Date Published:
March 9, 2007
MP3 Downloads:
- 17.5 minute radio feature by Andalusia from Rustbelt Radio
- Entire interview: Part 1 (45min, 20mb), Part 2 (37min, 17mb)
- Intros (4min, 3mb)
- Question 1: "More thorough introductions, including the organizations you're working with and their strategies" (8min, 7mb)
- Question 2: "What are some of the issues facing your communities?" (9min, 9mb)
- Question 3: "How does gender play into the challenges facing your communities and the people you work with?" (8min, 7mb)
- Question 4: "What would justice in the Gulf Coast, and for displaced Katrina Survivors, look like?" (7min, 6mb)
- Question 5: "What do y'all feel inspired about?" (2min, 2mb)
- Question 6: "What do you see as the role of allies in the struggle for justice in the Gulf Coast and for displaced Survivors?" (5min, 5mb)
- Question 7: "How is the struggle in New Orleans a part of the larger struggle for justice in this country?" (9min, 8mb)
- Question 8: "Are there ways that people here can support your organizations?" (5min, 5mb)
- Poem from Maya Dempster (2min, 2mb)
- Question and anwser period (19min, 9mb)
Full Transcript (word document)
moderated by Ingrid Chapman, courtesy of Left Turn
Catalyst Project organized a panel at this year’s
National Conference on Organized Resistance , featuring
Mayaba Liebenthal,
Amber McZeal, and
Maya Dempster,
who discussed their lives and political work post-Katrina, in New
Orleans and as evacuees, from the challenges of survivor organizing to
their visions for justice in the Gulf Coast. This is an excerpt
from that forum, which was moderated by Ingrid Chapman, transcribed by
Dee Ouellette & Jen Collins, and edited by Molly McClure.
Ingrid: Where are you living, and what work are you doing now?
Mayaba: I live in
New Orleans and work with INCITE: Women of Color against Violence and
Critical Resistance [CR]. INCITE seeks the liberation of women of
color by challenging domestic violence and recognizing that the state
is often the perpetrator of much of the violence against women, women
of color especially. CR is a prison abolition group working
against the prison industrial complex and modern-day slavery.
We’re trying to figure out what it actually looks like to have
true community accountability.
Amber: I work with
Survivors for Survivors in the Bay Area, which started in 2005 by an
evacuee/journalist/historian from New Orleans, C.C. Campbell
Rock. Survivors for Survivors assists with the unmet needs of the
2,000 families still displaced in the Bay Area, currently 16,000
displaced overall in California. We deal with requests anywhere from a
food card to an electricity bill to a cell phone bill to rent.
Survivors for Survivors started a work-for-hire catering company called
“A Taste of New Orleans” intended to help provide
self-sustenance for evacuees. I also work with a play of stories
from the Katrina Diaspora called “Stardust and Empty
Wagons” that was staged in San Francisco.
Maya: I’m
living in New York City and working with the Solidarity Coalition of
Katrina and Rita Survivors. We had about 5000 displaced
individuals to the New York City area. We have weekly meetings
and a monthly united front meeting, which is a platform for all of the
other not –for-profits in New York City area to get together and
focus on basic needs of survivors still not being met.
We’re focusing more on media now because it’s a way for us
to touch more individuals. I also work with Ghetto Dreams
Movement, which is a music/movie/entertainment organization, originally
based in New Orleans, that we use to bring awareness to
survivors’ issues in New York City Area. Ghetto Dreams Movement
also creates jobs for displaced individuals.
Mayaba: CR is
working on an amnesty campaign for prisoners of Katrina. When OPP
[Orleans Parish Prison] got flooded all of the evidence got washed
away, and thousands of people’s cases never went to trial.
