Hungry Blues

(Via Marsha Joyner.)

Ted Poston, "They Are No Longer Afraid." The New York Post

June 19, 1956.

You'd been living with [the bus boycott] daily for nearly three weeks in Montgomery, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it. Only through the words of others were you finally able to articulate a feeling, which had been with you from the beginning.

Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson, dynamic president of the Women's Political Council, had been one of the first to pinpoint it for you.

"Pass the lowliest, the most ignorant one, on the street and you'll see it," she said. "He walks a little straighter, his head is a little higher... They no longer lack courage; they're no longer afraid. They're free for the first time in their lives and they know they've won their own freedom. This goes not only for the lowest domestic but for the highest Negro professional also."

J. E. Pierce, Alabama-born economist whom you'd known a decade ago in your native Kentucky, expanded it:

"What you're seeing here is probably the closest approach to a classless society that has ever been created in any community in America. The whites have forced the Montgomery Negro to recognize one thing—that they are Negroes first and then domestics, doctors' wives, scholars or lawyers second.

"But for the first time the Negro is accepting with pride, not shame, the fact that all Negroes look alike to white people. Through their unity, their car pools, their determination to share and share alike, they have found each other—as Negroes... Walk a little straighter... head a little higher.

"This new dignity is not accidental. And it is no accident that they call each other 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' on every possible occasion. For the first time in their lives they feel like ladies and gentlemen from the bottom to the top."

Copyright © 1956 The New York Post. Selected from the Library of America anthology. See Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941-1963.

Thus asked Dr. Arjun Sengupta, the United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Reporter on Extreme Poverty, who visited New Orleans and Baton Rouge last week. The quote comes from New Orleans attorney and law professor Bill Quigley, in his latest report:

Fully armed National Guard troops refuse to allow over ten thousand people even to visit their property in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Despite the fact that people cannot come back, tens of thousands of people face eviction from their homes. A local judge told me that her court expects to process a thousand evictions a day for weeks.

Renters still in shelters or temporary homes across the country will never see the court notice taped to the door of their home. Because they will not show up for the eviction hearing that they do not know about, their possessions will be tossed out in the street. In the street their possessions will sit alongside an estimated 3 million truck loads of downed trees, piles of mud, fiberglass insulation, crushed sheetrock, abandoned cars, spoiled mattresses, wet rugs, and horrifyingly smelly refrigerators full of food from August.

There are also New Orleans renters facing evictions from landlords who want to renovate and charge higher rents to the out of town workers who populate the city. Some renters have offered to pay their rent and are still being evicted. Others question why they should have to pay rent for September when they were not allowed to return to New Orleans.

(Read the rest.)

I don't have a TV, so it was Brandon who tipped me off that Julian Bond was one of the speakers at the Capital Rotunda, while Rosa Parks was lying in state. As usual, Bond is excellent—giving a nuanced treatment of Parks' life and exploding the myth that the nonviolent movement and those who advocated self-defense were somehow separate, in binary opposition. Democracy Now! has Bond's eulogy, as well as the remarks from Reverend Grainger Browning Jr., Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Dorothy Height, Johnnie Carr, Oprah Winfrey, Cicely Tyson, and Bruce Gordon, all of which are worth reading. Here is Julian Bond's tribute to Rosa Parks:

We are gathered here to say goodbye and well done to Rosa Louise McCauley Parks. She leaves us as she lived her life with honor and dignity. She was daughter, sister, wife, aunt and mother to the Movement. But she was more than that. She leaves us just short of the 50th anniversary of the day she showed the world you can stand up for your rights by sitting down. Her actions produced a movement and introduced America to a new leader. Dr. King said she was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet to come.

Now, she wasn't the first to refuse to surrender to Montgomery's apartheid. There had been Claudette Colvin, there had been Mary Louise Smith and countless others before her, those who believed they had rights just like any other citizen. But Rosa Parks was the first person to plead not guilty; for her, breaking Alabama law was obeying the Constitution. It was defending justice. She was tired, alright. She was tired of mistreatment. She was tired of second class citizenship. But, you know, she didn't want to be known as the bus woman. She was much, much more than that.

