Don is a RAAN organizer from Cincinnati who, along with three other unaffiliated volunteers, drove to New Orleans on Oct. 2nd with a car full of supplies to assist in the mutual aid relief efforts underway after Hurricane Katrina. The following report is a composite of several e-mails and phone conversations, and will hopefully be the first in a series.
Don is reporting from the Common Ground community relief center in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans that the situation on the ground seems to have improved, at least to the point where residents are filtering back into the city, though many will remain homeless for some time.
The sheer incompetence of FEMA, Red Cross, and the other “institutional” relief agencies remains the most frustrating aspect. Apparently Red Cross “volunteers” are receiving $900 for 7 days work, and Salvation Army cooks are being made to prepare food for paid contractors instead of hurricane survivors. It is therefore unsurprising that many seem to have expressed that they intend to start working with the Common Ground teams once their time in those organizations is up. One of the most inspiring stories of resistance to this bureaucracy has come from a team of NY firefighters who said they have to “sneak out” of FEMA jurisdiction if they want to actually do anything in the neighborhood. One of these firefighters has offered to help Common Ground by scamming photocopies from the agency.
There is of course a massive armed presence of the state forces, though apparently the National Guard hasn’t been bothering the volunteers very much. The police unsurprisingly seem to be causing the biggest problems with harassment and intimidation, and a curfew is still in place from sundown to sunrise every night.
By all accounts, the Common Ground clinic and collective have been doing amazing work, and the official aid agencies are still asking them for medical supplies and other assistance. At this point the effort is divided into two locations: the original health clinic located in a mosque, and the collective’s base of operations at the house of former Black Panther Malik Rahim. It is here that Don and other non-medical volunteers are staying to distribute food, supplies, and coordinate help with efforts at fixing roofs and other immediate tasks. A couple folks from the immediate neighborhood have also gotten involved in the collective.
There is also now a campaign underway to make the health clinic a permanent institution in New Orleans, which is probably one of the most important things that could come out of this. We are seeing efforts at building new community schooling projects, and it will be necessary to defend these developments as well. RAAN has pointed out the immense danger faced by the Common Ground and all mutual-aid volunteers as the capitalist class slowly re-imposes its control over the city, but now it seems so many positive alliances have come out of these efforts, that a full or dramatic shutdown by the state would be impossible. Under no circumstances must this be taken as a sign that the danger has passed, but rather it should be seen as an immense opportunity to push forward with the creation of self-managed community, using all the resources and triumphs of the past several months to firmly cement these processes into the neighborhood and our support networks.
Nowhere else do we see such a stark contrast between the effectiveness of horizontal mutual aid as opposed to the stagnation of the electoral Left, who are split between ineffective liberal charity and “radical” sermons - opportunistic rants that have nothing to do with the material conditions in New Orleans or any honest attempts at improving them. The grassroots rebuilding efforts in New Orleans are serving as an incredible beacon of hope not only to the effected communities, but indeed to us all.
Don is asking that anyone who can donate money or supplies to Common Ground, and especially those who can come to New Orleans to volunteer, do so immediately. In his words, “this project is in a lot of ways a kind of proletarian self-defense from gentrification... this was the only relief in this neighborhood for a while and is the only one not surrounded by M-16 wielding soldiers…”
RAAN is forwarding all inquiries about grassroots hurricane relief to the efforts already underway through the Common Ground clinic. Monetary donations can be made directly to anti-authoritarian activists through Infoshop. Information about the Common Ground project and how you can get involved is available on their website at http://www.commongroundrelief.org/
Read RAAN's statement of solidarity with the MayDay DC team here.
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In other news, the RAAN website at redanarchist.org is experiencing some downtime while we move servers. Until we're back online we'll continue publishing these reports through other libertarian press.
