There are 75,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in Arkansas, according
to Kathryn Hall-Trujillo. She is the director of the Birthing
Project USA, a maternal and child health program nationwide.
“On my recent trip with Pastors for Peace to Arkansas I listened
in horror, sadness and outrage as people who survived Katrina spoke
of their lives before and after the hurricane,” she says. “I
wanted to slap the taste out of Mrs. (Barbara) Bush's mouth as she
declared they were better off in shelters (like the Houston Astrodome).”
With other working people, Hall-Trujillo helped bring and coordinate
hurricane aid to evacuees in Arkansas, her birthplace. The
airport in Little Rock is a main arrival point for aid, so local
folks are well aware of the aid volume arriving at the facility.
A main challenge in distributing Katrina aid to the rural populace
is developing relations with grassroots aid providers within the
context of the politics of displaced persons. This means dealing
with FEMA and the American Red Cross.
Can you say ineffective bureaucracies? By contrast in Little
Rock, Hall-Trujillo was very impressed with how labor and interfaith
folks are cooperating to try and improve people’s living standards.
A driving force for this activism is Curtis Muhammad’s Community
Labor United coalition, which includes 30 organizations. This
is a model of political organizing for other American people to
learn from and with.
Plainly, in the context of imperial wars overseas and climate change-caused
weather catastrophes stateside, it is high time to rethink the concept
of national security.
“One of the most patriotic duties we all have right now is to mobilize
ourselves and let Congress know that it is genocidal to divert the
resources of our country to kill people who are not our enemies
both at home and abroad,” Hall-Trujillo says.
Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action
and a co-editor with Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive
paper. He can be reached at [email protected]. |