A historian writes, “Although Martin Luther King played crucial role in transforming a local boycott into a social justice movement, he was, himself, transformed by a movement he did not initiate.” In Montgomery, the boycott owed its success to what a historian calls the self-reliant NAACP stalwarts who acted on their own before King could lead. Rosa Parks was first among those NAACP stalwarts. She had been active with the NAACP for more than a decade before the boycott began. When it began, she was secretary to the Alabama NAACP state conference. She was secretary to the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. She was advisor to the youth council of the NAACP. She was secretary to the Alabama Voters League. But she was more than that.

She was secretary to the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the pioneering black union, led nationally by A. Philip Randolph and locally by ED Nixon. She writes in her biography that Mr. Nixon once told her, “Women don't belong nowhere but in the kitchen.” She said, “Mr. Nixon, what about me?” He said, “You're a good secretary, and I need one.” But she was more than that.

She became such an icon in American history and popular culture that the Neville Brothers immortalized her. They sang, "Thank you, Ms. Rosa. You were the spark that started our freedom movement. Thank you, Sister Rosa Parks." She was a long-time fighter for justice in Alabama. She and her husbands were strong defenders of the Scottsboro Boys. She fought for their freedom. She was active in the NAACP. But she was more than that.

Nine years ago she delivered the eulogy at the funeral for Robert Williams, much as we are eulogizing her today. For those of you who don't remember, Williams was the NAACP president in Monroe, North Carolina. He answered Klan attacks bullet for bullet. For his courage, the NAACP expelled him. The State of North Carolina made him a criminal. And he found safety and sanctuary in Cuba and China. He became an all but forgotten man. In 1996, an elderly Rosa Parks, the exemplar of nonviolence, stood in a church pulpit in Monroe, North Carolina. She was glad, she said, to finally attend the funeral of a heroic black leader who had escaped the assassin's bullet and lived a long and happy life. The work that he did, she said, should go down in history and never be forgotten.

It was my great pleasure to have known her over the years, giving me precious memories of the time we were together. I was once speaking in Detroit. And when the event was over, my host asked me if I would like to go out for a drink with Rosa Parks. Of course, I said yes. Ms. Parks had Coca-Cola. She turned to me, and she said, “Julian, what are you doing now? Where are you living?” I said, “Mrs. Parks, I've moved to Washington, D.C. I just saw you on TV. You and Jesse Jackson were picketing the Greyhound bus station in support of the striking bus drivers.” And I said, “You know, Mrs. Parks, I've just taken a job at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. It's too close and too expensive to fly there. The train isn't convenient. The best way to get there from D.C. is by bus.” And in her sweet, calm, quiet, respectful, gentle manner Ms. Parks said, “Don't you ride that bus!”

Now, Ms. Parks was much, much more than the bus woman. She was much, much more than that. Eldridge Cleaver famously remarked that when she sat down that December day in Montgomery 50 years ago, somewhere in the universe a gear in the machinery had shifted. Rosa Parks shifted the gears of the universe all her life. Now she belongs to the universe . Thank you, Sister Rosa. Thank you, Rosa Parks.

Spencer Overton was one of the over 30,000 people who waited in line to pay their respects to Rosa Parks, whose body was lying in state in the Capital Rotunda on Sunday and Monday. Mrs. Parks was the thirtieth person in US history to be honored this way, the second African American and the first woman.

Professor Overton live blogged his time in procession, and I found his account quite moving.

Sunday evening, 11:15 pm--

I am surprised to find a very long line. The park ranger at the end of the line estimates that we'll be through at about 2 or 3 am. I'm no fan of long lines, but the numbers make me feel hopeful. I’m glad that so many people have shown up. I didn't feel as though there was a lot of media attention to make this a pop phenomenon...the attendance feels genuine....

There is a special feeling in this space on this clear, crisp night. On one side the Capitol Rotunda is illuminated. On the other, the Washington Monument is lit up, and beyond that you can make out the columns of the Lincoln Memorial-the spot where Mrs. Parks's young pastor had his finest moment eight years after her act of defiance set in motion his rise to international prominence.

Over half of the people seem to be African Americans of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. With regard to these folks, I have the sense of pride that I experienced 10 years ago at the Million Man March. Despite stereotypes of apathy, we have turned out....

1:30 am Monday--We pass a park ranger who estimated our numbers at "tens of thousands." I don't have a clue about the numbers. My part of the line is zig zagging in front of the reflecting pool. The grassy areas that we walk on have become firm, matted-down, mud due to the heavy foot traffic. Thousands still seem to be in front of me, and about 350 behind me (officers closed the line at about 12 midnight).

