by james tracy

From here to New Orleans

MANY PEOPLE HAVE commented that if the United States ever manages to achieve a noticeable amount of racial justice, the catalyst might actually come from the southern states. The rationale is that the South, steeped in centuries-old traditions of resistance to white supremacy, has never been burdened with northern pretensions of progress. We in San Francisco have a lot to learn about good ole southern bluntness as we often congratulate ourselves for diversity, even as African Americans are progressively emptied from this city.

This Thanksgiving week and beyond, the Bay to Gulf People's Pipeline will travel to New Orleans to assist in the reconstruction of two New Orleans neighborhoods: Algiers and the Ninth Ward. This is a very different kind of activist convergence, where windows will be fixed, not broken.

We will work under the leadership of Common Ground Collective, a group of African American New Orleanians who refused to move from their homes and have spearheaded clean-up and repair efforts since the hurricanes. With hammers, nails, sheetrock, and people power, we hopefully will be able to jump-start a beginning of the end of the diaspora of New Orleans. Common Ground has already achieved much: creating the first-ever community health clinic in Algiers, a mobile health clinic, repairing homes, and clearing tons of debris. The group has also started housing advocacy in the wake of mass evictions.

What the mainstream media won't tell you is that African American neighborhoods are simply not being repaired. While affluent neighborhoods and tourist hubs enjoy restored electricity, most black areas still don't. There is a method to this madness. Without electricity, decent sanitation, schools, and homes, poor people are unlikely to return. This way, plans for a gentrified New Orleans rebuilt around a casino model can proceed easily. Apparently the Bush administration has applied the Iraq approach to utility restoration in New Orleans.

"People in the Bay Area and elsewhere really don't understand what's going on in the Gulf," said Natasha Dedrick, a caravanista who has already been to New Orleans in support of Common Ground's efforts. "They think it's getting cleaned up and restored," she continues. "Actually, outside of grassroots efforts, very little is happening in poor, black, immigrant, and native areas. Our response as a people to the murderous neglect of poor and black folks will affect the future of this country. I would like to see that affect be a positive leap forward."

We are going to New Orleans for many good reasons. While we are eager to lessen human suffering, this is about solidarity, not charity. We are going to support African Americans' and poor people's political demand for the right to return to their city. We are going in order to back up the call that New Orleans can be rebuilt for and by its people instead of turning the Big Easy into a tourist theme park. We are going to New Orleans because the struggle may be one of the central antiracist efforts in our lifetimes.

"I feel as if this was my family and I want to be there," Fenny Kuo, a People's Pipeline caravanista, remarked. "As someone who has been active on housing issues in San Francisco, I can see exactly where developers would like to take New Orleans, further destroying entire neighborhoods."

This isn't simply a one-shot deal, and we hope to build a people's pipeline that will be in the fight for the long haul. Future delegations are planned for the winter and spring. With so many new, young activists traveling with us, we hope that the southern spirit of struggle will send back to San Francisco committed, determined organizers ready to tackle some of the very serious racial and economic justice problems here in our progressive enclave known as the Bay Area.

James Tracy is a member of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. For information on what is really going on in New Orleans, or to join the caravan, go to www.commongroundrelief.org or www.leftturn.org.