Beyond Shelters (Page 2)

"Everyone is talking right now without any plan," says ACORN founder Wade Rathke, who's displaced from his own residence in New Orleans. "I certainly don't have the answers to some issues. I don't know the future of the Ninth Ward. But what I'm certain of is that the voices of people who live in New Orleans are currently being left out of the discussion, and they've got to be at the center of it."

That's also the aim of the Survivors Leadership Group, a Houston-based assembly of evacuated community leaders organized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by The Metropolitan Organization (TMO), a group affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation network. Renee Barrios, the Foundation's lead organizer in Houston, recalls a Labor Day meeting when the distinction between treating Katrina evacuees as victims and as potential leaders became especially pronounced. On that day, she says, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities were appearing in the Astrodome, each of them promising aid in voices that boomed over the arena's PA system. Organizers with TMO almost turned around and left, but then decided they should first announce that they were looking for evacuees who wanted to organize.

A core group of about 100 evacuees met that day. Their first successful action was moving a line of evacuees who were waiting for Red Cross assistance at Houston's Reliant Center out of the stifling heat and into the air-conditioned building. The group also launched a successful petition drive that prompted Houston Mayor Bill White to ask the Federal Communications Commission to restrain cell phone providers from cutting off 504-area phones for nonpayment of bills.

The group also gained a spot in White's "Katrina Working Group," along with police officials, school administrators, city councilors and other local decision-makers. "When the mayor asked us to come to the table," says Barrios, "we said that we'll participate, but we're going to organize. Survivors are going to know best what's going to work and not work."

Christine Stephens, an Industrial Areas Foundation supervising organizer, says the group is working on two fronts: to help evacuees work toward better living conditions in their new communities, and to help those returning to New Orleans have a say in the rebuilding. In Louisiana that means gaining access to the various commissions headed by Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as well as getting folks' voices heard in upcoming special legislative sessions.

TMO and ACORN are working on separate tracks toward common goals; neither Rathke nor Barrios seems particularly interested in combining forces. Some coalitions are forming, however. ACORN has teamed with the NAACP, along with the AFL-CIO and other labor groups, to form New Opportunity and Hope, calling attention to worker-related issues during the reconstruction. In New Orleans veteran activists and political consultants have formed two umbrella groups for activists: the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition, and the Rebuilding Louisiana Coalition.

Organizing displaced residents to agitate on their own behalf poses unusual challenges. "I call people to tell them about a meeting," says Tanya Harris, "and they say, I'm in Idaho." For Harris, the first step remains getting her old neighbors back to the Lower Nine. As she sees it, that will keep them on the path toward home. Walking through the Baker trailer park, she doesn't hide her disappointment every time she encounters residents who say they're not going back. About half the people she meets tonight tell her this.

"Are you going to return?" she asks a couple from Harvey. "To what?" the man answers blankly. "My apartment? It's gone."

Harris tells them ACORN can help them find housing wherever they land. She takes down their names and phone numbers. On her way back to the car, she says that she knows everyone has tough choices to make, but it's difficult talking to people who are moving on. "Decisions are being made all around us," she says. "I want us to go back to fight."

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