UUSC: Two years after Katrina: Government help still lags

By Bev Hoffman

As the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, I write with a heavy heart and deep concern that many of the neediest people in New Orleans, southern Louisiana, and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast remain neglected by governments and power structures that have marginalized those same people for many years. For anyone who has ever lived there, as I did for 32 years, it would be difficult to absorb what has been happening. As one audience member said at the Gulf Coast plenary of the recent U.S. Social Forum, "Katrina still hurts."

In an effort both to help and to understand what's going on, I have made three trips to New Orleans since the storm struck on August 29, 2005. On my first two, I went with students from Oglethorpe University, where my wife heads the theatre department. We gutted several houses and heard informative and moving presentations by local activists. I had expected conditions to be bad, but I was not at all prepared for the devastation that extended all the way from Biloxi to New Orleans and beyond.

Both in Mississippi and New Orleans we witnessed the kind of destruction that I'd imagined only the worst urban war zones would be like. The landscape seemed apocalyptic everywhere until we turned off St. Claude Avenue into the French Quarter, which looked very much like the theme park that I remembered. As with much of uptown near the river, the French Quarter was untouched, and these two parts of the city provided a sharp contrast to almost everywhere else we visited.

New Orleans had been suffering for years before this particular disaster. Even before Katrina hit, 27 percent of its population lived below the poverty level, the public school system ranked among the worst in the country, and a wealthy elite seemed to care more about the Mardi Gras celebrations than dealing with endemic social problems.

The Mississippi Gulf Coast wasn't much better off. The casino industry brought an infusion of gambling money into the state. But the jobs created were the kinds that keep workers at a dead end, with little hope for decent pay or benefits: making up tourist beds and cleaning their rooms. Workers in the casinos, products of a second rate educational system, also suffered from lack of child care support and affordable housing.

New Orleans and Mississippi: Nearly two years later

As I prepared to return to post-Katrina New Orleans for a third time, newspaper reports offered only more discouraging news. The Times-Picayune reported that the suicide rate continued to be three times higher than before Katrina. According to USA Today, the death rate in New Orleans was 47 percent higher than before the storm. Another article described John McDonogh, my old high school, as a virtual war zone. Twenty-seven security guards were having trouble keeping the peace. So, as my flight touched down, I didn't know quite what to expect.

I was in New Orleans this time representing the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, to meet with some of UUSC's program partners and accompany them back to Atlanta, where I now live, for the U.S. Social Forum. What I saw was both hopeful and despairing.

The main streets were largely cleaned up, the larger commercial streets all had some businesses reopened, and uptown and the Quarter seemed as normal as ever. But once I got onto some of the back streets, the picture changed dramatically. Throughout Broadmoor, Central City, the Lake Front, Gentilly, and the Seventh and Ninth Wards, the pace of reconstruction seemed very, very slow. This lack of progress was even more apparent as the sun finally set. Habitable houses could be identified by light and sound, which set them off from the many that remained in darkness.

Visiting UUSC program partners and other local activists

"Floods are ‘acts of God.' But flood losses are largely ACTS OF MAN." Geographer Gilbert White said that in 1942, but I heard variations of this same idea from several people over the next two days.

Patricia Jones, director of the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA), a grassroots organization in the lower Ninth and UUSC program partner, described Katrina as a "man-made disaster." Kit Senter, another community activist, echoed Patricia when he characterized the 17 breaks or breaches in levees in and around New Orleans as a "massive failure" of the system.

Those levees were supposed to be maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to Daryl Malek Wiley, an old friend who leads the environmental justice program for the Sierra Club. Daryl didn't mince words about the levees, stating that the Corps' failure was "nothing less than negligent homicide." Patricia, Kit, Daryl, and other grassroots activists are heading advocacy efforts to ensure that the Corps rebuilds the levees properly and that the federal government provides funds to restore the wetlands, which make up the real protection from mainland flooding.

In Biloxi, Miss., I met Sharon Hanshaw, who later gave a compelling and inspirational talk at the Gulf Coast plenary as part of the USSF. Sharon directs Coastal Women for Change (CWC), another grassroots organization born out of Katrina. Five months after the storm, Sharon moved back to Biloxi and volunteered to do secretarial work for the organization. Her passion and unflagging commitment quickly led to her promotion to executive director.

According to Sharon, before the formation of CWC, most people felt they had "no voice in the process," but in less than a year, CWC has changed that, becoming a leading voice for low-income women on the Gulf Coast. They share space with a local NAACP chapter, and partner with other small NGOs working on issues like housing, jobs, and around-the-clock child care support for casino workers.

At the U.S. Social Forum

What's unique about Sharon, who lost both her home and a beauty salon she'd owned for 21 years, is that until Katrina she "had never organized anything." She'd also never spoken in public before. Anyone who heard her speak at the USSF Gulf Coast plenary would've found this hard to believe! Sharon, along with a panel of other speakers, moved many in a large auditorium audience to tears of sympathy and outrage.

I met other plenary panelists before their powerful presentations, including Daniel Castellanos and Saket Soni, both members of the Alliance for Guest Workers for Dignity. They also belong to the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, another UUSC program partner in the Gulf Coast.

Daniel, a young man from Peru, had spent thousands of dollars to come to the U.S. to work as part of a guest worker program. He told a captivated audience that brown people were being pitted against blacks. "They want us to fight," he said, "They want the African-American and Latino communities to fight." He also told horror stories of immigrant workers being sold from one business to another for $2,000, and of employers that confiscated workers' IDs, keeping them from leaving jobs. Saket later described this practice as "document servitude." Looking into an audience section of mostly African Americans, he said, "You are the old slaves. We are the new ones." His call for solidarity elicited a standing ovation at the end of his presentation.

Judging from the representatives of NENA, CWC, and the Worker Justice Coalition, UUSC is fortunate to be allied with such fine organizations and individuals. I recently spoke with Saket on the phone, and he described UUSC support of his organization as "incredibly important." Sharon and Patricia echoed similar sentiments.

The limits of volunteerism: Government must fulfill its role

As I reflect on my third visit to the area, a few things are apparent. First and foremost, local, state, and the national government are, by and large, continuing to fail the people of the Gulf Coast, especially the most vulnerable – the economically distressed, the elders, and the children. I also realized that while volunteer and service efforts have been, and continue to be, important, the immediate and long-term problems exposed in the region demand immediate and sustained efforts and solutions that only government can supply.

The same people that bore the brunt of the storm, that took the hardest hit, are the ones now having the most difficult time restoring even the most basic parts of their lives. While many are trying to recover in the city, thousands more cannot even return to New Orleans and continue to languish in dismal camps near Baton Rouge, with very few job opportunities and no financial resources. And newcomers to the region – immigrant workers – are struggling daily in an extremely hostile environment, where they face overt racism and exploitation.

What's also apparent is that many people are organizing, advocating, and making heroic efforts to help their communities. Perhaps situations like the Katrina disaster remind us that ordinary people can make extraordinary efforts when called upon. With the second anniversary of Katrina about to pass, and with so much more work to be done, more of us should join with Sharon Hanshaw and raise our voices, and recommit ourselves to helping the people of the Gulf Coast recover their lives.

Bev Hoffman is a long-time resident of New Orleans. Hoffman currently works as a consultant to UUSC.