HELP US STRENGTHEN OUR “NET” THAT “WORKS!

Organizers and staff of The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, together with thousands of our brothers and sisters from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, have suffered enormous losses because of hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed. The People’s Institute headquarters and many staff homes were in New Orleans East, a neighborhood with high floodwaters. We grieve for those hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their homes and businesses. We are enraged by the racist indifference and neglect that resulted in thousands of people needlessly suffering and dying.

Hurricane Katrina has also dramatized The People’s Institute’s networking principle: In the midst of our losses, the “net” of anti-racist organizers across the country and worldwide continues to work effectively. (See attached Highlights of People’s Institute Networking and Organizing Efforts in Response to Hurricane Katrina.)

The great calamity that the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama continue to suffer is beyond words. The human toll on the living, the unborn, the newly born, and those who crossed over will be with us for years to come.

As a national organization based in New Orleans with a national and international network of anti-racist organizers and trainers, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond will continue to feel directly the impact of Katrina. We will be forever grateful for the expressions of love, prayers, support and humanity expressed by so many.

In the midst of this catastrophe, we are compelled to express our observations on the critical role of race and its relationship to class that is evident in the media and the national/federal response to this national disaster. We fear the new racial trauma that will open deep emotional and psychological wounds.

What is happening in New Orleans stopped being a natural disaster on Monday
August 29, 2005. The clock of humanity once again stopped. Humanity was
tested and the United States failed to respond to her call. Racism took over and spoke for the people of the U.S. through the voices of its government and formal institutions.

We have framed our reflections within the core values of The People’s Institute.

Understanding history is vital

Many residents of New Orleans remember stories about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and Hurricane Betsy of 1965. Poor people of the Lower 9th Ward remember the decision both times to open the levee to the “east side” – i.e. to the poor white and black down-river neighborhoods, which led to ravishing flood waters and left many of us in the same place we have found ourselves today: houseless, displaced, in shelters, with family/friends, or just lost. Like decisions made with the Flood in 1927 and Hurricane Betsy in 1965, bias against poor African Americans and poor people in general has played a pivotal role in official federal government decisions both before and after Hurricane Katrina. The media, in large measure, has followed suit. As in 1927 and 1965, down-river communities have been destroyed.

Because New Orleans is predominantly African American and poor, its residents have been treated as less that human. Down river, poor whites of St. Bernard Parish were ignored as “throwaways.”

The actions before and after Hurricane Katrina are rooted in a long history of race and class division. The institutional systems of our nation - the military, criminal justice, media, highway and transportation systems - respond differently depending on who has been victimized. The public face of Katrina’s pain is Black.

This calamity has once again exposed these deep wounds of history and thrown in the salt of racism. These wounds burn through the flesh and soul of those most deeply impacted; they create scars of insecurity that will remain until these racist systems are transformed at their core.

Our culture is our survival

Poor people rely on our cultural strengths and actions for survival: We hold family and community relationships as highest values. It’s against our cultural and spiritual nature to just “up and leave” family members and friends behind even when imminent disaster is approaching.

The federal government’s bureaucratic responses to this grave human tragedy paralyzed the systems and stifled humane movements to relieve human suffering. Since policymakers were ignorant of African-American culture and way of life in New Orleans, as well as the values of poor white people in St. Bernard Parish, they failed to take into consideration how people respond when our institutions and systems fail us.

We knew that poor people throughout the region did not have the resources to leave. We knew that a lot of people were “under the radar” of our mainstream media. But many of us have been so acculturated by the mainstream political culture, we forgot how to use our spiritual and cultural resources, our formal and informal grassroots groups and religious entities, to get the word out about the serious nature of this evacuation. .

As the crisis continues, Black and poor people victimized and displaced by the flood are being reminded daily by the press, by the government, by the police and by the military, that they are considered inferior. They are being treated like refugees without regard to their national status, citizenship, family connections. They have been put on busses without being asked or told where they are going. People with family or friends in one city find themselves in shelters far from anyone they know.

The dehumanizing, stereotyping racial language of much of the media has played into the delayed action and chaotic evacuation and placed blame on the victims for the circumstances we did not create. People are being categorized by their conditions and not their humanity. Rather than being described as “temporarily displaced and “houseless” residents of the region, most of whom are law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, we were labeled REFUGEES, LOOTERS, HOMELESS. Such labeling and stereotyping allows mainstream cultural institutions to condone our placement in “special categories,” to put us aside for a “special time,” to force us to beg for resources that are ours.

We must transform our racist institutions.

Forty years ago, Hurricane Betsy led to vast improvements of our levee systems and coastal barriers. But in the last 20 years, similar improvements have been underfunded and incomplete, despite a sinking region and eroding coastlines. We have hurricanes every year. We will have them again, after Katrina.

New Orleans is a unique city visited by people from all over the world because of “our culture and hospitality.” The people we now label “refugees” are the ones who make New Orleans’ culture rich and unique. Why wasn’t the protection of this “uniqueness” a priority?

