So, You Want to Collaborate in My Community? By Sharon Hanshaw

Reprinted from our friends at Bridge The Gulf:

When I started Coastal Women for Change, it wasn't my vision to run a nonprofit. If it had been, I would have done my research and learned how to manage one. I was thrown into this work after a devastation. I was a cosmetologist before Hurricane Katrina. I started speaking up for my community and reaching out to my neighbors when I saw how my community of East Biloxi was being left out of the recovery process (like so many predominantly Black and poor communities and neighborhoods across the Gulf Coast).

I would not change my direction or my position. I feel God has a plan for each of us. Our legacy must begin with the change we do for our community, and the whole Gulf Coast region.

Nearly eight years later, it's a struggle to keep our community work going. People are being laid off big time around here. Still, staff are being hired at other nonprofit organizations, but not in many grassroots groups with connections to the community. Funders give grants to nonprofits in Biloxi to collaborate on community work, and the collaboration sounds good on paper. But when you reach out, it stops there. People say "collaboration," but act like, "This is money for us. Let's not collaborate with them."

These collaborations are not supporting people like we need. It's about how the funders see grassroots organizations. It's about what skills are valued – community organizing is taken for granted. Organizations that have the expertise to write grants are the ones that secure the funding. These people come into the community to work. I live in the community. It's assumed grassroots organizations will do the outreach to the community without support or funding. A university gets money, and we're supposed to do all the outreach for free. That's not true collaboration.

Instead of giving more money, support, and skills to organizations that already have these resources, funding decisions and collaborations should be about sharing money, support, and skills with grassroots and community-based groups. And it takes more than a two-hour workshop on grant writing to get those technical skills. It takes relationships and partnerships based on trust and mutual respect, that develop over time.

Here are just two examples of Coastal Women for Change's work that is not supported through collaboration or big funders. We do a backpack giveaway every fall. We serve 1000 people in our community, giving away book bags and school supplies. The giveaway is also a way to assess how great the need is. We collect the names of everyone, and ask people, "What do you need to be sustainable?" We survey, call and follow-up. We build off of the giveaway – It is a way to support our community and engage people further in making changes locally.

This year for the giveaway, I reached out to other nonprofits to say, "Can we do this together? Can you help me with the fundraising effort? You can be on this committee, help me write this letter, contribute volunteers, donate some paper for the event, for example." But I just got no response. It's a dead-end. Emails don't get responded to.

Another part of CWC's day-to-day work is just doing what we can to help people in our community survive. For example, I recently wrote a reference letter to recommend a woman for a job – she was having trouble finding employment because she had been incarcerated. She told me, "I got out jail and am trying to get a job, but no one will hire me." She found employment, with the help of my letter. Those kind of those things – helping the people – are often overlooked by funders and nonprofit collaborations.

The people who live in Ward 2 in East Biloxi should know all these nonprofits and the people who work there by name. They know who I am – I live here, I walk the street here. My people are gone, displaced after Katrina, but I am visiting with new people here. I'm trying to help the ex-offenders, homeless people. People match my face with the organization, because I come to the door. 
 
I don't see the grassroots people and the faith-based people who are walking the streets getting the respect needed so the people they're seeing get served. Those people are not at the table, and need to be at the table.

I recently heard Willie Baptist, author of Pedagogy of the Poor, speak about letting poor people be their own advocates. It really spoke to me and the kind of work we strive to do at Coastal Women for Change. We are trying to sustain the people that exist here, that are making under a living wage. How do you be sustainable in a world designed to keep you down? And how are nonprofit programs supposed to help if they replicate the same problems? We're at the meetings, we're the heads of the nonprofits, but where are the people we are talking about? They should be at these meeting. I recommend you read Pedagogy of the Poor.

If one of these nonprofits with technical skills, staff, and resources, asked "Sharon, what do you need?," here's what I would say: Lend me staff for a few hours a week. I could use a couple hours a week from one of your secretaries to help with my paperwork. 

Also, sit and look at what's been done, at our reports and photos. The proof is in the pictures of our work, the newspaper clippings. We had a childcare program, it ran out of funding.

Finally, reassess yourself. Revisit yourself. Ask yourself: Am I really for the people? Without the pay, would I still do it? What are my feelings towards fellow human beings? Are they my sisters and brothers? Is it genuine? How am I collaborating? Do I reach out to somebody who is doing the same thing, working in the same community?
 
I'm not going to build houses when I know my colleagues are building housing. I am going to focus on the youth and the seniors in the houses, or on a community garden – find the piece I can do, connect the dots. It takes all of us collectively to make a whole, and preserve our future.

You have to walk the talk, not just talk the talk.

Like Rosa Parks being recognized by Congress nearly 60 years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, how long do we have to wait to recognize something that should have been automatic? We are not respected in a way that suggests we have overcome. It's a challenge, teaching our kids, "you have to fight, you have to fight, you have to fight." But they that see our local municipalities don't even respect us, and think, "how are we going to make a difference?" They see racism all the time in school.

