She definitely doesn't look like she's "all there"!
Grassroots relief highlights gov’t negligence
By John Catalinotto
Published Sep 6, 2005 12:20 AMGrassroots initiatives
The grassroots support has been quicker and often better organized than that of the Red Cross, not to speak of FEMA. Gloria Rubac of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty told Workers World that there has been an outpouring of support from the Houston population, especially from the Black community. “There is a real connection between Houston, especially the Frenchtown neighborhood, and southern Louisiana, for both Black and white people, through language and culture,” she said. “There are many volunteers, so many that the Red Cross has been turning them away.”
Rubac said that SHAPE, which stands for Self-Help for African People through Education and has been a center of political activity in the Black community since 1969, has been “a center of organization” in Houston. “Other groups bring in all sorts of aid to the SHAPE Community Cen ter, where it is sorted for babies, adults, whatever. These are contributions from poor working class people in Hous ton contributing what they can. People with homes are taking families into their home.
“SHAPE has also been keeping track of who comes in from Louisiana and connecting people with others they know. The Red Cross wasn’t doing this until Sept. 5, so the community group did,” Rubac said.
“We heard that someone in New Orleans commandeered a bus and filled it with people trying to evacuate the city. It ran out of gas and got stuck. At the same time, the New Black Panther Party of Hous ton took three buses intending to pick people up from New Orleans. They wound up rescuing those from the bus that was stuck and taking them to Bossier City, La., near Shreveport.”
In another development, the anti-war movement is helping survivors of Hurri cane Katrina. A delegation from Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas—named after a GI killed in Iraq—set up camp in Cov ing ton, La., across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, to help the people forced to flee the Gulf Coast. The “White Rose” bus of the Veterans for Peace, Chapter 116, set up Camp Casey Covington, which is now providing food and medical support at the Covington Pine View Middle School on 28th Street.
The Camp Casey group has already made deliveries of water to the Red Cross and has been providing communications via its satellite connection. An e-mail from Dennis Kyne says they set up a distribution line that delivered tons of food and supplies in the first two days. Other Vet erans for Peace groups are sending truckloads of goods into the area. The only way to reach Camp Casey Covington right now is through Gordon Soderberg at his e-mail address: gordonsoderberg@mac.com.
Expanding the struggle
Along with bringing direct relief, progressive organizations have expanded the struggle to demand more aid from the government. A Camp Casey in downtown Detroit gave the microphone to someone who had just come from New Orleans to stay with family members. When the group then joined the Labor Day parade, the hurricane survivor carried a sign calling for the Cuban doctors to be allowed to help the displaced Gulf Coast population, reports Cheryl LaBash. “We hung a banner between streetlight poles that said, ‘Bush Lies—New Orleans Dies—Money for Our Cities, Not for War.’”
A number of organizations have called for coordinated national demonstrations on Sept. 12, preferably at federal buildings, to demand:
* Immediate relief—food, medicine, water, clothing and emergency shelter for the people of the region.
* Extended unemployment benefits for all who have lost jobs, and a massive jobs and housing program for the near future.
* Money for hurricane relief, not war!
* End the military occupation of New Orleans! People trying to feed their families are not looters!
* An independent international investigation of the criminal negligence that caused this disaster.
Initiating endorsers include the Million Worker March Movement; Troops Out Now Coalition; Saladin Muhammad, Black Workers For Justice; Harlem Tenants Council; Chris Silvera, Chair, Team sters National Black Caucus; Malik Rahim, Greencross, New Orleans; Inter national Action Center; Cuba Solidarity New York; Rev. Lucius Walker, Pastors for Peace; Rev. Luis Barrios, Iglesia San Romero de Las Américas; and local leaders and activists from around the country. Protests are already planned in all the large cities and in over 100 areas of the U.S.
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In other words, Malik Rahim is using STOLEN Red Cross supplies for his own group, the Green Cross, to prove to the world how incompetent the Red Cross is.