Grassroots Organizations Issue Call to Action in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: December 8-10 Survivors' Assembly

The Problem and Opportunity:
As leaders of grassroots advocacy organizations all across the country, we call for an ethical reconstruction of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Above all, the voices and needs of Katrina impacted residents must drive this process.

We understand that far from an unforeseeable disaster, Hurricane Katrina was a forecasted event that exposed decades of calculated indifference in federal policy toward the poor, creating a disaster of Biblical proportions. While the impact crossed racial lines, clearly, people of color suffered disproportionately. Low-income African Americans and other people of color, left behind in the economy due to our nation’s misguided budget priorities, were also left behind to face the fury of the hurricane and its aftermath. New Orleans is the manifestation of a tragedy that has already occurred in every city in our nation, but for the direction of the wind and the water.

The magnitude of the destruction, degradation and death flowing out of New Orleans provides an opportunity to forge a national progressive movement of equal magnitude. The witnessing by the whole nation, in real time, the brutal unmasked poverty and racism that reflects U.S. policy toward African Americans, other minorities and the poor has generated great social energy for change. The single most important factor to help focus and realize that social energy is to assist the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to gain a real voice in the reconstruction of their city and region. Their voice will provide a challenge to the negative national policies and priorities that target minorities and the poor all over the nation. It is our hope to join in forging a national movement that addresses racism, poverty, the lack of democracy, our relationship to the environment and related concerns exposed by Katrina.

Assessment and Direction:
We believe that good government addresses the needs of the most vulnerable first. Katrina throws into relief the harsh reality of long-term, failed governmental policies including the systematic dismantling of the nation’s safety net, the redistribution of wealth through tax cuts to the affluent and the redirection of resources to the war in Iraq.

We reject the divide and conquer strategies of those in power that would pit the needs of migrant workers, now toiling at great risk for low wages in the clean up effort, against the needs of those displaced.

In order to bring immediate relief to Katrina’s victims and ensure that the reconstruction of New Orleans is ethical, humane and just, we support the following:

1. We support the Right of Safe Return for Katrina impacted residents. Accordingly:
 The voices of the displaced must drive an ethical reconstruction process
 All former residents must have the right to return and rebuild
 All former residents must have the right to return to a safe community. This extends to the city’s soil, air, water, structures, food systems and waste systems.

2. We support the right of all laborers now cleaning and rebuilding New Orleans to fair treatment. Accordingly:

 All workers are entitled to a living wage, safe working conditions and the right to bargain collectively
 All workers are entitled to decent housing
 All undocumented workers are entitled to work without fear of deportation and/or other forms of harassment

3. We support immediate relief for former residents from New Orleans and surrounding area now dispersed throughout the nation. Accordingly:

 We support a full accounting of all funds raised by the Red Cross for Katrina victims. Further we call for the use all those funds to identify, locate, and create community among the displaced residents, including partnering with and funding culturally competent and linguistically accessible organizations to provide transportation, food, decent shelter, health care, mental health and social services, education and jobs
 We support the federal government funding the rebuilding of all of New Orleans, including its schools, low-income and affordable housing, and infrastructure
 We reject the draining of overtaxed local shelters and social service systems to address the needs of Katrina area residents and support instead the redistribution of funds currently dedicated to unwarranted military expenditures in Iraq and to tax cuts being proposed for the wealthy for Katrina relief efforts.

As the leaders of organizations that advocate on a variety of issues – from education reform to environmental justice, from food security to juvenile justice, from labor organizing to civil rights – we understand that only by foregrounding the voices of those most impacted can we ethically rebuild New Orleans. These voices will drive us toward a result that will prevent the entirely foreseeable, man-made tragedy of permanent displacement.

An Urgent Call to Action:
We call on all progressive and grassroots organizations and all of the New Orleans community, no matter where they are temporarily located, to come together and unite in the struggle to reconstruct New Orleans. The nation needs a relatively united voice from New Orleans to support. Additionally, we urge everyone (not just former residents of New Orleans) to contact their Congressional representatives immediately and demand that the budget being considered provide funding to reconstruct New Orleans without further cutting the already under funded existing social programs.

Finally and most importantly we urge that every person and/or organization help locate and re-connect New Orleans former residents in or around your community, urging and assisting those who desire to attend a Survivors Assembly for Reconstruction to be held December 9th in Jackson, Mississippi. The Survivors Assembly will be an occasion for former residents from New Orleans to gather, build unity among themselves as they consider and envision a new and better New Orleans and Gulf Coast Region. The Survivors Assembly will be followed on December 10th by a Demonstration in New Orleans to Protest Crimes against Humanity and to share whatever plans/thoughts/visions they choose to share about the reconstruction of New Orleans and the wider region. We urge anyone who can to join with the survivors on December 10th in New Orleans as a show of national solidarity and support. Details on this historic gathering can be obtained from the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition at 1-888-310-PHRF (7473), or on the web at http://www.communitylaborunited.net
or E-mail at info@communitylaborunited.net.