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Tag(s): Disasters; Health Alternative; Katrina; Love; Peace; Peace; Reconstruction- Rebuilding; Transportation; Volunteering Volunteers; Weather Hurricane
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May 30, 2007 at 08:46:27

Waveland, the Hurricane and the Rainbow

by Mac McKinney Page 2 of 3 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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"When the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds, and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again. They will be known as the warriors of the Rainbow." (see http://welcomehome.org/rainbow/index.html )

To finally make the connection between Waveland and the Rainbow Family, just as in New Orleans when, in the days and weeks after Katrina hit and FEMA was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, the activist group Common Ground stepped in to take the lead in helping the destitute, so too did the Rainbow Family step in at Waveland, right out of the clear blue sky, to help save the day for thousands of traumatized, starving and injured residents. The Family, never before running any kind of major disaster relief, gathered its forces from afar and made up its mind to set up, right in the parking lot of what was left of Fred's Department Store up on Highway 90, the "New Waveland Café and Clinic", serving, with plenty of smiles and compassion, hot meals three times a day to between 2,500 and 5,000 people, as well as providing emergency medical assistance to everyone in the area. The juxtaposition of the "hippie" Family serving an historically red-neck, Baptist region may have seemed a bit weird, a kind of "Hair" meets "Deliverance" scenario, but it worked, and worked well. While FEMA fiddled and Bush postured in front of Potemkin Village stages, volunteer doctors and nurses traveled in from around the country to serve those in need, ultimately treating over five thousand patients before the Clinic finally folded its tent.

Brad Stone, med student and founder and director of the Waveland Clinic (photo source: http://blogs.roanoke.com/kiln/archives/images/skd%20Brad%20Stone%20.jpg )

The altruistic organization, International Aid, facilitated donations of supplies and medicine from around the globe, and the Bastrop Christian Outreach Center also joined in to help. One of the Rainbow Family volunteers, Arjay Sutton, writing beautifully online in December, 2006, had this to say about his Katrina experiences, past and present:

"The first time I drove into Waveland, on September 11, 2005, almost two weeks after the storm, I navigated an obstacle course of the remains of Waveland's houses, businesses, cars, trucks, photo albums, children's toys.... everything.  All floated, mingled with the hidden, silent corpses of the people who used to live there, removed from moorings and foundations, and unceremoniously deposited in the middle of Route 603.

"Now imagine this drama played out in every beachside neighborhood, town, city, hamlet as much as 100 miles inland on every square inch of the coastland from New Orleans to Slidell to Pearlington to Waveland to Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian to Long Beach to Gulfport to Biloxi...all the way through Pascagoula, Bayou LaBatre, All the way to Mobile.  And you're the least densely populated of the lot.  And the poorest.

"I don't try to imagine the horror the good people of Hancock County have endured.  And with a little help from their friends...friends they never knew they had...friends they might have ridiculed, chased away, or even locked up on August 27, 2005...I'm pleased to report that life in Hancock County is pretty much getting back to normal." (from the New Waveland Café website, December 10, 2006, see http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl083105waveland.11adc324.html )

But Arjay also points out that this normalcy is rather superficial and ephemeral:

"....most people still live in FEMA trailers in the yards next to the wreckage of what used to be homes full of memories....Many watched as the debris truck picked up the remains of their homes, crushed them, then off to the dump for an eternity, perhaps to be uncovered by anthropologists centuries hence documenting the American Pompey.

"Like most of the Gulf Coast, the rebuilding has been tentative.  It's as if the entire region held its breath over the summer (of 2006), resigned to the worst--that another Katrina would rescramble the pieces as they were picked up--but working toward a future where people will tell their grandchildren about the "Hippie Café" across from the water tower.

"....There are still no buildings along the beach and fewer contemplated.  Many of the lots stand abandoned, appearing much as they did on the morning of August 30, 2005.  Much of the beachfront is for sale...no insurance company will write a policy there, which might be just as well.  The waterfront looks like a grassy park where, for over a hundred years, grand Victorian houses opened their bay windows wide to catch the sea breeze under the shade of 300-year-old live oaks in the drenched summer air." (ibid)

And he points out the cynical politics and economics overriding recovery:

"Many Hancock County residents have no way to rebuild.  The cycle looks as brutal as it does calculating.  Banks own property; people live there and pay the banks mortgages.  Katrina ended all gainful employment in the area and fat government contracts all went to wealthy out-of-state Republican donors like Ashbritt and Bechtel who sub-contracted out-of-state workers, just like in Iraq.  They pocketed the billions and ran.  Just like Iraq.

"FEMA and the Red Cross provided some financial assistance in the wake of the storm, but it's hard to make ends meet when you can't live in the house where you pay a mortgage.  Insurance companies flat out ripped off thousands of homeowners, giving them "emergency cash," for a signature that turned out to waive all rights to further payment.  Which has led to massive litigation.  Good for the trial lawyers.  Bad for the People.

"Which leaves many families living in FEMA trailers, working three jobs to make ends meet, and having no spare cash or time to build a new house.  These people really need help." (ibid)

The Rainbow Family Parade as they finally leave Waveland, mission accomplished. (photo source:

http://sistercitysupport.net/wp-content/photos/parade.jpg )

Hitting the Beach

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Student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and advocate for peace, justice and the unity of humankind, not through force, but through self-realization and mutual respect.