A year after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, a grass roots group,
the People's Organizing Committee is working with residents to rebuild.
Recently, Salam Hussein of the P.O.C. and Kim Mosby, a student volunteer
spoke with us at the Sag Harbor home of Dan Steiger for WPKN News.
The People's Organizing Committee has established what they call "Survivor's
Councils" in the poor, Lower Ninth ward of New Orleans and outside the city where
residents have been displaced.
Salam Hussein of the P.O.C. explained their main focus:
"We've been charged with, first of all, finding our survivors. The've been strung
out all over the country. Seeing how we can help them and inviting them to a
meeting to sit down with other residents to figure out the common problems they
all share - which number one in New Orleans is rebuilding; coming back, getting
their house fixed up, trying to re-establish schools, trying to find jobs, trying
to find health care, so people can come back."
Kim Mosby of New York University is one of many black students who volunteered
with POC. She described conducting a levee tour for other volunteers:
"the volunteers can see the differene between the wall which they call the levee
in the lower 9th ward and the 50 ft structures of concrete with earth on top of
them and parks and highways in the French Quarter and the white community off of
Lake Ponchatrain -- those are communities which didn't get any water."
Housing in the lower 9th ward is being gutted by the volunteers in preparation for
re-building. Local people are trained in the skills needed.
Mosby is also working with home owners to get them signed up for the list of
houses being saved.
"If houses aren't gutted by the 29th the government is going to consider them a
blight to the city, go in and clean them up for the resident and charge the
resident for the clean up process. If they can't really afford to get their house
gutted in the first place, they're not going to be able to pay the fees the
government is going to charge them and therefor the government is going to end up
seizing their property."
The POC has set up "Survivors councils" near Baton Rouge. People there live in
trailer parks which Mosby calls concentration camps, cut off from home town news.
Mosby says the elderly are dying in the trailers:
"They've had a huge problem with elderly in these trailers of finding them dead
weeks later - because they survey the trailer parks but don't knock on doors
of the elderly. I think in Renasaince Village, the largest park, they have found 58
bodies since it opened."
The P.O.C is seeking more volunteers and contributions of money and materials for
the rebuilding effort.
Information is available at www.peoplesorganizing.org
or you may contact Dan Steiger on Long Island at 631-831-4966.
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This report was prepared for WPKN Local News heard Monday-Friday at 6:30 pm
on WPKN 89.5 Bridgeport, CT, WPKM 88.7 Montauk, NY
