National FEMA Trailer Tour

This afternoon, our friend James Perry of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center arrived at the RNC in St. Paul, MN to urge Republican leaders to commit to Gulf Coast rebuilding as a result of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and now Gustav. Several others, including David Gauthe of Thibodeaux, LA and Derrick Evans of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives had planned to accompany the KatrinaRitaVille Express to the RNC, but Gustav put those plans on hold. Quite naturally, everyone in our circle of community advocates is extremely grateful that James has pressed on to St. Paul to represent the Gulf Coast during this unexpected window of renewed media interest and public concern.

Scores of gulf coast community leaders are connected through the KRV Express, the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal, and other regional networks spawned by the Hurricanes of 2005. Because our “family” of grassroots leaders and struggling communities spans coastal LA, MS, AL and TX (and a 49-state Diaspora), we share a deep anxiety in knowing that someone(s) dear to all of us will soon bear Gustav’s heaviest blows. We also know that the strong possibility of longterm adversity is again most likely to impact low-income and/or minority communities that have not recovered from Katrina or Rita. Throughout the gulf region, these people and places still suffer disproportionately from inadequate infrastructure and services, accelerated wetlands loss, toxic contamination, and the narrow definition of “disaster recovery” embraced by media, government and Big Business. From Mobile and Biloxi to Houma and Port Arthur, we are deeply concerned for one another’s safety and committed to a region-wide renewal that is healthy, just and sustainable for all.

Since Friday, I have spoken with several family members back home in Turkey Creek (Gulfport MS) as well as with friends in coastal Louisiana communities that seem even more likely - at this point - to be slammed head-on by Hurricane Gustav. Brenda Robichaux, Principal Chief of the United Houma Nation lives in Golden Meadow, LA, and has over 8,000 tribal members in Lafourche and Terrebone Parishes. Like Mike and Tracie Kuhn of Bayou Barataria, she is preparing herself and others for the area’s third devastating hurricane in 1100 days. Pam Dashiell of the Lower 9th Ward, bandleader Bennie Peete of the Hot 8 Brass Band, and attorney Tracie Washington are all doing the same in New Orleans. I did not reach Rosina Phillipe in Grand Isle or Reverend Martin Denesse of Grace Harbor Ministries, probably because both are preoccupied with a mandatory evacuation from Placquemines Parish (where the Mississippi River enters the Gulf). Please pray for all of these communities, particularly for community stewards like the above, who many are relying on for strength, direction and support in the midst of tremendous re-traumatization.

Most people I have spoken with have said their efforts to evacuate from Turkey Creek, NOLA and coastal Louisiana, etc. have been hindered by a severe shortage of places to go. Virtually all the hotel rooms in Baton Rouge and Jackson have been booked already, and the prospect of bumper-to-bumper traffic heading to places further out like Atlanta, Memphis or Birmingham is a financial and emotional nightmare. Current gas prices, Gustav’s increasing strength, and the eerie fact that Friday was Hurricane Katrina’s third anniversary have already caused more anxiety and re-traumatization than folks can handle alone. Once again, it is faith in a God of grace, mercy, and miracles that empowers the skittish, weary and cash-poor to trudge onward.

This afternoon, I also spoke with a friend whose company handles all the booking for several well-known luxury hotel chains. He shared with me that a FEMA representative looking to reserve space in one of the company’s five New Orleans hotels had called on Friday, wanting to book the entire place. When I asked why he would want the whole hotel, my friend explained that contracts for housing FEMA emergency personnel and contractors typically prohibit evacuees and media from staying in the same hotel. This, he continued, is because FEMA doesn’t want its workers returning from a long day of recovery and relief work to deal with folks asking questions about their neighborhoods, loved ones and so on.

If true, I thought, this policy is just one more reason why folks trying to get themselves out of harm’s way have so few options for where to go. Having also witnessed government agencies and contractors demolish thousands of habitable, publicly owned brick and multi-story units on the gulf coast since Katrina, I am not as impressed as mainstream media seems to be with governments’ current display of disaster readiness. Many of us would rather see the 5,000 Louisiana families still stuck in flimsy FEMA trailers since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita get first dibs on hotel rooms “blocked-out” in several cities by that agency. It would sure be safer, help folks return home sooner, and conserve peoples’ cash for fending for themselves once the camera crews, politicians and contractors wrap up their respective acts and leave - well before any real recovery happens.