We’re trying to get amnesty for people still inside, and all
charges dropped. INCITE initiated a project called the
Women’s Health and Justice Initiative [WHJI] which is opening a
women’s clinic, a multidimensional project that sees service as
part of a larger reproductive justice model. In our approach, the
clinic is part of a political process, so if you test positive for lead
poisoning, there’s also a space for you to organize around the
fact that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] didn’t clean
up the lead. We want the healthcare at the clinic to be a space
to take action, so you can create a sense of agency around your body
and a holistic sense of self, for yourself and for your community.
Ingrid: What are some of the major issues facing the communities you organize?
Amber: One of the
biggest issues is getting in touch with everyone to organize
them. Within my community itself, the 2000 people in the Bay
Area, we still don’t have a list of those people. We put up
posters and go to church events where survivors gather, but it’s
pretty much word of mouth and few people will come to those events
because they’re not looking for consolation from a priest right
now. They’re looking for the basic three: jobs, shelter,
food. And they’re looking for justice.
Mayaba: What
happened with Katrina and what’s going on with the land grab in
New Orleans are like a microcosm of the overall state of the US today.
You can go into every inner city community and they are suffering the
same way. I go to Detroit and they are having the same problems
that we are having in New Orleans, and they didn’t have a natural
disaster, right? We’re losing affordable housing.
We’ve lost affordable housing. Our communities are
over-policed. We’re policed up and it doesn’t make us
any safer. We can’t get public education. We’re
being denied access to health care. Workers’ rights are
being stepped on all over the place and the breakdown of our
communities is huge. So what are the issues facing us?
We’re being stomped. We’re trying to rebuild at a
time where no one really wants us to rebuild.
Amber: They brought
police and enforcement to New Orleans before they started bringing
other resources to actually sustain life. That doesn’t
promote safety --- that says to the people of New Orleans that you are
a threat. After I evacuated, I wanted desperately to return to
the city. A few of us were lucky enough to have a hotel room in
the city [paid for by FEMA]. When that was taken away, there was
nothing put in place of it. It was about a two-month period of
“this is going to be the last day that FEMA will pay for your
hotel.” Not knowing where you’re going to sleep at
night leaves you in a very confused, clouded state of mind. I do
believe that it was purposeful. There was no incentive to return
home. There still isn’t. Our hearts are home but
there’s no incentive there. And what we have to do is
create incentives to return home and a way to return home.
Maya: In New York,
similar to everywhere there are displaced people, the feeling towards
evacuees at first was welcoming, but when the cameras stopped rolling
that’s when the help stopped. Keeping your head clear is
very important just to be able to function, because there was never a
time we had to actually cry over our city. We just kept running,
kept going, kept going and all of a sudden it was a year had passed and
we were still moving, still trying to find housing, still trying to
just live. Those things were interrupted greatly. Life has
not returned to normal, there is no sense of normalcy.
We’re still not OK.
Ingrid: How does gender play into the challenges facing your communities and the people that you work with?
Mayaba: Women of
color bear the brunt of disasters: natural disasters, state-inflicted
disasters, state-enforced disasters. Women of color are at the
intersection of sexism and racism, and this perspective is often times
ignored or separated, like you walk into one area and you’re a
woman and you go over here and you’re black and somehow never the
twain shall meet. The lack of gender analysis is particularly
problematic in the organizing work in terms of trying to transform
society into a way that we want to live our lives. We need that
analysis of racism and sexism to develop community accountability
strategies for a functional stateless society. We need to be able to
ask: why are women of color affected like this? Why are we the
highest rising HIV population, the fastest growing population in
prisons? We know that domestic violence goes up after
disasters. Yet few services have actually been put in place to
help to change this or alleviate any of these conditions.
Black women are loved in theory but not in practice. There is a lack of
visibility of us as women of color, outside of symbolic imagery.
You saw Black women crying on TV during the flood, disempowered, the
most disenfranchised person you could find. Organizations will
work “on your behalf” but when you say what you need
yourself it doesn’t matter. At the INCITE clinic, nearly 90
percent of our funding has come from individual donors and people who
support us. Foundations? Not into it.
