The sun has just gone down on New Orleans and it is against the law to be on the street. 8pm is curfew and the police will arrest you. Saturday night, a 15 year old local kid named Richard was seen by police jumping a fence to get his cooler from a neighbor's yard. He ran from police... to Common Ground and was captured by 20 police on the sidewalk... right out in front of the house. The police beat him up and put him in jail.
The climate is hot and humid. It is dark out, but I'm sweating. Noah and I are in the garage/media center at two of three computers online. Common Ground ( www.commongroundrelief.org/ ) is a relief HQ and food distribution site. It is buzzing with activity in an otherwise ghost town. This neighborhood, Algiers, was not flooded, but many houses are wind damaged.
Leah, Noah, Jim, Alex, Chris and I all met at Earthdance and drove here together straight from the event. It took us two days to get to Louisiana from Northern California, with a stop in Tucson at my Sister Ivy’s house for a swim and lunch. It was a bonus being with family on my birthday.
We landing at a camp ground in Louisiana where Vets for Peace ( www.veteransforpeace.org/ )and Michael Moore’s crew were based. Dodging hurricane Rita, we followed Vets for Peace to a small black church in the back woods of Mississippi. The following two days were a mixture of intense drama and sweetness, with people freakin’ out off their meds, sporadic down-pouring rain, indecision about where to go next, interspersed with many special moments of connection and play between new friends - including singing and dancing. It was like an activist summer camp that brought together rad kids from opposite ends of the country -- Portland, Maine to L.A..
Two hours south, in Waveland, Mississippi we hooked-up with Aaron Funk, Diamond Dave and Rainbow family at the New Waveland Cafe, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to thousands in a super market parking-lot-turned relief supply depot. We worked with them for a day and a half, and then spent yesterday working at the Burning Man temple crew's free community market in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The Vietnamese community in Biloxi spent four years building a temple, and then the day after the dedication, Katrina made a mess of it. Matt, who helped build the temple on the playa at Burning Man, heard about what happened in Biloxi. He and his father, Phill, brought a bunch of heavy machinery there and did an amazing job of cleaning the space, which was filled with tons of debris and mud. They then set up a huge geodesic dome donated by Asha at Pacific Domes for the free market. During our day at the temple dome, I made a clothes lines to dry donated bedding that got rained on and stack toilet paper and diapers in shelves Noah made of pallets. We all sorted and stacked bedding and foods. They desperately need more volunteers. Contact: Shelly Lindsay @ 541-482-7288 or Melissa Bond: melissabond006@yahoo.com
“Can I get everyone’s attention? A tractor trailer with 20 pallets will be here in two hours,” Malik calls from the porch. “We’d better eat now,” someone responded.
The walls of this garage are covered with posters, placards and newspaper clippings sharing struggles and victories of Malik’s history as an activist. I volunteered for this evening’s night watch from 2am-3am, and was given a briefing- told what to do if police or white power come around. “The police don’t like Malik cuz of his involvement with the Black Panthers, and cuz this is a multi-racial camp. The white power hang out couple blocks down, but they have not been around lately.”
I made a tree house hammock in Waveland and got into something like poison oak, so I got itchy spots all over my arms and belly. Mo at the free medical clinic here in Algiers gave me clay to spread on the spots, which I am doing as I write this now.
At Earthdance, $500 was raised to buy a digital for this mission. The images are turning out great, so I’ll be adding them to the Action Hero Network Tribe.net photo album as soon as I get them off the card and on to a computer. I used Rainbow medic Pete’s computer to get online and upload images in Waveland, but he’ll have gone home to Virginia when I get back. A laptop is key to the success of promoting the Action Hero Network, so I need to get one soon. You can help make it happen through a contribution: www.ihcenter.org/groups/ac...twork.html
The mission is to inform the masses to what action heroes are doing, and inspire activism. There is an immediate need to get more volunteers and support here to the gulf coast. Sharing ActionHeroNetwork.net, you bring attention to many movements.
I was originally planning to head back to California with Leah, making this just a ten day trip, but I really don’t have any good reason to go back with all the work to do here. We are creating a community center, day care and after school project in Waveland. In a couple days, Greg (who does the Really Really Free Market in SF), is flying in to take part, and a couple other Action Heroes will be driving the Dragonfly Spaceship down from Portland, Oregon via SF. If you want to join us, please do so... we are rockin’ this scene, creating a new model for common-unity. Waveland is basically rubble, so people are open to building something totally new. We are free to camp and the Rainbow Family kitchen is kicking out the nutrition -- so it is an unique opportunity to focus creative powers and get busy.