During Katrina, U.S. institutions responded as they were constructed to respond: People were abandoned to their fate while police were sent to protect property - property that no longer held value under the catastrophic circumstances. The federal government failed to deploy the national Guard until it was too late, and even then Guards went to restore order, not to help victims of the flood.

Guns and violence are a way of life in this country which values property over poor human lives. We should not be surprised that dispossessed people sought guns. But we should also not be surprised at the military shut-down of New Orleans.

During this crisis, people were not “lacking services” they were lacking power to do anything about their circumstances. Institutional racism not only breeds contempt for the victims of racism but makes invisible the privileges of those of us who are not Black, so that we think we “got what we deserve” on our own. An analysis of the power dynamics of our institutions, that are set up to benefit some and disadvantage others, must lead to transformation of those institutions so people benefit from them equitably.

Everyone must be held accountable

Federal response to this grave human suffering was too often mechanical and distant. Barriers of complicated rules, time constraints, inadequate resources and bureaucratic, hierarchical structures delayed reactions and responses to this disaster. In a nation that holds “efficiency” as a highest value, there was no efficient system to save the lives of the poor and black people who drowned, who died of dehydration and hunger, without medicines or care for their open wounds.

Officials and institutions must be held accountable for the profound tragedy in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. That over 100,000 people were not evacuated from a region below sea level when a category 4-5 hurricane was headed directly for them is unconscionable.
While we need to hold elected officials and institutions accountable, in the larger sense we also need to hold ourselves accountable. Racism is built into the fabric of every one of our communities. Racism still exists in the US because the majority of people allow it to continue, both by our silence and by our actions. We need to ask ourselves, What are we doing to undo racism in our own communities and institutions? If we feel we don’t know enough, then we need to educate ourselves. If there isn’t anti-racist work going on in our communities then we need to start something. We need to channel our anger and grief into action. If we don’t take action ourselves, then holding other people accountable is meaningless.

We must overcome our Internalized Racial Oppression and our Internalized Racial Superiority

We saw many white leaders almost disappear as soon as the crisis arose. People took care of “me and mine,” driving out of the flooded areas with half-full cars and busses. Fear and prejudice prevented people with resources from maximizing their resources to assist others in imminent danger. Those left behind were for the first time in a long time left to help one other with what couldn’t be flooded away: our relational and survival skills.

Our government and social services systems have fostered so much dependency that some of us did not know how to function outside of these systems. The” systems disability” led people “disabled” to mobilize. Many generations of racial oppression manifested themselves in hopelessness, nothing to lose, and in acts of resistance to being dehumanized and made invisible. Desperate people do desperate things. The message of violence is, “YOU WILL SEE THAT I AM STILL HERE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!”

The opportunity for accountable Anti-Racist Leadership

We as a nation have the opportunity to participate in a national transformation. Our inability to address race directly is killing us, literally, figuratively and spiritually. We must rebuild the cities, towns, and ports that historically were the bedrock of America’s Peculiar Institution of racism. This time, we must rebuild them on a foundation that reflects the best of our humanity.

Katrina has also given us an opportunity to strengthen our anti-racist organizing around the country and the world. We must use this tragedy to demonstrate how racism displays its ugly head and dehumanizes us all, individually, institutionally, and culturally. We must be more intentional about equipping our leaders, from the grassroots to the pinnacles of power, with an anti-racist analysis so they can undo racism in all its forms.

We must prevent this tragedy from becoming a “cash cow” to benefit those who have historically benefited from war and crisis.. In transforming New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, we must create a vision of social justice and economic equity, so that poor people do not end up simply with “services” but without the economic resources to assure their genuine independence.

The solutions must be collective, involving all those who are impacted, keeping our cultural humanity intact. We will rebuild, using our unique values of hospitality, love, and understanding, with those in the cities who are temporarily or permanently relocated.

There is an opportunity here: Let people blown and flooded out by Katrina come back to rebuild their own communities! Let’s create a national Public Works program, like the one of the 1930’s, and pay people a decent and living wage to clean and rebuild their neighborhoods.

We know that the Highest Divine Power now calls us to our full greatness and takes all that we have been blessed with in knowledge, wisdom, and resources to meet this calling.

“This is normal for this country”: Lessons our children are learning
A story from People’s Institute trainer/organizer Sili Mana’O-Savusa

While watching news this week, my daughters and I were watching the thousands of people lined up outside the New Orleans superdome. There were hundreds upon hundreds of faces being shown.

I then heard one of the girls sniffling, I looked over at Puao. Her face was filled with tears. I asked her why she was crying. She sad that she felt like she was watching slavery, and she was worried that many people would die.

My other daughter looked at her and said, “This is how all black people are treated and the fact that no one is helping is normal for this country.” I asked Mau what she meant by that, and she responded by saying, “Look at all those people mom. Black people yelling & screaming for help, just like our kids in schools. Kids are always asking for help, but their voice is gone, just like all those people. No one can hear them. I see what racism is now. I understand what you are talking about in your meetings, mom. I get it now.”