Lessons
Learned By Grassroots Katrina And Tsunami
Social Justice Activists
By Bill Quigley
01 June, 2007
Black
Agenda Report
The
tiny old woman with the tanned deeply lined face stood up and told us
what happened to her coastal village of 130 families in Tamil Nadu India,
along the southeastern coast. Before the tsunami, villagers survived
by gathering prawns by hand from shallow waters and by hiring out to
work for people who owned fishing boats.
Without warning, on December
26, 2004, a thirty foot tsunami wall of water roared through their coastal
village sweeping aside everything in sight. The elderly woman was knocked
down. With her hands she demonstrated how she was violently tumbled
over and over by the powerful following waves. Finally able to wrap
her arms high around a coconut tree, she clung to it as her clothes
were ripped from her body by the surging waters. When the waters receded,
every house in her village was gone. The tiny woman, now quietly crying
as she told her story, was ashamed as she searched for something to
cover her nakedness. She started searching for her missing family and
the rest of her village. Many were dead. Some are still missing today.
Those who remained were homeless.
Today, some families in her
village live in newly constructed 340 square foot concrete homes built
by international relief agencies. Others live in temporary thatched
huts perched on top of their neighbors’ new homes. All are trying
to rebuild their lives.
The December 26, 2004 earthquake
in the Indian Ocean measuring 9.3 in magnitude sparked-off a series
of devastating tsunamis that killed over 230,000 people and made millions
homeless. Since then, Indian community organizations have struggled
in the face of unprecedented problems to try to recover and rebuild.
A group of grassroots Katrina
social justice activists were recruited to visit with our Indian counterparts
from the most devastated areas of coastal India to see what we could
learn with and from each other.
Together we visited numerous villages up and down the Indian coast and
listened to hundreds of people describe how the tsunami and its aftermath
continues to impact them. We listened to displaced families as we sat
on woven mats in steaming thatched huts as the temperatures passed 105.
An entire fishing community told us their story under towering palm
trees backed by the brilliant blue Bay of Bengal of the Indian Ocean.
We ate rice, yogurt and fish off of banana leaves with our fingers while
we visited with one village. Others shared what happened as we walked
in the blazing sun through fields of women and men digging dirt with
shovels and pails to
construct a new road.
We shared the experiences of our gulf coast communities and the massive
and continuing human rights violations perpetrated against Katrina survivors
both at home and internally displaced. We shared a slide show illustrating
human and civil rights violations after Katrina. After finding out that
police fired weapons to turn away fleeing people trying to escape across
the Mississippi river in New Orleans, the continuing displacement of
hundreds of thousands, and
the government’s determination to demolish thousands of usable
public housing apartments, our Indian friends were incredulous. One
said “This would never happen in our country. If this happened
in India, there would be a revolution!”
Over hundreds of miles and
days and nights of visits, we and our Indian friends found tremendous
similarities in our experiences between the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
Our governments, on all levels,
have and continue to fail us. The needs of poor and working people have
been mainly neglected. Incredible incompetence and apparent lack of
sustained concern have combined to aggravate and amplify the effects
of the disasters. It is primarily through the efforts of small voluntary
organizations that any real progress is being made.
We released a joint Tsunami-Katrina statement at the end of our trip
summarizing five of our joint observations.
We first agree that our communities
have each been the victims of disaster capitalism. After each of our
disasters, the tremendous loss and suffering of our people have been
seized upon as opportunities for profit by commercial and financial
interests. The rebuilding processes have been driven not by the needs
of the people, but by economic and corporate interests which have neglected
and over-ridden the needs and perspectives of local communities.
Second, we agree that technological
and bureaucratic planning for disasters is not enough. Communities at
risk of disaster must be respected and involved in all preparations
for disaster. While we recognize the important responsibility of government
in preparing for disaster, we have seen the failures of preparation
that is based on technology alone. We have also seen the failures of
bureaucratic and professional planners. These failures will continue
until the communities themselves are given a priority in preparing and
shaping and executing planning for disasters. All preparation must be
sensitive to community needs and traditions.
Third, before, during, and
after disasters, the needs of the least powerful must be made a priority.
This is nearly the opposite of what has been occurring. These needs
include the full implementation of human rights to housing, land, occupation
and livelihood, freedom from discrimination, and the right to return.
Fourth, we insist on gender
equity. Our experiences have clearly shown us that there is a systematic
violation of the rights of women in every phase of disasters. In planning,
preparation, evacuation, distribution of relief, rebuilding, the right
to return, and in every phase of policy and decision making, the presence
and participation and value of the role of women have been seriously
inadequate. The human rights of women must be immediately respected
as their suffering and disrespect continues today in both our countries.
Fifth, we demand accountability
and transparency. Anyone who is raising, taking, or spending money in
the name of our communities must be accountable to our people. We call
specifically for our governments, our NGOs and our non-profits to let
our communities know how much has been raised, how much has been spent,
how all funds have been spent, how it has been spent, and each organization,
corporation, governmental unit or person who receives any funds. Our
communities
must participate in all these decisions. In order to have true community
directed participation, we insist on our rights to accountability and
transparency.