One bright spot worth honoring, of course, is that some employers have paid their employees a few days early, and some for two pay periods. How thoughtful, kind and appropriate given that so many peoples’ paychecks are normally not available until the 31st or the 1st. This week, the 31st falls on a Sunday, and the 1st is both a federal holiday and the day on which Gustav is expected to reach land and destroy God knows what. Having lived three years with a disaster that keeps on giving, we are always thankful for unexpected blessings and thoughtful acts of kindness.

The KatrinaRitaVille Exress FEMA Trailer, featuring authentic voices and artistry of hurricane survivors and community activists, has logged nearly 30,000 miles since August 2007 to promote a more healthy, just and sustainable recovery for gulf coast communities still reeling from the storms of 2005, government neglect and disaster profiteering.  Accompanied by youth activists, recovery volunteers, and a ten-piece New Orleans-style brass band, the KRV Express is in Denver for the DNC and will be visible at events and sites throughout the city through Friday, culminating in an interfaith sunrise gathering to mark Hurricane Katrina’s third anniversary (August 29).   Afterwards, the trailer will depart for the RNC in St. Paul MN. 

For more information, including a trailer tour or interviews, please contact:

Karen Savage, Volunteer
617-784-0125
mathsavage at gmail dot com

Between July 13 and 23, the KatrinaRitaVille Express FEMA Trailer will be in the Boston area with New Orleans’ own Hot 8 Brass Band and the Finding Our Folk Tour.

You can catch the KRV Express

• Sunday 7/13, from 4 - 10pm, at the “Bastille Day Festival” in Harvard Square
• Monday 7/14, from 10 - 2pm, at the Hyde Square Task Force (375 Centre St.) in Jamaica Plain
• Tuesday 7/15, from 5 - 9pm, at JB Rhone Park in Central Square Cambridge (Mass Ave & Columbia Street)
• Friday 7/18, from 3 - 9pm, at Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs (Martha’s Vineyard)
• Saturday 7/19, from 4 - 7pm, at the Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs
• Sunday 7/20, from 6 - 9pm, at Lola’s Southern Seafood in Oak Bluffs

Also, we will soon announce the itinerary for an amazing 8-week swing through the Heartland of America, including Denver for the DNC, St. Paul for the RNC and Mississippi River communities from Minnesota to New Orleans.

Connecting with others who face engineer-enhanced disasters, toxic encroachment, crumbling public infrastructure,  and inequitable redevelopment  - we will illuminate the Gulf Coast’s slow and imbalanced recovery by promoting health, justice and sustainability in the rebuilding of communities anywhere.

House republicans moved today to pre-empt lawsuits against manufacturers of FEMA trailers, while whistleblowers from one supplier speak candidly about the dishonest government and company practices they were involved in.

Meanwhile, FEMA and local officials in coastal AL, MS and LA press on with evictions and other efforts to effectively shift the liability for any future health problems stemming from formaldehyde to trailer occupants themselves. New Orleans residents are now being fined $500 a day for remaining in FEMA trailers (on their own property) beyond July 1 - even though city and federal officials both know there is nowhere for them to go. Last month, 49 year old Eric Minshew, a mentally ill Katrina survivor in Lakeview, was killed by police after refusing to relinquish the FEMA trailer in his front yard - the only shelter he had. With occupancy down to 15,000 families (from 60,000 in January), it seems clear that one of the largest mass poisonings in US history is swiftly being remedied by one of our largest mass evictions.

The KatrinaRitaVille Express national FEMA Trailer Tour is headed to Denver, Saint Paul and down the Mississippi River this August and September. Please get involved. Stay posted.

• July 6th - New Orleans LA for the Essence Music Festival
• July 1st - Jackson MS for President Bush visit to Mississippi
• June 30th - Biloxi MS for Equity & Inclusion Campaign’s Strategic Planning conference
• June 26th - 28th - Ft. Lauderdale FL for Unitarian-Universalist Association’s 2008 General Assembly
• June 21st - Key West FL for the Summer Solstice
• June 20th - Miami FL for the “March on the Mayors” during the National Mayors’ Conference
• June 8th & 9th - Boston MA for “Finding Our Folk” documentary at Boston International Film Festival

Students from the Curley Middle School and the Harbor School in Boston

• June 6th - Jamaica Plain, MA for a gulf coast donors’ briefing
• June 3rd - Biloxi MS for Jefferson Davis’ Birthday and re-opening of “Beauvoir”
• May 23rd - Indianapolis IN to purchase our east coast trailer, “The Formalde-Ride”
• May 1st - Birmingham AL for KRV Expresss Fundraiser
• May 2nd - Birmingham AL for Alabama Arise visit to US Senator Shelby’s Office
• April 26th - Washington DC for “Loving Ourselves, Loving Our Hood” Block Party a Howard U.
• April 23rd - Washington DC for Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights’ EJ Commission Report, Equity & Inclusion Legislative Days

Even younger folk wonder “wha’s goin’ on?”

