The Second Looting of New Orleans
By Jordan Flaherty
AlterNet
Sunday 21 January 2007
The city is an international symbol of neglect and racism. But
the federal government isn't the only one to blame.
A year and a half after New Orleans became an international symbol of
governmental neglect and racism, the city remains in crisis. Students are still
without books, healthcare is less available to poor people than ever, public
housing is still closed, and infrastructure is still in desperate need of repair. In an
open letter to funders and national nonprofits, a diverse array of New Orleanians
declared, "From the perspective of the poorest and least powerful, it appears that
the work of national allies on our behalf has either not happened, or if it has
happened it has been a failure."
In a recent conversations with scores of New Orleans residents, including
organizers, advocates, health care providers, educators, artists and media
makers, I heard countless stories of diverted funding and unmet needs. While
many stressed that they have had important positive experiences with national
allies, few have received anything close to the funding, resources, or staff they
need for their work, and in fact most are working unsustainable hours while living
in a still-devastated city.
Research backs up the anecdotal reports. A January 2006 article in The
Chronicle of Philanthropy argued that the amount given to post-Katrina New
Orleans was "small-potato giving for America's foundations, which collectively
have $500-billion in assets." The article also asserted, "just as deplorable as the
small sums poured into the region are the choices foundations have made about
where the money should go." In other words, very little of the money had gone to
organizations directed by or accountable to New Orleanians. One prominent New
Orleans-born advocate and lobbyist called this phenomenon the "Halliburtization
of the nonprofit sector."
A February report from New York City's Foundation Center points out that the
Red Cross, which raised perhaps two billion dollars for Katrina relief despite
widespread accusations of racism and mismanagement, "ranked as by far the
largest named recipient of contributions from foundation and corporate donors in
response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita," receiving almost 35 percent of all aid.
At the time of the report, another 35 percent of the money the foundations
designated had not been spent. The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, Salvation Army
and United Way together made up another 13 percent. The rest was generally
spread between other national relief organizations.
Community Responses
After nearly fifteen months of shuttered storefronts, a block of Black-owned
businesses in New Orleans celebrated a rebirth this week. The street, on Bayou
Road in the seventh ward neighborhood of New Orleans, is a hopeful sign in a
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city where 60 percent of the population remains displaced and many businesses
are shutting down or moving. As recently as August, most of the area remained
shuttered and empty. Now, almost every shop is open. The Community Book
Center, a vital neighborhood gathering spot in the middle of the block, reopened
this week, despite still having no front windows and a floor in major need of work.
"Step carefully," Vera Warren-Williams, the owner, warned guests as they
entered the store during the reopening celebration.
Neighborhood spaces like the Community Book Center have long been a vital
part of New Orleans organizing, serving as a gathering place for people and
ideas. The revitalization of Bayou Road is just one example community pulling
together - friends and strangers coming by to help gut houses, clear debris, cook
food. Anything to help, as the people of New Orleans struggle together against
incredible odds in a city that was already devastated by poverty and privatization
and neglect pre-Katrina.
Although Community Book Center is a crucial resource, spaces like these
have received little outside support.
Foundations, according to the Chronicle article, "seem to have been
preoccupied with the issue of accountability. Many foundations wondered how
they could be certain that grants to local groups would be well spent and,
therefore, publicly accountable."
While those are reasonable concerns, many in New Orleans see a double
standard in this view. The Chronicle writer goes on to state, "the question of
accountability didn't seem to bother the large foundations that gave so
generously to the Red Cross, which had a questionable record of competence to
begin with and attracted even more criticism in the aftermath of Katrina over its
unwise use of funds, high administrative costs, and lack of outreach to
minorities."
Many feel that the message from major funders has been that New Orleanians
cannot handle the money appropriately. "Twenty seven years running a
business, and they don't trust us with money," Jennifer Turner of the Community
Book Center, comments, when asked about her feeling towards national funders.
