Race, Relief and Reconstruction in New Orleans

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By Jordan Flaherty, Posted by Rob Kall (about the submitter) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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The national Muslim community has dedicated significant resources towards relief efforts. Several of the largest Muslim charities, including Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America, Kind Hearts and Muslim American Society, have formed a coalition called the Muslim Hurricane Relief Task Force to participate in direct relief. They have provided vital aid to many, and spent millions of dollars on relief, an especially difficult task given the recent government crackdowns on Muslim charities and the fear this has generated within the US Muslim communities.

"Many immigrants didn't know how to get federal aid," Bashi tells me. "Those that weren't citizens were told that they couldn't get aid, in fact they were told they'd be deported if they even applied."

Fortunately, according to Bashi, Islamic charities filled some of these gaps, as well as providing aid to non-muslims, including at least 2,600 volunteers just in the Houston shelters. However, as with other organizations on the front lines of relief, there are still questions about the distribution of relief, and if those with the most need are being served equitably.

I spoke recently with Nurah Jeter Ammat'ullah, founder/director of the Muslim Women's Institute for Research and Development. She has been working with Islamic aid groups in the Houston area. She told me, "this is what I understand to be the tenets of Islam, working in service of humanity."

However, she voiced concerns over the way aid is being distributed. "I'm concerned that aid is not reaching the African-American Muslim community in relation to their needs. I'm concerned that aid is not reaching the African-American communities of the Gulf region, overall, in relation to their needs. Aside from hurricane relief, there are systematic issues that have plagued African-American communities in this region for a long time. People are making donations, and its vital that we make sure we have transparency, and some apparatus that allows community oversight....on one hand we're a unified faith community, on the other hand you have ethnic lines superimposed on class lines that don't paint a very good picture."

This is a problem not at all unique to the Muslim aid community. In fact, any relief effort that is not also aimed at attacking the fundamental structures of racism and corruption that led to this disaster will in some way reinforce the problem. People like myself, who were better off to begin with, have been most able to receive relief aid.

On a deeper level, the very idea of "Hurricane Katrina Relief" encourages the idea that the problem is just the damage from the hurricane, and that if we can get people back to where they were pre-hurricane, everything will be ok. The status quo pre-hurricane was, and is, the problem. The inequalities and negligence and disinvestment that were a part of that status quo caused this tragedy.

Now as the picture shifts from relief to reconstruction, the inequalities become even more serious.

I asked Bashi about his community's role in reconstruction. "Muslims, and especially immigrant Muslims, are political pariahs in this country right now," he said. "I can't see any government board wanting to have muslim representation. Most Brown folks who have been elected are exceedingly xenophobic or else they wouldn't have gotten there. Look at Bobby Jindal, who represented the far right positions, but still lost the Governors race because of his skin color. Ultimately, we're just a small minority of the city's population, and we're not expecting any representation in decision making. The only place we can be involved is on a grassroots level."

The poor Black majority of the city has also been shut out of these decisions. The Mayor and Governor have both appointed advisory boards that are significant in who they leave out. Although Mayor Nagin did choose Barbara Major, a dedicated and brilliant community leader, to sit on his board, the other 16 board members he chose are all corporate leaders with no constituency in the Black community, a description that arguably also applies to Nagin, a corporate businessman who was elected with the support of 70% of the white vote of New Orleans..

According to Curtis Muhammad of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, even among natural allies there has been a hesitation to support Black-led efforts.

"We're seeing a fear on the part of people even in the progressive community to take leadership on this from poor Black folks, and we want to confront this and find out why," Muhammad recently told me.

Many community members I've spoken with recently have expressed urgency, concern, and fear for the future. So many resources are flowing to organizations such as Red Cross who are more a part of the problem than solution. If the people of New Orleans are going to have a real say in the decisions that will effect them, its vital to build a broad alliance and find a way to harness the support from across the US and around the world.

I asked Ammat'ullah what charity she would recommend Muslims donate to if they want to help the people of New Orleans, and she replied, "so far, from what I've seen and heard, I would recommend they donate to the People's Hurricane Relief Fund."

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Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. This is his eighth article from New Orleans. You can contact Jordan at NewOrleans@leftturn.org.
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Jordan's previous articles from New Orleans

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