Post-Katrina, Funders and Foundations Failed New Orleans

In December of 2006, New Orleans' social justice community came together to draft a letter addressed to foundations and funders, in response to the dismal response to the continuing post-Katrina crisis. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and other disasters still to come, the issues raised then are as relevant as ever. 

The letter is reproduced below, along with many of the original names of those who signed on; a range of signatories that helps show the extent of the anger and frustration felt at that time. 

We also encourage those interested in this issue to see this 2007 letter written by civil rights lawyer Bill Quigley. 

LETTER FROM THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS TO OUR FRIENDS AND ALLIES

December 15, 2006

We, the undersigned, represent a wide range of grassroots New Orleans organizers, activists, artists, educators, media makers, health care providers and other community members concerned about the fate of our city.  This letter is directed to all those around the world concerned about the fate of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but is especially intended for US-based nonprofit organizations, foundations, and other institutions with resources and finances that have been, or could be, directed towards the Gulf Coast.

In the days after the storm, there were promises of support from the federal government and an array of nongovernmental organizations, such as progressive and liberal foundations and nonprofits.  Small and large organizations have done fundraising on our behalf, promising to deliver resources and support to the people of New Orleans.

Many organizations and individuals have supported New Orleans-led efforts with time, resources, and advocacy on our behalf, and for this we are very grateful. These folks followed through on their commitments and offered support in a way that was respectful, responsible, and timely.

However, we are writing this letter to tell you that, aside from these very important exceptions, the support we need has not arrived, or has been seriously limited, or has been based upon conditions that become an enormous burden for us.

We remain in crisis, understaffed, underfunded and in many cases in desperate need of help. From the perspective of the poorest and least powerful, it appears that the work of national allies on their behalf has either not happened or if it has happened it has been a failure.

In the days after August 29, 2005 the world watched as our city was devastated.  This destruction was not caused by Hurricane Katrina, but by failures of local, state and national government, and institutional structures of racism and corruption.  The disaster highlighted already-existing problems such as neglect, privatization and deindustrialization.

As New Orleanians, we have seen tragedy first hand.  We have lost friends and seen our community devastated.  More than 15 months later, we have seen few improvements.  Our education, health care and criminal justice systems remain in crisis, and more than 60 percent of the former population of our city remains displaced. Among those that remain, depression and other mental health issues have skyrocketed.

While many nationwide speak of "Katrina Fatigue," we are still living the disaster.  We remain committed to our homes and communities.  And we still need support.

In 15 months we have hosted visits by countless representatives from an encyclopedic list of prominent organizations and foundations.  We have given hundreds of tours of affected areas, and we have assisted in the writing of scores of reports and assessments.  We have participated in or assisted in organizing panels and workshops and conferences.  We have supplied housing and food and hospitality to hundreds of supporters promising to return with funding and resources, to donate staff and equipment and more.  It seems hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised in our name, often using our words, or our stories.

However, just as the government's promises of assistance, such as the "Road Home" program, remain largely out of reach of most New Orleanians, we have also seen very little money and support from liberal and progressive sources.

Instead of prioritizing efforts led by people who are from the communities most affected, we have seen millions of dollars that was advertised as dedicated towards Gulf Coast residents either remain unspent, or shuttled to well-placed outsiders with at best a cursory knowledge of the realities faced by people here. Instead of reflecting local needs and priorities, many projects funded reflect outside perception of what our priorities should be. We have seen attempts to dictate to us what we should do, instead of a real desire to listen and build together.

We are at an historic moment.  The disaster on the Gulf Coast, and especially in New Orleans, has highlighted issues of national and international relevance.  Questions of race, class, gender, education, health care, food access, policing, housing, privatization, mental health and much more are on vivid display.

The south has been traditionally underfunded and exploited by institutions, including corporations, the labor movement, foundations, and the federal government.  We have faced the legacy of centuries of institutional racism and oppression, with little outside support.  And yet, against massive odds, grassroots movements in the south have organized and won inspiring victories with international relevance.

In New Orleans, despite personal loss and family tragedies, people are fighting for the future of the city they love. Many are working with little to no funding or support.

We are writing this open letter to you to tell you that it's not too late.  The struggle is still ongoing.  Evacuees are organizing in trailer parks, health care providers are opening clinics, former public housing residents are fighting to keep their homes from being demolished, artists and media makers are documenting the struggle, educators and lawyers are joining with high school students to fight for better schools.

We ask you, as concerned friends and allies nationwide, as funders and organizations, to look critically at your practices.  Has your organization raised money on New Orleans' behalf?  Did that money go towards New Orleans-based projects, initiated and directed by those most affected?  Have you listened directly to the needs of those in the Gulf and been responsive to them? Have you adjusted your practices and strategies to the organizing realities on the ground?

