Check Out My New Blog

Based on my experiences in the Gulf Coast I decided to take a group of youth to the Gulf Coast to witness for themselves and to help raise awareness in Massachusetts about what is going on in the Gulf Coast region. If you want to see what I think you can check out that blog projecthiphopboston.blogspot.com . You will get some input from me but even more input from the 4 youth who are going on our trip.

Hope you will follow us on this new journey!

Wilma Survivors Are Organizing

From: Miami Workers Center <MWC@democracyinaction.org >
Date: Nov 11, 2005 7:41 PM
Subject: From FEMA to City Hall: Where Does the Buck Stop?

Update from Miami:
16 days after Hurricane Wilma stormed through Miami, city, county, state, and federal agencies continue to fail to support its people. Along with 40 or so displaced residents and allies, the Miami Workers Center (MWC) and Low-Income Families Fighting Together (LIFFT) held a press conference and sit-in at the City Mayor's Office.

ïNot one more night, Homes not Cots, Viviendas Ahora, read the signs of families who rode up to city hall on a school bus from the only Red Cross shelter in the county. Those families made a political decision to go to city hall instead of negotiating the constant barrage of service workers who were now having evacuees fill out form after form without ever delivering housing.
The group gathered in front of city hall held a banner declaring, Housing Now. Several strong women from the Tamiami shelter led the call for immediate assistance from the local government and FEMA. Gihan Perera of the Workers Center addressed the press, 16 days after Hurricane Wilma, and 3 months after Katrina, what have we learned? Where are those that are supposed to be responsible? Where is the government? We are here today to ask the Mayor of Miami to stand up and take responsibility for the people of Miami and to ask him to hold FEMA accountable to doing its job as the Federal government.

Then Sushma Sheth and Rosalie Whiley of the MWC and LIFFT led a delegation of displaced residents and allies with the entire crowd into city hall to demand a meeting with the mayor. The mayor, who was out of the office, refused to return to city hall for a meeting. However City Commissioner Gonzalez promised an immediate 'solution' to the people's problems. He and the city manager assured the crowd that they would get FEMA to handle it. It never happened. Finally, a meeting was granted with the mayor's chief of staff. The city's position was that it is Miami-Dade County's responsibility to deal with FEMA. However, the chief of staff refused to arrange a meeting between the city, county, and FEMA.

Outside the meeting, the city's homeless assistance service provided a few families with motel accommodations which will more than likely last for a night or two. The mayor was quoted on NPR this morning saying: The City of Miami is doing everything to make sure that its residents have housing, through shelters or hotels.

This is yet another disappointment for people who have lost almost everything not only due to the storm but also to the neglect of those who are charged with taking care of them. This is the reality of the new urban politics. Disaster is the role of the state.

Shelter residents protest, seek solution
Miami Herald
By: Mike Vasquez

Organizing Background:
Organizers from the MWC went to the shelter in Tamiami on Sunday night in order to check out the conditions as well as to see how people were doing. People were fed up with the conditions in the shelter, a shrinking staff, inaccessibility to their children's schools, their jobs, medications etc. We encountered at least 75 families who felt it was time to directly confront the city and FEMA for failing them.

On Monday November 7 Mayor Manny Diaz announced a new initiative. This step was directly in response to the MWC led campaign for immediate hurricane recovery policies. The mayor's plan seemed to be a clear victory. It included the creation of a city wide housing fund for renters and homeowners, exactly the design a coalition, which included the MWC, had proposed just a week before. However, it would only be helpful in conjunction with FEMA funding, and that was growing difficult. Moreover, even in the combination of FEMA and city programs, the affordable housing crisis in Miami makes the reality of utilizing the program highly unlikely. By admission of many city staff, it would only be good for people who already have resources to utilize it. Most people in the shelter do not.

We Keep Moving:
Although the action at city hall was not an immediate success in regards to having demands met we do not consider it a total loss. We are continuing to grow and build. Two of the women who were given housing in motels last night took buses back down to the Tamiami shelter today to organize. They told MWC that they are not going to give up the fight and plan on building with more displaced people. Currently there is an organizing meeting scheduled at the Tamiami shelter for Monday night.

From FEMA to the Red Cross

Because so much of what happened in Katrina is repeating itself for the victims of Wilma I feel the need to focus my blog entries on tracking what is going on in Miami. Please read and feel free to contact the Worker's Center if you can help. A friend that I have known since high school, Terry Marshall, has been working with the Worker's Center since his roof was damaged in the storm and eventually collapsed destroying everything inside.


