On September 7, a Jamaat al-Muslimeen supporter and I joined protestors at the White House decrying the racism of the authorities in dealing with the New Orleans situation. The protest was called by A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). The small but spirited group was led in chants by Eugene Puryear, a student activist from Howard University. “From Iraq to New Orleans, Fund Peoples’ Needs, Not the War Machine,” we chanted in the direction of the Rose Garden.
The protest reminded me of the many Jamaat al-Muslimeen protests I’d attended as a teenager. But where were all the other Muslims?
Caneisha Mills, ANSWER’S youth and student coordinator, spoke at a forum following the protest. She had just returned from a fact-finding trip to New Orleans. Tall and slender with beautiful, dark skin and a proud walk, she brought to mind some of the Panther women. With no makeup, her hair simply done, she might have been a Muslim. Most striking was her seriousness.
Caneisha is in her senior year at Howard University, yet she took time off from her classes to go to New Orleans, along with filmmaker Gloria La Riva, and photographer Bill Hackwell. They took as many relief supplies as they could for the people of New Orleans.
Caneisha’s anger at the injustice in New Orleans was evident, yet she was able to speak articulately and confidently. Her main points were: 1) the military is in place in New Orleans, but only to protect property, not to help the people evacuate, nor to provide for their needs; 2) supplies and volunteers are available, but they are not being allowed to reach where they are needed; 3) supplies brought in by the government are strictly for government personnel, not for the people who are in need.
She traveled through seven police/military checkpoints before arriving in the district of Algiers, where she, La Riva, and Hackwell were to be hosted at the home of community leader, Malik Rahim.
Malik Rahim is a former member of the Black Panther Party. Some activists suggest that if the BPP with its original platform been around today, the suffering in New Orleans might have largely been averted.
Malik is an example of grassroots leadership at its best. Algiers, where he lives, sits on higher ground than the rest of New Orleans. It was not as badly damaged as other areas, and much of it would still be habitable, were it not for the lack of electricity, food and water. Malik suggested using parks, schools, and other parts of Algiers to set up camps for people displaced from other parts of New Orleans, but so far, his efforts in this arena have fallen on deaf ears.
Malik told Caneisha: “Imagine being in a city, poor, without any money and all of a sudden you are told to leave and you don’t even have a bicycle. Ninety percent of the people don’t even have cars.”
Malik, along with three of his friends, go door-to-door three times a day, taking food, water, and ice to the people. When he returns from his “rounds” he is on the phone with community organizations, religious groups, and reporters, amassing more food and supplies to deliver the next day. His street is the only one with telephones still working, and black and white neighbors alike come in periodically to use his phone.
Malik spoke of white vigilantes riding through Algiers in pickup trucks, gunning down any blacks they thought didn’t belong there. His friends and neighbors feared for his safety, and many parked their cars in front of his house to fortify its entrance.
Caneisha remarked on the extraordinary hospitality of the Rahim family, despite the long-term difficulties facing them.
She spent considerable time walking around the Superdome and interviewing people. Most stories pointed to the abject disregard of the authorities for the predicament of the people. One black woman she interviewed tearfully recalled the trauma of waiting on her roof for days with her entire family, thinking they would all die there, as they were repeatedly bypassed by helicopters. The woman and her family remained on their roof until they were finally rescued by relatives. Only later did they learn that the helicopters had orders not to take larger families.
Caneisha interviewed a group of five young black men, who had taken it upon themselves to rescue people stranded in the flooded areas. Their leader, a handsome young man with shining eyes, told her “By the grace of Allah, we were able to commandeer a boat.”
He and his friends filled the boat with twenty-five people each trip. They would ask for volunteers who had the strength, to cling to the outside of the boat, and leave the seats for the weaker ones. Thus they were able to evacuate as many people as possible each trip. Many of the people had already been stuck their attics or on their rooftops for days with very little food or water, so they tried to get to them as quickly as possible. After the young men had been at this a couple days, they finally saw some official rescue boats bringing in people, but never more than five or six people at a time. “We did not bring our own families in till last,” he said.
Such stories of the peoples’ heroism abounded; one report that particularly inspired this writer was that of prisoners who broke into stores and got food out for the elderly and weak.
Caneisha and the ANSWER delegation returned from New Orleans and immediately set to work on the September 24 anti-war protest in Washington, DC. Few thinking people can miss the connection between the racism evident in the Bush Regime’s reaction to Katrina and the racism of the illegal war on Iraq. Appropriately, the original anti-war theme of the march was modified to: “From Iraq to New Orleans, Fund peoples needs, not the war machine.”
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