We ask you to seize this opportunity, and join and support the grassroots movements.  If the people of New Orleans can succeed against incredible odds to save their city and their community, it is a victory for oppressed people everywhere. If the people of New Orleans lose, it is a loss for movements everywhere.  Struggling together, we can win together.

Signed,

Cherice Harrison-Nelson, Director and Curator, Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame
Royce Osborn, writer/producer
Greta Gladney, 4th generation Lower 9th Ward resident
Corlita Mahr, Media Justice Advocate
Judy Watts, President/CEO, Agenda for Children
Robert “Kool Black” Horton, Critical Resistance
Jennifer Turner, Community Book Center
Mayaba Liebenthal, INCITE Women of Color Against Violence, Critical Resistance
Norris Henderson, Co-Director Safe Streets/Strong Communities
Ursula Price, Outreach and Investigation Coordinator, Safe Streets/Strong Communities
Evelyn Lynn, Managing Director, Safe Streets/Strong Communities
Shana griffin, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
Min. J. Kojo Livingston, Founder Liberation Zone/Destiny One Ministries
Shana Sassoon, New Orleans Network Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans
Althea Francois, Safe Streets/Strong Communities
Malcolm Suber, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund
Saket Soni, New Orleans Worker’s Justice Project
Nick Slie, I-10, Witness Project, Co-Artistic Director Mondo Bizarro
Catherine Jones, Organizer and co-founder, Latino Health Outreach Project
Jennifer Whitney, coordinator, Latino Health Outreach Project
S. Mandisa Moore, INCITE! New Orleans
Aesha Rasheed, Project Manager, New Orleans Network
Dix deLaneuville, Educator,
Rebecca Snedeker, Filmmaker
Catherine A. Galpin, RN, FACES and Children's Hospital
Grace Bauer, Families and Friends of Louisiana 's Incarcerated Children
Xochitl Bervera, Families and Friends of Louisiana 's Incarcerated Children
Bess Carrick, Producer/Director
John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University
Diana Dunn, The People's Institute, European Dissent
Courtney Egan, Artist
Lou Furman, Turning Point Partners
Ariana Hall, Director, CubaNOLA Collective
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Historian, writer and lecturer, New Orleans and Mississippi Pine Belt
Susan Hamovitch, Filmmaker/Teacher, NYC/New Orleans
Russell Henderson, Lecturer, Dillard University and Organizer, Rebuilding Louisana Coalition
Ms. Deon Haywood, Events Coordinator, Women With A Vision Inc.
Rachel Herzing, Critical Resistance, Oakland
Rev. Doug Highfield, Universal Life Church, Cherokee, AL
Joyce Marie Jackson, Ph.D., Cultural Researcher, LSU Dept. of Geography & Anthropology, and Co-founder of Cultural Crossroads, Inc., Baton Rouge
Elizabeth K Jeffers, Teacher
Dana Kaplan, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana
Vi Landry, freelance journalist, New Orleans/New York
Bridget Lehane, European Dissent and The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond
Karen-kaia Livers, Alliance for Community Theaters, Inc.
Rachel E. Luft, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of New Orleans
Damekia Morgan, Families and Friends of Louisiana 's Incarcerated Children
Ukali Mwendo, (Hazardous Materials Specialist, NOFD),President, Provisional Government - Republic of New Afrika / New Orleans LA (former resident of the Lafitte Housing Development)
Thea Patterson, Women's Health and Justice Initiative
J. Nash Porter, Documentary Photographer and Co-founder of Cultural Crossroads, Inc., Baton Rouge
Gloria Powers, Arts Project Manager
Bill Quigley, Loyola Professor of Law
Linda Santi, , Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans
Tony Sferlazza, Director of Plenty International NOLA
Heidi Lee Sinclair, MD, MPH, Baton Rouge Children's Health Project
Justin Stein, Neighborhood Relations Coordinator and Community Mediator, Common Ground Health Clinic
Audrey Stewart, Loyola Law Clinic
Tracie L. Washington, Esq., Director, Louisiana Justice Institute
Scott Weinstein, Former co-director of the Common Ground Health Clinic
Melissa Wells, New Orleans,
Jerald L. White, Bottletree Productions
Morgan Williams, Student Hurricane Network, Co-founder
Gina Womack, Families and Friends of Louisiana 's Incarcerated Children

Want to Help People Recovering From Hurricane Sandy? Don't Give to the Red Cross

In response to Hurricane Sandy and those who are looking for places to donate, we are publishing below edited excerpts from articles about the Red Cross and relief previously posted on this site, featuring links embedded for more information.

Perhaps nowhere in the US is Red Cross as unpopular as in New Orleans, where the memory of post-Katrina discrimination and corruption by the aid agency is still fresh.

