[StBernard] Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

[Westley Annis]

Building a Political Movement Can 
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast 
By MIKE HOWELLS and JAY ARENA 

Four years after Hurricane Katrina the mass media and most national
political leaders have largely dropped the still-devastated and suffering
people of New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast from their political radar
screen. Yet, the region and its people have not been forgotten by legions of
college, faith-based and other volunteers. Thousands of people--young, old
and middle aged, from all over the country, during vacations, spring breaks,
or on unpaid job leaves--continue to trek to the region to lend a hand
gutting and rebuilding homes, churches, and schools,  among other self-help
efforts.

We, grassroots activists working for a racially and economically just
reconstruction of the region, salute the intentions that have brought
volunteers to the Gulf and the sacrifices they have made. Nonetheless, as
admirable and well-intentioned as these efforts are, we argue that
volunteerism, of the "thousand points of light variety", is not what we
need.

Indeed, volunteerism, of the traditional variety, is part of the problem,
not the solution to rebuilding the Gulf. Rather, what we need are volunteers
in the tradition of the civil rights movement. We need volunteers who come
to solidarize, to support, to engage with the social movements battling
for-profit and non-profit corporations that are profiting from the disaster.
We need volunteers to join us in demanding the GOVERNMENT fulfill its
responsibility to rebuild the Gulf Coast equitably. 

Below we identify how volunteerism is part of the problem, not the solution
to a forging a racially and economically just reconstruction. We then offer
an alternative form--what we call Movement Volunteerism--one that provides
solidarity to the social movements struggling for justice. 

The Damage Done by Volunteerism

Apolitical, "self-help" volunteerism provides political cover and protection
for the national, state and local political leaders, and their corporate
allies, whose destruction of public services, and other initiatives, have
worsened the conditions for black and working class people, and blocked
their return. 

While volunteers have built hundreds of homes, the local and national
authorities have unnecessarily destroyed many more. The most egregious
example was the Bush administration, with the full cooperation of New
Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, and the city council, demolishing 5,000 badly
needed, and little damaged, public housing apartments in 2008. The
reconstruction plan developed by Bush, authorized by the city council, and
now supported by the Obama administration, provides for rebuilding only a
fraction of the former public housing units.  

Likewise, volunteers have flocked to heavily storm damaged St. Bernard
parish, located downriver from New Orleans, to help this community recover.
Yet, while receiving volunteers with open arms, the St. Bernard political
leadership has taken aggressive steps to keep others in the community out,
particularly the poor and African Americans. A prime example was the St.
Bernard parish council's passage, after the storm, of an ordinance to make
it illegal for homeowners to rent to non- 'blood relatives', and another
ordinance blocking the construction of multi-family housing. In a parish
that was over 90% white before the storm, both of these ordinances were
thinly veiled attempts to keep black renters out of the parish. 

Volunteers, who are regularly saluted for their work by political officials
in New Orleans, St. Bernard, and the local press, have a special obligation
to speak out against these exclusionary policies. Silence by volunteers, in
the face of these crimes, is consent.

Voluntarism is a form of scabbing that drives down wages. 

By working for free volunteers contribute to driving down wages in the area,
most importantly the wages for Katrina survivors.  This facet of voluntarism
is actually worsening the plight of working class Katrina survivors.  For
example, gambling moguls on the Gulf Coast have exploited the use of
volunteer labor to rebuild area casinos on the cheap.  In another case,
for-profit contractors in New Orleans cynically used volunteer labor, while
claiming to use paid labor, in order to boost profits.   

Voluntarism acts as an "enabler", allowing government authorities to avoid
responsibility for rebuilding the Gulf. Voluntarism promotes the illusion
that "self-help" can rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf.   

While the federal government, now led by Barack Obama, gives trillions to
bail out Wall Street, it fails miserably to fund the living wage jobs that
Katrina survivors so desperately need to rebuild their communities.
Self-help voluntarism, in fact, ends up alienating Katrina survivors from
the rebuilding process, both physically and economically. At the same time,
voluntarism provides a political cover for the government's failure to
provide the public assistance truly needed to rebuild the hurricane
devastated communities of the Gulf Coast.  Voluntarism--the actual
volunteers and the whole ideology that accompanies their work--helps the
government manage, mask, this deep contradiction:  trillions in
state-provided corporate welfare, yet crumbs for the people, including the
still struggling, Gulf Coast. 

Volunteerism facilitates the ruling elite's "disaster capitalism" agenda of
using a disaster to privatize public services and to eliminate obstacles to
the further enrichment of the corporate elite. 

