.

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee 130 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 02139 617-868-6600 (tel) 617-868-7102 (fax) www.uusc.org

April 30, 2006 To whom it may concern; The Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee formed the Gulf Coast Relief Fund to respond to the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In November 2005, we participated in a meeting of several organizations doing community work in New Orleans. They all emphasized the difficulty of working in New Orleans, the complexities of working with evacuees and returnees, the losses that their own organizations had suffered and the overall lack of funding for community organization in the wake of the hurricanes. In December 2005, The Gulf Coast Relief Fund supported a team to spend several weeks in New Orleans mapping the community organizations work there. The team spoke with organizations on the ground about the work they were doing, the challenges they faced and their needs for capacity building. The organizational mapping done by the team shows that there is really very little funding going into these organizations which have lost personnel, equipment and records. We found the teams work very useful our own programmatic funding framework in New Orleans. By mid-January, we decided to continue to support a two person team, Jainey Bavishi and Rachel Wilch, on the ground for several months. Their objective was to continue to work with groups on the ground, chart out where groups on the ground needed new support and produce a series of three reports to share with other funders and groups working on New Orleans.. At the end of April, our conclusion is that there is still far too little funding and support for these groups, particularly in the face of the widespread institutional failure to respond to the needs of the most disadvantaged populations from the city. We would like to share with you the two report that have been completed, the March report, New Orleans post Katrina Community organizing landscape; current efforts, unmet needs; and the April Report New Orleans Post Katrina Community organizing landscape; From Action to Policy. Both of these can also be found on the UUSC website www.uusc.org under Katrina Relief and on the Unitarian Universalist website www.uua.org under Gulf Coast Relief Fund. We hope you will find this useful in your work; please let us know if you would like to receive the third and final report. Sincerely, Martha Thompson Program Manager for Rights in Humanitarian Crises
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee 130 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 02139 617-868-6600 (tel.) 617-868-7102 (fax) www.uusc.org UUSC advances human rights and social justice around the world

New Orleans Post-Katrina Community Organizing Landscape:

Current Efforts, Unmet Needs

Prepared for the UUA-UUSC and the larger Funding Community

by Jainey Bavishi and Rachel Wilch March, 2006

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We want to acknowledge the support and trust from the Unitarian Universalist AssociationUnitarian Universalist Service Committee that made this community organizing mapping project possible. We also want to acknowledge Leigh Graham and Susana Williams for their contributions to the first phases of this project. We would like to recognize our local partner and primary community liaison, Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc. (NHS), who helped us to establish and build relationships, through an overview of the community organizing landscape, an extensive geographic tour of the destruction, and numerous introductions to community organizers. Lastly, we would like to thank all the community organizers and groups that took time out of their extremely busy schedules to share their stories, explain their work and allow us into their communities.

CONTACT INFORMATION You may contact the authors of this report by email or telephone: Jainey Bavishi jainey@mit.edu 704-293-3320 Rachel Wilch rwilch@mit.edu 206-714-2318

INTRODUCTION In January, 2006, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) sponsored a team of graduate students from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to survey post-Katrina community organizing efforts in New Orleans. The team set out to meet and begin conversations with grassroots organizers in order to collect information about the nature of their efforts, the scope of their visions, and their areas of need. The results of this analysis have helped to inform the UUA-UUSCs decisions about funding allocations in the complex post-Katrina organizing landscape, in which information flow is often constrained and areas of need are constantly changing. The UUA-UUSC is continuing to support this surveying work until the middle of May and wishes to share the information collected from this project with the larger funding community, with the hope that it will help to draw additional resources to organizing efforts in New Orleans. The following is the first of a series of monthly reports that will emerge from this project. This report provides an update on organizing efforts in New Orleans and identifies areas for resource allocation within specific organizations. The surveying work that informed this report was conducted between January and the beginning of March, 2006. When we started this project, we were in touch with a few community organizations working on the ground in under-resourced minority communities. These community organizations helped to put us in touch with other organizers working in the similar communities. Using this snowball method, we have generated a continually evolving list of contacts. Because organizations often serve many different needs of communities, it is difficult to place the organizations we have interviewed into a single category. However as a rule we have focused on organizations working on mobilization and community building, avoiding agencies involved in social services and case management. Initially, we talked to organizations that served constituents across the city; whereas recently, in reaction to a changing policy landscape, we have focused on specific neighborhood groups mobilizing to respond to the city's pending neighborhood planning process. The terrain and players involved in rebuilding are constantly evolving; the people and programs represented in this report should not be read as a comprehensive list of community organizations working in marginalized communities in New Orleans, but rather as a work in progress.

At the time of this writing, more than six months after the storm, the recovery process in New Orleans still seems long and slow. Even in the most operative neighborhoods that did not endure flooding, stop signs replacing dysfunctional traffic lights cause congestion on major city corridors, piles of sheet rock and other trash sit on the sidewalks waiting to be picked up, and fallen limbs litter street medians. In the most devastated neighborhoods, bulldozing has begun, bringing new energy to the clean up process, but also grim reminders as the bodies of hurricane victims are uncovered in the rubble. The celebration of Mardi Gras brought life back to the city for a short time, attracting tourists and residents, alike. Neighborhoods, even in some of the flooded areas of the city, felt lively as neighbors reconnected and people watched the festivities from their front stoops. But with the end of the celebrations, the emptiness returned and the devastation reappeared. As the election approaches, there is a great deal of concern about who will be able to exercise their right to vote; those who will possibly be excluded are also the ones most affected by the storm. The race and class dimensions that overlay these groups bring up major questions about who this city is being rebuilt for and who will be able to come home. The remainder of this report will classify and describe the organizations working to rebuild this city, outlining the needs identified in our interviews with them. ORGANIZING LANDSCAPE The possibility of shrinking the citys footprint has been a predominant issue in the redevelopment of New Orleans. If the most devastated neighborhoods do not redevelop adequately to justify the services needed to support them, they are in danger of being reduced or eliminated. In January, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission recommended that the City Council implement a neighborhood planning process through which residents would participate in the creation of plans for the future of neighborhoods. That process has not yet been formally initiated and is already a month and a half behind the proposed schedule. With or without residents input, it is certain that some neighborhoods viability is in question, and eventually a judgment will be made about whether or not those neighborhoods will survive. There are also neighborhoods, located on higher ground, that suffered little or no damage from the hurricane and subsequent flooding, yet the communities occupying these neighborhoods face the danger of being forced out. It is important to note that Hurricane Katrina destroyed some

wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods and did not destroy all working class, predominantly black neighborhoods. Therefore, in a city without rent control, poorer neighborhoods, largely unaffected by the storm, are at great risk of being completely changed by gentrification as developers look for areas to relocate the affluent displaced populations. Many communities are mobilizing to reclaim their neighborhoods. In affected communities, individuals and neighborhood associations are striving to prove the viability of their neighborhoods. This involves rallying displaced residents and creating conditions for them to return, finding spaces for residents to meet and organize, reopening neighborhood institutions, organizing support networks for the debris removal and the rebuilding process, and working with planners and architects to produce neighborhood plans. In unflooded areas, communities are working to defend their neighborhoods from gentrification. Some communities are focusing on creating a public presence on the street to present themselves as a formidable obstacle to big developers. In other neighborhoods, groups are helping community residents stay in their neighborhoods by working to help them fix their homes from storm damage and providing firsttime home buyer counseling. Providing support for these initiatives may require a paradigm shift on the part of funders, as many of these neighborhood anchors do not fit the description of traditional grantees. Historically, community organizing in New Orleans poor or otherwise marginalized communities has taken place on non-institutional grassroots levels. Community groups are often lacking 501c3 status and a formalized process for development, grant writing, and funds management. However, local organizations as well as nonprofits in other parts of the country have demonstrated a willingness to serve as financial intermediaries in order to make the provision of funding to these groups possible. Supporting neighborhood based efforts not only helps to directly respond to the effects of Hurricane Katrina, but is also an investment in deciding who is a part of the citys long-term future. Larger organizations or coalitions of organizations that function on the city scale, serving many neighborhoods rather than a single area, are also responding to support neighborhoods. Some of these groups act as clearinghouses for a wide range of services and information needed by residents, serving as a one-stop shop for post-Katrina concerns. Their work may include gutting

houses for residents as the first step to coming home, communicating with community networks to disperse information about pending city plans, or addressing other emerging community needs. The Common Ground Collective, for example sponsors a pro-bono house gutting program, a free health clinic, a legal aid center with regular drop in hours, an emergency housing and eviction telephone hotline, and a public computer lab with internet access. Similarly, the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee functions as a coalition operating through 14 working groups ranging in focus from workers rights to arts and culture. Other citywide organizations work in a more focused but no less important arena, whether it is supporting homeownership in neighborhoods with high percentages of renters, building community centers as meeting and organizing spaces for residents, or advocating for public housing tenants. There is also a group of organizations that are striving to reconnect residents, both displaced and at home, to the unique culture and heritage of New Orleans. A Studio in the Woods, the Neighborhood Story Project, and the Finding our Folk Tour are just a few of the organizations working to reclaim the citys rich artistic traditions, to give New Orleanians a chance to tell their stories in their own voices, and to bring New Orleans music and culture to people whove returned and ho those still evacuated. These organizations occupy a special niche in the organizing landscape, helping to remind communities of the unique creativity of New Orleans and the inspiration and empowerment it fosters These groups also play an important role in the healing process occurring after Katrina by creating different outlets of expression to address what happened and by providing a sense of what things were like before the storm. A list of the organizations that were interviewed for this report and brief descriptions of their activities can be found in the appendix that follows. The next section discusses the overarching needs of the organizing community and the specific needs of individual organizations. UNMET NEEDS After talking with nearly two dozen organizations working on a variety of areas, we identified three central areas of unmet need. They are as follows: staffing, space and programming and outreach. A brief description of each general type of need, followed by a list of specific organizations' needs are included below.