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but the sense I get from the conversations in the line is that people are out in relatively large numbers for varied reasons. Some are out to "thank" Rosa Parks for her sacrifice. A larger sense of purpose, however, seems to come from people who are not merely commemorating the past, but who are looking for a constructive way to express their current concerns. From the feel of the evening and the mood, I imagine that these folks might be tired of shallow spin by our "leaders," and recognize the goodness and nobility of average, ordinary people who try to do the right thing but don't seek fame and glory. These are people who are ready to do the "right" thing to ensure that the people like those who were left behind in the aftermath of Katrina are treated like human beings. In other words, the mood that permeates the crowd doesn't seem like hero worship, but much more like an understanding of how Mrs. Parks is connected to our contemporary challenges. This line--this procession of average Americans--seems like an outlet.

(Whole thing.)

Been working on something I hope I'll get to tell you all about soon. It's done now, so back to blogging.

Let's see how much of the backlog I can get to...

Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley

Bourbon Princess, The Waiting Noon

Nina Simone, Lilac Wine

Dana and Karen Kletter, Sister Song

Louis Armstrong, West End Blues (Hot Five)

Bukka White, Po' Boy

Elliott Smith, LA (La Boule Noire 4-3-00)

Cat Stevens, Miles From Nowhere

The Klezmatics, An Undoing World

Blind Gary Davis, Goin' To Sit Down On The Banks Of The River

Quote of note: “Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past...”

DEATH SENTENCES LINKED TO HISTORY OF LYNCHING IN STATES

COLUMBUS , Ohio – States that sentence the most criminals to death also tend to be the states that had the most lynchings in the past, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that the number of death sentences for all criminals – Black and white – were higher in states with a history of lynchings. But the link was even stronger when only Black death sentences were analyzed.

The results may be shocking to many people, but they aren't surprising to sociologists who study the racial aspects of the death penalty, said David Jacobs, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University .

“Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past,” Jacobs said. “This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection.”

Another study finding reinforces this idea. Results showed that the number of death sentences in states with the most lynchings increased as the state's population of African Americans grew larger, at least to a certain point. The researchers believe that is because, as their numbers increase, Blacks are seen by the white majority as a growing threat....

The findings also showed that the number of death sentences increases in states after a growth in the population of Blacks. But the number of death sentences begins to go down once the population of African Americans reaches a threshold of about 20 to 22 percent.

“Probably at that point, Blacks have enough votes and political influence within states to reduce the number of death sentences,” Jacobs said.

The results of the study suggest that the United States is still a product of its past, Jacobs said.

“Historical events continue to influence the current behavior of important social institutions. But the main point is that our findings do not support claims that the death penalty is administered in a color-blind fashion.”

(Whole thing.)

Further Reading

• STATES WITH HIGHER PROPORTIONS OF BLACK CITIZENS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE DEATH PENALTY, STUDY FINDS

• PRISON POPULATION SWELLS UNDER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS, STUDY SAYS

"My resistance to being mistreated on the buses and anywhere else was just a regular thing with me and not just that day."

--Rosa Parks, Interview with Aldon D. Morris, Oct 14, 1981

It is hard to get out from under the myth that Rosa Parks performed her famous act of civil disobedience because she was a simple working woman who finally just got fed up with segregation. In today's obituary from the New York Times E. R. Shipp is definitely trying.

Mrs. Parks was very active in the Montgomery N.A.A.C.P. chapter, and she and her husband, Raymond, a barber, had taken part in voter registration drives.

At the urging of an employer, Virginia Durr, Mrs. Parks had attended an interracial leadership conference at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., in the summer of 1955. There, she later said, she "gained strength to persevere in my work for freedom, not just for blacks but for all oppressed people."

But as she rushed home from her job as a seamstress at a department store on Dec. 1, 1955, the last thing on her mind was becoming "the mother of the civil rights movement," as many would later describe her. She had to send out notices of the N.A.A.C.P.'s coming election of officers. And she had to prepare for the workshop that she was running for teenagers that weekend.

"So it was not a time for me to be planning to get arrested," she said in an interview in 1988.

Shipp emphasizes that Parks was active in the NAACP, but quickly pulls back whatever that might imply about her intent as activist. Parks' resistance, as Shpp presents it, was without political intent; it was still just an unsophisticated act of born from fatigue and frustration. A couple of paragraphs later, Shipp sets out once again to upset the powerful myth of Rosa Parks, but the myth takes over a second time.

