hey all, just wrote this and sent it to Z Mag, thought you might want to read some good news from way down yonder best, michael

The Battle of Algiers, New Orleans

Community, Activist Unite To Save Neighborhood

By Michael Steinberg

The Algiers district of New Orleans lies across the Mississippi River from the rest of the city. Pre-Katrina, a downtown ferry dressed up to look like an old time steamboat glided back and forth across the water frequently.

Upon entering the ferry building in Algiers Point, a sign announced that this was the initial landing and holding area for slaves shipped across the Atlantic from Africa, and for Cajuns exiled from French Canada.

Tourist oriented businesses and gentrified homes marked Algiers Point. But further in from the river a low income working class neighborhood of descendants of the African slaves predominated.

Due to its location, Algiers did not flood when the levees broke in other parts of New Orleans. There was wind damage due to the hurricane, but Algiers escaped the deluge.

Because of the efforts of local community organizers and activist volunteers who responded to a call for aid, the African American neighborhood has survived. And not only has it survived, but it is serving as a model of grassroots organizing to rebuild and revitalize not only New Orleans but also the rest of the storm ravaged Gulf Coast.

Call and Response

Algiers resident Malik Rahim has had a lot to do with the community’s survival. Rahim is a former Black Panther and a founding member of the New Orleans Green Party. Soon after Katrina struck he became a voice for the city’s African American dispossessed and oppressed. During appearances on Democracy Now and Air American radio Malik Rahim reported on the heavy handed tactics of police and military forces in New Orleans, as well as white vigilante groups who were singling out African Americans for abuse. He slammed authorities for failing to provide food, water and other relief supplies to the many thousands in desperate need in the Crescent City.

Malik Rahim also put out a call for the many people remaining in Algiers to stay in their homes and organize to survive. This was at a time when Mayor Ray Nagin was calling for mandatory evacuation, and the military was attempting to enforce it. Besides that, Rahim began calling for activists to come to Algiers to provide support for the community.

Roger Benham was one of those who heeded Malik Rahim’s call. Benham, a longtime activist, lives in northeast Connecticut, and had recently returned from a summer of campaigning to oppose moutaintop removal in Appalachia when Katrina hit.

“I was going crazy watching the news on TV,” Benham recounted recently. “Then the Friday after the hurricane I got a call from Riot Folk singer/songwriter Ryan Harvey. He asked me if any action medics were going down there.”

Benham is also a certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). He describes action medics as “a loose network of health care providers who give support at political demonstrations with first aid. We set up first aid tents to create anti-authoritarian spaces at big marches.”

Harvey told Benham that Hartford Food Not Bombs was organizing a bus full of food, and with a kitchen to “go to the area of greatest need and set up there,” Benham said. After thinking about going for a few days, Benham got on that bus.

“We drove non-stop,” Benmah said. Once in the South he met up with some other EMTs from the DC Collective who had a van full of medical supplies. Benham hooked up with them, and, having heard Rahim’s call, they decided to try to make it to Algiers.

Birth of Common Ground Relief

The action EMTs initially went to Covington, LA, on the north side of Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. There they rendezvoused with Veterans For Peace, who had traveled from Camp Casey in Crawford, TX to feed people. On September 8 Veterans For Peace went to Algiers, at Malik Rahim’s request.

The following day I called Roger. He told me they had made it into New Orleans and through a military checkpoint, then to Algiers. There they made contact with Malik Rahim and “We set up a medical station in Masjid Bigal mosque on Teche Street,” he reported. He also told me there was a strong military presence on the ground and in the air, including Blackwater Security and Instar, private mercenary groups also operating in Iraq. But he was also seeing utility trucks in the neighborhood attempting to get the electricity going. He told me that Algiers had never lost city water, though it wasn’t yet drinkable.

The next day when I talked with Roger he described their first full day at the medical aid station. “We’re trying to help people help themselves,” he said. “Some people we saw today came looking for prescription drugs they’d run out of. Several were vets who depend on the VA for their blood pressure medications. We gave out meds we’re certified to administer. We also went to visit elders in their homes nearby. In one household I met a 101 year old woman. She’s doing fine.”

He also reported that electricity was coming back on, and gas lines were being repaired. In addition he said that a United Church of Christ group was providing food and drinking water to the community, but that FEMA was doing nothing to help people.

At this point in our conversation he informed me that FEMA was likely listening in to our call. “They called another of the EMTs I’m with,” he said. “They asked him specific questions about a phone conversation he had here.”

Roger also reported that he asked a soldier how people without money could get their prescription drugs. “People who have money and can get a ride can go to drugstores that are open in nearby towns,” he explained. “But if you don’t have money, the soldier said, you’d be taken to the airport (then being used a triage medical center) and issued the needed drugs. But then you’d be put on a plane and evacuated. If you had family in a major city they’d take you there. If not, they’d fly you wherever the next plane was heading.”

Each time I spoke to Roger I wrote up a dispatch and posted it on the New Orleans Independent Media site. I thought this was an important story that nobody else was covering.

When I next spoke with him on Monday, September 12, he confirmed that the mainstream media was still ignoring the community organizing in Algiers. “I haven’t seen corporate reporter #1,” he said.

Meanwhile their efforts were growing and more help was arriving. “We’ve been seeing 100 people a day,” he reported. “We’re really swamped.” They were also continuing housecalls, traveling with borrowed bicycles.

“A French MD was here yesterday,” he told me. “And today there was one from Seattle. And a Canadian RN is trying to get here to fill scripts for people who need meds. There a whole lot of MDs, RNs and EMTs sitting around Baton Rouge waiting for FEMA to give them something to do. We’re trying to get some of those people down here.”

Roger also reported that relief shipments from the DC Collective and Pastors For Peace had arrived that day.

Soon more and more supporters, from around the US and the world, were arriving, and the first aid station Benham and a handful of others had started became the Common Ground Health Clinic. People hope it will remain a permanent presence in Algiers. Preciously there was no health care clinic in the community.

The success of this effort encouraged Malik Rahim and supporters to help set up similar self help relief stations in other parts of New Orleans, and nearby hard hit areas such as Plaquemines Parish to the southeast.

Word began to spread fast about what was happening in Algiers, first in places like New Orleans Indymedia, and eventually some mainstream media started paying attention. Benahm was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

So when Mayor Nagin announced that New Orleans residents could begin to return, the first place named to be “reopened” was Algiers.

But the battle continues. The New Orleans police force it back on the streets, and has been harassing people at the clinic. Yet the work goes on.

“The clinic is just a beachhead, “Roger Benham asserted at a report back meeting in Willimantic, CT on September 29. “It grew into the Common Ground Relief Effort. This seeks to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for poor people there in an environmentally sustainable way. We’ve moved from relief to recovery to affecting the recovery process. Common Ground draws people together to unite to work to influence how things go.”

Contact: www.commongroundrelief.org

Michael Steinberg is an activist and writer living in Connecticut.