Staffing As a result of city funding cuts and displacement of workers following the storm, many organizations are operating with severely limited capacity at a time when community needs are the greatest. At a recent meeting, Steve Bradberry, head organizer for ACORN's New Orleans office, pointed to staffing as his organization's most urgent need. Prior to Katrina, ACORN employed nine organizers, one each to mobilize the city's nine membership chapters. After the storm, as ACORN struggles locate evacuated staff and reconfigure operations to meet its members' enormous communication, housing, construction, labor, voting rights and legal advocacy needs, only three organizers are working to cover the same area. ACORN's situation is not unique. Across the board, there is an immediate and enormous need for organizational capacity building in the form of funded positions for professional and administrative staff, programming staff, organizers and consultants with expertise in strategic planning, information technology, accounting and legal support. The UUA-UUSC is taking steps towards meeting these needs by funding two full-time positions each for Neighborhood Housing Services, PICO, New Orleans Network and The Advancement Project. An additional four positions are in the proposal phase. Even with these resources, organizations need additional support. Generally, organizations describe needing from one to five staff positions each. Given an increased post-Katrina cost of living and the challenges associated with recruiting and retaining quality staff members, proposed salaries ranged from $28,000-$35,000 plus benefits for an entry level organizer or administrative staff position, to $45,000-$55,000 plus benefits for more experienced professional staff or executive director positions. Consultants bringing legal, technical, accounting or other types of expertise are typically paid hourly or per contract; the costs of these services vary.

Organizations' stated staffing needs are as follows:

One or Two Full Time Organizers, Entry Level Staff Members Three to Six Full Time Organizers, Entry Level Staff Members Full Time Specialist, Experienced Organizer, and/ or Program Director

Organization
ACORN A Studio in the Woods Common Ground Douglass Community Coalition Gert Town Revival Initiative, Inc. Finding Our Folk Tour IAF-Jeremiah Group My House Community Learning Center Neighborhood Housing Services Neighborhood Story Project New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) New Orleans Network People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training (VIET)

Legal, Accounting, or Technical Support

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x

x x

x x

Space There is a profound need for space on the part of organizations seeking to resume their pre-storm operations and for those working to meet the new and emerging needs of their communities. In the near term, organizations need resources to rent office and programming space in dry neighborhoods; in the long-run, organizations need support to construct new or renovated spaces in neighborhoods where constituents are. Rebuilding spacesjust like rebuilding organizational operationsoffers an opportunity to reenvision the scope and mission of an organization. Doug Anderson is the executive director of My House Community Learning Center, an after school and literacy program which operated out of a 22,000 square foot building (which the organization owned) in the Mid City neighborhood 9

prior to Katrina. During the storm, the neighborhood was flooded by four feet of water, inundating the first floor of My House, but leaving the second floor untouched and the building structurally sound. Following the storm, Anderson recognized that his constituents (children from the neighborhood) were absent, his pre-storm programming was obsolete, and that My House's biggest remaining resource was its building. Since October, Anderson has been working to shape a dynamic non-profit incubator and community center to be located in the building. The incubator portion of the complex will house from five to ten small non-profit organizations and will be structured as a collective with shared conference rooms, meeting spaces and support staff such as grant writers, accountants, attorneys and information technology specialists. The community center will house public spaces for meetings and programming, a daycare center, and other community resources. Through a practical analysis of its post-Katrina resources, My House has decided on an organizational restructuring that will best meet the changed needs of the neighborhood and of the city's struggling non-profit organizations. At present, My House continues to refine the redevelopment plan for its Mid City location, and is looking for an interim office to rent during the construction process. Since Katrina, the price for office space has risen sharply while its availability has plummeted. Rents vary by neighborhood, but most organizers describe prices that fall between $1 and $2.50 per square foot. Programming spaces are in similarly short supply; prices depend on the owner, and on the size and nature of the space. However, some organizations have expressed a newfound interest in sharing both office and programming spaces with other groups; exploring this possibility could cut down on total rental costs. The costs of renovation and new construction are attached to the needs of the builder and the current condition of the location. Individual organizations' construction budgets should be consulted when making funding decisions.

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Organizations stated needs for space are as follows:

Community Space for Meetings, Information Center, and Activities

Organization
Concerned Citizens of Agriculture Street Landfill Douglass Community Coalition My House Community Learning Center New Orleans Network New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee Porch Community Center Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training

Interim or Permanent Office Space

Funding for Renovations or Construction

x x x x x x x x x x

Programming and Outreach Organizations need support to resume, and in some cases redevelop programming, and to conduct outreach activities to get in touch with constituents. Resuming pre-storm programming and tailoring new programming to the changing needs of residents helps make New Orleans a more realistic option for return. Support for outreach activities addresses the challenges associated with organizing and serving the still scattered population of New Orleans. The Porch Community Center is in the planning phase at present, but already, artist in residence, Willy Birch is organizing programming for the future space. Well aware of the forthcoming city mandate for neighborhoods to prove their viability through a variety of means including a visible presence on the street, Birch and his neighbors are planning a community center with a large, open air 'porch'. This sheltered space will be clearly visible from the street, housing a tool library and an active woodworking gallery. Birch is also working to create a calendar of arts happenings in the neighborhood ranging from visual arts workshops to participatory performance arts events where residents reclaim their neighborhood; their first actiona community tree plantingtook place a few weeks ago. Programming and outreach are obviously highly unique to a given organization, and as such are hard to typify. Organizations' stated needs have ranged from funding to make photocopies of a monthly newsletter to support for gutting a thousand flood-damaged homes. Currently, the 11

UUA-UUSC is funding NOHEAT (the New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team) to create outreach materials that will help residents of public housing stay informed about lobbying activities and demonstrations. Many other areas of need exist, and new programming and outreach needs are emerging constantly. Organizations' stated programming and outreach needs include:
Outreach/ Resource Materials Youth Programming/ Curriculum Development Equipment & Materials for House Gutting Artistic/ Cultural Programming

Organization
ACORN A Studio in the Woods Common Ground Finding Our Folk Tour House of Dance and Feathers New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF) Porch Community Center Students at the Center Youth Inspirational Connection, Inc. Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training (VIET)

x x x x x x x x x x x

CONCLUSION This report provides a snapshot of the current activities and needs of the organizations we have interviewed thus far. It is an incomplete picture of the organizing landscape, but does paint in broad strokes some of the responsibilities and constraints facing organizations in New Orleans. For a more nuanced impression of the status of the rebuilding effort, and for more up to date information about the operations and needs of given organizations, we recommend foremost a firsthand visit to the city, and second, direct contact with head organizers and executive directors who can provide the most current information in this ever-shifting landscape. Most organizations' contact information is available online; for further questions about how to reach organizations or for help planning a trip to the Gulf Coast, please feel free to contact the authors of this report.

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APPENDIX I. DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATIONS ACTIVITIES Neighborhood Anchors: Concerned Citizens of Agriculture Street is a community advocacy group representing residents living above the former Agriculture Street Landfill. Prior to Katrina the group was engaged in a legal battle with the city over issues of environmental health and justice. The storm inundated the neighborhood with five to six feet of flood water, causing even more toxin from the landfill below to seep into the homes and yards of residents. Now the group is pressing environmental officials to declare the site uninhabitable and to support residents to relocate elsewhere. The Douglass Community Coalition came out of pre-Katrina efforts to improve Frederick Douglass High School in the Upper 9th Ward. After the storm the coalition broadened its focus, working to bring a farmers market, health clinic, teen recreation center, community center, housing, and improved educational facilities to the community. The coalition includes dozens of partner organizations. The Gert Town Revival Initiative emerged as a response to the health and environmental hazards posed by a now closed pesticide manufacturer in the Gert Town neighborhood of New Orleans. Although the factory is gone, the health risks remain and have been exacerbated by Katrina-related flooding. Now, GRI is lobbying for resources to clean the land and houses before residents return, and for additional services to support the return of senior citizens and other vulnerable populations who make up a high percentage of those living in Gert Town. The House of Dance and Feathers is a New Orleans Cultural museum located in the Lower 9th Ward. Run out of an addition to the curator's home, the House of Dance and Feathers had a singular schedule of cultural programming and a preeminent collection of local artifacts and memorabilia including Mardi Gras Indian feather and bead work. Although much of the collection was spared from the flood, the building was heavily damaged. The House of Dance and Feathers is now working to expand its collection and to rebuild and reopen its doors on the same location in the Lower 9th Ward. My House Community Learning Center in the Mid City neighborhood ran after school and literacy programming prior to Katrina. During the storm, the center's 22,000 sq. ft. building was flooded along with the neighborhood around it. As a result, the center has shifted its focus from programming to redevelopment of the space into a non-profit incubator and a full service community center with a daycare and community meeting and programming spaces. The Porch Community Center is a collaborative project between Seventh Ward residents, Tulane University and NHS. The proposed center will be a part of NHS's emerging network of community centers, consisting of a carpentry workshop and tool library to help residents learn the skills to work on their homes, housing and homeownership counseling from NHS, and regular visual and performing arts programming as a means of creatively reclaiming the neighborhood. The Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training (VIET) is based out of the larger Vietnamese community concentrated in New Orleans East. Prior to the storm, VIET was