That moment on the Cleveland Avenue bus also turned a very private woman into a reluctant symbol and torchbearer in the quest for racial equality and of a movement that became increasingly organized and sophisticated in making demands and getting results....

Even in the last years of her life, the frail Mrs. Parks made appearances at events and commemorations, saying little but lending the considerable strength of her presence. In recent years, she suffered from dementia, according to medical records released during a lawsuit over the use of her name by the hip-hop group OutKast. Over the years myth tended to obscure the truth about Mrs. Parks. One legend had it that she was a cleaning woman with bad feet who was too tired to drag herself to the rear of the bus. Another had it that she was a "plant" by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The truth, as she later explained, was that she was tired of being humiliated, of having to adapt to the byzantine rules, some codified as law and others passed on as tradition, that reinforced the position of blacks as something less than full human beings.

"She was fed up," said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend and executive director of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. "She was in her 40's. She was not a child. There comes a point where you say, 'No, I'm a full citizen, too. This is not the way I should be treated.'"

In "Stride Toward Freedom," Dr. King wrote, "Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'"

Shipp will not have us believe the most simplistic version of the myth, that Parks sat down and refused to stand up again because her feet hurt. But it is still only a variation on this theme to say that Parks was frustrated and just couldn't take it any more. In this view, Parks is an everywoman reacting to racism (and sexism) as any person today would. While there is an element to this thinking that encourages all of us to resist racism and sexism, it also deprives Parks of political thought, and it removes Parks' political thought and action from the context of the community life and the political movement that were the supports for her activism.

In his book The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, from which I took my epigraph, Aldon D. Morris describes Rosa Parks' history as a civil rights activist in more detail.

Mrs. Parks, like others steeped in the protest tradition, had a long history of involvement with protest organizations. She began serving as secretary for the local NAACP in 1943 and still held that post when arrested in 1955. In the late 1940s the Alabama State Conference of NAACP brances was organized, and Mrs. Parks served as the first secretary for that body. The position brought her into contact with such activists operating on the national level as Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins. In the early 1940s Mrs. Parks organized the local NAACP Youth Council, which fizzled out after a few years. However, she and other local women reorganized the Council in 1954-55, with Mrs. Parks as the adult adviser. During the 1950s the youth in this organization attempted to borrow books from a white library. They also took rides and sat in the front seats of segregated buses, then returned to the Youth Council to discuss their acts of defiance with Mrs. Parks. Mrs. Parks had scheduled a NAACP Youth Council workshop to be held on December 4, 1955, but her arrest on December 1 canceled that function. (49-50)

Back in 1978, in an interview with Morris for his book, civil rights leader Septima Clark did not see Parks' public reticence as a sign of reluctant participation in the Black liberation movement. Instead, Clark explains that

Rosa Parks was afraid for white people to know that she was as militant as she was. (149)

Clark is speaking of the time that she spent with Parks at the Highlander Folk School in 1955, just a few months before she sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Clark continues:

She didn't want to speak before the whites that she met up there [at Highlander], because she was afraid they would take it back to the whites in Montgomery. After she talked it out in that workshop that morning and she went back home she decided that, "I'm not going to move out of that seat." (149)

White people tend to have problems with Black militancy. It makes sympathetic liberals uncomfortable and it can be downright dangerous among white supremacists, whether they be Klansmen, police, politicians, or bankers or business people.

I don't believe that Shipp is trying to perpetuate the myth that deprives Rosa Parks of political thought and isolates her from the movement she dedicated herself to. The myth helps people insulate themselves from the reality not just of segregated buses but of a white (and male) dominated power structure. The myth helps people avoid discussing institutionalized racism still in wide evidence today. The myth keeps people today from knowledge of how change was won yesterday—which might inspire more people to work for change in the present. Most people, including myself, have a need to shield themselves from the realities that surrounded Rosa Parks' great moment in history. A commitment to change means a commitment to continuing to examine the present and reexamine the past, to challenge the assumptions that allow the lives of some to be devalued for the benefit of others.

~

Further Reading

MLK, Communist Training Schools, Cindy Sheehan, and Rosa Parks (I, II)

Go read it.

The AP's Alan Sayre reports in nola.com:

Orleans Parish Civil District Judge Kern Reese issued a temporary order blocking eviction hearings from taking place at the New Orleans' post-hurricane court headquarters in Gonzales, roughly 60 miles west of the city. . . .