If our nonprofit organizations and funders cannot manage respectful and authentic collaboration, what kind of communities and movements are we building?

The change must begin with action, not talk. Show the community you care through action.

Sharon Hanshaw is Executive Director of Coastal Women for Change, in Biloxi, Mississippi. A native of Biloxi, Sharon worked as a cosmetologist for 21 years. She got involved in community organizing and activism after Hurricane Katrina, working to make sure that community members are decision makers in the recovery process. Coastal Women for Change (CWC) focuses on women's empowerment and community development through programs for the elderly and children.

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

Hundreds in New Orleans Protest Israeli Killings in Gaza

In one of the larger protests New Orleans has seen in recent years, nearly two hundred demonstrators marched through New Orleans' French Quarter on Saturday, November 17, to protest the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. The next day, a mostly student crowd of about 40 held a candlelight vigil at Tulane University, in an action organized by a new campus group called Tulane Students for Justice in Palestine.

One week later, in the aftermath of the declared ceasefire, a smaller march once again traveled through the French Quarter, calling for an end to US financial and diplomatic support for Israeli Apartheid, and pointing out that, despite the ceasefire, Palestinians were still being killed by Israeli military forces.

New Orleans has a long history of Palestine activism. During the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that began in late 2008, more than one thousand New Orleanians marched through the French Quarter in one of the largest protests the city had seen in the past decade. Two years later, New Orleans made international headlines when local activists disrupted a talk featuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israeli political and military leaders Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak. Despite the large local support and the range of organizations involved, the city's formerly-daily paper generally refuses to cover the protests - even when hundreds of demonstrators are right outside the newspaper's offices, as happened in 2009.

Protestors have pointed to links between the struggles of New Orleans and Palestine, both of which call for the Right of Return for their displaced residents, and both are facing mass home demolitions, mass jailings, and exploitative nonprofits, and both have inspired people from around the world through their creative resistance.

Seven Years After Katrina, A Divided City, By Jordan Flaherty

A version of this article originally appeared on TruthOut.org.
 

Seven years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has become a national laboratory for government reforms. But the process through which those experiments have been carried out rarely has been transparent or democratic. The results have been divisive, pitting new residents against those who grew up here, rich against poor, and white against Black.

Education, housing, criminal justice, health care, urban planning, even our media; systemic changes have touched every aspect life in New Orleans, often creating a template used in other cities. A few examples:

- In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, more than 7,500 employees in city’s public school system were fired, despite the protection of union membership and a contract. Thousands of young teachers, many affiliated with programs like Teach For America, filled the empty slots. As charters took over from traditional public schools, the city became what then-superintendent Paul Vallas called the first 100% free market public school system in the US. A judge recently found that the mass firings were illegal, but any resolution will likely be tied up in appeals for years.

- Every public housing development has either been partially or entirely torn down. The housing authority now administers more than 17,000 vouchers – nearly double the pre-Katrina amount –a massive privatization of a formerly public system. During this period, rents have risen dramatically across the city.

- The US Department of Justice has spent three years in negotiations with city government over reform of the police department. The historic consent decree that came out of these negotiations mandates vast changes in nearly every aspect of the NOPD and some aspects could serve as a model for departments across the US. But organizations that deal with police violence, as well as the city’s independent police monitor, have filed legal challenges to the agreement, stating that they were left out of the negotiations and that as a result, the final document lacks community oversight.

- As the city loses its daily paper, an influx of funding has arrived to support various online media projects – including $880,000 from George Soros to one website. In a city that is still majority African-American, the staff of these new media ventures is almost entirely white, and often politically conservative. These funders – many of whom consider themselves progressive - have mostly ignored the city’s Black media, which have a proud history of centuries of local resistance to the dominant narrative. Publications like Louisiana Weekly covered police violence and institutional racism when the daily paper was not interested. Wealthy liberals are apparently still not interested.

There is wide agreement that most of our government services have long deep, systemic problems. But in rebuilding New Orleans, the key question is not only how much change is needed, but more crucially, who should dictate that change.

New Orleans has become a destination for a new class of residents drawn by the allure of being able to conduct these experiments. For a while, they self-identified as YURPs (Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals).  Now they are frequently known as “social entrepreneurs,” and they have wealthy and powerful allies. Warren Buffet has invested in the redevelopment of public housing. Oprah Winfrey and the Walton family have donated to the charter schools. Attorney General Holder came to town to announce police department reforms. President Obama has visited several times, despite the fact that this state is not remotely in play for Democrats.

Many residents – especially in the Black community – have felt disenfranchised in the new New Orleans. They see the influx of college graduates who have come to start nonprofits and run our schools and redesign our neighborhoods as disaster profiteers, not saviors. You can hear it every day on WBOK, the city’s only Black-owned talk radio station, and read about it in the Louisiana Weekly, Data News, and New Orleans Tribune, the city’s Black newspapers. This new rebuilding class is seen as working in alliance with white elites to disenfranchise a shrinking Black majority. Callers and guests on WBOK point to the rapid change in political representation: Among the political offices that have shifted to white after a generation in Black hands are the mayor, police chief, district attorney, and majorities on the school board and city council.

