How to Volunteer in New Orleans, or, sleeping in the belly of the beast

I’m going to tell you in a little bit how to volunteer with Commonground in New Orleans. Let me give a little bit of the layout of the land right now, emotionally speaking.

It’s not easy, because the primary emotion you will begin to feel is one of grief. Even if you aren’t from here. Even if you’d never set foot in the city. You’ll feel the grief emanating from the dried, caked mud in the ninth ward, from the faces of people not sure of the future.

You’ll also notice and feel a dogged determination, and anger, like the emotions displayed by Leah Hodges and Mama D in Congress day before yesterday. They did my heart proud with their refusal to relinquish their beliefs and point of view in the face of a kind of state sanctioned harrassment.

New Orleans is dry now, and she’s hurting, but she needs people. She needs people to come to be a witness and testify to others what this manmade disaster has wrought.

New Orleans is what happens after years and years of neglect of our wetlands, of our levees, of our infrastructure.
And if you say it can’t happen where you live, I suggest you pack your bags now and get out while you can.

New Orleans is what happens when the priority of a nation turns away from the needs of the people, when a people fall asleep and allow the theft of a treasury.

We’re waking up now. In New Orleans, the dead were awakened when the flood engulfed the old tombs of our ancestors. The ancestors are angry because their old places of roaming and worship are destroyed, whole blocks and neighborhoods. Where will the ghosts roam now? Where will the people live?

They are talking about buying the land and homes of the working poor in New Orleans. Truth is, every single resident displaced deserves some sort of compensation beyond the measly FEMA money most have had to fight tooth and nail for.

This disaster was manmade. It was in the making years ago when the so-called global economy was born, and jobs were sent overseas, undermining the economic base of our country.

It was in the making when the media was consolidated under a few multi-national companies, limiting debate and discussion in a very, undemocratic like fashion.

It was in the making when we as citizens chose not to participate locally in our community because we were beaten down by cynicism and distrust.

Oh, I was talking about volunteering. Katrina here brought us out of our homes, even the ones not displaced. My family rarely sees me anymore, but I know this is temporary.

We’re starting something here: its called community involvement on a profound, basic level: one on one work.

I would have never met Linda from the B.W. Cooper Housing Development if this storm hadn’t happened. We’ve become sisters in our shared outrage, grief and determination. People are dying out here from grief. The suicide rate is up, suicide threats occuring everyday, double and triple the rate before the storm.

Linda and I are finding, as we sift through the rubble of her B.W. Cooper home, that if we work together and help each other, we’ll find a way. We’ll make it. We’ll never be the same, but we will be stronger for it.

It takes a citizenry to make a nation. Let’s take our nation back, one house at a time.

Here’s how you contact Commonground to volunteer:

These Commonground people have shown up for every single rally we’ve organized to reopen public housing in New Orleans, and to protest the illegal evictions occuring all over the city. We’re learning here of the ties that bind us all, and something beautiful is rising from these ashes.