Where's the Just in Social Justice?
Finding Solidarity Among Charity in New Orleans
Rebecca Miller
Issue date: 3/5/10 Section: On Campus
Does anybody think about New Orleans anymore? If we do, it tends to be a snapshot frozen in time four years ago, of houses 20 feet underwater and looters terrorizing the city. And that's understandable - we have our own lives, and there are other places in the world that deserve equal attention.
Before I went to New Orleans, I pictured it as a city broken; a historically and culturally rich place irrevocably damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But in the wake of the Haitian earthquake, which struck four days before I left New Orleans, I think it is important to revisit what we did wrong back in 2005. I don't mean "we" the U.S. government, a subject that has been discussed at great length; I mean "we" the privileged classes of American society, and our concept of humanitarian service, which needs to be reevaluated on both a logistic and moral level.
I went down to New Orleans December 31, 2009 with Occidental College's Rebirth Club. Led by Professor Caroline Heldman, the club has taken a group of students to volunteer in New Orleans every winter break since Hurricane Katrina struck.
Over the years, Oxy students have worked to gut houses, help found a women's shelter, clear lots, replant wetlands and recycle Mardi Gras beads. Most students enroll in Heldman's Disaster Politics Course, which requires them to read three books* on Hurricane Katrina, write a final paper and complete an educational project upon returning to L.A. In the evenings, students write in journals, hold discussions and listen to speakers, all of which are supposed to help them understand the politics of catastrophe, specifically the unimaginable neglect, racism and incompetence that made Katrina so lethal.
We spent almost a week living at Common Ground Collective in the Lower 9th Ward. Often perceived as the tragic seat of racial neglect and total destruction, the L9 is also remembered as a dangerous place full of murderers, gangs, drugs and depravity. Before Katrina, the L9 was the poorest sector of New Orleans; it also had the highest rate of black home ownership in the country. Most of these houses are gone now.
What surprised me is that it doesn't look like debris-strew wasteland. Instead, because most of the houses have been torn down, this once-vibrant neighborhood looks like nothing was ever there besides the tall, un-mown grass. I thought this was the case, until someone pointed out that the flat cement islands on the ground used to be driveways.
My experience in New Orleans was characterized by these kinds of slow, heavy realizations. Even now, I am ashamed of the blindness with which I viewed the places we stayed, the people we met and the work we did.
One of the hardest things I realized was that the considerable amount of money I spent to prepare myself for the trip and fly to New Orleans - not to mention the money I spent on the ground - could have been spent otherwise. For instance, that same flight could have brought a former resident of the L9 home for the first time, instead of delivering a white, wealthy outsider into that person's neighborhood just to pull weeds. Simply put, New Orleans did not need me. It did not even necessarily want me. My unskilled labor could have been put to better use closer to home, in my own community.
My awareness of my ignorance intensified when our group moved from the L9 to a house in Algiers that belonged to community organizer and former Black Panther Malik Rahim. You may remember Algiers from its brief appearance in national headlines in 2005, when a series of white vigilante shootings in the neighborhood cut to the heart of the racial tension in New Orleans. We had a chance to speak to one of the victims, a man who has been running from the corrupt NOPD ever since he discovered the body of his friend burned alive in his car behind the police station. His story is only now being seriously investigated. (For more information on this story, visit http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/thompson.)
As mostly white, wealthy students who attend a very expensive liberal arts school in Los Angeles, we were outsiders to Algiers, a mostly-black neighborhood whose long history has created a strong community with a unique culture about which we knew nothing.
This was a new feeling for me. I have been raised to believe that I can do anything, that I am endlessly capable, unique and special. Because no door has ever been closed to me, I thought my success was attributed to the fact that I am polite and try hard where it counts. Somehow, it didn't occur to me that there are places I don't belong. More than that, I was blind to the fact that there are people who spend their lives being told that they don't belong anywhere. My outlook on the world has been ultimately dependent on my wealth and my whiteness, so much so that I assume I belong to any place I want to be.
A pack of young outsiders is an intimidating and, at times, damaging thing to unleash in a community. It sends a strange message, one of helping people whom we perceive to be helpless because of racial and class stereotypes, even though they are more capable of taking care of their community than we are. Though we became aware of this problem during our trip, there was still no way to distinguish ourselves from other groups who come down seeking to do charity work that ignores the needs of the community in favor of self-gratifying projects they convince themselves the community "needs." Rebirth Club seeks to engage in solidarity, not charity; even so, we constantly ran up against our own ignorance.
Here, I am defining "charity" work as that which places you above the people you are helping. Instead of recognizing all the ways in which you gain from your experience, you expect to be hailed as a selfless person, which is why many people (myself included) are drawn to exciting work like volunteering in New Orleans, rather than local, more "mundane" service efforts. Solidarity, on the other hand, is a model for service that is contingent upon recognizing your own privilege within the social structure, acknowledging the people you are helping as your equals, seeing a part of that person within yourself and knowing that your work betters both parties equally.
Solidarity means being aware of what the community says it needs, instead of imposing your beliefs and assumptions on it. It begs you to ask the community what it needs before you begin giving back to its members. From there, you can combine your unique skills with the specific needs of the those you are serving, creating a truly helpful service project
As readers of a feminist magazine, you all have an awareness of the existence of systems we don't question, yet let influence our lives on a daily basis. The same systems that play out across races can be seen working upon genders, sexes and classes. Once you become aware of others outside of yourself, you can't help but notice the ubiquitous power imbalances in our society. By working in solidarity to overcome systemic inequalities, we work to free ourselves from the supremacy structures which we uphold unconsciously everyday.
The members of Rebirth Club took more from New Orleans than we could ever give back - our "life-changing experience" was gleaned from people's homes, communities and lives. To compensate for this, many of us feel compelled to engage in social justice work in our own communities. I encourage everyone to look around them, see what needs to be done and do it.