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involved in a variety of advocacy and job training programs as well as offering an annual summer day camp for kids. IN the wake of Katrina, VIET has broadened its focus to include advocacy and support in navigating the bureaucracies of insurance, taxes, FEMA aid packages and absentee voting. VIET has been extremely successful at mobilizing residents in this hard hit neighborhood; now the organization is trying to expand its tax and legal support programs, reopen its summer day camp and establish a recreation center for neighborhood youth. City-wide Organizations and Coalitions: ACORN is a grassroots membership-organization working for social justice and equality. Since Katrina, ACORN's semi-autonomous New Orleans chapter has been involved in lobbying Washington for federal funding for rebuilding, anti-bulldozing class action lawsuits on behalf of residents in the Lower 9th Ward, organizing residents to prepare for the neighborhood planning process, and wide scale pro-bono gutting of flooded houses belonging to ACORN members from across the city. Common Ground Collective emerged in the weeks following Katrina and now consists of more than forty full-time volunteer organizers working on a range of rebuilding issues. Common Ground has been particularly effective at pro-bono gutting of flooded homes in the Upper and Lower 9th Ward and at legal defense of tenants' rights. IAF-Jeremiah Group is a consortium of local churches organized before the storm. PostKatrina the Jeremiah Group has worked to help pastors locate evacuated parishioners and identify and meet their needs. The Jeremiah Group is currently exploring homebuilding and homeownership programs for its members. Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) was founded to help move low and moderate income residents from rentals to homeownership. Post-Katrina NHS's focus has expanded to include development of a network of interconnected community centers offering a variety of social services including housing and homeownership counseling. New Orleans Network emerged post-Katrina as an information sharing tool for organizers and community members. Housed on the internet, the New Orleans Network's function is to provide a community calendar and database with information on organizations, services, events and fundraising. New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) is a public housing and tenant advocacy coalition that brings together public housing and rental tenants, activists and attorneys. Since Katrina, NOHEAT has been fighting for the reopening of New Orleans' public housing projects, for eviction protection for renters and FEMA hotel voucher recipients. People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee (PHRF) is a broad-based coalition whose activities are spread across fourteen working groups and whose stated focus is on the needs and perspectives of marginalized, poor, African-American survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Currently PHRF is engaged in developing affordable housing, opening a center for reconstruction workers, and developing a 'Peoples' Plan' as a response to the city's official neighborhood planning process. Organizations Promoting Artistic Expression:

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A Studio in the Woods, located in Lower Coast Algiers on the fringe of Orleans Parish, is a non-profit dedicated to preserving bottomland hardwood forest and providing within it a peaceful retreat where visual, literary and performing artists can work uninterrupted. Post-Katrina the Studio has expanded its pre-existing artists residency program to help New Orleans artists return to the city, healing themselves and their communities through artistic expression. The Studio is also working with an environmental educator and a botanist to develop a youth curriculum on the ecological effects of the storm. The Finding Our Folk Tour is traveling between evacuee hubs across the nation to bring artists, musicians and activists to young New Orleanians in exile. The tour functions as an opportunity for New Orleans youth to tell their stories, reconnect with friends, and enjoy the artwork and music unique to their city. It offers youth the chance to stay connected to New Orleans, its people and its singular culture, while still waiting for the chance to return. Neighborhood Story Project (NSP) is a community documentary program. Before the storm, NSP worked with public high school students to author their own stories, publishing the finished products as bound books. Despite funding shortages and upheaval in the public school system, NSP is back working on writing with local middle and high school students and other community members to make their stories heard. Students at the Center (SAC) worked before the storm with public high school students to produce original writing and film. A focus on helping young people tell their own stories has expanded post-Katrina to processing and creating narratives of the storm and evacuation. SAC is back working with students in New Orleans, and is also traveling to evacuee hubs to hold periodic conferences of youth in exile. Youth Inspirational Connection, Inc. was founded in 1975 to support youth organizing and involvement in the arts. Since the storm, YIC has been working to revive its annual youthorganized, youth-run music festival which was held every October for the last 16 years until Katrina. The festival, which typically employed an event planning staff of 30 high school students, and brought together over 4000 musicians, brought musical traditions from around the world to the people of New Orleans. II. AUTHORS BIOS Jainey Bavishi is a first year Masters candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT from Charlotte, NC, focusing on international development and regional planning. After graduating from Duke University in 2003 with an AB in Public Policy Studies and Cultural Anthropology, Jainey spent a year in the town of Cuttack in Orissa, India, an area still recovering from a deadly super cyclone in 1999 that killed more than 10,000 people and left over 1.5 million homeless. Her work focused on creating advocacy materials for a movement to start daycare centers in communities below the poverty line through documenting the voices and visions of poor working mothers. Jainey spent the last year working as a research assistant at the Fannie Mae Foundation. She researched lessons and best practices from domestic community revitalization work. Rachel Wilch was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She received a BA from Reed College in Portland, OR where she studied labor movement narratives through the lens of

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cultural anthropology. Her interests focus on economic justice and alternative approaches to affordable housing. She grew up in, and later worked on establishing low-income mutual housing cooperatives. She is currently pursuing her MCP (Masters of City Planning) in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She is excited for the adventures and opportunities she is finding across the country, though she is eager to eventually set up shop back in the great Northwest.

16

New Orleans Post-Katrina Community Organizing Landscape:

From Action to Policy

Part Two in a Three Part Series

Prepared for the UUA-UUSC and The funding community

by Jainey Bavishi and Rachel Wilch April, 2006

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We want to acknowledge the ongoing support of the Unitarian Universalist AssociationUnitarian Universalist Service Committee that allowed an initially small project blossom into this more comprehensive series. We would like to recognize our local partner and primary community liaison, Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc. (NHS), who has supported our work from the very beginning, and continues to help us navigate the intricacies of New Orleans complex organizing landscape. We also want to acknowledge Tony Pipa for his tireless editorial and advisory assistance. We would like to thank readers of the first report who have passed it on to other interested parties. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the organizers, advocates and residents who so generously offered their time, information and experiences, and who gave this series of reports their substance.

CONTACT INFORMATION You may contact the authors of this report by email or telephone: Jainey Bavishi jainey@mit.edu 704-293-3320 Rachel Wilch rwilch@mit.edu 206-714-2318

INTRODUCTION This report functions as the second in a series of three reports on the status and needs of community organizing efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans. The first report, entitled New Orleans Post-Katrina Organizing Landscape: Current Efforts, Unmet Needs, provided a general overview of the types of groups currently involved in organizing and community initiatives in New Orleans, and the basic categories of need present across the board. To briefly summarize the findings, groups were divided into three types: those serving the needs of an individual community or neighborhood, those serving the entire city, and those working on the cultural and artistic dimensions to rebuilding. The needs of these organizations also fell into three broad categories: staffing, office and meeting spaces, and programming and outreach. This report departs slightly from the previous organizational categories, shifting instead towards an exploration of the relationship between community-based action and policy. It attempts to highlight instances where city, state and federal policymakers are adopting official policy and protocols based upon the work of grassroots organizers. It centers on three particular areas: the neighborhood planning process, housing and education; the categories of needs remain the same as those in the last report. This report is not intended to replace the first report, but to build upon it, acting as an update/addendum. Some organizations featured in the first report are outlined again here for their particular relevance to the three areas of policy focus. New organizations, met with since the distribution of the first report are also included. We encourage recipients to read the two side by side: an electronic copy of the first report, New Orleans Post-Katrina Community Organizing Landscape: Current Efforts, Unmet Needs is available through the both the UUSC website online at www.uusc.org and on the UUA website at www.uua.org. Research for this series was funded by the Unitarian Universalist Association-Unitarian Universalist Service Committee; these reports are intended for both internal use within the UUAUUSC, and for the information of the broader funding community. The UUA-UUSC encourages recipients of this report to pass it on to anyone else who might be interested.