Reese, who set a Nov. 2 hearing on whether to make his order permanent, said eviction proceedings could be held in a city court in nearby Algiers that was not affected by flooding from Hurricane Katrina. The suit said thousands of renters do not have personal transportation from New Orleans to Gonzales.

The filing attorney is Bill Quigley, whose recent article on conditions in New Orleans some may have read here or elsewhere. The legal petition lists as plaintiffs in the suit:

Gizelle Smith, a working mother with three children who is a resident of Orleans Parish who has rented the same property in Orleans Parish for over ten years, and who is now being threatened with eviction; Central City Partnership, an association of citizens from Central City New Orleans who include many renters; Rebuilding Louisiana Coalition, (RLC) an association of people that includes many people in Orleans Parish who are renters; ACORN, the Association of Communities for Reform Now, New Orleans chapter, which is an association of low and moderate income people in Orleans Parish including many persons who are renters; New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (HEAT), a group of people in Orleans Parish affiliated with Common Ground collective who have come together to fight against wrongful and unjust evictions; The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund Committee, an organization of many people in the area including many renters.

We are clearly talking about thousands of possible evictions from landlords who are very eager to get their current tenants out by whatever means necessary (from the AP article):

Landlords in the New Orleans area have been filing eviction suits, saying they have thousands of apartments that could help remedy a severe housing shortage cited as a major obstacle to getting employee-hungry businesses running. Many tenants who fled the region have not contacted their landlords.

At the same time, some residents say they've returned to their rented dwellings to find that landlords have thrown out personal belongings as trash.

Is anyone getting cognitive dissonance yet? Here's what I'm talking about again, with a direct quote. See if you hear it this time:

The National Apartment Association had pushed for an end to the eviction ban, saying it would help rehabilitate property, provide homes for workers and help with the city's economic recovery (emphasis added).

NAA Executive Vice President Doug Culkin, who visited New Orleans last week, said Tuesday that he hoped the suit "is not going to delay repairing those apartments and getting people back into them" (emphasis added).

Which workers? What people? Economic recovery for whom? If there is a need for workers, why not invite the current tenants back to their own homes and offer them a job?

It would be interesting to find out if the number of apartments which landlords think could be gained through evictions is greater than the 23,267 rental units Naomi Klein has estimated were vacant prior to Katrina in the French Quarter, Garden District and other unaffected areas in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. It would be interesting likewise to learn if any of the landlords pursuing evictions also own some of those undamaged units that were vacant before the hurricane.

[If you are in the Boston area and are free tomorrow afternoon, come support this action. --BG]

Join us as we gather 400 supporters to represent the number of Massachusetts high school graduates every year who are denied access to higher education.

Let's show the legislature that the everyone deserves the right to an education.

The event will run from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM and be held at the Grand Staircase.

Get more information

To RSVP, please contact Carlos Saavedra at csaavedra AT miracoalition DOT org

(From the information link, above:)

The Issue

Each year around 400 hundred high achieving students, who have lived in Massachusetts for most of their lives, are unable to pursue higher education because of their immigration status. Currently, students without permanent legal status must pay out of state tuition to attend state and city universities and colleges. Out of state tuition is three to five times the cost of in state tuition. As most of these students cannot afford to pay out of state tuition, they are forced to forego college and work in low-paying, low-skilled jobs.

The In-State Tuition Bill S. 764/ H. 1230

The bill allows students to pay the same in-state tuition rates as their peers at public colleges and universities provided they have attended a Massachusetts high school for three years and have graduated or received the equivalent of a diploma. If the student is not a legal permanent resident, they must sign an affidavit stating that they have filed an application to become a legal permanent resident, or will file an application as soon as they are eligible to do so.

Current Status

New Mexico, Texas, Utah, California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Kansas and Oklahoma have already passed similar bills. Governor Romney vetoed the bill in Massachusetts in June 2004. This session the bill was reported favorably out of the House Ways and Means Committee and is currently awaiting a full vote on the House floor. Governor Romney is expected to once again veto the bill, therefore we need a 2/3rds majority in the House to move forward. We are currently counting votes and urging House leadership to bring the bill up for a full floor vote.

Also see this, which explains that nationally "approximately 65,000 undocumented students . . . graduate from high school every year without the opportunity to go to college."

