degree, was pumped
dry within three weeks of the storm. Memphis Street
(in Lakeview) smells now of bleach, which kills mold,
and resounds to the thwack of crowbars and the whine
of chain saws. Insurance adjusters have begun making
rounds.”

A similar story is unfolding in South Florida, where
the Miami Workers Center reports, “Close to 24 hours
after Wilma struck, power returned to Miami's affluent
and tourist districts such as South Beach, Downtown
and the Brickell Financial District. In the past
week, power has returned to most suburban communities.
But power has been slowest returning to black,
latino, and immigrant poor urban neighborhoods. Many
of the 400,000 still in the dark have been told not to
expect power until as late as November 22nd.”

Miami Workers center volunteer Terry Marshall reports,
“this experience is showing...that it’s not a question
of where the hurricane hits. It’s a question of where
the resources are missed.”

New Orleans was, as more than one former resident has
said, the African city in North America. It is a city
steeped in a culture that is specifically African
American - from Jazz to blues to bounce. It is the
number one African American tourist destination in the
US. The Bayou Classic and Essence Festival, two vital
Black community events, bring tens of thousands of
Black tourists to the city every year. Walking around
town, its hard to imagine these tourists coming back
to the new New Orleans - a city was once 70% Black and
now feels unwelcome and hostile - or at least uncaring
- to its own past.

Last Wednesday alone, 335 evictions were filed in New
Orleans courts - the amount normally filed in a month.
There have been countless reports of landlords
throwing tenant’s property out on the street without
any notice. New Orleans human rights lawyer Bill
Quigley reports that “Fully armed National Guard
troops refuse to allow over ten thousand people to
even physically visit their property in the Lower
Ninth Ward neighborhood. Despite the fact that people
cannot come back, tens of thousands of people face
eviction from their homes. A local judge told me that
their court expects to process a thousand evictions a
day for weeks. Renters still in shelters or temporary
homes across the country will never see the court
notice taped to the door of their home. Because they
will not show up for the eviction hearing that they do
not know about, their possessions will be tossed out
in the street. In the street their possessions will
sit alongside an estimated 3 million truck loads of
downed trees, piles of mud, fiberglass insulation,
crushed sheetrock, abandoned cars, spoiled mattresses,
wet rugs, and horrifyingly smelly refrigerators full
of food from August.”

A recent poll from Gallup reports that, even adjusting
for differences in income, White and Black New
Orleanians have had deeply different experiences of
this disaster. Blacks were more likely to fear for
their lives (63% vs. 39%), to have been separated from
family members for at least a day (55% vs. 45%), gone
without food for at least a day (53% vs. 24%) and
spent at least one night in an emergency shelter (34%
vs. 13%).

The New York Times and other papers have reprinted
former FEMA director Michael Brown’s emails from the
time when our city was being flooded - stunning
evidence of how little the agency cared about what was
happening in New Orleans. “If you'll look at my lovely
FEMA attire you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god,”
reads a typical email from the day after the hurricane
hit. Other emails showed Brown and his staffers to be
more concerned with his dinner reservations in Baton
Rouge and a dog sitter for his house than with
anything happening in New Orleans.

The demographics of New Orleans have changed in gender
as well as race. The thousands of contractors and
laborers that have arrived from across the country -
in addition to National Guard, police agencies,
security guards, and other workers - are
overwhelmingly male. Because most schools are closed,
there are few kids below 17 or their families. Women
I know who have returned report feeling uncomfortable
and unsafe.

A large Latino immigrant population has come to work
in the city’s reconstruction. These workers have been
demonized by everyone from Mayor Nagin to local talk
radio. Grassroots medical volunteers report that some
of the workers are forbidden by their employers from
talking to anyone or even leaving their rooms at
night. They are working in hazardous conditions, for
low pay and little safety protection - already many
have become ill, and they have no access to medical
care, and face a hostile city.

There are still thousands of New Orleans residents who
have not been convicted of any crime trapped in
maximum security prisons and “no one in a position of
power finds this pressing,” says Ursula Price, a staff
researcher with A Fighting Chance, an indigent defense
group. She estimates at least 2000 prisoners from
Orleans Parish Prison remain in Angola, the notorious
former slave plantation in rural Louisiana. These are
people who were picked up for “misdemeanor offenses
such as public drunkenness, traffic violations,
soliciting a prostitute,” Price says. If convicted,
at most they would have served less time than they
have been in for. But, in Orleans Parish and
Jefferson Parish, courts have been closed for most of
this time, and public defenders have been laid off.
“The system is not working with us,” Price tells me.
“I don't understand why prosecutors are in there
arguing against release of someone on a misdemeanor
charge. We have women who have had miscarriages,
mental heath problems, physical health problems, and
no one in power seems to care.” The total population
of Orleans Parish Prison at the time of hurricane
Katrina was at least 7,000 people. In a city of just
500,000, that's a significant population.

