Infoshop News (news.infoshop.org) February 17, 2006
New Orleans -- The little blue house rising out of the rubble looks almost like a mirage, surrounded by a sea of jumbled cinderblocks, twisted pieces of iron, overturned and smashed cars and whole houses buckled in on themselves or tossed off their foundations.
The blue house is neat and bright and its well-swept yard sprouts a few flowers and protest signs saying “Welcome Home Lower Ninth Ward Residents” and “No Eminent Domain.”
This is the work of the Common Ground collective, a grassroots group founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by two local activists and staffed by locals and thousands of visiting volunteers. In response to the serious dearth of material aid and rebuilding, healthcare, informational and other services from government agencies, Common Ground volunteers have snapped into action to provide everything from healthcare, food, clothing, supplies and internet access to help gutting and rebuilding houses, legal advice and political resistance against what many see as the city’s plans to level the lower ninth ward and turn it into green space, like a park or golf course, or other uses that don’t include the former residents.
Several volunteers moved into the “blue house,” as it is called, in early January just after the area was finally opened to residents and the public. They slept there, without heat, electricity or running water, in defiance of a curfew that prohibited even residents from staying overnight in their homes. The group figured if they were arrested, they could use their case to challenge the constitutionality of the curfew. But they weren’t, and the curfew was dropped soon after.
The house, donated by a resident, is practically in the shadow of the overturned barge that breached the levee nearby with a flood of water that virtually flattened the neighborhood and killed many residents. Common Ground members figured that by setting up an outpost right by the barge and levee breach, they could more easily force the media and visiting politicians to listen to the residents’ demands that they be allowed to rebuild in their former home.
“This was all these people know,” said Denna Trufant, whose father narrowly escaped from his home in the ward, as she drove through to survey the damage. “They need to rebuild it.”
Common Ground volunteers, as many as 1,000 any given week, are slowly helping to gut and clear properties in the lower ninth. They hold regular meetings for residents at the house discussing legal options, property rights, clean-up strategies and other issues. Across the canal, several miles up Claiborne Street from the blue house, in the “upper” ninth ward, Common Ground’s main headquarters is a bustling settlement of tents, stacks of supplies, bunks and a decontamination station. The organization is headquartered in a Baptist church and its gravel parking lot. Displaced residents and long-term volunteers sleep in hastily but sturdily constructed three-high bunks walled off into rooms with tarps and blankets in the church. Across the street the parking lot hosts a tent city and distribution center with meticulously organized free goods including canned food, pasta and other edibles; toys; clothes; baby diapers and supplies; even nail polish. On the sidewalk outside the church, the decontamination station with a series of buckets with different solutions to decontaminate rubber boots, gloves and other protective gear used for gutting houses. Posters and handouts describe how to deal with mold and the chemical and industrial toxins spread everywhere by the flood.
Next to the tent city, a cute house in the process of being rebuilt inside hosts a legal clinic and health clinic. Separated by “walls” of bare slats, volunteer attorneys and nursing students do workshops and offer basic healthcare and supplies.
“We’re doing a comprehensive community health needs assessment, finding out where people got care before,” said Noah Morris, 23, a volunteer from Providence, Rhode Island who is now studying nursing at a local community college. “We distribute self-testing kits, we have an acupuncturist and herbalist and we do rapid HIV testing. We’re trying to get more lab equipment and staff so we can play a primary care role in people’s lives.”
The group living situation and decision-making processes at Common Ground and the interaction between mostly low-income, black residents and mostly white, relatively well-off young volunteers has presented many challenges and lessons regarding racism, classism, sexism and solidarity and tolerance, according to organizers.
“One girl asked a woman to keep her voice down, and she said, ‘White people have been telling me to keep my voice down all my life. In Africa you speak your mind and you let out your emotions,’” said Brandon Darby, one of the long-term Common Ground organizers.
Common Ground was founded within days of Hurricane Katrina by a local former Black Panther and long-time activist named Malik Rahim and another local activist named Sharon Jones. It started as a first aid station in Algiers, the largely impoverished, black neighborhood across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. The first aid station quickly spawned other projects and drew a range of local and national supporters.
Soon there was a full-scale health clinic in Algiers in a donated mosque. The clinic, which was slated to move from the mosque to another building this winter, is regularly packed with residents who get medical advice and basic care from volunteer doctors and nurses and other volunteers.
Near the Algiers clinic are several food and clothing distribution centers. In addition to the blue house, the Algiers sites and the main Common Ground headquarters, there is also a media center with free internet and a low power radio station and a women’s center. An outreach project to mostly Latino migrant workers is in the works.
The group gets no funding from the government and survives mostly on individual donations along with a few grants, as well as extensive in-kind donations. Among others they’ve gotten donations from filmmaker Michael Moore and the group Veterans for Peace. In March members plan to meet with representatives of President Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela, to take the country up on offers of aid that the US government refused. Currently they are raising $30,000 to buy heavy-duty tents for residents who are being evicted from temporary shelter, according to Darby.
Common Ground has been met with both hostility and grudging respect and cooperation from various government agencies, according to organizers. Several members were arrested for blocking the street with an aid truck. Others have had guns shoved in their faces by police and private security guards. But they say that in other cases, government workers have turned to them for information or support, “off the books” in Darby’s words.
Along with offering concrete aid and assistance, the group has a larger political viewpoint and strategy of challenging capitalist and segregationist development procedures and inequality and racism in general. Members say politicians and mainstream media have lauded their efforts but downplayed their political message.
“We try to take a really challenging stance,” said Darby. “Especially now that we have so much support nationally and internationally.”
Common Ground’s relationships with residents and other activist and community groups in the city have apparently been positive overall, though controversial and rocky in some respects, largely because of the racial dynamics and economic inequalities between residents and volunteers. The group has forged alliances with some other local groups and churches, but hasn’t been able to see eye to eye with others.
Meanwhile along with the Katrina related challenges, Common Ground members are hoping to develop a grassroots infrastructure to respond to future disasters in the New Orleans area or beyond. They want to identify places where evacuees can be quickly and comfortably relocated, and they want to have equipment and medical supplies ready to respond to disasters.
“If Katrina is any example of how the federal government responds, we need to have people watching, making a critical analysis and being ready to respond ourselves,” Darby said.
--------- Kari Lydersen is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, In These Times, LiP Magazine, Clamor, and The New Standard.
Infoshop's page on Hurricane Katrina Mutual Aid Relief http://www.infoshop.org/hurricanekatrina.html
Additional articles by Kari Lydersen at Infoshop News:
* Kansas Education Shortchanged by Corporate Tax Breaks http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2006kansas_education
* Paramilitaries and Palm Plantations: A Murderous Combination in Colombia http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20051225225156434
* Katrina's Environmental Devastation Adds to a Legacy of Environmental Racism http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20051017081945776
* Don't Eat That Fish! More Mercury Will be the Legacy of New Coal-Burning Plants http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050922095709940
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