Our joint tsunami-Katrina
statement can be supplemented by many other personal observations of
this writer.
As social justice activists
and organizers, we need to do a much better job of developing solidarity.
We are battling for the very lives of our traditional communities and
we need each other’s ideas and support. We cannot afford fragmentation.
We cannot afford to consider one group more worthy or deserving than
others. In the US, we need to do much more to forge linkages between
the needs of coastal Louisiana and coastal Mississippi and the urban
needs of the New Orleans metro area. Nationally, we need to strengthen
our alliances with other communities fighting for justice. Internationally,
we have much to learn from each other and we must build much better
solidarity. Our Indian sisters and brothers told us if they knew what
was going on after Katrina they would have demonstrated in front of
the U.S. Embassy in India demanding the government respect our human
rights. It is a tactic of our enemies to divide and conquer, it is
our job to connect and conquer.
We must insist on rebuilding
our own communities. In India, we found examples where the communities
decided how to rebuild, chose to use local materials, and demanded and
won the right for local people to do the rebuilding so they could learn
new skills. We were shocked to find that many more new homes have already
been built in India for their displaced than in the U.S. Non governmental
agencies and non-profits, many with the best intentions have come to
our communities and have accomplished little good. They and the government
must be held accountable. India is trying, we have much to learn from
them.
There is a universal need
after the trauma of disasters for what the Indian activists call “psycho-social
counseling.” This need continues now and will continue until it
is met. Recovery is not only about the physical aspects of rebuilding
a place to stay or finding a job or getting some compensation. It is
also about relationships. On the gulf coast in the US and India we know
there are hundreds of thousands of people who continue to deeply suffer
the traumas of these disasters. They cannot “get over it”
without trained assistance.
The same is true in India,
however, the Indians are training volunteer community counselors to
help villages and organizations identify the non-physical effects and
to help people and communities heal.
In India the caste system creates invisible divisions and tens of millions
of invisible people. Dalits, or untouchables, built magnificent temples
as slave laborers but are met with violence if
they try to enter the temples their ancestors built. In the US, we use
the systems of color to create our invisible people. No just solutions
are possible without directly confronting the continuing existence and
legacies of these systems.
At the same time, economic
lines have been sharply drawn in both our nations. In the U.S. it is
property ownership that draws the line. Two people who lived different
halves of the same house for the same number of years are treated dramatically
differently if one owns the house and the other rents. Property owners
may get up to $150,000 in compensation in Mississippi and Louisiana
– renters, nothing. In India, fisherfolk are eligible for compensation
for their lost boats and new housing. Those who worked on the boats
for the owner are entitled to nothing. Like most economic injustices,
these artificial human distinctions, often codified into unjust laws
by those who profit from them, must be challenged and dismantled. Our
shared economic class issues must be a point of unity for us, across
lines of caste and race.
In both countries, if you
plot the intersection of race (or caste), gender, and economic status,
you will find those who are left out of the repair and rebuilding. In
both our countries the disabled were left behind at every step. This
is not an accident. These are all human decisions and can and must be
reversed.
As an important part of solidarity,
we have to keep reminding ourselves and our organizations that action
cannot be confused with progress. After a disaster, we are all very
busy. We have all been subject to countless planning meetings and consultations
and we have tried to participate in our communities. But the test of
all actions should be – “Does this help build, expand, or
defend a movement towards justice?” If it does not, we must re-think
it. Because unless we are building a more just world, the next disaster
will prey on the victims of injustice just as much as these did. Our
Indian friends reminded us that economic equity is the best way to reduce
the impact of disaster.
Disaster victims in both
the US and India are crippled, confused, and buried beneath bureaucratic
paperwork demands. The approach in both countries is that one must prove
they are eligible and worthy of assistance. Legal requirements and administrative
schemes choke the distribution of help.
Right, not charity, is our
common demand. Human rights, not bureaucratic eligibility criteria,
must be the foundation for relief, recovery and rebuilding. People have
human rights to food and shelter and the opportunity and assistance
necessary to live a life of dignity. The government must respect and
implement human rights. The degradations and delays and disrespect of
eligibility applications for basic human necessities must cease. Human
rights must be our shared basis for going forward. Internationally,
if the bottom of the North can link up with the bottom of the South,
human rights will be our shared language.
The final and best piece
of advice I received was from T. Peter, head of the Kerala Fish Workers
Association. Their organization has struggled with elected officials,
private companies, and the caste system in all phases of life. He leaned
over, his dark face split by a broad smile, and told me what we in the
U.S. should be doing to bring about justice for our gulf coast: “Less
meeting, more fighting!”
And so we will.
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor
at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill recently returned from India
where he and other Gulf Coast community activists toured hundreds of
miles of coastal communities devastated by the Tsunami. They met with
Indian community members to discuss common challenges and strategies
to rebuild their communities. In August, the Indian people will be visiting
the gulf coast. The trips were sponsored by ActionAid International
and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Bill Quigley can be reached
at [email protected].
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