The Katrina Express

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The tour aims to dramatize the overall crisis that continues to confront the Gulf Coast’s most overlooked people and places. While poor and minority survivors and activists will agree (if anyone asks them) that they face multiple, interconnected disasters in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, this basic local insight goes largely unrecognized.

Government failure is certainly most responsible for a “recovery” that has been arbitrary, resource-driven, and slow rather than holistic, need-driven, or effective. But no one, progressives included, has adequately depicted, let alone offset, that failure. Narrowly focused aid has often segregated otherwise related issues, making one or another worse and masking the lack of an overall plan. Residents of the region feel tremendous gratitude to the tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of volunteers whose countless hours of labor, along with their financial contributions, are primarily responsible for what rebuilding has occurred. However, this individual goodwill is no substitute for the kind of comprehensive, coordinated, and sustained response that is needed from government at all levels.

Unfortunately, no thoughtful and coordinated response will occur without a compelling grassroots push for community visibility, multi-issue awareness, and broad social justice for Gulf Coast survivors. Our region today remains in a cultural, environmental, economic, and human rights crisis no less severe than its more frequently discussed housing crunch, and it extends far beyond the parishes of its famed city, New Orleans. The media, policy makers, academicians, and private funding groups repeatedly fail to recognize regional connectivity or to challenge the basic invisibility of the Gulf Coast’s several wounded communities and ecosystems—together, its very soul. Our community-driven and multi-issue platform will, we hope, eclipse the piecemeal analyses and responses that are moving social justice and equitable recovery nowhere fast.

Derrick Evans is executive director of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives in Gulfport, Mississippi. To find out more about the tour, visit www.krvexpress.org. Reprinted from Dollars & Sense (Sept.-Oct. 2007). Subscriptions: $18.95 (6 issues) from Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834; www.dollarsandsense.org.

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