[Just got this from one of the organizers. Why not have a vigil in your community? --BG]

United, we, the community stand

"No one is expendable!"

With over a thousand counted dead and hundreds (especially children) still listed as missing,

We call for Candle Light Vigils -

Sunday, October 30 at 6pm

in every local community that can.

Two months to the day after the flooding of New Orleans - we gather to share our grief, our ongoing commitment to each other (no one of any race or class is expendable!) and to a healthy environment and a just and therefore, peaceful society for all!

In this we stand united.

Where is our national government's call to stand united in the face of this tragedy? This unnatural disaster?

After 9/11, they called for us to come together as a country, to stand in vigil together, to rebuild together - is it that they do not need to drum up nationalism to get us into a war, that they have forgotten our need to come together as a country to support the survivors of this disaster?

Since the US Government is already returning to business as usual (big "rebuilding" contracts for their friends, tax breaks for the wealthy, cuts in services for and rolling back the rights of the rest of us), we call for unity. We call out to our sisters and brothers, who are low-income, who are people of color - You are not expendable - you will never be expendable to the rest of the community, the moral community, the community of compassion and concern - which is most of us in this country!

Candlelight Vigils:

Boston - Dudley Square,

Sunday, October 30th, 6pm

United we stand - in our grief, our commitment to each other and in our call for justice!

~

The New Abolitionists/March to Abolish Poverty www.abolishpoverty.net

Economic Human Rights Project

Michigan Welfare Right Union

National Welfare Rights Union

Reply to: Econhmnrts AT aol DOT com

Add your organizations' endorsement

Add the place of your organization's vigil/event

(Via MR Zine.)

Brothers and Sisters,

The crisis for the working class (whether employed or not, waged or not) continues to grow. Even as the nation, and especially the poor and Black working class of the Gulf states and New Orleans in particular, tries to pick up the pieces after Katrina's (and Rita's) devastation, the assault by capital and their partners in the government grows more intense -- the suspension of Davis Bacon and OHSA safeguards, plans to defund the safety net to finance business interests in the reconstruction of the region, little thought to how those left behind will find a home in the reconstruction process and its outcome. The Democrats have failed to articulate a credible alternative to this plan or address this crisis in any significant way.

It is also true that the flip side of disaster is opportunity. For the trade unions the moment presents a unique opportunity, not open since the sit-downs of the 1930s, to bring dignity, voice, a living wage and benefits in the form of unions to the masses left behind in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, particularly the poor and African Americans. It is a well-established fact that Blacks are the most pro-union force in the U.S. They have proven time and time again to be this country's most dedicated fighters of oppression. But the trade union movement may not be able to take advantage of this opportunity unless it addresses issues not yet confronted in any meaningful way by the debate and programs of the two new federations.

Now these issues have surfaced in the wake of Katrina, specifically in a piece by ACORN and SEIU leader Wade Rathke entitled "Chalabi and Katrina" (www.ChiefOrganizer.org, 3 October 2005) that disparages an organization, Community Labor United, and one of its principal organizers, Curtis Muhammad, with deep roots in the voter registration drives in Mississippi, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and for the last 20 years a part of the New Orleans community.

Days after the hurricane and while struggling with their own displacement, CLU folks began to pull together what has become the People's Hurricane and Relief Fund. Since then they have held two national meetings, the first on September 10th with participation from 49 different organizations, and the second, September 30th-October 1st, with more than 100 participants from prisoners' and women's rights groups, predominantly black cultural, faith-based, and educational groups, non-union worker organizations, community groups, legal scholars, and the ACLU. A Coordinating Committee, representing the breadth and community organizations throughout the Gulf Region as well as CLU's own base, was chosen by the survivors, and working subcommittees and 6 regional communications centers (organizing offices) have been established. There has been widespread support for the PHRF both nationally and internationally. (For more, see the PHRF website: www.communitylaborunited.net.)

With this background we want to examine the issues raised by "Chalabi and Katrina":

1. Confront racism within our movement. White leaders, even those whose membership base is predominantly Black and Latino, should be careful about making pronouncements about who is genuine and who has the requisite skills. Confronting racism means understanding that our culture and economic and political system is build on racialized capital and we operate within that context. Diversity should not be confused with power. If we are serious about bringing unions to the south (all those red states and their right-to-work laws), then we need to cede power to those very folks we seek to organize. The job of unions is to help give these forces additional information and resources they might not currently have so that they can chart their own future.

