New Orleans organizer: ‘Freedom Summer 2006’

Curtis Muhammad was in Roxbury, Mass., on April 8 as part of his travels announ cing a new national campaign called Freedom Summer 2006 that calls on students to get involved in relief work on the U.S. Gulf Coast ravaged by Hurri cane Katrina last year. The campaign evokes the Freedom Summer movement of the 1960s civil rights era.

Curtis Muhammad WW file photo: G. Dunkel

“The government tried to snuff our people out,” Muhammad declared at a luncheon sponsored by the Coalition of the Caring, a Boston-based organization to assist Hurricane Katrina/Rita survivors.

Muhammad is a co-founder and Interim Coordinating Committee member of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition (PHRF). He is also a veteran of the Student Non-Violent Coordi n ating Com mit tee (SNCC) and serves as a consultant with Junebug Productions, The Colorline Project, The Young Peoples Project and The Algebra Project.

Freedom Summer 2006 is a follow-up to the Spring Break initiative, which brought mostly young Black students from across the country to the Gulf Coast in March and April.

Survivors of Katrina, community leaders and grassroots activists formed PHRF in New Orleans immediately following the hurricane’s destruction and the government’s wholesale abandonment of the mostly Black population in the region. An independent organization, PHRF addres ses the immediate and long-term needs and justice for survivors as well as government accountability and comprehensive reconstruction of the Gulf South.

Black political leaders, relief service providers, labor and community organizers, college students, and survivors living in Massachusetts listened intently to Muhammad as he described the wholesale criminal acts of government officials regarding Katrina/Rita before, during and after the storm.

After an introduction by L. Soul Brown of the Griot House, Muhammad showed the video, “They Left Us Here To Die,” filmed in December 2005. Accompanied by Sweet Honey & the Rock music, the film depicts Black and poor white communities destroyed and in shambles with cars, rubble, electrical wires and more strewn about for dozens of blocks as well as pulverized levees. This is juxtaposed in the film with pictures of affluent white communities’ houses and other infrastructure already rebuilt or in the process of rebuilding.

After the film Muhammad gathered the audience in a circle, where they remem bered those who died in the storm; many bod ies are still being found amid the des truc tion or elsewhere. “We cannot forget that they tried to kill our people. We’re not talking about an accident here,” said Muham mad, referring to government offi cials, real estate devel opers and corporations.

Muhammad then described how the local, state and U.S. government agencies had pointed guns at members of peoples’ organizations who tried to go back into New Orleans to assist those in distress. They didn’t allow in provisions to feed people or working vehicles to evacuate them. Black people were labeled as “thugs” and “criminals” when engaged in survival activities such as securing food and water. He said aid from various Euro pean states, Venezuela, Cuba and others is still being rebuffed by the government.

Muhammad stressed that it was those people the media labeled “gangsters,” mostly young Black men, who delivered supplies after government officials and agencies abandoned the people. At this point he talked about the historical and present-day legacy of British, French, Spanish and U.S. influence in New Orleans and throughout the South, specifically slavery.

Katrina survivors living in the Greater Boston area then described their difficult experiences of resettling in the Northeast. They pledged to help their fellow survivors, including supporting the survivors’ right to return to the Gulf Coast.

Audience members also spoke, some raising the plight of the thousands of displaced or deserted children and the upcoming April 22 New Orleans mayoral elections.

Tony Van Der Meer of the Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, speaking from the floor, said, “This fundamental violation of our human rights is nationwide throughout the United States. We need an independent vehicle to organize our people for our own survival such as a reconstruction party to deal with this genocide.”

Speakers included Coalition of the Car ing members Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, Rep. Gloria Fox, the Rev. Richard Ric hard son and Catherine Hardaway of Elder Services. The coalition is largely responsible for securing a $25-million state appropriation immediately after Katrina/Rita hit to help temporary or permanent survivors in Massachusetts.