Katrina survivors keep fighting for justice

On June 3, the New York Solidarity Coalition with Katrina/Rita Survivors sponsored a Special People’s Legislative Town Hall Meeting with Federal, State and City Elected Officials at Fordham University in New York. The meeting was hosted by the Department of Campus Ministries at the school.

The main goal of those meeting under the slogan “Nothing About Us Without Us Is For Us!” was to encourage a dialog between elected officials and hurricane survivors who have been denied the right to have any say on how to reconstruct their neighborhoods and cities in order to eventually return home.

The right to return includes having decent jobs with a living wage, health care, education, a safe environment and better housing before more hurricanes hit.

The meeting began with introductions and greetings from more than a dozen survivors who now reside in New York, New Haven, Conn. and other cities because their homes were destroyed in rural parts of Mississippi or in New Orleans, the city hardest hit by Katrina.

The survivors spoke about how unwelcome local officials, like billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have made them feel since they were displaced by the hurricanes. Some of the hardships they have faced over the months include being threatened several times with eviction from hotel space or shelters; being unemployed, underemployed or without any secure financial assistance; lacking educational and health care opportunities; police harassment and much more.

Survivors who spoke included Christine Gavin-Latham, Brandon Pellerin, Veronica Ogden-Smith, Kathy Gibbs, Maya Dempster, Ada Hahn, Leon Paredes, Shanalyna Palmer, Brandi Kilbourne, Belinda Beecham, Brian Bilal Moran, Ivy Parker and Dick Darby. Many supporters of the evacuees also attended and participated in the meeting, including City Council member Charles Barron, Brenda Stokely from the Million Worker March Movement and Ajamu Sankofa from Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Darby, from New Orleans, commented that what displaced the survivors wasn’t the storm but neglect on the part of all levels of government. A big part of this neglect was the fact that the levees in New Orleans were not shored up ahead of time before Katrina hit. The breaking of the levees caused massive flooding that decimated the poorest areas of the city, like the predominantly African-American area known as the Ninth Ward. Those same levees still remain insecure as the new hurricane season begins.

Gov’t neglect of the people

In a report released Feb. 6 called “Sup plementary Report on the Findings of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Inves ti gate the Preparation and Response to Hurri cane Katrina,” Congressperson Cynthia McKinney from Georgia explained the impact of Katrina on the Ninth Ward: “As our tour bus for the Congressional Delegation made up of Select Committee Members, guest members and their staff drove through the devastated Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, not far from downtown, one could still get a sense of the charm. Aside from the roads having been cleared, little had changed in four and a half months since a 20-foot wall of water was unleashed upon the community of lower-income, mostly African American residents.

“Fourteen percent of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward were senior citizens. Another 14 percent were handicapped. A full 60 percent owned their own homes, ranking the home ownership rate in this community among the highest in the country. At the same time, only 40 percent of residents were literate.”

McKinney’s report went on to conclude, “A single weather event, Hurricane Katrina, has brought about the greatest population dislocation in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Katrina was not the strongest hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast, but it was perhaps the most destructive ever due to its extraordinary storm surge on the one hand, and due to human failure on the other: the inadequacy of levees, the inadequacies of the evacuation plan, the inadequacy of governmental response and a social environment characterized by widespread poverty, racial inequi ties and a history of racial discrimination.” (The entire report is at www.house. gov/mckinney/katrina.supplemental.pdf.)

Resisting FEMA’s
inhumane treatment

The criminal behavior that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, showed toward the hurricane survivors will be a major focus of a national protest, including a press conference in Washington, D.C., on June 13.

Katrina/Rita survivors from as far away as New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Mobile, parts of North Carolina and New York and other cities will be coming together in front of the FEMA office at 12 noon. They intend to expose the fact that FEMA has refused to live up to its promise to provide local governments with one year to 18 months’ worth of paid rent and utilities for displaced Gulf Coast residents.

The cut-off date for federal housing assistance for the majority of 55,000 families of hurricane evacuees was May 31. (Washington Post, May 31) For families living in 11 districts in Texas—including Austin, Dallas and Houston—it is June 30. A lawsuit to enjoin FEMA from ending payments to voucher holders was rejected by the courts on May 30. A trial on the merits of the case is scheduled for June 20.

The New York solidarity committee is demanding that the U.S. government adhere to United Nations standards on the treatment of internally displaced persons. The UN standards call for two to three years of housing assistance as well as job placement, counseling and assistance to return to one’s home. Looking at these guidelines alone, FEMA and the U.S. government have completely failed the people of the Gulf Coast.

The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, U.S. Human Rights Network, the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign, Saving Our Selves Coalition and other groups and individuals are calling the June 13 protest and assisting in helping Katrina/Rita survivors to travel and stay in Washington, D.C., for the protest. They are urging that supporters be there to show solidarity with the right of the Katrina/Rita survivors to be seen and heard by the government. n

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