Four Principles for Organizing in Our Post-Katrina World
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu.
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Katrina turned our world upside down. Our social justice communities have had to start over in many ways. Many of our usual friends and organizations are literally gone – over 200,000 from the City of New Orleans alone are still displaced.
The Gulf Coast is in a “self-help” mode. If you have the resources to help yourself, go right at it. If you need help from the community, especially from the government, you are out of luck.
Everyone saw who was left behind when Katrina hit: the elderly, the children, the disabled, the prisoners, those in hospitals and nursing homes, those without cars, the working poor. Guess who is being shut out of the rebuilding of New Orleans? The same people – left behind again for the same reasons.
We have had to start over. Here are some reflections on four of the many organizing principles we are learning as we start over.
Tragedy and Hope
We fight two tendencies as we struggle for justice. One is to focus only on the terrible things that have happened and those that continue to happen. The other is to look only for the good in order to keep our spirits up and our optimism for the future well-fed.
Either one of these approaches without the other will rob us of the ability to stay balanced in the long-term struggle for justice.
Pain and devastation are very real. Over 1000 people died directly, thousands more have died since. Homes and neighborhoods remain destroyed.
But, despite the odds, neighborhoods are showing signs of life as formerly isolated neighbors are introducing themselves to one another and working together to build their communities. Volunteers from across the country have generously come to help out and to provide some of the basics we need.
The hardest thing in the world is to have a heart that is totally open to both tragedy and hope. But that is exactly what we need.
Race and Poverty Over and Over and Over
What neighborhoods are going to be rebuilt? Where are people going to go to school? Who is going to get assistance and when? No decision is made in our community without the dimensions of race and poverty being part of the discussion – usually the unstated part.
Plus, all of a sudden, half the workforce in our city is Latino. This is very new for us. We never had day labor corners before. Politicians are blaming the newest brown workers for the problems of black workers. Everyone conveniently overlooks the fact that black workers were treated poorly before the hurricanes. All of a sudden it is the fault of those new guys.
Most of our civil rights issues have usually been black and white. Now we have an additional group at the table. We are having trouble making room. Our justice ideas have to expand.
It is impossible to overstate the continuing need for clear racial and economic justice analysis in order to avoid re-creating the problems of the past.
Growing Importance of Human Rights
Our community is starting to see some connections between the displacement of over 200,000 people from their homes and the displacement of other peoples across the globe.
We are surprised to find that the United Nations Principles on Internally Displaced Persons apply to us.
We feel in our bones we have a right to return. But there is little in our traditional civil rights law that creates a right to return home. A human rights analysis is helping us create a framework for our struggle to return.
Solidarity
Several local organizations have adopted the slogan “Solidarity not charity.”
People are coming to help us from all over. We appreciate it. But there is something unsettling in being the object of charity.
We know there are neighborhoods in every city in this country where people have been left behind. Places where the schools don’t work, where people do not have jobs. Every city has a little Katrina in it. It is more concentrated in New Orleans right now. It is easier to see here.
Use your time with us to develop relationships with us, but also use it to help people see the Katrinas in your own community as well.
Then we will all understand why Australian aboriginal activist Lila Watson challenged us: “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us struggle together.”
We need your solidarity. Let us struggle together.