UPDATE As this report goes to print, nearly eight months have passed since levee failures following Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans with floodwater. Although visiting politicians quip at the progress being made here and the specter of an upcoming mayoral election has prompted some visible improvements, life for most New Orleanians remains a waiting game. FEMA building elevation recommendations were released this week, but the impact of this information is unknown as the city has yet to revise building permits to reflect the changes. The neighborhood planning process to determine the rebuilding agenda for individual neighborhoods recommended by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission (BNOB) was slated to begin on February 20, but the city government has taken no steps towards initiating this process. While New Orleans residents wait in cities like Houston and Baton Rouge to hear the fate of their communities back home, the rental market in New Orleans continues to tighten with low vacancy rates and climbing rents. This uncertainty, combined with a maze of red tape from insurance companies and utility providers, an eviscerated public education system, non-existent public health facilities, crumbling city infrastructure and service provision, massive municipal layoffs and unknown environmental hazards make return to New Orleans impossible for many residents. Reviving and repopulating this city requires not a silver bullet but a gradual, simultaneous rebuilding of all facets of New Orleans. What follows is a particular analysis of the neighborhood planning process, housing and education. These three areas of focus were chosen from the many components of the rebuilding process for their exemplification of the intersections of policy and actions on the part of organizers, advocates and residents. This report especially works to examine the cooption of community based methods, efforts and achievements, by governmental and policy actors struggling to craft a viable and economical rebuilding strategy. This report does not claim to provide a fully comprehensive perspective, but given limited time and space, the categories do offer a useful cross section of particular aspects of the rebuilding process.

Neighborhood Planning In January, 2006, the mayor-appointed Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) redevelopment commission made recommendations to the city council about issues relating to urban planning. With regards to rebuilding neighborhoods, the BNOB commission suggested that the city sponsor a city-wide neighborhood planning process, through which residents help to create redevelopment plans for their neighborhoods. The process, initially scheduled to take place during a three month period between February 20 and May 20, in time to provide recommendations for the federal budget allocation process this summer. No other details were provided during the BNOB commissions presentation of their recommendations, nor are they available on the BNOB website, where citizens were directed to find more information. The information that was presented also lacked a clear statement of how the neighborhood plans would be used. At the time of the recommendations, it was suspected that one of the outcomes of the neighborhood planning process would be to determine whether or not neighborhoods will have a future at all. Now more than two months after the city government was supposed to begin the process was supposed to have begun, funding has still not been secured for such an effort. In the meantime, rumors about the process have prompted communities to begin mobilizing out of fear that their neighborhoods will targeted for redevelopment as parks or wetlands. Some neighborhood groups such as the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association have engaged in their own neighborhood planning process. Other organizations such as ACORN are reaching out to neighborhoods that may not have the resources and connections to hire their own planners to engage residents in planning meetings and encourage them to give input on the future of their neighborhoods. The Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee is working to develop a Peoples Plan, an all encompassing neighborhood plan in response to the Bring New Orleans Back Commissions recommendation. Meanwhile, the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative is hoping to connect neighborhoods to existing neighborhood planning efforts. The explosion of grassroots neighborhood level planning activity has sparked a great deal of coalition building and information sharing between organizations across the city and within neighborhoods. At the same time, different communities within the same geographic areas are striving to preserve their own interests through separate plans. Eventually, these

disparate plans will have to be consolidated across racial and economic divisions within communities. Following failed negotiations with FEMA for funds to facilitate the city-sponsored planning process, both public and private dollars have recently been committed to consolidate and support ongoing grassroots neighborhood level planning activities. The result is a process that favors neighborhoods with resources to hire experts, bring people back to the city, and engage in their own planning. This serves as an example of a grassroots movement now adopted as the citys official mechanism to gain resident input for neighborhood planning. Now more than ever, neighborhood groups and organizations working to support neighborhood planning are in need of resources as it is not likely that the city will provide adequate support for a participatory neighborhood planning process but will rather depend on neighborhoods to initiate their own processes. A list of neighborhood organizations can be found in the appendix of this report. Housing New Orleans is currently facing a severe housing shortage as residents from damaged areas and an influx of construction and aid workers crowd into limited housing stock in the un-flooded sliver by the river. This reorientation of housing and population in the city has driven rents up dramatically, leaving lower-income New Orleanians without the possibility of returning home. Official plans for rebuilding assistance focus on homeowners, rather than renters. This leaves not only the very poor, elderly and the disabled, but also the full sixty percent of New Orleanians who rent rather than own, without adequate support to rebuild their lives here. Organizations and activists must be supported in advocating for this enormous segment of the population. UUA-UUSC has already shown a commitment to support affordable rental housing, low-income home ownership programs and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable renter populations. In its first round of grant making, UUA-UUSC funded the interfaith coalitions PICO and IAFJeremiah in their shifts towards affordable home building. UUA-UUSC also provided grants for Neighborhood Housing Services to hire a housing counselor to help prepare low-income renters for home ownership. Finally, UUA-UUSC provided a grant to C3/Hands Off Iberville, a public

housing advocacy and activism group, to support its work on behalf of the rights of displaced public housing residents. Despite this generosity, the task of meeting needs and defending the rights of nearly two-thirds the citys population remains an enormous task. A recent study conducted by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center found that in post-Katrina New Orleans, African-American renters were racially discriminated against 77% of the time. And even in less overt situations, the lack of accessibility in available housing is serving to prevent disabled and elderly New Orleanians from returning. At a recent meeting Sharon Alexis and Zeenat Rasheed lamented the lack of accessibility, medical and transportation services, and dependable hurricane evacuation plan as major barriers for the return of elders and disabled residents. With support, Alexis and Rasheed hope that their organization, Katrinas House of Care will come to consist of an elderly/disabled residential care center located just north of the city in an area less vulnerable to storms, as well as a home-ownership training and support center for low-income families. The myriad work around rental housing can be loosely organized into three categories. The first category consists of groups working on housing policy and advocacy, such as the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative, ACORN, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, and C3/Hands off Iberville/NOHEAT. The second category consists of groups working on resident education and skill development; this category includes GNO Fair Housing Action Center, Neighborhood Housing Services, and Katrinas House of Care. The third category consists of groups working on the actual refurbishment or development of homes for rehabitation, rent or sale to low or moderate-income residents; this category includes Common Ground Collective, ACORN, Katrinas House of Care, Humanitas, and Neighborhood Housing Services. Education and Youth Programs With only three public schools open in the city along with a mere sixteen other charter and alternative schools, the lack of space in publicly accessible, geographically proximate schools remains a major barrier preventing displaced families from returning home. A total of fifty-six school facilities are expected to open to meet the 2007 demand, but as the Board of Education

and FEMA struggle to accurately measure the demand for schools, the difficult question arises of what must come first in the recovery process, the community or the school? Currently, 107 of New Orleanss schools are under the control of the State of Louisianas Recovery School District, a body that oversaw five Orleans Parish schools before Katrina because of low performance, and took over an additional 102 after the storm. The schools are slated to be under this Recovery School District for five years at which point administration of the schools will be reevaluated. Additionally, many auxiliary educational programs for children, such as after school centers and tutoring services, have lost public funding since the storm. These programs were important in supplementing public education and educators before Katrina and are even more critical now that children are experiencing interruptions in their schooling and loss of activities and peer groups. As displaced families consider returning home at the end of the academic year, programs for children and youth will be extremely important in helping to provide safe spaces for young people to learn, play, interact, and express themselves while parents find time to work on their houses. Programs for children and youth can be grouped into four categories. The first category consists of organizations that are working to create spaces for youth to hang out, recognizing that most places in the city where young people previously spent time, such as malls and movie theaters, remain closed post-Katrina, such as the Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training and the Douglass Coalition. In the second category, the Youth Inspirational Connection, Inc. and the Finding Our Folk Tour are working to involve young people in the production of cultural events in New Orleans and in evacuee cities, respectively, in order to provide them with leadership opportunities as well as relief from the day to day stress of living in the post-disaster world. The third include programs that are working to provide outlets for youth expressions while enriching their skills, such as Students at the Center and the Neighborhood Story Project. Finally, the Finding Our Folk Tour and A Studio in the Woods are also working to help young people understand the causes, experiences and effects of Katrina through structured curricula. An outline of unmet organizational needs, as well as specific descriptions of each organization mentioned in the above categories can be found in the following section and the appendix, respectively.

