Thursday, July 20, 2006

New Katrina Report from Sage Foundation:


Notice from WORLDWATCH Institute:

New Report: In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race After Katrina
Zoe Chafe – July 17, 2006
This interdisciplinary report, written by professors from around the country, illuminates the environmental justice implications of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The researchers focus on race disparities and linkages to environmental quality in the US, and the ways in which these disparities influence the preparation and relief efforts: before, during, and after a disaster. They provide positive examples of cities that prioritized development for poorer citizens during post-disaster reconstruction.

The report concludes with a simple but profound statement:

“Yet by allowing the weak link in the social chain—the poorest communities in the low-lying areas of the city—to be exposed, all of New Orleans was put at risk. By failing to value fenceline lives and communities, the risks rise for neighborhoods far from the first releases from a chemical incident.”

In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race After Katrina
By Manuel Pastor, Robert Bullard, James Boyce, Alice Fothergill, Rachel Morello-Frosch, and Beverly Wright. Supported by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Natural Disasters & Peacemaking--WorldWatch Institute

From the Worldwatch Institute:

With the number of disasters (and their devastating impacts) increasing worldwide, Worldwatch has initiated a major research and policy project on "un-natural" disasters. Many of the earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods that batter the globe are "un-natural disasters" because preventable human actions, including wetlands destruction, global warming, and population growth, turn natural hazards into humanitarian disasters.

The project looks specifically at disasters in conflict areas, proposing innovative ways to work towards peace during the relief and rebuilding processes. "While grim in its origin, post-disaster humanitarian action can be a powerful catalyst for overcoming deep human divides," says Michael Renner, Worldwatch Senior Researcher and Director of the Institute's Global Security Project. "But humanitarian impulses must be translated into tangible political change, or else lasting peace may not be achieved."

Visit our Disasters & Peacemaking portal for daily news updates and Worldwatch analysis relevant to "un-natural" disasters and their worldwide effects. The links will also be available via Worldwatch's listserv.

Recent Reports:

New Worldwatch Article on Peacemaking after Disasters - July 17

New Report: In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race After Katrina

Friday, July 14, 2006

Volunteer Joins Emergency Communities and Common Ground Collective to Help Residents in Arabi and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans

Excerpt from:
Hard Work In the Big Easy:
Vacationers Donate Time To Help Katrina Victims


By Eric Patel
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 9, 2006
Yes, the Big Easy has become a lot harder to visit, especially if, like a growing number of travelers, you're looking to volunteer in a city severely damaged and surprisingly unhealed since Hurricane Katrina's devastation last August. It's a city that even has its own version of refugee camps. Within hours of touching down, I found myself ladling out scrambled eggs to a long line of residents at a makeshift "cafe" under a tent set up by aging hippies to feed homeless locals.

Even a cursory tour around New Orleans confirms the worst you've heard. The Lower Ninth Ward -- ground zero for the worst levee break -- is a virtually untouched, surreal landscape: splintered houses lying on cars, cars in trees, trees on houses, moldy rubble everywhere. In spring, seven months after the event, the entire area was silent -- no rumble of bulldozers, no excavators, no dump trucks.

In that bleak landscape, dozens of volunteer organizations have come to help -- getting people food, water or supplies or helping them reinhabit their homes and neighborhoods. They offer hope to locals and a blend of hard work, challenge and even adventure to volunteer vacationers.

During a 10-day trip here, I worked with two grass-roots nonprofit groups. The first, New York-based Emergency Communities, fed residents in the disaster zone of Arabi, a few miles east of the French Quarter (that site has since closed, although the group has operations in other areas in the same parish). The second, Common Ground Collective of New Orleans, helps homeowners in the impoverished Ninth Ward get back into their flood-destroyed homes and provides a variety of other services. Both are run on a shoestring and are fueled by a diverse and seemingly endless supply of volunteers.

To read more, click here

Most Members of Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund Advisory Committee Resign

Religious Leaders Quit Katrina Fund Panel

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
The Associated Press
Friday, July 14, 2006
NEW ORLEANS -- By all accounts, the group of nine was a religious powerhouse: Their ranks included rabbis, imams and ministers, including the man hailed by some as the next Billy Graham. But as of Thursday, seven of the nine religious leaders serving on a committee created by the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to disburse money to churches destroyed by Hurricane Katrina had quit their posts, claiming their advice was ignored.

Four out of nine board members confirmed their resignations on Thursday. Last week, two others--Bishop T.D. Jakes, the prominent Dallas megachurch pastor, and the Rev. William H. Gray III, former president of the United Negro College Fund--resigned as co-chairs.

Departing members of the interfaith advisory committee say the fund's Washington staff disregarded their advice, cutting checks for Gulf Coast churches without properly investigating the institutions.

To read more, click here.

Advisory Committee Co-Chairs Resign from Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund

3 Leaders Quit Effort To Aid Gulf Churches

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 13, 2006
The two most prominent members of an interfaith committee set up to distribute $20 million to churches affected by Hurricane Katrina abruptly resigned in recent days, saying their grant-making decisions were being undermined by the directors of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.

Bishop T.D. Jakes and the Rev. William H. Gray III, co-chairs of Interfaith Advisory Committee, submitted their resignations late last week. Another committee member, the Rev. William J. Shaw, said by telephone that he resigned over the weekend; he declined to comment further.

Gray said board directors and staff members of the Katrina Fund -- established by former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- would agree with the committee's recommendations in meetings and then do the opposite. He said that he, Jakes and Shaw resigned when the staff sent $35,000 to a church without their knowledge, then refused to explain why. That particular church had not been inspected to determine its need, Gray said.

To read more, click here.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

New Books on Katrina and Its Aftermath


Here is an overview of the growing deluge of books on Katrina, by Jason Berry for NPR's "All Things Considered":
Now I am engulfed by the first tide of Katrina books. If you watched that disaster-coverage on television, you may wonder, "What's to know that we didn't see?"

A lot, in fact. About global warming, how cities live or die, the science of levees and stunning human dramas to shape our memory of the flood.

Two of the books reviewed by Berry are New Orleans Times-Picayune writer Jed Horne's Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City, and Douglas Brinkley's The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.



Also, on today's Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed Jed Horne about his book.

Terry Gross's May 10 interview with author Douglas Brinkley is here.