Subject: [Sfbay-video] The first Gulf Coast report from the Hard
Knock Radio/Third World Majority/Can't Stop Won't Stop team
Reply-To: thenmozhi@xxxxxxxxxx
Dear Friends and Allies,
As you know, last week Third World Majority and Hard Knock Radio
sent a joint delegation of woman of color journalists to the
Gulf States on a Fact Finding mission to cover and document the
struggles and heroic stories of survivals in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. Our first story follows:
-----------------
In The Houston Astrodome, Frustration and Survival
Reported By Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Anita Johnson
Written By Jeff Chang
To Barbara Bush, the Astrodome was a poor people's heaven. From
the floor of the Dome, however, life seemed a lot closer to
hell.
HOUSTON, September 13 - Outside the Houston Astrodome earlier
this week, dozens of tents for State Farm Insurance, the Bank of
America, Chase, Veteran's Aid, and many more seemed to promise a
quick return to something like shopping-mall normalcy. It was
easy to sign up for a credit card. An ATM city had sprung up, so
you could slide your new card in and get cash right away, and
pay the bill later.
At press briefings organized by local officials, the story was
upbeat, a shining example of government, business, and charity
coming together to do good. Thousands of evacuees were being
processed, more than 500 children were been reunited with their
families, and life went on.
But behind the doors of the Astrodome, survival and frustration
were the order of the day. Jamel Bell, who fled his flooded
Ninth Ward in New Orleans, found no salvation here. "Inside it
feels like prison," he said. At curfew, he says, the evacuees
were locked in.
News teams from independent sources, such as our own, were
continuously harassed by local officials and police. Reporters
from KPFT, the Pacifica station in Houston, tossed their press
badges for Red Cross volunteer badges in order to do their work.
In Baton Rouge, hip-hop journalist and WBAI reporter Rosa
Clemente was arrested and briefly detained after National
Guardsmen attempted to confiscate her recording equipment.
Despite news reports that evacuees were being moved through the
system and out of the center efficiently and quickly, there were
up to 35,000 evacuees daily in the building. Cots of weary
people stretched across the floor. Celebrities, followed by
television cameras, filed in and out. The food was terrible, the
meat in the sandwiches sometimes served still frozen.
Surveillance was heavy, and the tensions on the floor remained
thick.
Many evacuees tried to forget the brutal images of their
evacuation: skin sores on a man wading through toxic waters, a
chaotic stampede of evacuees on a bridge towards a line of
buses, the traumatic separation of families at evacuation
checkpoints. An unnamed woman survivor told KPFT radio host
Robert Muhammad that National Guardsmen had raped her friend and
left her in the swamp. Amidst apocalyptic scenes that seemed
biblical, Dionne Wright, a custodian in her mid-30s, tried to
calm her daugher. "This is not the end," she said. "This is not
the end."
Raver Price, a 19-year old woman from the largely black and poor
Ninth Ward, felt she heard rumblings before the levee break, and
wondered if they were the sounds of man-made dynamite. When she
and her hungry friends took food from a flooded store, she
encountered a Guardsman who sneered at her, "I can't wait to
kill you bitches."
Among the displaced New Orleans youths in the Astrodome, some
neighborhood rivalries did not go out with the tide, and fights
sometimes broke out between different crews. Many evacuees said
that when they went to sleep, they kept one eye on their
belongings.
Before dawn, often as early as 5:30am, lines for basic
services?including those to find housing or obtain the
much-desired $2000 relief check from FEMA and the $235 relief
check from the Red Cross?began forming, and processing continued
until 8pm.
Many were mystified by FEMA rules. Households are only allowed
to report one address for the one-time check to be sent to. But
for families still in the midst of being reunited, or on the
verge of being sent to another evacuation center or even another
city, the logic seemed bizarre.
Yet some families left without anything. Immigrants, including
many of the estimated 30,000 displaced Vietnamese Americans here
in Houston, were being turned away. Even legal residents learned
that their green cards are not enough to qualify them for
disaster aid. These realizations invariably came after hours of
waiting. FEMA and the Red Cross had no translators on hand.