UNMET NEEDS While organizational needs are many and varied, in general they can be organized into three broadly defined categories. Organizations interviewed all identified some combination of staffing, office and meeting space, and programming and outreach needs. The first UUA-UUSC report, available on the UUA-UUSC websites at www.uua.org and www.uusc.org provides a more thorough description of each category of unmet needs, and some analysis of why these particular needs have emerged in the wake of Katrina. Tables outlining the specific needs of the organizations discussed in this report can be found below. Staffing
Three to Six Full Time Organizers, Entry Level Staff Members x

Organization ACORN A Studio in the Woods Douglass Community Coalition Finding Our Folk Tour Holy Cross Neighborhood Association Humanitas Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center Neighborhood Housing Services Neighborhood Story Project New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative Katrina's House of Care People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training

Stipends for Neighborhood Watch and Graduate Interns

One or Two Full Time Organizers, Entry Level Staff Members x x x

Legal, Accounting, or Technical Support

Full Time Specialist, Experienced Organizer, Program Director x

x x x x

x x

x x x x x x

10

Space
Community Space for Meetings, Information Center, and Activities x x x x x x x x Funding for Renovations, Construction and Land Acquisition

Organization Douglass Community Coalition Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center Holy Cross Neighborhood Association Katrina's House of Care C3/Hands Off Iberville/New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training

Interim/Permanent Office Space

Programming
Youth Programming/ Curriculum Development

Organization ACORN A Studio in the Woods Common Ground Finding Our Folk Tour Greater New Orleans Housing Action Center Students at the Center Youth Inspirational Connection, Inc. Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training

Outreach & Marketing

Equipment & Materials for House Gutting x x

Artistic/Cultural Programming x

x x x x x

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CONCLUSION This report provides an exploration of the intersections between community action and policy, through examination of the following three areas of rebuilding: the neighborhood planning process, housing and education. As the landscape of rebuilding continues to shift, the relationships and activities of organizations will evolve as well. For the most accurate and up to date perspectives on the rebuilding process, and associated action and policy, we recommend contacting organizers directly. The contact information for most organizations is available online; for further questions about how to reach organizations or for help planning a trip to the Gulf Coast, please feel free to contact the authors of this report.

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APPENDIX I. DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATIONS ACTIVITIES ACORN is a nationwide grassroots membership organization working for social justice and equality. Since Katrina, ACORNs semi-autonomous New Orleans chapter has been involved in lobbying Washington for federal funding for rebuilding, anti-bulldozing and voting rights class action lawsuits on behalf of city residents, organizing residents to prepare for the neighborhood planning process, and wide scale pro-bono gutting of flooded houses. A Studio in the Woods, located in Lower Coast Algiers, on the fringes of Orleans Parish, is a non-profit dedicated to preserving bottomland hardwood forest and providing within it a peaceful retreat where visual, literary and performing artists can work uninterrupted. Post-Katrina, the studio has expanded its existing artists residency program to help New Orleans artists return to the city, healing themselves and their communities through artistic exploration. The studio is also working with an environmental educatory and botanist to develop youth curriculum on the ecological effects of the storm. C3/Hands off Iberville and New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) form the nucleus of a public housing and tenant advocacy coalition that brings together public housing and rental tenants, activists and attorneys. Since Katrina, the coalition has been fighting for the reopening of New Orleans public housing projects and for eviction protection for renters and FEMA hotel voucher recipients. The Common Ground Collective emerged in the weeks following Katrina and now consists of more than forty full-time volunteer organizers working on a range of rebuilding issues. Common Ground has been particularly effective in its pro-bono gutting of flooded homes, and in providing legal defense of tenants rights. The Douglass Community Coalition came out of pre-Katrina efforts to improve Frederick Douglass High School in the Upper 9th Ward. After the storm the coalition broadened its focus, engaging on larger issues of educational policy, and working to bring a farmers market, health clinic, teen recreation center, community center, housing, and improved schools to the community. The coalition includes dozens of partner organizations. The Finding our Folk Tour is traveling between evacuee hubs across the nation to bring artists, musicians and activists to young New Orleanians in exile. The tour functions as an opportunity for New Orleans youth to tell their stories, reconnect with friends, and enjoy the artwork and music unique to their city. It offers youth the chance to stay connected to New Orleans, its people and its singular culture, while they wait for the chance to return. The Holy Cross Neighborhood Association is a community group from the Holy Cross section of the Lower 9th Ward. The association was active both before and since the storm; it is currently working with professional planners to conduct a participatory neighborhood planning process. The association is exploring creative ways of protecting the historic neighborhood, and of bringing together geographically dispersed residents around planning and action.

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Humanitas is a faith based non-profit operating in conjunction with the Mount Tabor Baptist Church in the Gentilly neighborhood in New Orleans. The organization has a long history advocating for the housing concerns of low-wealth, elderly and disabled New Orleanians, and is currently involved in developing affordable housing in Gentilly and throughout the city. PostKatrina, the organization has provided housing for 51 families. Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center was founded in 1994 through a Fair Housing Initiative grant from HUD. The center advocates for fair housing practices and renters rights through legal enforcement work and through landlord and tenant education outreach. Following Katrina, the massive shuffling of renters and rental properties has inundated GNOFHAC with complaints of unfair housing. The center has a policy of turning no one away, but lacks the capacity to deal with its current workload. Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) was founded to help move low and moderate income residents from renting to homeownership. Post-Katrina NHS focus has expanded to include partnering on nonprofit homebuilding and the development of a network of interconnected community centers offering a variety of social services including housing and homeownership counseling. The Neighborhood Story Project is a community documentary program. Before the storm, the Neighborhood Story Project worked with public high school students to author their own stories, publishing the finished products as bound books. Despite funding shortages and upheaval in the public school system, the Neighborhood Story Project is back working on writing with local middle and high school students and other community members to make their stories heard. New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative is a coalition of public, private, nonprofit and community based organizations working with New Orleans neighborhoods to support and expand affordable housing. Before and since Katrina, NONDC has worked to provide technical assistance, policy advocacy and neighborhood based demonstrations for residents and organizations working to support neighborhoods. Katrinas House of Care is a new organization providing immediate, short-term emergency assistance to Katrina victims in need of help with returning to New Orleans and cleaning up and rebuilding their homes. The group, which has applied for expedited 501c3 status, also plans to provide long term housing and holistic support necessary to help the most vulnerable populations of New Orleans, including the elderly, the disabled, low-income individuals and families, and youth. Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee (PHRF) is a broad-based coalition whose activities are spread across fourteen working groups and whose stated focus is the needs and perspectives of marginalized, poor, African-American survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Currently PHRF is engaged in developing affordable housing, opening a workers center, and developing a Peoples Plan as a response to the citys call for a neighborhood planning process.

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Students at the Center worked before the storm with public high school students to produce original writing and film A focus on helping young people tell their own stories has expanded post-Katrina to processing and creating narratives of the storm and evacuation. Students at the Center is back working with students in New Orleans, and is also traveling to evacuee hubs to hold periodic conferences of youth in exile. The Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training (VIET) is based out of the large Vietnamese community concentrated in New Orleans East. Prior to the storm, VIET was involved in a variety of advocacy and job training programs as well as offering an annual summer day camp for kids. In the wake of Katrina, VIET has broadened its focus to include advocacy and support in navigating the bureaucracies of insurance, taxes, FEMA aid packages and absentee voting. VIET has been extremely successful in mobilizing residents in this hard hit neighborhood; now the organization is trying to expand its tax and legal support programs, reopen its summer day camp and establish a recreation center for neighborhood youth. Youth Inspirational Connection, Inc. was founded in 1975 to support youth organizing and involvement in the arts. Since the storm, YIC has been working to revive its annual youthorganized, youth-run music festival which was held every October for the last 16 years until Katrina. The festival, which typically employs and event planning staff of 30 high school students, and brings together over 4000 musicians, brings musical traditions from around the world to the people of New Orleans. III. NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATIONS The following list of neighborhood improvement groups and resident councils is a combination of neighborhood group listings predating Katrina, and those founded since the storm. This is a working list, bringing together the resources available to us at the time of publication. Because of its piecemeal nature, it is uncertain which groups are active at this time. Nevertheless, it provides a good starting point for funders interested in working within a particular neighborhood, and also a good sense of the wide scope of civic involvement both pre- and post-Katrina. West Bank Algiers Council of Neighborhood residents Algiers Neighborhood Improvement Association Algiers Point Association Algiers Riverview Association Aurora Civic Association Aurora Gardens Community Association Aurora Oaks, Hyman, Kabel Civic Organization Aurora West Civic Association Behrman Heights Association English Turn Civic Improvement Association English Turn Property Owners Association Tall Timbers Owners Association

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Uptown and Carrollton 123 Walnut Street Association Audubon Area Zoning Association Audubon Boulevard Neighborhood Association Audubon Boulevard Neighborhood Association Audubon Riverside Neighborhood Association Audubon Street Neighborhood Association Baronne Street Neighborhood Association Broadmoor Improvement Association Calhoun-Palmer Neighborhood Association Carrollton Avenue Preservation Alliance Carrollton-Earhart-Monticello-Palmetto Neighborhood Association Citizens of Upper Broadmoor Council of Carrollton Residents Associations Greater Carrollton Neighborhood Association Fontainbleau Improvement Association Holly Park Apartments Holly Park Civic Association Hollygrove Improvement Organization Jefferson City Improvement Association Maple Area Residents, Inc. Newcomb Boulevard Association Old Carrollton Neighborhood Association Palmer Park Residents, Inc. Palmetto-Dixon Neighborhood Association Soniat Square Association Uptown Neighborhood Improvement, Inc. Uptown Triangle Association Upper Audubon Association Upper Carrollton Residents Association State Street Driver Improvement Association State-Palmer-Calhoun Association of Neighborhoods Versailles Boulevard Commission Central City and Garden District Bienville-Conti-Tulane Neighborhood Collaborative Central City Renaissance Alliance Coliseum Square Association Garden District Association Irish Channel Neighborhood Association Jackson Avenue FoundationJackson Avenue Task Force Lower Garden District Coalition Treme District Civic Association Treme Neighborhood Association Faubourg Treme Esplanade Ridge/Treme Civic Association