While Hurricane Katrina created great suffering for the majority of the
Gulf, it also offered, from the perspective of elites, great opportunities.
The mandatory evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina provided the
corporate elite and their servants in government with a golden opportunity
to shut down and privatize public services. In the immediate aftermath of
the storm the authorities put the corporate elite's agenda into effect with
a vengeance.  The government shuttered Charity Hospital, the city's only
public hospital, closed the lion's share of the city's public housing, and
shut down a majority of the city's public schools. Government authorities
took all these measures while the great majority of residents were still in
exile. 

How did voluntarism facilitate the dismantling of New Orleans public
services? A myriad of non-profits, with the encouragement of the area's
economic and political elites, helped make the radical downsizing of local
public services more politically palatable.  For example, the post-Katrina
media hoopla surrounding the construction of affordable housing by various
non-profits, including Habitat for Humanity and Brad Pitt's Make It Right
foundation, helped foster the illusion that volunteerism could provide the
affordable housing needed in the storm devastated Gulf Region. While these
groups were building and renovating private homes, the leadership of these
organizations remained silent as authorities savaged the single greatest
source of affordable housing in New Orleans, public housing. 

On the matter of public education the response of voluntarism is no better
than its response to public housing.  Following the mass firing of New
Orleans public school teachers and the liquidation of their collective
bargaining agreement two months after the storm, Teach For America
volunteers were hired by education authorities to serve, in effect, as scab
labor.  

On the matter of public health care, government authorities and their
backers have and are manipulating health care voluntarism to dampen public
anger at the closure of Charity Hospital. Volunteer health care clinics
foster the illusion, whether intended or not, that a private sector approach
to health care service can adequately fill the health care void created by
the closure of Charity Hospital.  Still, in spite of all the good works by
private health care volunteers, the number of hospital beds in New Orleans
is only 20% what it was pre-Katrina.  The closure of Charity Hospital is the
reason for the precipitous decline in the number of hospital beds for the
mentally ill in New Orleans after the storm.  Nonetheless, on a daily basis
New Orleanians are inundated with media coverage of the "good works" of
health care volunteers. This coverage helps maintain the illusion that
Katrina survivors can live without Charity Hospital.   

Is There An Alternative to "Self-Help" Voluntarism?

Must volunteer work on the Gulf Coast be limited to the voluntarism of the
non-profit industrial complex? No! Is there an alternative to "self -help"
voluntarism"? Yes!

Movement Voluntarism is a peoples alternative to "self-help" voluntarism.

The lifeblood of Movement Voluntarism is people, whereas the lifeblood of
"self-help" voluntarism is money. Funding, often from corporate or
foundation sources, determines the limits of "self-help" organizing. This
holds true for progressive, as well as traditional, "self-help" voluntarism.


In contrast, popular support sets the limits for Movement Voluntarism. 

On a grassroots level, in the Gulf, there were and are fight backs free of
the influence of corporate and foundation money.  These fight back groups
have played very important roles in the struggle to defend public housing
and reopen Charity Hospital. These groups emerged from the ranks of Katrina
Survivors and have, in the four years since the storm, remained active in
the fight to rebuild local public services. These democratically-run
groupings function outside the purview of the non-profit corporate world.
This independence is crucial to allowing the groups to escape the unhealthy
influence of corporate and political elites.  The reluctance of the
corporate media to even acknowledge the participation of these groups in the
fight for a democratic rebuilding of the Gulf Coast is a backhanded salute
to Movement Voluntarism.  

We urge those who want justice for the exploited and oppressed people of the
Gulf to contact groups organized along the lines of Movement Voluntarism.
Connecting with these groups is an important step toward building the sort
of Movement Voluntarism that can facilitate a just rebuilding of the Gulf
Coast. Building democratic groupings challenging an unjust status-quo
without corporate foundation funding is not easy. But the experience in
post-Katrina New Orleans demonstrates that this sort of organizing is key to
unleashing the power from below that can put human need ahead of profit. 

Opportunities to Engage in Movement Voluntarism
C3/Hands Off Iberville. Contact: Mike Howells, 504-587-0080;  
email: howellnow at bellsouth.net

Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital. Contact:  Derrick Morrison,
504-908-5310, email: dmorrison33 at cox.net. Website:
http://www.charityhospital.net/

Mayday New Orleans. Contact: Sam Jackson, 504-319-3300, email: 
jackson-action at hotmail.com. Website: http://www.maydaynolahousing.org/

Mike Howells and Jay Arena are active in New Orleans public housing, and
larger, right of return movement.