No disaster is natural, and hurricanes and other devastating events end up revealing systemic injustices already in place. Unfortunately, many aid groups actually end up contributing to these systemic problems. Although Red Cross, religious charities, and others are to a great extent filled with well-meaning and hard-working individuals, and these groups have helped many people in need, any effort at aid that does not address the deeper structural problems actually contributes to reinforcing those structures. In other words, despite best efforts, they become part of the problem.

After Katrina, churches and other religious charities—from Salvation Army to Scientologists—coordinated many of the relief efforts. This was a furthering of the Bush administration’s goal of privatizing social services and increasing the social role of religious institutions. Some groups provided essential and vital aid, but their overall effort contributed to the re-positioning of relief as a nongovernmental and profit-driven function.

A February 2006 report from New York City’s Foundation Center points out that the Red Cross, which raised perhaps two billion dollars from Katrina appeals despite widespread accusations of racism and mismanagement, “ranked as by far the largest named recipient of contributions from foundation and corporate donors in response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” receiving almost 35 percent of all aid, while grassroots and locally-led projects received virtually no support. However, communities across the Gulf Coast reported that the aid was not reaching those most in need, and there were widespread accusations of racism at Red Cross facilities.

According to an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, foundations “seem to have been preoccupied with the issue of accountability. Many foundations wondered how they could be certain that grants to local groups would be well spent and, therefore, publicly accountable.” While those are reasonable concerns, it also reveals a double standard. The Chronicle writer goes on to state, “the question of accountability didn't seem to bother the large foundations that gave so generously to the Red Cross, which had a questionable record of competence to begin with and attracted even more criticism in the aftermath of Katrina over its unwise use of funds, high administrative costs, and lack of outreach to minorities.”

In Haiti post-earthquake, similar concerns were raised almost immediately. In addition, when the vast majority of post-earthquake aid went to NGOs like Red Cross, it played the role of further undermining the government’s sovereignty. In the final analysis, a report from Associated Press found that less than one percent of US aid was distributed to groups in Haiti.

Red Cross and other large and bureaucratic aid agencies that function without and means of community accountability were quick to fundraise for Haiti. But did their aid reach people on the ground? The Associated Press reported that for every one dollar of US aid to Haiti, "42 cents is for disaster assistance, 33 cents is for the US military, 9 cents is for food, 9 cents is to transport the food, 5 cents to pay Haitians to help with recovery effort, less than 1 cent for the Haitian government and ½ a cent is for the government of the Dominican Republic."

Tracy Kidder, of the Haiti-based organization Partners in Health/ Zanmi Lasante, said it very well: "There are 10,000 aid organizations in Haiti, and Haiti is still one of the poorest countries in the world - then something‘s wrong with the way things are, the way aid is being administered."

A statement signed by six human rights organizations brought these concerns to the discussion of Haiti relief. "There is no doubt that Haiti's hungry, thirsty, injured, and sick urgently need all the assistance the international community can provide, but it is critical that the underlying goal of improving human rights drives the distribution of every dollar of aid given to Haiti," said Loune Viaud, Director of Strategic Planning and Operations at Partners in Health, one of the drafters of the letter. "The only way to avoid escalation of this crisis is for international aid to take a long-term view and strive to rebuild a stronger Haiti -- one that includes a government that can ensure the basic human rights of all Haitians and a nation that is empowered to demand those rights."

Anyone who sees the devastation caused by a disaster wants to help. But keep in mind that it is local grassroots organizations who are based in communities that are best positioned to know who needs aid and how to get it to them. And, in the long term, what communities need is the support to be able to lead their own recovery and reconstruction.

UPDATE 1: The Wall Street Journal reports that if you donated money to the Red Cross for Sandy relief, you helped pay for 45 Red Cross workers to stay at the Soho Grand Hotel, at a rate of $310 a night, for a total of $181,000, while people most in need received garbage bags of broken hamburgers.

UPDATE 2: See also the report from ProPublica, How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes.

Lolis Eric Elie And The Connections That Link New Orleans And Haiti

This article has been reprinted from Bev Bell at Other Worlds:

The Things That Are The Richest Are The Least Valued: New Orleans And Haiti, Post-Catastrophe

Lolis Eric Elie, Interviewed by Beverly Bell
August 28, 2012

Tomorrow, seven years to the day after Hurricane Katrina dodged New Orleans, the city will be venturing out to assess Hurricane Isaac’s overnight imprint on its neighborhoods. Yet parts of the city – especially low-income, African-American parts – are still damaged from the flood that followed the 2005 storm, when more than 50 levees broke and filled New Orleans with killing waters.

Below, writer Lolis Eric Elie speaks to the connections between his native New Orleans and Haiti, which did not escape Hurricane Isaac. Officially, 24 people died when the hurricane passed through on August 25, though the numbers of those who will die from secondary effects such as hunger and cholera will never be counted. Elie’s discussion, however, focuses on an earlier disaster in Haiti, the epic 7.0 earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Elie is one of the writers of the HBO hit series Treme and co-producer of the documentary Faubourg Treme.