"They think we're all stupid or corrupt."
In the aftermath of Katrina, the people of New Orleans were depicted in the
media as "looters" and violent criminals, or as helplessly poor and ignorant. In
other words, as anything but a trustable partner in the rebuilding of their city.
Even today, many news stories about New Orleans post-Katrina focus on FEMA
payments that were misused or obtained through fraud, rather than the bigger
story of corporate fraud.
Many feel this media depiction, and the bias and racism that it in many cases
reflected, is in part to blame for the reluctance of major funders to give money
directly to the people most affected.
"They figure if they give poor people money they'll buy crack and cigarettes,"
People's Organizing Committee and People's Hurricane Relief Fund co-founder
Curtis Muhammad summarized.
Money and Resources
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At a small corner bar in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood, community
activists and organizers from grassroots base-building organizations such as
Critical Resistance, the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition and Safe
Streets/Strong Communities gathered to celebrate a victory. After a year of
organizing, protesting and lobbying, Safe Streets won city funding for an
independent monitor over the city's notoriously corrupt and violent police
department.
The Safe Streets victory is the result of several years of struggle by many
organizations and individuals. More importantly, it is a part of an overall effort
grounded in, and led by, those most affected. While there has been some
funding for base building organizations such as those listed above, it has been
pennies compared to the hundreds of millions directed elsewhere.
For a region of the country that has been historically underfunded, these
issues are nothing new. "I'm very much afraid of this 'foundation complex,'" civil
rights organizer Ella Baker said in 1963, referring to the changes happening then
in the structure of grassroots movements.
In an article in an upcoming South End Press anthology about New Orleans
post-Katrina, members of INCITE Women of Color Against Violence write,
"Though hundreds of nonprofits, NGOs, university urban planning departments,
and foundations have come through the city, they have paid little attention to the
organizing led by people of color that existed before Katrina and that is struggling
now more than ever."
Echoing this analysis, the Chronicle of Philanthropy article complains of a
"long-term lack of concern and neglect that foundations that operate nationally
and in the Gulf Coast region have shown for poor and minority Gulf Coast
residents, even as some grant makers proudly strutted their awards to national
antipoverty and antiracism programs."
The INCITE authors posit that successful organizing is rooted in the
community and takes a long time to bear fruit. Mainstream funders don't
appreciate this, and, "a look at who and what gets funding in New Orleans, from
foundations to support work, reveals the priorities of these foundations and the
entire nonprofit system. Organizations that represent their work through quick
and quantifiable accomplishments are rewarded by the system. Foundations are
not only drawn to them but are pressured by their own donors to fund them."
For many in the nonprofit field nationally, post-Katrina New Orleans has been
an opportunity for career advancement. While local residents have been too
overwhelmed by tragedy to apply for grants, a few well-placed national
individuals and organizations have not hesitated to take their place in line.
Although some have no relation to New Orleans, they often have previous
relationships with the foundations, as well as resources that translate into easier
access to funding, such as development staff, website designers, and
professional promotional materials.
Systemic Failure
Foundations are not to blame for the continuing crisis in New Orleans, nor do
they possess a special responsibility to help the city. However, many foundations
have expressed a desire to support New Orleans' recovery, and funding is
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desperately needed on the ground. Because of this, their actions have taken on
added scrutiny from people in New Orleans.
Foundations are an integral part of the current structure of U.S. nonprofits, a
system that INCITE has called the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, to emphasize
the intersecting, dependent and corporatized ways in which the system is
constructed. It is a system in which organizations are frequently pitted against
each other for funding, where organizers are discouraged from being active in
their own community, and where accountability to and leadership from those
most affected has become increasingly rare, and in many cases, the priorities of
the "movement" are guided by those with money rather than being led by those
most affected.