In a recent cover story in the Tribune, journalist Lovell Beaulieu compares the new rebuilding class to the genocide of Native Americans. “520 years after the Indians discovered Columbus, a similar story is unfolding,” writes Beaulieu. “New arrivals from around the United States and the world are landing here to get a piece of the action that is lucrative post-Katrina New Orleans…Black people are merely pawns in a game with little clout and few voices. Their primary role is to be the ones who get pushed out, disregarded and forgotten.”

People hear the term “blank slate,” a term often used to describe post-Katrina New Orleans – as a way of erasing the city’s long history of Black-led resistance to white supremacy. As New Orleans poet and educator Kalamu Ya Salaam has said, “it wasn’t a blank slate, it was a cemetery.” Where some new arrivals see opportunity, many residents see grave robbers.  In response, those who find anything to praise in the old ways are often accused of being stuck in the past or embracing corruption.

Hurricane Isaac has demonstrated that New Orleans is still at risk from storms – although the flood protection system around the city seems to be more reliable than it was before the levees failed and eighty percent of New Orleans was underwater. But have the systemic problems that were displayed to the world seven years ago been fixed by the radical changes the city has seen? Is reform possible without the consent of those most affected by those changes? These are polarizing questions in the new New Orleans.

Louisiana Organization Selected for Echoing Green Fellowship

From a Press Release by Echoing Green and Cooperative Advocacy for the People:
This month Ameca Reali and Adrienne Wheeler of the New Orleans-based Cooperative Advocacy for the People were named as 2011 Echoing Green Fellows. Out of 2,854 applicants from over 100 countries, only twenty-two individuals, representing a total of fifteen organizations, were selected as social change visionaries in the fields of human rights, health, and the environment.

“Louisiana incarcerates more people than any state in the country in a nation that jails more people than anywhere else in the world,” said Ameca Reali, co-founder of Cooperative Advocacy for the People. “This astounding fact has pushed us to rethink the way our criminal justice system operates and to provide avenues toward accountability that lifts instead of incarcerates our communities. Through this fellowship, Echoing Green has provided an opportunity for those affected by the criminal justice system to have a place to work toward collective solution building.”

For 25 years, Echoing Green has helped inspire and seed some of the world’s most powerful institutions—From Teach For America to City Year to SKS Microfinance. Since it was founded by growth equity firm General Atlantic in 1987, it has invested nearly $32 million in over 500 social entrepreneurs.

The 2011 Echoing Green Fellows are launching a total of fifteen new nonprofit, for-profit and hybrid organizations to solve intractable social problems. Chosen based on a rigorous selection process, each venture will receive seed funding of up to $90,000 over two years, health insurance, strategic planning support, legal assistance, and financial modeling, as well as mentoring from Echoing Green’s network of alumni and other leading social change professionals.

In announcing the 2011 Echoing Green Fellows, Dr. Cheryl L. Dorsey, President of Echoing Green, said, “Echoing Green’s 2011 Fellows are an inspiring group of pragmatic visionaries who, rather than accept the world as it is, see what it can be. It takes a village to raise a social entrepreneur. Help them bring their ideas to life, and further unleash their talent.”

Dave Hodgson, Managing Director of General Atlantic, LLC and Chairman of the Echoing Green Board of Directors, said, “Name the need—hunger, housing, fighting disease, connecting citizens who care, doing greater good with technologies—and you will find Echoing Green Fellows at work on creating solutions all over the world. We look forward to welcoming this new class of innovators into our robust network.”

Full descriptions and high definition videos of the 2011 Echoing Green Fellows can be accessed at this link.

About Cooperative Advocacy for the People:

Cooperative Advocacy for the People will be a non-profit criminal justice advocacy organization based in New Orleans, Louisiana that will provide incarcerated individuals with the possibility of freedom, access to justice, and the opportunity to make radical changes in a system with glaring deficiencies. A part of the organization’s mission includes offering non-capital post-conviction and expungment assistance. The organization will also create a collaborative space where attorneys, legal workers, and advocates can participate collectively in planning and implementing strategies for accountability and reform.

Ameca Reali was born and raised in a small town in Upstate, NY. She is one of three children raised by a single parent in public housing. From an early age her mother taught her the principles of service to others and the community and advocacy through her work in the community. Ameca graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University at Buffalo in 2006 and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University College of Law, New Orleans in 2011.

Adrienne Wheeler is from Savannah, Georgia and is a member of a military family (retired). She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 2001, a Master of Arts degree from New York University in 2008, and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University College of Law, New Orleans in 2011.

About Echoing Green:

Echoing Green is a nonprofit social venture fund that identifies, invests in, and supports some of the world’s best emerging social entrepreneurs—society’s change agents. Green invests deeply in these next generation change agents as well as works to create an ecosystem around them that supports and celebrates social innovation as a high-impact strategy for social change.