Non-profits? Not into it. Yet they have all been asking
what we need and what we want to do, and when we finally say it
we’re ignored.
Ingrid: What would justice in the Gulf Coast, and justice for displaced Katrina survivors look like to you?
Maya: A good start would
be some admittance to the neglect, to the government failing their
citizens. It wouldn’t change what happened but it’s a
good start. The treatment of people of African descent by the
government, national guard, state police, and other states’
police is dehumanizing and unacceptable. I had eight sheriffs
hold shotguns to my head at about 9:30 at night. This was while
the curfew was still in effect. The curfew was for midnight but
nevertheless that still occurred. Imagine just leaving your
house, getting in your car, and eight sheriffs jump out, put shotguns
to your head, and tell you to get on the ground. Focusing on
Mardi Gras parties is not important when there are numerous murders on
a daily basis. The focus needs to change so the city can heal.
Amber: New Orleans
is where my home was and my heart is. Maya hit on something when
she said “New Orleanians are not new to neglect.”
That is a problem. The hundreds of thousands who are displaced
are accustomed to being neglected. Which is why giving voice to
survivors through “Stardust and Empty Wagons” is
crucial. We’re used to being told to shut up, or being
killed in order to be silenced. The government moves like
molasses, like we say in the south, and molasses moves very, very
slow. And slow is not going to work right now. As fast as
the hurricane hit and the levees blew and the people were out,
that’s as fast as we needed to move to be back in. Since
it’s all knocked down let’s rebuild it the right way.
We can start to curb our addiction to oil and electricity now by
switching over to solar paneling on all the houses. Then New
Orleans can be a model for the rest of the country.
Ingrid: What do you feel inspired about?
Maya: I find this
forum to be extremely inspiring, and also very healing. Every
time we get to speak and share these stories with different people it
helps the healing process, and helps to invoke change.
Amber: You
can’t kill the spirit and that’s what New Orleans culture
is about. That’s what second lines are about. We
don’t die. It doesn’t matter what you do to my
body. I will still carry joy.
Ingrid: What is the role of allies in the struggle for justice in the Gulf Coast and for survivors?
Mayaba: When allies
come to New Orleans, it’s really important to do work in your own
communities as well, especially to undo the racism that we’ve
been taught and that’s reinforced with every breath and step we
take. We had a rally about ending the violence in New Orleans
that felt like a Klan rally---it was the most pro-police white thing
that I’ve ever seen in my life. A woman had a sign saying
“Thugs are Terrorists.” What I want is for people to
look into your own communities and organize around that kind of
mentality. You don’t need to come to New Orleans to do that.
Amber: Allies can
leverage the resources they have to the ends that we need, like
connecting organizations to technical support. Allies can act as
liaisons connecting us to opportunities like this to tell the truth as
we see it. If you fight the same issues of housing and
gentrification in your own town, make the connections to what’s
happening in New Orleans. We need tangible sustainability. Stop
giving your money to the Red Cross, to these corporations who run
commercials with Aaron Neville songs and sad pictures. That is
not what we look like. Do I look like that to you? New
Orleanians don’t like pity. We’re a very proud
people. Demand that the U.S. adhere to the U.N. guidelines for
internally displaced peoples. Police the U.S. on the grounds of
crimes against humanity because that’s what’s going
on. Demand that Blanco release the LRA [Louisiana Recovery
Authority] funds that she’s been sitting on and accruing interest
for the past year. These funds are for the Road Home program,
which has no incentive for renters, which all of us happen to have
been. The majority of New Orleanians were renters, but these
funds would only allocate a hundred and fifty thousand dollar grant to
every homeowner whose property was damaged or lost to rebuild their
home. Become knowledgeable of what’s going on, like Big
Easy money profiteering. The same companies in Iraq right now are
the companies doing recovery efforts and getting the no-bid contracts
in New Orleans.