A Saturday Night Dispatch from Miami Workers Center (Nov. 5th)

Last night the Miami Workers Center and a group of displaced residents faced down FEMA and demanded housing [see our previous email or website www.theworkerscenter.org)] The FEMA representative threatened the group of displaced residents with arrest. But the county police refused to arrest anyone. The police, in an odd turn of events, sided with the residents against FEMA. They claimed to not want to enact the "double indignity" of arresting people who were already facing such trying circumstances. The police assured the residents they could stay the night and again confront the FEMA officials in the morning. The residents decided to return to where they were staying, cars and ruined apartments with soggy mattresses, choosing familiarity over the cold shoulder of the government.

We thought the police siding with us against FEMA was weird...then when we arrived at the Miami Workers Center office today we were greeted by two representatives of the Red Cross, Tonya Frazier and Luis O. Riva. These officials stated they were responding to the press coverage the Miami Workers Center and the displaced residents have been getting. They claimed to be ready to provide temporary local housing, EBT cards and hot meals for the residents the Miami Workers Center had been working witrh over the passed weeks. The Red Cross came to get direction from the Miami Workers Center on where to go and what to do.

We spoke with the Red Cross representatives and negotiated with them around what exactly was needed on the ground. We worked with them for hours while we simultaneously pulled together displaced residents to update them on the situation. We also gathered the resident's contact information so they could be contacted by Red Cross case workers, as promised to us. The representatives left our office around three o'clock to check out a site for temporary shelter in the neighborhood. They said they were going to return and never did. Red Cross case workers still haven't contacted the residents. A hot food line was never set up at the evicted buildings where the displaced residents have been gathering.

MIAMI - Displaced Hurricane Victims Confront FEMA (Nov 5)

Fed up with the continued run around from FEMA and the Red Cross, displaced residents and their children along with the Miami Workers Center and allies, marched on the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) at the Joseph Caleb Center in Miami. The delegation of 40 people occupied the lobby for 7 hours after being blocked from entering the office The group carried pillows and blankets signs. They chanted for immediate housing vouchers, and demanded a meeting with the head FEMA official.

Negotiations with FEMA were disastrous. The first FEMA official in charge of the Recovery Center, Randy Proudy, gave a number of false promises, lied about the negotiations, and ultimately snuck out the back door during the middle of the event. He was later fired. Things were so bad that the Miami Dade County police had to call national FEMA executives to locate someone that was accountable. When the regional director arrived 4 hours later, he delivered nothing but excuses, and threatened to have the entire group arrested immediately.

BACKGROUND
This direct action was taken after days of mass evictions following in the wake of Wilma - one of the most devastating storms that Miami has seen in 20 years. These evictions are a result of building condemnations due to worsened conditions in already inadequate housing throughout poor neighborhoods of Miami. As apartments were deemed unfit for human habitation people were forced from their ruined homes. Eerily reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina, there is an empty vacuum of support for the working poor.
Working with displaced residents of poor neighborhoods the Miami Workers Center in coalition with ten other organizations put forward a policy proposal called "Hurricane Economic Recovery Policies" on November 3. This proposal was released at a lively press conference attended by over 80 people and 20 organizations involved in grassroots organizing, advocacy, and service work. The crowd was brought to their feet clapping and yelling as three displaced women called for people to stand up to the city government, national government, their landlords and large aid agencies and demand the help they need. Several of these same women led the group into the FEMA center today.

PRESS:

November 3
his article has an in depth look at what poor residents in Miami face in the destructive wake of Hurricane Wilma.
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=52225988&url_num=1&url=http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13056573.htm
This article examines the lack of housing for the displaced victims of Hurricane Wilma in Broward County. It contains some very startling numbers.
http://www2.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MIA10407/

November 4
Articles summarizes the press conference, a brief look at what displaced residents face, the Red Cross response, and the policy proposals-
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/13077048.htm

November 4
The Editorial Board of the Miami Herald. endorsed the major policy recommendations of the Hurricane Economic Recovery
Policies
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13077546.htm

November 5
This column in from the Miami Herald condemns the local governments faulty response to the disaster while holding up main points of the policy proposal.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/ana_menendez/13087295.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Wilma and FEMA vs. the Poor
The underreported story...
Joseph Phelan, MWC Communications

As days turn into weeks the situation worsens for the poor people left behind not only by aid relief but by society as a whole. People who had been living under slumlord conditions are evicted from housing that has been deemed unsafe for human habitation, yet at the same time there is no alternative housing offered. People living paycheck to paycheck are facing the stress of lost jobs do to homelessness or business closures. They are also facing a hostile city government which refuses to spend reimbursable money on temporary vouchers for hotels.

