theotheramerica

oct/nov2007 red pepper

15

ew Orleans musicians marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina devastating their city this summer by carrying their instruments in sombre silence. Of the estimated 3,000 who played in the city before Katrina, only about 1,800 have returned. More than 100,000 of the city’s ex-residents remain in exile, while tens of thousands more are still making do in temporary accommodation. Curtis Muhammad, a civil rights movement veteran and member of the New Orleans Survivor Council (NOSC), was in the UK in August to rally international support for this grass-roots movement. The NOSC has been inspired by the ‘bottom-up’ organising of the likes of the sharecroppers’ unions of the 1930s and 1940s and civil rights activists such as Ella Baker, a mentor and trainer of young campaigners. Muhammad draws parallels between the abandoned and displaced poor black survivors of today and the ‘liberated’ black slaves cast adrift after the American civil war: ‘The survivor council is an attempt to recapture their old models of organising when your government has deserted you. When there’s no aid, no foundation, nobody – where do you go? You’ve got to go back to try and bring that old technology forward and use it.’ Muhammad talks a lot about mobilising from the ‘bottom’. He is referring to the roughly 80 per cent of the world’s population that lives on an average of two dollars a day. ‘What you have seen in Latin America,’ he says, ‘is a group of people that nobody ever considered people. The left didn’t see them as the working class. They are the “informal economy”. They live in cardboard boxes and sleep in shacks in riverbanks. Thousands of people

so poor they have no job, no house. And they’re organising and raising hell in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela – all over.’

Solidarity In early 2007, Muhammad and a delegation from the NOSC visited the communal councils in Caracas, Venezuela, to begin to establish an international solidarity movement between these ‘people of the bottom’. The Venezuelan government, just after Katrina, had offered to send resources to help the recovery, but the Bush administration rejected the move. Meanwhile, it took the administration a year to approve a $10 billion grant for flooded-out homeowners. The fund has already run out – well before the last applicant has been paid. With members of the councils, the NOSC met with Venezuelan government officials to organise help directly. In March the organisers also sent a letter to the people of Venezuela requesting they send over organisers and resources and also engineers to help build a small demonstration levee to world-class

standards. Organisers have visited the city twice since then. A decision has also been made to try to build a sister-city relationship between the NOSC and the Caracas communal councils. ‘We started looking internationally at the Zapatistas in Mexico, the communal councils in Venezuela, the landless people in Bolivia and Brazil and we have taken our people to visit these places,’ says Muhammad. ‘Every programme and everything we do grows out of the ideas of the people. We consider the genius of the people.’ The first step taken in New Orleans, following the example of Latin American organisers, was sending organisers and volunteers into the streets to meet and talk with as many poor black survivors as they could. Almost 6,000 visits were conducted. The purpose was to begin building relationships and establish agreement for future communication with people who

Organising from the bottom

Bythe time Hurricane Katrina struckNewOrleans the Wall StreetJournal was reporting thatthe rich white elite was already planning its newvision forthe citydemographically, economicallyand politically. TAMANNAKALHARtalked to local blackactivistCURTISMUHAMMAD aboutthe resistance and alternatives to the ‘new’NewOrleans