2. This movement must be built democratically from the bottom up, engaging the base to develop tactics and strategies that speak to their constituencies' own needs, culture, and history. The grassroots must control their own organization and movement. Remarks that belittle the work of grassroots activists of many years standing, organizing on a model based on experience among working-class and poor Blacks of the south that does not fit the union template, have no place in the labor movement. We have too much to learn from each other.

3. Fund and collaborate, and be prepared to take leadership from indigenous Black (and Latino, Asian, and Native American) forces on the ground. Many of these forces prior to the hurricane were not organized in ways that the unions are. They do not have a large paid staff, or offices with all the trappings. But that does not mean that organizations like CLU are "little bitty" or insignificant or cannot "handle money" or could not "organize a two car funeral" (as Rathke puts it in "Chalabi and Katrina"). This disrespect fails to acknowledge, on one hand, that the base of the labor movement (and with it dues dollars) and that of the CLU are the same, and on the other hand, the severe obstacles, principally racism and the legacy of slavery, that on-the-ground folks face in the south. Networking and informal ties have protected and nourished their organizing long after efforts like Operation Dixie or the Civil Rights Movement have moved on or declared victory. Organizations like CLU demand our respect and support.

4. Build a united front against the enemies of working people, employed or the unemployed poor. Our task is so huge that we can not afford to undercut each other with name-calling, patronizing statements, and inappropriate remarks. We must air differences in a principled way. Many of us work with ACORN in our cities and are on good terms with many organizers from that group. We cannot believe that such a provocative and destructive letter was circulated by Rathke to other ACORN leaders or reflects their views. We hope that people of good will in ACORN will give some signals to disassociate themselves from this divisive and chauvinist tactic. None of us has discovered the sure-fire way to organize or build a movement. Let's not give our enemies more fire power than they already possess. The Cold War era purges of the labor movement should have taught us that.

We exist at what one might describe as a "Katrina moment." It is a moment of both reflection and action. It is a moment to better understand and unpack the issues of race and class that have become so obvious through this disaster. It is also a moment to challenge the prevailing neo-liberal economic theories that were partially to blame for the scope of the disaster and seem to be central to the discussion of the nature of reconstruction. It is also a moment for a mass response to the disaster, which means that this is not the time for any one organization to hold itself up as the central core or the provider of franchises. To put it in other terms, this may be a moment to lay the foundations for a rebirth of a labor movement that is in synch with other social forces that share our opposition to the steady slide toward barbarism.

In solidarity,

(In alphabetical order)

Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director, US Human Rights Network

Gene Bruskin, co-convener of USLAW*

Kathy Engel, founding Executive Director MADRE, cultural and communications worker

Ray Eurquhart, retired UE 150 volunteer organizer

Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum

Badili Jones, member, SEIU Local 1985

Elly Leary, Vice President and Chief Negotiator, UAW 2324 (retired)

Eric Mann, veteran of CORE, SDS, and UAW

Marsha Steinberg, Field Representative/Organizer SEIU Local 660

Makani Themba-Nixon, Executive Director, The Praxis Project

Jerry Tucker, former member, International Executive Board, UAW

Steve Williams, Executive Director, People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)

* for identification purposes only

Wade Rathke is a seasoned organizer who helped found ACORN and SEIU Local 100 in the 1970s. He has remained strongly active in both groups and in a number of others. It is therefore all the more disturbing to see Rathke, a key player in building an organization that "pioneered multi- racial and multi-issue organizing," make such an concerted and destructive attack on Community Labor United and its Black leader Curtis Muhammad. On Friday, on his blog, Chief Organizer, Rathke was unbelievably condescending.

The most bizarre, and in some ways insulting, question I have been asked in the wake of Katrina is to identify groups to act as sponsor go betweens, just as if New Orleans was another foreign country like Iraq. It is insulting because whether we are talking about almost 10000 family members of ACORN in New Orleans or a couple of thousand members of Local 100 from the city – we have a base, it just doesn't happen to be in New Orleans, since it is caught in the diaspora now.