A friend of mine visited Haiti post-earthquake and he sent back a bunch of pictures of fresh graves of people with my last name. I’ve always known that there were Elies there, but that personal connection, seeing it that way… I can’t escape imagining people with my last name and my blood perishing in the earthquake.

In terms of obvious connections, the architecture strikes you immediately: the shutters and the stucco construction, the colors people paint their houses. These things make places in Haiti look very much like parts of New Orleans. The food is also a striking parallel. In Haiti, you have a version of New Orleans’ red beans and rice. You also get a sense of celebration in that culture that parallels our own. For example, considering how small Haiti is, it’s amazing that their visual art has had the incredible influence that it has had. There are at least a half dozen signature styles of Haitian visual arts, whereas you couldn’t say, “That’s obviously a painting from Brazil, or from Poland.”

We also share with Haiti the fact that the things that are richest are the same that are the least valued by the people who count these things. Part of what was so heartbreaking about New Orleans post-levee failure was the fact that we had to explain to people why we were important, why we mattered. And even in the context of trying to make that case, we often found ourselves  minimizing our cultural riches and maximizing our discussions of international trade and oil refining and drilling. We found ourselves forced to speak in the language of a marketplace when that is certainly not the thing that has made New Orleans singular.

Haiti is similar.  If you took it out of the world market picture, financial markets would not collapse. But if you took Haiti out of the cultural picture through its music, its architecture, its visual arts, we as a world community would be greatly impoverished.

The other thing we share with Haiti is this assumption that somehow we deserve our misfortune. Or that somehow misfortune follows us so closely and so consistently that no one should be surprised.

The shorthand for what happened, whether we’re talking for Haiti or New Orleans, is that this was a natural disaster, and nothing could be further from the truth. It is so easy to attribute our difficulties to natural disasters or acts of God, but no one investigates very closely how much unnatural disasters and acts of man are really at the heart of these twin catastrophes. In New Orleans, if the federal levees had been built to the standards that they were supposed to be built to, Katrina would have caused moderate damage. Of course, in Mississippi and Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, it would still have been devastating, but New Orleans would not have been devastated the way it was. If the forced urbanization of Haiti had not taken place in the l980s [when many small farmers went out of business due to the influx of foreign goods at prices made extremely low by IMF pressure on trade tariffs], if millions had not flocked to the city, then the destruction of Port-au-Prince would not have taken the human toll that it took. The forces behind this migration were anything but natural.

Post-flood, there was both euphoria and dread. Euphoria at the possibility that we could rebuild  and apply to the rebuilding a degree of intelligence unprecedented in the city’s history. There was also an immense dread that the same kinds of developers and profiteers would guide the rebuilding, thereby amplifying and expanding all that was bad prior to the levee failures. It is impossible these days to speak about major disasters without referencing Naomi Klein [the intellectual author of disaster capitalism, as described in her book The Shock Doctrine]. Implicit in the rebuilding strategies I hear about for Haiti, and heard about for New Orleans, is the sentiment that we are so desperate that we should be glad for any assistance, no matter how lethal.

The other thing the rebuilding of New Orleans and Port-au-Prince have in common is a sense that what we need is outside experts. At no point has anyone looked at our history and asked about the extent to which outside experts have been culpable in our misfortune. The outside experts who knew how to drain swamps and develop subdivisions had us building in places that we probably should not have built. The outside experts from the Army Corps of Engineers assured us that the levees would protect these areas. They did not. In the case of Haiti, outside experts have been going there at least since the American occupation of 1915 to 1934. The assumption is that foreigners, especially white foreigners, are automatically more qualified than someone in Haiti who can do the work. You cannot escape the racial dimension of the post-earthquake assistance.

Gendered Disaster

In the aftermath of Katrina, INCITE! Women Of Color Against Violence and other feminist organizations brought attention to the way that disaster in gendered, noting that women were especially victimized by Katrina and it's aftermath.

An organization called the Gender and Disaster Network released six principles for engendered relief and reconstruction, stating, "Gender analysis is not optional or divisive but imperative to direct aid and plan for full and equitable recovery. Nothing in disaster work is 'gender neutral.'"

Now in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, New Orleans activists from the Women's Health and Justice Initiative, which was started by members of New Orleans INCITE, have spoken out about these same issues. They have forwarded a list of women-run organizations in Haiti, encouraging activists to support relief that focuses on those hardest hit by this disaster. They ask the question, "How can we intentionally support the long term sustainability and self determination of the Haitian people? When crises of this magnitude occur, we all understandably want to act quickly, but we must also figure out how to act thoughtfully in our efforts to develop a comprehensive, sustainable, and accountable transnational radical feminist response."