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Lafitte Resident Council Old Elysian Fields Neighborhood Coalition Marigny, Bywater, Desire, St. Claude and St. Rock Bywater Neighborhood Association Desire Area Resident Council/Desire Community Family Center Delachaise Neighborhood Association Faubourg Delachaise Neighborhood Association Faubourg Franklin Association Faubourg Lafayette Neighborhood Improvement Association Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association Faubourg St. John Neighborhood Association Faubourg St. Roch Improvement association Historic Faubourg Lafayette Association History Faubourg St. Mary Corp. Vieux Carre Esplanade Preservation Association French Quarter Citizens for Preservation French Quarter North and South Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents, & Associates, Inc. Upper Decatur Association St. Peter Street Neighborhood Improvement Association Gentilly Gentilly Heights East Neighborhood Association Gentilly Residents Neighborhood Association Gentilly Sugar Hill Residents Association Gentilly Terrace Gentilly Terrace and Garden Improvement Association Lower Gentilly Neighborhood Development Association Mirabeau Gardens Neighborhood Association Pontilly Association Lakeview City Park Neighborhood Association Lake Forest Estates Home Owners Association Lake Marina Towers Condominium Association Lake Oak Civic Association Lake Oaks Subdivision Improvement District Lake Vista Property Owners Association Lake Willow Homeowners Association Lakeshore Property Owners Association Lower Ninth and Holy Cross Holy Cross Neighborhood Association

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Lower Ninth Ward Homeowners Association Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Council, Inc. Florida Boulevard Community Improvement Association East End Eastover Residents Association Lake Catherine Neighborhood Association Venetian Isles Civic and Improvement Association Village de LEst Improvement Association Huntington Park Homeowners Association Lake Bullard Homeowners Association Press Park Homeowners Association Seabrooke Neighborhood Association Central Business and Warehouse Districts Riverfront Civic Association Downtown Neighborhoods Improvement Association Lafayette Square Association III. AUTHORS BIOS Jainey Bavishi is a first year Masters candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT from Charlotte, NC, focusing on international development and regional planning. After graduating from Duke University in 2003 with an AB in Public Policy Studies and Cultural Anthropology, Jainey spent a year in the town of Cuttack in Orrissa, India, an area still recovering from a deadly super cyclone in 1999 that killed more than 10,000 people and left over 1.5 million homeless. Her work focused on creating advocacy materials for a movement to start daycare centers in communities below the poverty line through documenting the voices of poor working mothers. Jainey spent the last year working as a research assistant at the Fannie Mae Foundation. She researched lessons and best practices from domestic community revitalization work. Rachel Wilch was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She received a BA from Reed College in Portland, Oregon where she studied labor movement narratives through the lens of cultural anthropology. Her interests focus on economic justice and alternative approaches to affordable housing. She grew up in and later worked on establishing low-income mutual housing cooperatives. She is currently pursuing her MCP (Masters of City Planning) in the department of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is excited for the adventures and opportunities she is finding across the country, though she is eager to eventually set up shop back in the great Northwest.

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June 30, 2006 To whom it may concern: The Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee formed the Gulf Coast Relief Fund to respond to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In November 2005, we participated in a meeting of several organizations doing community work in New Orleans. They all emphasized the difficulty of working in New Orleans, the complexities of working with evacuees and returnees, the losses their own organizations had suffered, and the overall lack of funding for community organization in the wake of the hurricanes. In December 2005, The Gulf Coast Relief Fund supported a team that spent several weeks in New Orleans mapping community organizations work there. The team spoke with organizations about the work they were doing, the challenges they faced, and their needs for capacity building. The organizational mapping done by the team shows there is very little funding going into these organizations. We found the teams work very useful for our own programmatic funding framework in New Orleans. By mid-January, we decided to continue to support a two-person team, Jainey Bavishi and Rachel Wilch, for several months. The product of our team's research has been compiled in a series of three reports. The first two summarize the status of New Orleans and the current needs of community organizers. This third and final report in the series, entitled, Building Relationships to Rebuild New Orleans is based on follow-up interviews with representatives from organizations with which UUA-UUSC has already formed funding partnerships. These interviews delve into the specific ways in which foundations and national organizations are already contributing to New Orleans, and ways in which this support might be more effectively directed. PDF files of all three reports are available for download on the UUSC website, www.uusc.org, under Katrina Relief and on the Unitarian Universalist Association website, www.uua.org, under Gulf Coast Relief Fund. We hope you will find this information useful in your work; please feel free to pass these resources along to others. Sincerely, Martha Thompson Program Manager for Rights in Humanitarian Crises

New Orleans Post-Katrina Community Organizing Landscape:

Building Relationships to Rebuild New Orleans

Part Three in a Three Part Series*

Prepared for the UUA-UUSC and the Funding Community By Jainey Bavishi and Rachel Wilch June, 2006
*This report is the final of a three part series entitled, New Orleans Post-Katrina Organizing Landscape. Research for this series has been funded by the Unitarian Universalist Association-Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUA-UUSC). The first two reports of this series, Current Efforts, Unmet Needs, serving as a general overview of the types of groups involved in organizing and community initiatives in New Orleans and presenting the basic categories of needs of those organizations, and From Action to Policy, exploring the relationship between community-based action and policy, can be found on the websites of the UUA (www.uua.org) and UUSC (www.uusc.org). The UUA-UUSC encourages the wide distribution of these reports to all those interested.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We want to acknowledge the Unitarian Universalist Association-Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, whose ongoing support, flexibility and openness have made it possible for this information to be widely shared. We would like to once again thank Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc., our local partner and main community liaison, who was invaluable in helping us to navigate the complex terrain of New Orleanss community organizing through the duration of this project. We would like to thank the readers of our first two reports who have helped us to pass them along to others who are interested. And finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the organizers interviewed for this report, who have consistently shared with us their time and perspectives to help us make this project possible.

CONTACT INFORMATION You may contact the authors of this report by email or telephone: Jainey Bavishi jainey@mit.edu 704-293-3320 Rachel Wilch rwilch@mit.edu 206-714-2318

INTRODUCTION So, how is it going down there? More than nine months have passed since New Orleans levee system failed, inundating 80% of the city with Hurricane Katrinas flood waters. Nine months is a long time to wait for phone service to be restored to your undamaged home, a long time to live in an out-of-town motel, waiting to return to a home that did see flood water. Nine months is not such a long time if youre a bankrupt city administration, trying to rebuild a municipal infrastructure from the bottom up, or if youre a construction firm contracted to design and build the kind of levee that will save lives, rather than wash them away. Depending on who you ask, and where you go, So, how is it going down there? has as many answers as there are people in New Orleans (and Houston, Baton Rouge, Atlanta...) To understand New Orleans and its current needs, one cannot dismiss the diversity of perspectives as mere confusion, but rather one must embrace it as representative of the piecemeal, often lopsided process that is taking place, a process where a step forward in one area, can mean one or even three steps backwards someplace else. ***** Walking the streets of the French Quarter, it is easy to forget that a hurricane washed through New Orleans at all. The sidewalks are still choked with sunburned tourists, the carriage drivers still water their mules in front of Jackson Square, and the ubiquitous daiquiri stands still vend daiquiris, margaritas, and the blood-red drinks known as hurricanes. Walking behind a crowd of visitors on Esplanade Avenue one afternoon, we overheard a wife remark to her husband, I dont know what everybodys complaining about. New Orleans looks better than ever to me. Citywide, some visible progress has been made in the form of towed cars, restored traffic lights, and regular mail delivery, but if one spends much time anywhere but the French Quarter, it is easy to see what everybodys complaining about. Insects breed in standing water leftover from the flood. Soggy houses continue moldering in the sun. Potholes the size of VW bugs checker 4

thoroughfares, while blocks that were high and dry during the flood are now threatened by broken water mains and debris clogged sewers. With paradoxes in plain sight all over the city, it is hard to make a single statement that summarizes the state of New Orleans. As the city haphazardly dedicates its eviscerated municipal agencies to the tasks of rebuilding, there are simply not enough resources to go around. When recovery progresses, everyday maintenance falls by the wayside and vice versa. The race, class and geographic boundaries along which services were unevenly distributed prior to the storm become ever more apparent. The sight of city cleanup crews trimming grass and picking up litter along the abandoned St. Charles streetcar tracks contrasts absurdly with the heaps of uncollected household trash in the repopulated Seventh Ward and with the un-passable graveyard of cars now occupying the Claiborne Avenue neutral ground. Into this social and physical geography of paradoxes, community organizers seek to create parity. Despite personal and professional losses, displacement and trauma, people doing community work continue to wake up everyday to champion their neighbors, most who are still struggling to come back home. It is through often tenuous, often new relationships with funders that this work is possible. And it is through funders and organizers willingness to understand each others situations and to meet each other half way that this support will be most effectively marshaled. ***** This report, a compilation of interviews with representatives of seven grassroots and communitybased organizations funded by the Unitarian Universalist Association- Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUA-UUSC), is intended to contribute to an ongoing conversation between organizers and funders about how to effectively work together in partnership. Each interviewee was asked the same set of six questions relating to foundations and the various national organizations working to provide resources and support to local players in the rebuilding process, and then given time to provide additional comments; the questions were:

o What resources could national foundations provide, in addition to grant money, to make the money easier and more efficient to spend? o What role have you seen national organizations and foundations taking so far? What roles could or should they be playing? o How could national foundations most effectively encourage collaboration? o What is your ideal funder grantee relationship? o What is your organizations timeline? What will you be focusing on in the next three months? Six months? One year? Five years? o What would success look like? How would you measure it? The small group of organizers interviewed for this report certainly does not represent the full spectrum of work that is being done at the grassroots level in New Orleans; however, the diversity of their responses is a testament to the larger range of perspectives on these issues. Short biographies of those interviewed and profiles of the organizations they represent can be found in the appendix of this report. INTERVIEWS Additional Resources In each of our seven interviews with UUA-UUSC partner organizations, we started by asking, What other resources could foundations offer, in addition to funding, to make a grant easier or more efficient to spend? Shana Sassoon, of New Orleans Network and Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc. (NHS) detected, in the heart of this question, the impatience on the part of funders about why organizers have failed to spend quickly the money that they had delivered quickly. People arent using it, but it doesnt mean that they wont use it. It just means that its slower, Shana explained. I feel like theres a certain amount of angst over that from the funding community, which I can understand. But at the same time, you know, were nine months out from the storm. From the funding community, Shana asked foremost for patience, trust and a set of expectations adjusted for this unprecedented situation. This request was echoed by other organizers who almost across the board asked for an individuated approach that took into account the unique state and capacity of each organization and the very real constraints to speeding progress.

Beyond this, organizers ideas for non-financial forms of support varied. Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville said that his group had had no trouble spending the money granted them, whereas Cyndi Nguyen of the Vietnamese Initiative in Economic Training (VIET) noted that funding for supplies was difficult to spend in part because local stores lacked the products her organization needs. She asked foundations to donate the physical supplies (computers, generators, construction equipment), rather than the money to purchase them. Similarly, Jackie Jones of the Jeremiah Group discussed the difficulties of managing money once it has been granted. She requested that the occasional services of a bookkeeper/funds manager be donated along with funding. Shana added that networking help was always useful, and went on to acknowledge the fleeting nature of funding in New Orleans and the need for relationship building and for strategic planning sessions to ensure fiscal sustainability, even after philanthropic attention shifts elsewhere. With an eye to New Orleanians right to return, Khalil Shahyd of the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) asked for technical training for organizers and residents both back home and in the diaspora, to enable them to participate in the planning and zoning discussions taking place. Lauren Anderson, also of NHS, and Shana Sassoon suggested centralized clearinghouses located both in New Orleans to manage the flood of donated goods and labor, and located in evacuee hubs to help connect displaced New Orleanians to jobs, training, and housing back home. Steve Bradberry of ACORN stated his organizations needdespite the constant flow of university students and church groupsfor interns and organizers of color, and also for donations of skilled workers and crew leaders to expand the organizations existing house-gutting program. Finally, a number of organizers discussed the challenges of self-care in this post-Katrina landscape. Lauren Anderson noted the lack of mental health care available in the city, and Shana agreed with her about the near inevitability of mental collapse for so many of the critical folks in New Orleans. In addition to bringing counseling services to the city, Lauren and Shana echoed an idea we first heard from Steve Bradberry, suggesting that foundations might organize retreats for people doing community work in New Orleans. These retreats would be both an opportunity for rest and relaxation, and a chance for more focused interaction between organizers who typically only encounter one another in harried professional contexts.

We found as many different ideas for non-funding support, as there were organizations. While organizers did not speak with a unified voice as to any specifics that might guide funding decisions, the diversity of responses does speak to the need for an individualized approach. Relationship building, and the cultivation of what Shana Sassoon referred to as fewer, but deeper relationships would seem to be key to providing funding and the ancillary support needed to spend it. Roles Taken By Foundations and National Organizations Like the question about additional resources, when asked, What role do you see national organizations taking so far? What could/should they be doing? organizers responded with a variety of answers. Some organizers discussed the process by which foundations and national organizations were involving themselves with local players and local issues in New Orleans, while others discussed particular programming or initiatives that could be undertaken at a national level. From the beginning of relationships between foundations and local organizations, organizers are often asked not only to guide funders through their own projects or programs, but to function as event planners, taxi drivers, tour guides to the city's attractions and destruction, entertainment directors and educators about community histories and relationships, in another city that would be called consulting, Shana Sassoon of NHS and New Orleans Network pointed out. And in another context it would be understood that that shouldnt be for free. Her challenge to foundations: Pay for peoples time! You can figure out a way to write that into your budget, and you can figure out a way to justify itYou dont even have to pay people personally. You could just make donations [to their organizations]. Lauren Anderson of NHS added but these are very different circumstances right now. It's hard. I don't say no to it [requests for destruction tours, etc.]. ..it's really important for people from the outside to bear witness to what's happening here. But it's a tremendous amount of our time. Shana went on to note that foundations and national organizations have also tended to take over work that could be done by local players who are more familiar with the social and political

landscape in New Orleans. Jackie Jones of the Jeremiah Group elaborated on this point, describing the awkwardness generated by national players foisting collaborations upon New Orleans organizations, without any real knowledge of the personal and professional politics, and the established organizational processes unique to every group working on the ground. On the other hand, however, both Shana Sassoon and Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville saw connecting organizations to potential partners, collaborators and allies as a central role for national organizations and foundations, through clear and transparent expectations are a prerequisite to cultivating such cooperation. Finally, Steve Bradberry of ACORN worried about the current lack of involvement on the part of national political movements. The progressive community has been lackluster, Steve said. Where has been the outcry about voting rights nationally? You know everybody knows about it, right? But how many people are picking up the telephone and letting their congressmen and senators know that they want money to send to New Orleans to get it back on track instead of, you know, shooting out to Iraq?In terms of this whole national community, people say, Oh, people in New Orleans arent mad enough. Thats a load of crap! They just arent getting support from other places. In terms of steps national organizations and foundations could take to make themselves more useful, organizers again offered a variety of opinions. Cyndi Nguyen of VIET echoed Shana Sassoon, offering that organizers are ordinary people who are just trying to do their jobs, but who generally dont have the time to put on dog and pony shows for funders. Most organizations are still in recovery mode and so are limited in staff and capacity. As such, Cyndi noted what a breath of fresh air it was to have funders seek out grantees, instead of the other way around. She emphasized the importance of foundations looking in unexpected places, and isolated communities for areas of need, rather than the most familiar or high profile non-profits. Cyndi also challenged foundations to lose the suit and meet organizers on their own turf, in their own communities and offices, at Sunday church services and nighttime meetings, in plain old jeans and t-shirts rather than their usual corporate attire. Lauren Anderson and Shana Sassoon, speaking for NHS, took a different spin on foundations corporate approach. They said that foundations and national organizations seeking to provide

New Orleans oriented support or events should work to model their convenings after corporate style events (if not their dress code). Rather than packing countless workshops and panel discussions into cramped schedules, the folks who call these convenings should focus on their potential as networking events, holding them in interesting locations and leaving plenty of unstructured time for making connections. Khalil Shahyd of PHRF elaborated on the content piece of trainings, saying that organizers would benefit most from capacity building events. Collaboration Collaboration is a buzzword in philanthropic circles, but bringing about a genuine collaborative process is always easier said than done. We posed the question, How could national organizations most effectively encourage collaboration? One of the main frustrations organizers express when discussing the funding process is the sense that organizations are willynilly pushed into collaborations that do not make sense. Although funders certainly have the best of intentions, these forced partnerships can do more harm than good in New Orleans tenuous and politically charged organizing landscape. Jackie Jones of the Jeremiah Group speaks to the challenges of collaboration mandated by funding, rather than organically grown out of mutual interest. Some of us come to the table with different missions, different principles, different ways of approaching strategies, and you know, I dont think that organizations are going to fold their work into somebody elses work, be it the right thing to do or [not], she observes. What we were being asked to dojust wasnt that practical from the perspective of what we have to do and how we operate. In addition to style, organizations differ in terms of scope for example, groups like IAF organize institutions, whereas ACORN works with individuals, some groups work in one or a few neighborhoods while others operate city-wide, etc. Lauren Anderson of NHS observed that much of the collaboration orchestrated by funders centers around pieces of work, and Shana Sassoon of NHS and New Orleans Network gave a window into what is actually necessary to make such a collaboration successful. Youre talking about serious relationship building that would have to happen, and clarification of roles. And some of that has been successful, but for the most part not. Many of these relationships are

