Friday, September 02, 2005

Listening to the Chief

Wade Rathke, ACORN's Chief has been discussing the aftermath of Katrina on his blog. It's worth reading. Here's a sample.

Helene O’Brien, ACORN’s National Field Director, called me in the afternoon weeping about the TV film of people dying in the Convention Center and yelling that we had to do something, because our people were dying. What could we do? What works?

So, we put out a call on the email alerts and to all of our members to all their Congressperson and demand that the poor of New Orleans and the victims of this disaster get immediate help. Some of our offices are calling for sit-ins in the offices of their representatives until they know there is help.

Is this a decision or a cop-out? It’s a nothing, but it simply a way to allow everyone to do something in a situation where there is almost nothing we can do at the depth of our powerlessness.

My daughter, now a real organizer, talked to me at mid-night from the Tampa office where she and other young organizers had been making calls and running off flyers because they wanted to do something, so they were doing what they knew how to do. It was hard to tell her that there was no way to move 100 people at the Site Fighters Conference to a Congressional office. There were no busses. There was no gas. Maybe at the end of the conference we could have everyone made a cell phone call to the 800 number for Congress at the same time, so that they could do something.

There was silence.
She said it was lame.
It is lame.

I’m ashamed that we have worked so hard for so many years to organize so many thousands of lower income families and built so much power in so many areas and absolutely in New Orleans, but it turns out simply to not mean much when the
price of being poor is reduced to dollars and cents in a disaster and converted to life and death.

...

At the bottom line as an organizer one learns that sometimes it is not a question of doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but at least of doing something, allowing people to act in some way, to have a voice and to speak strongly with that voice.

Yesterday. the WFP has encouraged our supporters to contribute to the Red Cross. ACORN also needs help rebuildng. You can do that here.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Jerry Nadler is smart and wise

From Erik Engquist in Crain's:

Four Democratic members of Congress including Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-Manhattan, plan to introduce a bill that would make it easier for victims of Hurricane Katrina to declare bankruptcy.

A bankruptcy reform law that passed earlier this year and takes effect on October 17 imposes new hurdles for people seeking to escape their debts through bankruptcy. Democrats had offered an amendment carving out an exception for victims of natural disaster, but it was defeated on a party-line vote.

The bill’s sponsors believe the measure has a better chance in Katrina’s wake.