Perhaps the biggest lesson of Katrina for people concerned about social
justice is that the structures of U.S. movements are in serious crisis. As the
director of one base-building organization posed the question, "what's wrong with
the 501c3 structure that everyone could come down for a five-day tour but no
one could come to actually do the work for a month? What's wrong with a 501c3
structure where everyone is already so under resourced and then tied to projects
and promised outcomes that the biggest disaster this nation has seen in decades
occurs and no one can stop what they are working on to come down and help?
What's wrong with the foundation world that they have to produce 207 fancy
glossy interview reports to their board in order to shuffle a few thousand dollars
our way?"
One thing that is clear is that the current paradigm simply doesn't work.
Without community accountability, projects aimed to bring justice to that
community are weaker and sometimes counterproductive.
Writing in the South End Press book, INCITE members argue that the
structure of a non-accountable movement stopped organizations from
responding more capably to the disaster when it happened, and that a movement
more responsive to the local community would have been more effective.
"Community organizing and community - based accountability are the things we
have left when the systems have collapsed," they argue.
Many organizers told me that, in dealing with foundations, they were expected
to be responsive to the foundations instead of to any concrete needs on the
ground. "Its not just that you have to jump when they tell you to jump," the
manager of one organization told me, "you also have to act like you wanted to
jump anyway."
Again, these issues are not new - more than forty years ago, Fannie Lou
Hamer, civil rights leader and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party, complained, "I can't see a leader leading me nowhere if he's in New York
and I'm down here catching hell."
"What's wrong with our movement and our organizations," the director of
another grassroots organization asked me, "that they couldn't collaborate and
coordinate and offer us some organized plan of assistance instead of asking us
to do more and more to help them help us? What's wrong with funders that they
couldn't coordinate, the way they ask us to, so that they could come down once,
together, and not on 15 separate trips?"
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Moving Forward
When asked for solutions, many in New Orleans called for allies to bring a
deeper respect for the experiences of the people on the ground. Others
expressed an overall need for movements to move away from reliance on
foundations and large donors.
Several organizers highlighted the examples of positive experiences. "National
Immigration Law Center (NILC) came here in a principled way, looking to hire
someone local, and to support already existing local projects," Rosana Cruz, who
works with NILC and the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, explained.
"Advancement Project does litigation led by and in support of grassroots
organizing campaigns. OXFAM is a major international organization, but they
came in and worked responsibly with small organizations on they ground they
had previous relationships with. And they made multi-year commitments. They
didn't just come and dump money - or worse, come and promise money then
disappear, as some did."
"Ironically, many of the folks who have come through for us are Southern
groups, who are themselves under resourced," the managing director of one
organization told me. "Organizations like Project South and Southerners On New
Ground (SONG) have been stronger allies than many larger national groups."
The Chronicle article asks foundations to play a role in "strengthening nonprofit
organizations that serve low-income people and African-Americans, as well as
other minorities ... America's foundations need to move from a policy of neglect
of the nation's most vulnerable organizations to one of affirmative action, an
approach that will mean changing the way many foundations do business."
"I would ask national organizing groups to send a staff person down for 6-12
months," begins the executive director of another organization, "I would also
recommend all progressive and liberal foundations with Katrina money to do an
analysis of funding and jointly release the results along with the plan for funding
in 2007 and 2008."
Others listed specific needs they felt were unmet. "We need seed money,
technical training and leadership development," explained Mayaba Liebenthal, an
organizer active with the New Orleans chapters of Critical Resistance and
INCITE."
The stakes are far beyond New Orleans. This is a struggle with national and
international implications. If the people of New Orleans are supported in their
struggle, it will be a victory against profiteering and privatization. Questions of
race, class, gender, education, health care, food access, policing, housing,
privatization, mental health and much more are on vivid display. "Everyone is
here right now, or has come through," Curtis Mohammed comments, referring to
the vast array of organizations and individuals who have visited the city. "If the
movement continues to grow, New Orleans will be seen as a turning point." But,
despite all of the resilience on display here, the people of New Orleans can't do it
alone.
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine.
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