The situation in Miami is very similar to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, if not in scale than in intention. A system of aid and relief failed poor people of color. This failure is not a sudden breakdown of an otherwise functioning society. It is a sharp illustration of the structural problem of underdevelopment in particular communities, namely poor, urban, and black and immigrant. Evictions and death due to lack of health care, hunger, and poor living conditions are a reality for these populations. These permanent conditions under the neo-liberal policies of today's capitalism are only accelerated by the crisis of natural disasters.

The tragedy of New Orleans was highlighted by immense press coverage, as it should have been, do to the severely dramatic nature of bursting levees and massive flooding. Press coverage and public outcry at the lack of support for low income communities of color leading up to, during, and after Katrina forced President Bush to acknowledge "that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America," a line that cuts sharply against the right wing push to dismantle hard won civil rights.

While poor people of color were displaced in relatively large numbers in both Miami and New Orleans the cities' tourist destinations were up and running with electricity first. In Miami, the beach and other wealthy and tourist areas were sealed off and protected by police and national guard under curfews and martial law. This indignity only served to further highlight the sad reality of the U.S. society as illustrated by Gihan Pereara of the Miami Workers Center, "We are living in two cities, two worlds, one poor and working class, the other rich."

Victims of Katrina in New Orleans and victims of Wilma in Miami lived through a storm of immense natural power and destruction. But more destructive than the winds and water is the disaster of economic injustice and racism This killer does not find its origins in the the Atlantic but in the board rooms of corporate developers, the meetings rooms of real estate speculators and the back rooms of banks. Katrina has now rendered all of New Orleans a clean slate for mega-casino's and luxury hotels, Miami's poor black and immigrant communities were already facing an ironic affordable housing crisis in the middle of an unprecedented building boom with the promise of 70,000 luxury condo units to be built in the next four years. The forced removal of these communities was on the horizon before Wilma, the destructive nature of the hurricane just happened to be more immediately violent. Wilma and Katrina's displacement of poor communities is a windfall for developers.

In the wake of Katrina a lot of the talk from political leaders focused on re-building. Because of strong national attention on the area there is a possibility that this rebuilding process will not completely exclude the communities that originally lived there. But with no state-sponsored support prior to and immediately following the storm, a terrible to non-existent tracking program for displaced people, and a legacy of disenfranchisement for poor people of color the question has to be raised: Who will direct and benefit from the rebuilding of New Orleans, and Miami and who will be left out of the picture?

The answer to that question is all too clear under the present political regime. It is the poor, the black. the immigrant, the low wage earner, the mother, the children of them all that pay the price. It is on their backs that a few may prosper handsomely, and it is those few that make decisions for all of us.

Wilma Victims Will Be Heard (Nov 4th)

This is a reprint of the updates being sent out by the Miami Worker Center where a friend of mine, Terry Marshall, is helping other Wilma victims to organize for food, shelter and human decency.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the wake of Hurricane Wilma hundreds of low-income black and immigrant residents of South Florida are facing two disasters, one natural the other economic. We are proud to report that immediate actions taken by a broad grouping of organizing, social service, legal advocacy, and faith-based organizations are exposing FEMA and local government's lack of response to the needs of poor people of color in South Florida.

At a press conference, we unveiled "Hurricane Economic Recovery Policies" a proposal that could bring immediate relief and make up for what FEMA fails to provide. Today, the Miami Herald editorial board endorsed this course of action.

Editorial - http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13077546.htm

News Coverage - http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/13077048.htm

An Update on Florida after Wilma

This post is a reprint of an article written by a friend of mine who recently moved to Miami and returned back to his apartment right after Hurricane Wilma had passed. The devastation continues....

Miami Crisis Update 10/27/05

Miami is known for its night glow of bright neon lights. They are supposed to represent all that is glitter and gold about the city. The first night after Hurricane Wilma, the lights (or lack of) showed how race space, and class were intertwined. On that night one could drive over one of the bridges that connect the main land to Miami beach and see what parts of the city were given priority (south beach and downtown still shined) and what’s parts didn’t (Most of the mainland, Liberty city, Overtown, North Miami).