• April 20th & 21st - New Orleans LA for the North American Leaders Summit

New Orleans’ Duncan Plaza - Park Rehab or Homeless Folk Removal?

• April 19th - Chicago IL for the US Human Rights Network conference
• April 18th - St. Louis MO for awareness raising
• April 17th - New Orleans LA French Quarter
• April 12th - Bayou Barataria LA for coastal wetlands tour with Louisiana Bayoukeeper
• April 11th - New Orleans LA for “V-Day” celebration of Katrina’s female survivors and advocates
• April 10th - Coastal Mississippi for gulf coast donors’ tour and briefing in Turkey Creek
• April 7th - Jackson MS for photos outside the Governor’s Mansion and State Capital Building
• April 6th - Oxford MS (University of Mississippi) for Winter Institute
• April 5th - Memphis TN for “The Dream Reborn” Conference with the Hot-8

Derrick Evans emphasizes a full & fair recovery

• April 3-4th - Spelman College in Atlanta GA for “Finding Our Folk” with the Hot-8
• March 31st - Washington DC to see HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson resign
• March 30th - New York City for public visibility throughout Manhattan

March 30th - East Village NYC for hurricane recovery street theater at Middle Collegiate Church

• March 29th - Norwalk CT for Open House at Norwalk Unitarian-Universalist Church
• March 28th - Hartford CT for visit to US Sen. Christopher Dodd’s office
• March 26-27th - Cornell University in Ithaca NY for “Finding Our Folk” with the Hot-8
• March 25th - Birmingham AL for MTV Interview at historic 16th Street Baptist Church

Gulf coast FEMA Trailers are a form of violence whose cramped, poisoned and emotionally depressed survivors include thousands of women and girls. This is why the KRV Express appeared in Saturday afternoon’s Jumpin’ in the Pink second-line march from New Orleans’ Ashe Cultural Arts Center to historic Congo Square. After rolling up Rampart Street behind the New Birth and Free Agents brass bands, our traveling FEMA Trailer set up at Louis Armstrong Park for the marchers - including V-Day founder Eve Ensler - to check out the inside. The Jumpin’ in the Pink march was a kick off for the Katrina Warriors’ Festival, a 4-week celebration of the creativity, activism and courage of New Orleans and Gulf Coast women. The festival will culminate at the Super Dome on April 11-12 with V to the Tenth, an international gathering aimed at ending violence against women and girls - including the violence which Katrina, Rita and the Gulf region’s unjust “recovery” continue to manifest.

Let’s be honest. The scores of thousands of gulf coast families residing in toxic aluminum boxes during the past two and a half years have been the victims of federally funded violence against US citizens. Hardly a human rights champion, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour observed in May 2007, “if we took the convicts in Parchman (state penitentiary) and put them into those FEMA trailers, they’d sue us for cruel and inhuman treatment – and win.”

Whether it’s been FEMA’s documented pattern of concealing its own concerns about formaldehyde, or an average cost exceeding $70,000 per unit– every FEMA trailer currently or previously housing a gulf coast storm survivor is a crime scene. This is one reason for the agency’s mad rush to get the 38,000 families still stuck in them out before this summer (but not necessarily into safer or affordable housing). With rents across the region rising daily, FEMA’s fellow federal prankster, HUD, gleefully destroys more housing units than anyone is building (thank you volunteers, but let’s be real about the problem’s scope).

Not to be outdone by HUD or FEMA, Barbour is vastly enlarging Mississippi’s state port with $600 million federal recovery dollars intended for low-income family housing. With no shame, one of his explanations is that he cannot find any poor people in Mississippi (the poorest state in the US) who need or want the housing assistance (Katrina destroyed 60,000 housing units on the Mississippi coast). If one of the 20,000 families that did get one of Barbour’s slow-arriving “Governor’s Grants” had used a single cent to enlarge their home, he would be charging them with fraud and maybe even huffing about looters, as he did when Katrina hit.

To anyone paying attention, it is clear that certain state and federal leaders would rather see Americans - women, children, elderly, etc. - living in tents under I-10 than in houses or apartments funded with congressional recovery dollars. Surely not in FEMA trailers - the “smoking gun” evidence for at least one crime, and a stark indication of their true regard for citizens, taxpayers and human beings.