See pics from the places mentioned above in the photo album at: actionhero.tribe.net/
The climate is hot and humid. It is dark out, but I'm sweating. Noah and I are in the garage/media center at two of three computers online. Common Ground ( www.commongroundrelief.org/ ) is a relief HQ and food distribution site. It is buzzing with activity in an otherwise ghost town. This neighborhood, Algiers, was not flooded, but many houses are wind damaged.
Leah, Noah, Jim, Alex, Chris and I all met at Earthdance and drove here together straight from the event. It took us two days to get to Louisiana from Northern California, with a stop in Tucson at my Sister Ivy’s house for a swim and lunch. It was a bonus being with family on my birthday.
We landing at a camp ground in Louisiana where Vets for Peace ( www.veteransforpeace.org/ )and Michael Moore’s crew were based. Dodging hurricane Rita, we followed Vets for Peace to a small black church in the back woods of Mississippi. The following two days were a mixture of intense drama and sweetness, with people freakin’ out off their meds, sporadic down-pouring rain, indecision about where to go next, interspersed with many special moments of connection and play between new friends - including singing and dancing. It was like an activist summer camp that brought together rad kids from opposite ends of the country -- Portland, Maine to L.A..
Two hours south, in Waveland, Mississippi we hooked-up with Aaron Funk, Diamond Dave and Rainbow family at the New Waveland Cafe, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to thousands in a super market parking-lot-turned relief supply depot. We worked with them for a day and a half, and then spent yesterday working at the Burning Man temple crew's free community market in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The Vietnamese community in Biloxi spent four years building a temple, and then the day after the dedication, Katrina made a mess of it. Matt, who helped build the temple on the playa at Burning Man, heard about what happened in Biloxi. He and his father, Phill, brought a bunch of heavy machinery there and did an amazing job of cleaning the space, which was filled with tons of debris and mud. They then set up a huge geodesic dome donated by Asha at Pacific Domes for the free market. During our day at the temple dome, I made a clothes lines to dry donated bedding that got rained on and stack toilet paper and diapers in shelves Noah made of pallets. We all sorted and stacked bedding and foods. They desperately need more volunteers. Contact: Shelly Lindsay @ 541-482-7288 or Melissa Bond: melissabond006@yahoo.com
“Can I get everyone’s attention? A tractor trailer with 20 pallets will be here in two hours,” Malik calls from the porch. “We’d better eat now,” someone responded.
The walls of this garage are covered with posters, placards and newspaper clippings sharing struggles and victories of Malik’s history as an activist. I volunteered for this evening’s night watch from 2am-3am, and was given a briefing- told what to do if police or white power come around. “The police don’t like Malik cuz of his involvement with the Black Panthers, and cuz this is a multi-racial camp. The white power hang out couple blocks down, but they have not been around lately.”
I made a tree house hammock in Waveland and got into something like poison oak, so I got itchy spots all over my arms and belly. Mo at the free medical clinic here in Algiers gave me clay to spread on the spots, which I am doing as I write this now.
At Earthdance, $500 was raised to buy a digital for this mission. The images are turning out great, so I’ll be adding them to the Action Hero Network Tribe.net photo album as soon as I get them off the card and on to a computer. I used Rainbow medic Pete’s computer to get online and upload images in Waveland, but he’ll have gone home to Virginia when I get back. A laptop is key to the success of promoting the Action Hero Network, so I need to get one soon. You can help make it happen through a contribution: www.ihcenter.org/groups/ac...twork.html
The mission is to inform the masses to what action heroes are doing, and inspire activism. There is an immediate need to get more volunteers and support here to the gulf coast. Sharing ActionHeroNetwork.net, you bring attention to many movements.
I was originally planning to head back to California with Leah, making this just a ten day trip, but I really don’t have any good reason to go back with all the work to do here. We are creating a community center, day care and after school project in Waveland. In a couple days, Greg (who does the Really Really Free Market in SF), is flying in to take part, and a couple other Action Heroes will be driving the Dragonfly Spaceship down from Portland, Oregon via SF. If you want to join us, please do so... we are rockin’ this scene, creating a new model for common-unity. Waveland is basically rubble, so people are open to building something totally new. We are free to camp and the Rainbow Family kitchen is kicking out the nutrition -- so it is an unique opportunity to focus creative powers and get busy.
See pics from the places mentioned above in the photo album at: actionhero.tribe.net/
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