And The Days Go On
Miami is experiencing its 5-day without power (Florida Power and Lights reported in the Herald that 42% of the city has regained power). I have been back in Miami for 4 days now. Luckily I was out of town when the hurricane hit. I say luckily because I came back to see that my apartment ceiling caved in from rain (right over where I sleep—on the couch). After spending the last few days trying figure out my housing situation, I took time today to help out with the broader situation.

I volunteer with the Miami workers center. The Miami Workers Center (http://www.miamiworkerscenter.org/index.php) is a strategy and organizing center for low-income communities and low-wage workers in Miami-Dade County. The Center organized teams of volunteers to go out into the community to interview and document how folks were doing and assess the crisis.

My Team was assigned to Ward Towers and Claude Pepper, two senior citizens homes in North Miami. We were armed with clipboards and fliers. On the back there was a list of emergency numbers that people could call for help with hurricane related problems.
Our tasks were to dialogue with folks and document there stories, assist in any emergency needs, and to let them know that the center was open as a resource (the center is based in liberty city and just regained power today).

The first thing I noticed about the two buildings was how nondescript they were. It’s as if the city didn’t want to let anyone know that elderly folk live there. The stories I heard once I got inside help me see how the city makes the poor and elderly even more invisible than just the buildings appearance.

The building is occupied by mostly by older black and Latina women. They are experiencing their 5th straight day without electrical power. The first 3 days they got no help at all. They did not have access to an elevator until today. Because of this some people who lived on the higher floors (the building is 16 Stories, 200 units) to sleep on the first floor in the common room on hard steel chairs! One woman, who has arthritis, lived on the eighth floor and had to walk up and down the stairs. Needless to say here knees are causing her more pain as of late. They did not receive any ice or water until last night. Many folks believe this was because a couple of news stations came by and did a story on them. Exposing the conditions. Windows were blown in and apartments flooded. To date the city has done nothing about this but board up some windows. Residents had to clean up the water themselves. One Latina resident told us that a store around the corner was price gouging, selling candles that usually cost $1.25 for $5!
But don’t let these stories lead you to believe the elders in this building were helpless victims. A man confined to a wheelchair told us after the first 3 days of no help that the residents were discussing sitting in the middle of the cross street and getting arrested. “How would that look, the police arresting a 85 year old woman because she wanted food and water and lights? How would that look!”?

An elder Black woman, Ms. Emma Brown, told us “The is no color here! We all, all of us, helped each other out, as neighbors. All the different people you see around you, we all worked together to help one another. We didn’t see color!” In a city that is known for its racial tensions between Cubans (primarily) and Blacks, That’s huge!
My team would not have been able to so effectively get folks stories if it wasn’t for Ms. Mae Catherine Smith. Ms. Smith is a member of L.I.F.F.T. (Low Income Families Fighting Together, a initiative of the Miami Worker Center) and a resident the Ward tower senior citizen home. She took us around and introduced us to people. Explaining who we were and what we were doing. You could tell that she was an organizer within the building and people trusted her. She was breaking down to folk how they could get help and what needed to be done. It was her leadership that guided us this afternoon.

When we got back to the center to debrief with the other teams we shared some of the stories we heard things we’ve seen.
- Distribution Centers being mismanaged: no set times, running out of supplies early, telling people wrong locations, no coordination between agencies (county not knowing where or when federal was coming, or military). Some officials at distributions center admitted that they had know idea when the center would re-open or where.

- People are not being able to get transportation to centers either. The bus system is horrible in Miami and even if you have a car you will be an in 2-mile line trying to get gas). No Spanish speaking cops in largely Spanish speaking areas. To top it off the packages of food that they are handing out to people is hardly anything to eat. The items in one package were: Jell-O pudding, small package of cereal, chocolate milk, and a small can of beeforoni)

The Miami Workers Center is planning on sending people out to spots again tomorrow. Their work is proving to be essential in this time of need. All of the neighborhoods (Liberty city, Opa-locka, Allaphatta, and Little Havana) that we investigated today were low-income communities of color (black and Latino). In the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma these resource depleted areas are still suffering from neglect. The hardest hit being the elderly and women and children.

