16 red pepperoct/nov2007

‘Theold leftis gone. Weneed to begin to getmoreinvested in thepoor’

would then be invited to meet together in what was to become the New Orleans Survivor Council. The base structure of the NOSC is the ‘people’s circle meeting’, where poor and working people can control their own organisation and develop their ideas and their ability to implement them. There is a firm rule of equality to ensure no voice goes unheard. All present are seated in a circle and get the same amount of time to speak. Organisers help with transportation, food, childcare and assistance for elderly or disabled participants to eliminate any obstacles people may face in attending. The meeting opens and ends with a song, poem or prayer ‘to remind ourselves of who we are. We cook traditional food and sing songs and stories because it’s a powerful thing.’ The number attending varies from as few as five people at a time: ‘Sometimes it’s large if you find an artist – somebody well known from New Orleans. We’ve used bands, singers and athletes. There’s a philosophy among the elders that “Whoever is here are the people we’ve been looking for” and we’re going to work just as hard if it’s just five of them.’ When I ask Muhammad how the council tries to reach out to the tens of thousands that have left the city he replies emphatically: ‘We just do it! We go to New York to try and find these people. Somebody goes to Chicago to visit a relative – we tell him to go find these people there. That’s the way you do it.’

Rich elite There is a strong belief within the black community of New Orleans that the US government used the category five hurricane as a pretext to evict the majority poor black population and replace it with a wealthy white majority. By the time Katrina struck, the Wall Street Journalwas reporting that the rich white elite was already planning its new vision for the city – demographically, economically and politically. The non-partisan US website www.thinkprogress.org has reported that the main author of the New Orleans reconstruction plan is a top conservative donor and former director of the Urban Land Institute, a business-oriented group whose New Orleans proposal ‘would create a blueprint that eliminated mostly black neighborhoods’.

Muhammad agrees: ‘All the houses for the rich, middle class white people have either been completely refurbished or are being right this minute. The tourist centre is totally refurbished and the hotels totally refurbished. You can go to New Orleans and think wow, it’s been completely rebuilt.’ But he says nothing is happening where the main poor black community is located, outside the developed centre. ‘And that’s the vast majority of the New Orleans area. There’s more money in that town than is required to fix it up – it’s the gold rush! But still there’s no houses being built for the poor people. And in the meantime we are being replaced by an immigrant force of workers. They have 30,000 Mexicans in New Orleans, the new slaves.’ Immigrants from central and south America were in New Orleans within days, Muhammad says, cleaning up the toxic ruins in bare feet, without protective gear, decent housing or any sort of rights. A separate immigrant organisers’ workers centre was formed under the umbrella of the NOSC to try to bring together poor residents and these exploited incomers. The NOSC has made significant progress with virtually no financial resources. It started by prioritising the rebuilding of homes for those in most need. In the past two years 1,600 young students and other volunteers have come to help in this way. With their assistance the NOSC has been able to organise lowincome homeowners to rebuild their homes, public housing residents to reoccupy their homes, former renters to repair blighted houses and move in with their families. It has also taught building skills to survivors so they can rebuild their

homes themselves. ‘We’re working on 140 houses right now,’ says Muhammad. We’ve cleaned them up – got them ready – they’re occupiable. Sometimes we have to break in through windows and doors because they locked down the public houses with steel doors and windows.’

Direct action Further direct action has been employed in preventing unscrupulous private developers and contractors from taking over buildings. Muhammad tells of NOSC members ‘arresting’ bulldozer drivers: ‘We do citizen arrests. Sometimes we’ll be cleaning up a school and some private company has been given the right to tear the school down. All our schools are up for sale! We can mobilise 300 people in about 15 minutes to show up. We just go crazy and usually they back off.’ The NOSC has also begun a leadership training institute to provide poor blacks with the skills needed to run and manage their own organisations and to implement large development projects. ‘Hundreds of people come through it all the time. But it’s a struggle.’ Working from Muhammad’s house, the organisation’s headquarters (which will soon be relocated to an almost renovated church), letters are sent out requesting donations. ‘We have over half a million people on our mailing list so we can raise a little bit of cash. You don’t stop because you didn’t get your big budget. You work at the level of the budget you do have and keep going.’ Despite the day-to-day victories, Muhammad is keen to stress that the organisation is struggling: ‘We have got to start connecting ourselves to each other around the world and begin to move globally as our enemies move globally.’ ‘We’ve lost something from the 1960s. If we’re going to do this we’ve got to go back and capture the genius of our movements. We have a real fight and struggle going on in New Orleans right now. We have to commit to organising the bottom. Our old revolutionaries are gone. The old left is gone. So we need to begin to get more invested in the poor. The 80 per cent that ain’t got shit – they are organisable! And that is our only hope.’

www.peoplesorganizing.org theotheramerica

oct/nov2007 red pepper

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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