Au Huynh came down from Philadelphia to help in the relief
efforts. "I was a refugee, I came here in 1989," she said. "I
don't think there is a political mark on being a refugee. (Being
a refugee means) being displaced because of political reasons or
environmental reason. It's important to recognize the rights of
refugees, it shouldn't be based on being a citizen in terms of
getting relief."
Huynh had called the Red Cross to volunteer as a translator, but
they said they had no need for her. So, through the internet,
she found a small Houston group called Save The Boat People SOS
that was setting up relief efforts. The organization is one of
the Asian American community organizations working with a
network of Buddhist temples in Houston on an extraordinary
parallel relief effort.
With most Asian American evacuees being routed away from the
Astrodome, volunteers took them in at the Hong Kong City Mall.
In the parking lot, there are piles of donated clothing. At a
card table, volunteers work on their own personal laptops and
cellphones to find shelter, make urgent medical referrals, and
reunite families.
Some 50,000 Vietnamese worked the Louisiana coast as fisherman
and in New Orleans in the service and manufacturing sectors,
alongside a large community of Filipino American shrimpers, the
oldest Filipino community in North America. So the volunteers at
the Hong Kong City Mall expect many more evacuees.
But these efforts are short-term. Houston officials have been
pushing to move all the evacuees out of the Astrodome and the
Reliant Center by Saturday into the Reliant Arena. They say that
they might not be able to complete the efforts until next week.
Meanwhile, the evacuees wonder and worry about their future.
Many want to return, and most believe they will be able to do so
in a week or two. But while New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has
allowed the homeowners and business owners of the Garden
District and the French Quarter to return this week, there are
still no dates set for poor, largely African American
neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward to reopen.
Evacuees are being shipped off all over the country?San
Francisco, Michigan, and New York?with no return ticket. As
pundits and planners across the country have begun to call for
neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward to be bulldozed and
permanently abandoned, many evacuees have begun to ask if there
is an agenda afoot to eliminate the city's poor and people of
color. Organizers from the New Orleans organization <a
href=http://srv.ezinedirector.net/?n=1034324&s=28090899
target=_blank>Community Labor United</a> have begun calling for
"evacuees from our community to actively participate in the
rebuilding of New Orleans."
In the Astrodome, Dolores Johnson has another cold sandwich and
shakes her head. She asks, "We are able-bodied. Why can't we be
involved in the process to rebuild our homes?"
COMING NEXT: How New Orleans' evacuees and community organizers
are reacting to redevelopment and resettlement plans.
---------------
To track ongoing coverage of these untold stories we encourage
you to visit our website: http://www.thirdworldmajority.org. We
will continue to post up to date stories and articles as soon as
they become available to us. In addition, there is a posted
list of non-profit organizations in the Gulf States that are in
need of your support. If you are interested in making a donation
directly to these organization you can do so by visiting the TWM
website for their organization’s contact information.
Similarly, TWM is in need of your support as well. We are
looking for people interested in volunteering in this important
endeavor. Here are some of the ways that you can support TWM in
this critical time:
* Writers: We need writers to help us document stories that are
coming through both by phone and email.
* Video Editors: We need editors to log and capture raw footage
delegates will bring with them next week. This footage will in
turn be produced into a video piece to be disseminated widely.
* Podcasters: Audiobloggers we need your help! If you are a
podcaster and can provide feedback and input please contact us!
* Donate! Your in kind donation will help us continue the follow
up work needed to keep these stories alive. To donate to TWM you
can make checks out to the Agape Foundation. Checks can be sent
to:
Third World Majority
369 15th Street
Oakland, CA 94612
510.465.6941
wanda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If you would like to receive these story updates or other
information regarding TWM work by email please visit our website
at http://www.thirdworldmajority.org and sign up.
Thank you for your support!
Third World Majority
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