There are completely opposite stories going on in neighborhoods like The Design District, Downtown, and South Beach. Places that are known for being playgrounds for the upper classes had power and services back on within 24hrs of the hurricane. Race, Space, and Class (Gender and age as well) seem to come together again. This experience is showing (along with that of the Katrina victims) that it’s not a question of where hurricanes hits. It’s a question of where the resources are missed.
More updates to come….

Terry Marshall
Independent ResearcherBLOC Network (http://www.blocnetwork.org/)

This Is the Maddest I Have Been. Has America Learned Anything About Human Decency?

Last night around midnight I got a call from a friend Kristy in Mississippi. I have gotten used to Kristy sounding really sad on the phone, but I could immediately tell that something was even more wrong than usual. Kristy and I got connected through First Missionary Baptist Church (FMBC). Kristy was one of the first people to come to the church's Disaster Center. The roof in Kristy's apartment was partially torn off during the hurricane and so her house was flooded. There was mold and moisture in the apartment and so almost all of her furniture and clothing were destroyed. Her apartment was unhabitable so she had to move in with her mother. Without a car and pretty far from her children's school, Kristy was really anxious to move back into her own place and try to put her life back together.

The day that Kristy came into the FMBC Disaster Center, Sis Jenkins called me so that I could try to help with her list of needs. I listened to what she had been through, we prayed and we exchanged information. From Sept. 10th until I got to Gulfport on Sept. 29th, Kristy and I stayed in touch. Over the two weeks I was there we got to hang out a little bit, I met her three children and we talked about her possibly moving to Boston. While it was obvoious that the storm had taken a toll on her spirit, it was also clear that Kristy was a woman who wanted to make a better life for her kids. She encourages them to do well in school and they are well behaved kids.

A day before I left Kristy's apartment complex called to tell her that she could move into a new apartment that had not been damaged. She jumped at the change and moved in on the 11th. Her first day in she got someone to bring a truck so that she could move things from her old apartment to her new apartment. After some items were stolen from the truck she decided to wait and get more help before she moved anything else. She told me that she was going to find some people to help her move this week.

On Monday, October 17th, less than a week after she moved to her new apartment, Kristy noticed some construction work going on at her old apartment building. When she got closer she saw some men throwing her things out of the second story window. They had thrown out her dining room table, her dishes, her framed pictures. They had walked past the door on her front door that said " I will be returning for the items I can salvage" and they started demolishing apartment. With no regard for all that she had already gone through, they got rid of some of her most prized possessions - the porcelin doll that she bought her youngest daughter for Christmas, her children's framed HeadStart graduation certificates, cute photos from the days when the kids all got along before the natural process hits when a 12 year old can't get along with an 8 year old.

She tried to pick things off the ground, but when it was obvious that she couldn't carry much and that they were not going to stop, she went to the management office. The property manager claimed that she had told her they were coming. Nothing in writing, just a claim that she told her. Finally Kristy had to run to the local church and ask people to help her move her things. By the time that she got back, they were throwing sheet rock on top of her cushed possessions. At that point the only thing she could salvage was 2 TVs, her stereo, and her computer. How did those survive being thrown out the window? They weren't - the demolition guys set them aside near their truck planning to take them home for themselves.

This morning she went to the rubble again and there was fiberglass on top of the sheet rock, making it even more dangerous to sort through the debris. Then they did more bulldozing making it harder to get to the stuff.

I am not even going to hide how I feel about this - I am pissed off. There is to reason that this family should have had to go to another traumatic experience. To think that you lost everything and then to be able to salvage something and have it destroyed this way. This should not happen to anyone. Kristy's apartment building is owned and/or managed by the Lynd Corporation, a Texas-based company that boasts 750 million in property acquisitions. Their website says that they are helping the victims of Katrina by relocating evacuees in Texas. What about the victims in Mississippi. Didn't this family at least deserve some notice before a truck on contracters came from Texas and demolished the few things they had left?

So I am going to get off of my soapbox, but I am so angry that I refuse to rest until Kristy gets some justice. At first she was scared to say anything for fear of being evicted but then she told me that she doesn't even care anymore. She said that she didn't know if she could even live there anymore. Despite the fact that she did nothing wrong, there is not a one of us who would not be embaressed to have to pick your prized possessions out of the rubble while the whole neighborhood watched.

Keep watching for more information on what you can do to help bring justice to this family......