Ingrid: How does the struggle in New Orleans impact the broader struggle for justice in this country?
Mayaba: We’re
at a very remarkable moment to be able to change the entire framework
that we use to talk about injustice. We can talk about what
happened in Katrina as human rights issues, which gives the US an
international context and an international language. We’re
actually at a time where we can align our social movements in this
country with the human rights and social movements of everywhere else.
Maya: Katrina was
the largest migration of African-Americans since slavery. I
can’t help but think that had that not been the case we might
have gotten a little bit more of a dignified response from the media,
from the government. Aid wouldn’t have taken so long, and
not arrived. Most hurricane survivors didn’t even receive
the $2000 that was supposed to aid in your immediate needs let alone
monies for personal property loss or any kind of personal
assistance. Most people got nothing but leaving their homes and
never returning.
Amber: 9-11 was a
disaster with a one-mile radius. Katrina hit a hundred and forty
miles of coastline. 9-11 directly affected a few thousand
people. Throughout the Gulf we’re talking over a million
people directly affected, between the two hurricanes from Lake Charles
to the Mississippi and further north. Yet you see in the news a
lot of attention placed on “oh he bought a car with his FEMA
money” for those who did receive the personal property money, a
lot of judgment about what they did with it. It’s these
little things that hurt after a while.
Ingrid: How can people support your particular organizations?
Amber: Bring
“Stardust and Empty Wagons” out for a performance or for a
reading--- all the proceeds go to the immediate needs of
evacuees. If you know evacuees in your area, connect them to
either resources or technology to be connected with other
evacuees. It’s huge, it’s crucial. Community
was a big factor for New Orleans and the pain that we feel right now is
the unraveling of our culture. Culture is our life.
Mayaba: The New
Orleans Women’s Clinic is opening, any and all fundraising is
appreciated. CR has a video called “I Won’t Drown on that
Levee and You Ain’t Gonna Break my Back.” We need to raise
awareness about what happened in the prison, what’s still
happening. Get the word out about organizing on the ground,
because the news is not getting out about how much grassroots activity
is happening there. If people knew that, it would undermine every
intention and plan that the government has for the city.
Maya: We have a
collaboration of different musicians from New Orleans that make up the
Ghetto Dreams Movement, ready to do shows and perform. We have
media for sale, there are two albums. They are songs of
inspiration, and days before hurricane Katrina. This music is
very healing to us, so if you see that, support it.
Amber: We need
reparations. You can even change the name, because the needs have
changed. I don’t need a mule. I don’t know where I
would put a mule.
Mayaba: Would the mule now be a Honda? I’d like a hybrid.
Mayaba Liebenthal
is a Black feminist anarchist and human rights advocate committed to
creating projects institutions that support self-determined and
sustainable communities development. A New Orleans resident, she
is a member of various community based organizations including INCITE:
Women of Color Against Violence, and Critical Resistance. She is
a contributor to the South End anthology, What Lies Beneath Katrina: Race and the State of the Nation
.
Amber McZeal
is a native New Orleanian by way of Lafayette, Louisiana. She
currently resides in Berkeley, California where she is a volunteer
public and community relations director with the social justice
activist group Survivors for Survivors, a survivor initiated non-profit
organization assisting hurricane survivors with needs still unmet by
the national recovery agencies. Prior to Katrina she was a
student of jazz performance at Southern University in New
Orleans. She is continuing her studies in sound therapy in
California.
Maya Dempster
is a writer artist and activist. She is a New Orleans resident
via New York City right now. As a survivor of Katrina and Rita
she now works closely with New York Solidarity Coalition of
Katrina/Rita Survivors to aid evacuees in the struggle for social
justice.
Catalyst Project
is a center for political education and movement building based in the
San Francisco Bay Area, committed to anti-racist work in majority white
sections of left social movements with the goal of building multiracial
left movements for liberation. Since Katrina, Catalyst has made
solidarity with the Gulf Coast a major part of our work.
