Fifteen months 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 released yesterday, 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 conversations this week 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. In discussions this week, 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% of all aid. At the time of the report, another 35% 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%. 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 city where 60% 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
mokete.
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.
Leha Setsi sa Libuka sa Sechaba e le sesebelisoa sa bohlokoa, libaka tse kang tsena li fumane tšehetso e fokolang ea kantle.
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.”
Ba bangata ba na le maikutlo a hore molaetsa o tsoang ho bafani ba lichelete ba ka sehloohong e bile hore New Orleanians ha e khone ho sebetsana le chelete ka nepo. "Lilemo tse mashome a mabeli a metso e supileng re ntse re sebetsa khoebong, 'me ha ba re tšepe chelete," Jennifer Turner oa Setsi sa Libuka sa Sechaba, o fana ka maikutlo, ha a botsoa ka maikutlo a hae mabapi le bafani ba lichelete ba naha. "Ba nahana hore kaofela re maoatla kapa re bolile."
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
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 under funded, 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.
Sengoliloeng se hlahang bukeng e tlang ea South End Press anthology mabapi le New Orleans post-Katrina, litho tsa INCITE Women of Color Against Violence li ngotse, "Le hoja makholo a se nang phaello, mekhatlo e ikemetseng, mafapha a moralo oa litoropo tsa univesithi le metheo a fihlile toropong, e ne e sa ele hloko tlhophiso e neng e etelletsoe pele ke batho ba mebala-bala e bileng teng pele ho Katrina, e ntseng e hula ka thata ho feta leha e le neng pele.”
E lumellana le tlhahlobo ena, sengoloa sa Chronicle of Philanthropy se tletleba ka "khaello ea nako e telele le ho hlokomolohuoa hoo metheo e sebetsang naheng ka bophara le tikolohong ea Gulf Coast e bonts'itseng ho baahi ba futsanehileng le ba fokolang ba Gulf Coast, joalo ka ha baetsi ba lithuso ba ile ba ithorisa ka boikakaso. likhau bakeng sa mananeo a naha a khahlanong le bofuma le khethollo ea morabe.”
The INCITE authors posit that successful organizing is rooted in the
community and takes 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 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 US 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 US 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 5 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?”
Ntho e 'ngoe e hlakileng ke hore paradigm ea hona joale ha e sebetse. Ntle le boikarabello ba sechaba, merero e reretsoeng ho tlisa toka sechabeng seo e fokola 'me ka linako tse ling ha e na thuso.
TLHOKOMELO
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 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 youto 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.”
“Phoso ke efe ka mokhatlo oa rōna le mekhatlo ea rōna,” motsamaisi oa mokhatlo o mong o moholo o ile a mpotsa, “hore ba ne ba sitoa ho sebelisana ’moho le ho hokahanya le ho re fa moralo o hlophisitsoeng oa thuso ho e-na le hore ba re kōpe hore re etse ho eketsehileng le ho feta ho ba thusa? rona? Phoso ke efe ka bafani ba lichelete bao ba neng ba sa khone ho hokahanya, ka tsela eo ba re kopang hore re e etse, e le hore ba tle ba theohe hang, hammoho, eseng maetong a 15 a fapaneng?
HO RATA MOLEMO
Ha ba botsoa litharollo, ba bangata ba New Orleans ba ile ba kopa balekane hore ba tlise tlhompho e tebileng bakeng sa liphihlelo tsa batho ba fatše. Ba bang ba bontšitse tlhoko e akaretsang ea hore metsamao e tlohe ho itšetleheng ka metheo le bafani ba bangata.
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.”
Mookameli ea ka sehloohong oa mokhatlo o mong o ile a mpolella: “Ho makatsang ke hore batho ba bangata ba re hlahetseng ke lihlopha tsa Linaha tsa Boroa, bao ka bobona ba se nang thuso. "Mekhatlo e kang Project South le Southerners On New Ground (SONG) e bile lilekane tse matla ho feta lihlopha tse ngata tse kholo tsa lichaba."
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.”
Motsamaisi ea ka sehloohong oa mokhatlo o mong o qala: "Ke kopa lihlopha tsa tlhophiso tsa naha hore li romele mohiruoa bakeng sa likhoeli tse 6-12, ke khothaletsa le metheo eohle e tsoelang pele le e lokolohileng ka chelete ea Katrina ho etsa tlhahlobo ea lichelete le ho lokolloa ka kopanelo. liphetho hammoho le moralo oa lichelete ka 2007 le 2008."
Ba bang ba ile ba thathamisa litlhoko tse khethehileng tseo ba nahanang hore ha lia ka tsa khotsofatsoa. "Re hloka chelete ea peo, koetliso ea tekheniki le nts'etsopele ea boetapele," ho hlalositse Mayaba Liebenthal, mohlophisi ea sebetsang le likhaolo tsa New Orleans tsa Critical Resistance le 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.
Resources Mentioned In Article:
1) Letter From New Orleans Grassroots:
http://www.leftturn.org/NewOrleansLetter.aspx
(Note: Letter will soon move to:
http://www.leftturn.org/NewOrleansLetter.htm)
2) CorpWatch Report:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14023
3) After Katrina: What Foundations Should Do, By Pablo Eisenberg, in The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
http://www.nng.org/news_detail.html?news_id=61
4) Foundation Center report:
http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/research/pdf/katrina_snap.pdf
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Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine and a community
organizer. His previous articles from New Orleans are at:
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollection /jordanonkatrina.aspx
To contact Jordan, email: [imeile e sirelelitsoe].
Ho myspace: http://www.myspace.com/secondlines
Li-podcast: http://www.nolahumanrights.org (click on “podcasts”)
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ZNetwork e tšehelitsoe ka lichelete feela ka seatla se bulehileng sa babali ba eona.
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