Question what is normal, and engage with what is uncomfortable. You have power, and you have a voice - what matters is how and where you choose to use them.
*Current readings for the Disaster Politics course at Occidental: Dead in Attic by Chris Rose; The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley; Come Hell or High Water by Michael Eric Dyson.
Before I went to New Orleans, I pictured it as a city broken; a historically and culturally rich place irrevocably damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But in the wake of the Haitian earthquake, which struck four days before I left New Orleans, I think it is important to revisit what we did wrong back in 2005. I don't mean "we" the U.S. government, a subject that has been discussed at great length; I mean "we" the privileged classes of American society, and our concept of humanitarian service, which needs to be reevaluated on both a logistic and moral level.
I went down to New Orleans December 31, 2009 with Occidental College's Rebirth Club. Led by Professor Caroline Heldman, the club has taken a group of students to volunteer in New Orleans every winter break since Hurricane Katrina struck.
 Media Credit: Eric Martinez Oxy's Rebirth Club at Work |
We spent almost a week living at Common Ground Collective in the Lower 9th Ward. Often perceived as the tragic seat of racial neglect and total destruction, the L9 is also remembered as a dangerous place full of murderers, gangs, drugs and depravity. Before Katrina, the L9 was the poorest sector of New Orleans; it also had the highest rate of black home ownership in the country. Most of these houses are gone now.
What surprised me is that it doesn't look like debris-strew wasteland. Instead, because most of the houses have been torn down, this once-vibrant neighborhood looks like nothing was ever there besides the tall, un-mown grass. I thought this was the case, until someone pointed out that the flat cement islands on the ground used to be driveways.
My experience in New Orleans was characterized by these kinds of slow, heavy realizations. Even now, I am ashamed of the blindness with which I viewed the places we stayed, the people we met and the work we did.
One of the hardest things I realized was that the considerable amount of money I spent to prepare myself for the trip and fly to New Orleans - not to mention the money I spent on the ground - could have been spent otherwise. For instance, that same flight could have brought a former resident of the L9 home for the first time, instead of delivering a white, wealthy outsider into that person's neighborhood just to pull weeds. Simply put, New Orleans did not need me. It did not even necessarily want me. My unskilled labor could have been put to better use closer to home, in my own community.
My awareness of my ignorance intensified when our group moved from the L9 to a house in Algiers that belonged to community organizer and former Black Panther Malik Rahim. You may remember Algiers from its brief appearance in national headlines in 2005, when a series of white vigilante shootings in the neighborhood cut to the heart of the racial tension in New Orleans. We had a chance to speak to one of the victims, a man who has been running from the corrupt NOPD ever since he discovered the body of his friend burned alive in his car behind the police station. His story is only now being seriously investigated. (For more information on this story, visit http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/thompson.)
As mostly white, wealthy students who attend a very expensive liberal arts school in Los Angeles, we were outsiders to Algiers, a mostly-black neighborhood whose long history has created a strong community with a unique culture about which we knew nothing.
This was a new feeling for me. I have been raised to believe that I can do anything, that I am endlessly capable, unique and special. Because no door has ever been closed to me, I thought my success was attributed to the fact that I am polite and try hard where it counts. Somehow, it didn't occur to me that there are places I don't belong. More than that, I was blind to the fact that there are people who spend their lives being told that they don't belong anywhere. My outlook on the world has been ultimately dependent on my wealth and my whiteness, so much so that I assume I belong to any place I want to be.
A pack of young outsiders is an intimidating and, at times, damaging thing to unleash in a community. It sends a strange message, one of helping people whom we perceive to be helpless because of racial and class stereotypes, even though they are more capable of taking care of their community than we are. Though we became aware of this problem during our trip, there was still no way to distinguish ourselves from other groups who come down seeking to do charity work that ignores the needs of the community in favor of self-gratifying projects they convince themselves the community "needs." Rebirth Club seeks to engage in solidarity, not charity; even so, we constantly ran up against our own ignorance.
Here, I am defining "charity" work as that which places you above the people you are helping. Instead of recognizing all the ways in which you gain from your experience, you expect to be hailed as a selfless person, which is why many people (myself included) are drawn to exciting work like volunteering in New Orleans, rather than local, more "mundane" service efforts. Solidarity, on the other hand, is a model for service that is contingent upon recognizing your own privilege within the social structure, acknowledging the people you are helping as your equals, seeing a part of that person within yourself and knowing that your work betters both parties equally.
Solidarity means being aware of what the community says it needs, instead of imposing your beliefs and assumptions on it. It begs you to ask the community what it needs before you begin giving back to its members. From there, you can combine your unique skills with the specific needs of the those you are serving, creating a truly helpful service project
As readers of a feminist magazine, you all have an awareness of the existence of systems we don't question, yet let influence our lives on a daily basis. The same systems that play out across races can be seen working upon genders, sexes and classes. Once you become aware of others outside of yourself, you can't help but notice the ubiquitous power imbalances in our society. By working in solidarity to overcome systemic inequalities, we work to free ourselves from the supremacy structures which we uphold unconsciously everyday.
The members of Rebirth Club took more from New Orleans than we could ever give back - our "life-changing experience" was gleaned from people's homes, communities and lives. To compensate for this, many of us feel compelled to engage in social justice work in our own communities. I encourage everyone to look around them, see what needs to be done and do it.
Question what is normal, and engage with what is uncomfortable. You have power, and you have a voice - what matters is how and where you choose to use them.
*Current readings for the Disaster Politics course at Occidental: Dead in Attic by Chris Rose; The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley; Come Hell or High Water by Michael Eric Dyson.
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