The people of New Orleans are not just physically
displaced, but also disenfranchised from their city in
other ways. According to the Wall Street Journal,
when FEMA officials were asked by Louisiana state
officials for access to the FEMA database so that they
could inform New Orleans evacuees about their right to
vote in upcoming municipal elections, the response was
a terse email - “(FEMA) will not let you have a copy
of the FEMA applicant list. Sorry!!!” What better way
to let people know that the city is not theirs than to
have an election to which they are not invited?

Many in New Orleans are struggling with an even more
basic and vital concern - the recovery of their loved
ones. Less than a quarter of the bodies so far
reported discovered in New Orleans have been turned
over to families. The rest are at the New Orleans
coroners, currently relocated to St. Gabriel’s Parish.
“Officials in coroner's offices in several parishes
reported that they sought to keep their victims from
going to St. Gabriel,” reports today's Times-Picayune,
which describes one families long ordeal in recovering
their mother’s body. Just one more area where people
of New Orleans are left behind.

While this tragedy multiplies, while evictions mount
and exploitation increases, the former residents of
New Orleans have their choice of a dizzying array of
forums, hearings, panels, tribunals, town halls,
committees, subcommittees, commissions, meetings,
marches and demonstrations, most of which are seeking
the input of the people of new orleans.

In the space of two days last week, I went to a public
meeting with a representative from the UN High
Commission on extreme poverty. I went to a meeting of
the housing subcommittee of the urban planning
committee of the mayors blue ribbon commission on
rebuilding New Orleans. I joined a rally at the State
Capitol featuring Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton,
and various Government officials. At each event I saw
hundreds of poor folks from New Orleans. I also met
representatives of a community group for East New
Orleans residents displaced to Baton Rouge - they
report that 500 people come to their weekly meetings.

This Monday, I will march across the bridge from New
Orleans to Gretna, to join in protests called by a
wide array of national organizations against a crime
Cynthia McKinney has said "might become the worst
American civil rights episode of the 21st Century,"
the blockade by Gretna police of the only exit out of
New Orleans for thousands of evacuees. I also plan to
join the People's Assembly initiated by the People's
Hurricane Fund on December 8-10.

There are many outlets for action, as well as plenty
of anger and energy, but also a deep skepticism. The
people of New Orleans have a justified distrust of the
people and institutions who have arrived with promises
and resources. Hundreds of well-meaning volunteers
have come in to town, and many have done vital work,
but in some cases this has increased tensions. “Some
people have come here with this attitude, ‘we’re
bringing organizing to New Orleans.’ They don’t seem
interested in what was here before,” reports one
community organizer.

These divisions are not only concentrated on the
grassroots - disagreements within the mayor’s
commission on rebuilding New Orleans have become
increasingly public, with some representatives
complaining to the New York Times of not being invited
to private breakfasts between the mayor and other
commission members.

"The truth is," said one longtime activist, "people
have a lot of anger and grief, and they don't where to
direct it." We are all tired, frustrated and sad, but
the struggle for justice continues.

=====================================
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of
Left Turn Magazine. This is his tenth article from
New Orleans. You can contact Jordan at
NewOrleans [at] leftturn.org. Jordan’s previous articles
from New Orleans are at
http://www.leftturn.org/articles/SpecialCollections/katrina.aspx

=====================================
Based on conversations with organizers and community
members, Left Turn Magazine has compiled a list of
grassroots New Orleans organizations focused on
relief, recovery, social justice and cultural
preservation that need your support. The list is
online at
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=689&type=W

=====================================
A Fighting Chance needs donations and volunteers to
help with their work providing defense for prisoners
in New Orleans. If you have a phone line you can
volunteer to help reunite family members from wherever
you are located. Email ursula_price1978 [at] hotmail.com.

More info on the March to Gretna this Monday:
http://www.upfordemocracy.org/

Other Resources for information and action:

Catherine Jones’ Blog from New Orleans is at:
http://floodlines.blogspot.com/
Abram Himmelstein’s Blog from New Orleans is at:
http://blogs.chron.com/exile/
United Houma Nation - http://www.unitedhoumanation.org

Saving Our Selves coalition -
http://www.sosafterkatrina.org
Miami Workers Center -
http://www.theworkerscenter.org/

This is a low-volume email list for Jordan Flaherty's
emails from New Orleans. To subscribe, email
jordanhurricane-subscribe [at] lists.riseup.net. To
unsubscribe, email
jordanhurricane-unsubscribe [at] lists.riseup.net.