A good example is something called Community Labor United (CLU). This is a little bitty thing of maybe a dozen or two activists that has convened meetings off and on for years mostly on Saturdays for a while at Dillard and last I heard at the Treme Community Center. Mainly it is not labor but it has a couple of well intentioned AFT teachers that are personally involved and Curtis Muhammad, who ran a small local union for UNITE for a couple of years before he retired, was often in attendance. Mostly I didn't recognize the few other folks there, but some may have been students or whatever. Curtis is a good guy, but good love him, he wouldn't be able to really move any thing in New Orleans, because he doesn't have the base, the weight, the contacts, or the history god love him. To the best of my knowledge CLU was semi-defunct in recent years and certainly never had a paid staff or any capacity. Back 5-6 years ago when it was trying to first get started, we used to send folks to some of the Saturday meetings because they wanted to support our work and act as a bridge to other communities, but over the last couple of years that has also petered out. But now a wave of water moves through New Orleans and I actually get inquires about whether or not CLU can help in some way.

Huh? What? They are nice people and we count them as friends and allies, but are we talking about something real there? Of course not! Could they handle money? No reason to believe that. Do they have a base in New Orleans? No not whatsoever. Heck, I don't know if they could organize a two car funeral if they were driving both cars. They have only convened forums in the past to talk about stuff. If that was needed, they could do that I suppose, but there are a lot of folks who can do that.

What is truly bizarre about this attack is that the passing reference to Iraq is actually part of an extended conceit, in which Rathke compares CLU and Curtis Muhammad to Ahmad Chalabi.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had a candidate to front for the Iraqi people – Dr. Ahmad Chalabi. He had been running the Iraqi National Congress for many years from the United Kingdom. He had a degree from the University of Chicago. He was connected. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was not as certain and neither was the Army. Each in turn had their own ex-pat Iraqi leaders who they hoped would get traction once repatriated to home soil.

Make no mistake though. When they were not in Iraqi, but working the world promoting schemes for liberation armies or business ventures or this or that, they had friends and sponsors based on the value that these men and their political formations served to their sponsors, not for the Iraqi people. They were tools in the hands of others.

Watching the embarrassment of the Bush Administration when it was trying harder to install provisional and puppet fronts for the invading force, I would have thought we might have all learned lessons about making sure as an a priori in these matters that one should be very, very careful not to anoint someone from afar, who can not operate on the ground. Now in the middle of the post-Katrina shakeout, I can see that this is not the case. Progressives seem not to want to learn what the conservatives have taught us. We want to make sure we learn the lessons the hard way with our own embarrassment.

In the wake of Katrina everyone and their brother seems to suddenly be interested in New Orleans and trying to figure out a way to insert themselves and their issues into the muck that remains of the city. Some of this is a good thing.

Where it gets hairy is when people try to create representatives for the people for the purposes of the sponsors and the donor community, just like we have seen in Iraq.

The obvious implication here is that CLU and Curtis Muhammad are not only corrupt, but pawns of the Bush administration. Complicating matters for Rathke is Naomi Klein, who has written positively of CLU in The Nation. Thus, in addition to his racist dismissal of Muhammad ("Curtis is a good guy, but good love him [sic], he wouldn't be able to really move any thing in New Orleans"), Rathke takes a sexist swipe at Klein.

How do Calabi's happen? Just this way! CLU was somehow mentioned by Naomi Klein in a piece in the Nation. I have no idea what she knows about New Orleans, but I imagine she was grabbing something out of the hat. The article gets reprinted some places, and all of a sudden Chalabi is out and about in New Orleans.

Naomi Klein isn't from New Orleans, but she is a good investigative reporter, who went to New Orleans early in the disaster and did important work. The article Rathke alludes to certainly shows Klein to have done her homework about community organizations, political leaders, and business interests in NOLA. Further, organizers who support the interests of low-income people should be very interested in what Klein turned up about the housing situation in New Orleans.

More to the point, however, CLU did not simply ride the wave of the fifteen minutes of fame that Klein afforded them. From the first weeks following the disaster, there was a steady stream of press releases and media appearances that indicated a broad political vision and ambitious and determined political organizing, which I was also hearing about through my own contacts among the Civil Right Movement veterans community, of which Muhammad is a well-known part.

If Rathke has a legitimate argument with CLU about organizing tactics or a different political vision, that's fine. He has not articulated anything concrete. Rather, he has engaged in the worst kind of baseless attack that plays on racial power dynamics and has the potential to be highly destructive to a grassroots people's movement.

I have more to say about the racism involved in Rathke's attack and in some of the responses to it and to Curtis Muhammad's response. But first I will post an important response to Rathke from a coalition of activists (next up).