Marchers demand justice for Katrina evacuees

Thousands of people, predominantly African Americans, mobilized on April 1 in New Orleans to protest the treatment of Katrina survivors and to ensure that displaced residents are allowed to participate in the upcoming municipal election on April 22.

Malik Rahim and Clarence Thomas. Photo: Delores Thomas

Participants included people from throughout the country, including Inter national Longshore and Ware house Union (ILWU) and Million Worker March Movement (MWMM) members from Oakland, Calif., and Seattle, Wash.

The event was organized by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coali tion. The theme was “March for Our Right to Return, A Protected Vote & Reconstruction.”

The action started with a three-hour rally at the Convention Center parking lot. Speakers included Bill Cosby, author Michael Eric Dyson, former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Congressman William Jefferson of New Orleans and Congresswoman Sheila Jack son of Texas, current New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, AFSCME international secretary-treasurer and Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President William Lucy and Sibal Holt from the Louisiana AFL-CIO.

Lucy expressed brief remarks of solidarity and introduced Sibal Holt, who announced the “New Orleans Workers’ Rights March and Rally” for May 2. She stated that, “Labor unions and community organizations will urge city and federal governments to set standards for how workers should be treated” during the rebuilding of New Orleans. The event is being sponsored by Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO.

Activists left out

Malik Rahim, a leader of Common Ground Collective, explained that while he had been initially contacted by Rev. Jackson weeks earlier and was part of the initial planning for April 1, he was not included in subsequent meetings regarding the organizing. Although Malik’s work and contribution to the struggle of the Katrina survivors is well-known in New Orleans, nationally and around the world, he was not invited to be a rally speaker. Brother Malik said, “I felt exploited. I was good enough to do the organizing but not to speak at the rally.”

Another important long-standing community activist, Sister “Mama D” from the Seventh Ward, organized for the event yet was not a part of the original speaker list. She worked on the 1963 March on Wash ington under the leadership of Bayard Rustin. She testified in Washington, D.C., following the hurricane on the government’s lack of response and magnitude of the destruction and human suffering in New Orleans after Katrina.

“Mama D” remembers when there was a strong coalition between labor and the civil rights movement. She expressed that labor should be the driving force for civil rights and human rights in America. The organizers during the rally extended an invitation for her to speak but she declined the offer in light of the last-minute invitation.

“Mama D” is sending out a request for skilled tradespersons from across the country to come to New Orleans and contribute to the rebuilding. Recently, she addressed the ILWU Local 19 Executive Board in Seattle, Wash. The union agreed to provide financial support for survivors rebuilding their homes in the Seventh Ward community.

There were no militant trade union activists represented at the rally or progressive community activists from New Orleans who spoke. A pitifully small number of evacuees were a part of the program.

Crescent City Connection

Thousands marched across the Cres cent City Con nection bridge on April 1 for an important reason. The bridge goes over the Mississippi River. It is symbolic of the injustice in post-Katrina New Orleans. The image of primarily Black New Orleans survivors as pedestrians who tried to cross the bridge over the West Bank was seen worldwide this past Sept. 1.

At that time there was a blockade formed by city police from Gretna, Mar rero, Harvey, as well as the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department to keep survivors from crossing the bridge. The evacuees were hungry, thirsty and tired from suffering days of trying to survive the hurricane devastation. In the smoldering heat, they walked across the Crescent City Connec tion to look for shelter and food. They were turned back and forced to return to New Orleans by police officers, intimidating the survivors with their weapons.

New Orleans officials at the time described this action as blatantly racist because evacuees were depicted as “potential thieves and thugs.”

The West Bank authorities, according to the local Times-Picayune newspaper, said the racism charges were unfair. They claimed that the West Bank had run out of resources and was not equipped to handle more fleeing families from New Orleans.

ILWU, MWMM solidarity
& voting rights

ILWU Local 19 member/ MWMM committee leader Gabriel Prawl and ILWU Local 52 member/MWMM committee leader Michael Hoard, along with 17 students, two professors and three faculty members of Shoreline Community College also attended the march.

The delegation of labor and students is part of a community/labor coalition, the Puget South Katrina Relief Reconstruc tion Committee. This coalition has been spearheaded by ILWU Locals 19 and 52, the MWMM of the Pacific Northwest and the African-American Longshore Coalition.

The students spent a week assisting homeowners in the lower Ninth Ward gut and clean homes under the direction of the Common Ground Collective. Rahim described the students as the best of all the volunteers to offer their services.

The Pacific Northwest Labor and community/labor coalition are collecting construction supplies as well as providing finan cial assistance to Katrina survivors in New Orleans.

Rev. Jackson, com paring Saturday’s event to the 1965 historic march from Sel ma to Mont gomery, stated, “We’ve march ed too much, we’ve bled too often, we’ve died too young.”

Al Sharpton spoke of how the law should be changed to establish satellite voting sites in cities outside of Louisiana. Sharp ton said, “What happens here will affect our voting rights all over the United States.”

The Louisiana State Legislature has only agreed to allow displaced Orleans Parish voters to cast early ballots at 10 satellite sites in their largest cities and parishes such as Alexandria, Baton Rouge and Lake Charles.

The writer is the former secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 10 and national co-chair of the Million Worker March Movement.