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possible in the long term, but are particularly challenging in the short term given the urgency of the current situation. Khalil Shahyd felt that past struggles with collaboration within the organizing community, and especially within PHRF recently, pointed to the ultimate impossibility of collaboration. Jackie, Lauren and Shana however, all agreed that policy and advocacy might be fruitful areas in which to foster collaboration. Steve Bradberry of ACORN saw potential in identifying pre-existing organizational relationships that might be supported, and Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville framed his discussion of collaboration not within a local context, but within a larger context of national movement building. In any case, Cyndi Nguyen of VIET provides a useful caveat to any work on collaboration. She draws a distinction between authentic and inauthentic partnerships, remarking, Having bodies (around the table) is one thing, but having bodies that has an interest in doing and carrying out into action is another thing. So, you know, I know that when they do a collaboration, they just send out a mass of emails to anyone that has an interest, but before we actually do a collaboration, we need to investigate in who were inviting [sic]. Jackie Jones expands on Cyndis point, noting that funders demands for collaboration [put] organizers in awkward positions, because you dont want to just outright say, Im not going to do it, I cant do it, I dont want to do it, because, I mean, youre looking for the funding, so you try to have an intelligent informed conversation when its put on the table, but youre still walking a very, very tight ropeits like you dangle this carrot in front of organizations, (though) I dont think its your intention. Ideal Funder-Grantee Relationship We asked organizers to describe their ideal funder-grantee relationship. What organizers envisioned ranged from a relationship that Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville described in which ideally the funder provides the money with no strings attached, providing the organization with the most flexibility and the least intervention possible, to VIET co-founder, Cyndi Nguyens idea of a partnership characterized by ongoing monitoring, face to face interactions,

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and professional evaluations. The level of institutionalization of the organization and history of applying for grants are factors that may determine where organizations lie on this spectrum; for a few of the organizers we talked to, the opportunities to interact with funders in the past few months are the first times theyve worked with national grantmakers. In general, local organizers expressed a desire to have a relationship with a funder that allowed space for setting realistic expectation and honest dialogue about progress. Jackie Jones of the Jeremiah Group noted, A lot of what were doing is so out of the norm of what you would normally do. For this reason, she hopes for opportunities to address challenges with funders honestly to the extent that she can change course midway through a project if she sees that something is not working, without worrying about the funder questioning her preparedness to carry out the project or risk losing opportunities for future grants. This kind of relationship contrasts a situation in which a foundation sets blanket funding criteria for all grantees, not taking into account the differences in capacity and scale between organizations. Steve Bradberry of ACORN stated that his ideal relationships are with funders who work with organizations where they are and the expectations are based upon where they are. Shana Sassoon of NHS and New Orleans Network added that an ideal funder-grantee relationship is a true partnership that accomplishes something. If theres a partnership that doesnt accomplish any work, she explained, its not a good relationship to us because it just uses our time. Cyndi Nguyen echoed the notion of partnership; for her, partnership entails funders looking through her books to make sure there are no mistakes, participating in her programs to provide professional evaluations, and sitting down to discuss reports face to face. This type of relationship provides Cyndi with reassurance that funding will continue. The continuation of funding is especially important with the scope of work still left to be done and the constantly changing needs. Shana Sassoon remarked, Because this is a marathon, this place isnt changing any time soon. Lauren Anderson of NHS stated, The support weve gotten for community work has been incredible, but she worries if that money will still be available a year from now. Both Jackie Jones and Jay Arena discussed the possibility of selfgenerating funds for the longer term so that their organizations are not solely dependent on grant

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money. In terms of keeping grantmakers informed about changing needs, Cyndi Nguyen said that having representatives of national foundations on the ground is useful. She also suggested the idea of a list serve through which local organizations could keep the funding community updated. Organizational Timeline When asked what their organizations timeline looked like in the next three months, six months, one year and five years, some organizers mentioned programmatic goals for the next three to six months, but it was difficult for them to look beyond that time. Its hard to think that far ahead, Lauren Anderson told us when we asked about her organizations goals a year from now. I just pray that Im still alive. One reason that organizers have trouble thinking ahead is that they worry if funding will still be available a year from now. Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville talked about housing being a major concern in the next three to six months as people come home. He expects that his groups activities will intensify as evacuees are being pushed out of the diaspora but at the same time, they dont have a welcome mat in New Orleans. He made the point, In some ways the government is setting the timeline. Cyndi Nguyen of VIET shared the sentiment. Her organization will be working on summer programs for children as more families start coming home and preparing families for hurricane season by educating children, the only fluent English speakers in many of the families in her community, about what to do if another hurricane were to hit the area. But, as her community is adjacent to a recently opened landfill in New Orleans East, Cyndi is not sure if people will be coming home to stay this summer or picking up and leaving again. She said, I dont know whats going to happen, but I know that the community is doing everything we could [sic] to stop the landfill but I dont know that thats enough. I guess that six months is really hard to tell because we have so many challenges within our next three monthsThe only thing now is that we need the government to do their part. Lauren Anderson of NHS, who plans to have two community centers open, community festivals to celebrate their launches and work started in a third neighborhood in the next three to six months also made the point, Nobody can exhale until after this storm seasons over. Steve

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Bradberry of ACORN also said that his organization will continue to work to bring people home unless the city just washed away and we couldnt come back. He also mentioned the continued need for support for organizing around policy to enable residents to speak on issues as well as bricks and mortar. Some interviewees expressed the need for strategic planning and evaluation. Jackie Jones stated that the Jeremiah Group (a local IAF chapter) is planning on bringing in a regional director of the national IAF network to help put a timeline together. Shana Sassoon who will be focusing on fundraising, outreach, a full-scale launch and working on an anniversary report with the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch in the next three months, said in looking ahead to the next six months, the New Orleans Network will be in an evaluative stage to determine whether or not there is a continued need for their work. Khalil Shahyd also discussed a need for PHRF to engage in a process to determine their purpose and plans. Success We asked organizers, What would success look like? How would you measure it? Our interviewees definitions of success ranged from achieving goals related to organizational development to programmatic accomplishments to bringing evacuees back home. Indicators of progress are dependent on the goals themselves. For Jackie Jones, internal success for the Jeremiah Group would include having twenty-five primary leaders, people who would help the organization build relationships, fundraise and also address issues identified by members of the organization, and building a broad, diverse membership base. Shana Sassoon, explained that capacity building the staff of Neighborhood Housing Services is also important so that it can in turn serve as capacity builders for the neighborhoods it serves. Speaking for New Orleans Network, Shana hopes that by the end of the year, the organization increases its staff so that the existing staff members are not so overstretched. Similarly, Cyndi Nguyens definition of success for VIET, also related to organizational development, has to do with increasing space rather than capacity. Frustrated by her lack of flexibility to expand programs due to space constraints, she would like to build a community center that could serve as office space, programming space and an evacuation site for

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the residents of her community. Many of the interviewees organizational development goals are necessary for the success of their programs. More directly related to programming, Shana Sassoon, in talking about the Neighborhood Housing Services community centers, stated, I think the centers themselves also being utilized in a dynamic way would look like success to meused by different people for different purposes. For New Orleans Network, programmatic success would be measured by end of the year indicators like increased usership of the online calendar, doubling the email announcements list, and expanding their online database of community organizations. Jackie Joness external measure of success involves political recognition of her organization based on its accomplishments and victories. As Jackie alluded, success in this situation means more than the organizational development and programmatic goals that are normally used as indicators of progress and achievement. As Lauren Anderson of NHS explained, For this moment in history, there is more that brings this city together than divides it because we all have the same common enemy. It seems like such an opportunity to capitalize on that, to build bridges across groups and neighborhoodsWeve got so much potential to thrive. Khalil Shahyd of PHRF echoed her comment, saying that success, first and foremost, would involve recouping as much of our population as absolutely possible, as quickly as possible and then secondly building a different type of formalized, strong neighborhood structures. Steve Bradberry of ACORN was also on the same page, stating, Success looks like 200,000 people back in the city. Other things such as living wage, education and healthcare would occur along with the organizing to get those people home. ACORN, like other organizations in the city, is working in an unfamiliar situation of rebuilding and recovery, but from a familiar angle. The scope and urgency of the work is of course magnified. Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville believes that the potential of this situation goes beyond an opportunity for change in New Orleans; he sees an opportunity for a national movement. Although his coalitions immediate goal is the reopening of public housing in New Orleans, he

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stated, What we want is a movement, a social movement, emerging out of this - a renewed struggle for racial struggle, for racial and economic justice in the U.S. CONCLUSION Over our months in New Orleans, the organizers we encountered were exceedingly generous with their time and connections. They first opened their meetings to us, and eventually, often their homes and personal lives. We shared meals and celebrated birthdays with organizers, we made sojourns to super markets and toured their half-finished homes. Through these interactions, we built trust, care and genuine admiration for these folks. Because of these relationships, organizers revealed to us more honest, candid perspectives about funder/grantee relations than ever before. More than a few of our friends shook their heads as we concluded their interviews for this report, saying that after their candor they imagined theyd never get funding again. We encourage funders and national organizations to understand this report not as an invective, but rather a testament to the value of deep relationships, to organizers genuine desire to succeed in New Orleans, and to their recognition of the centrality of funding relationships to achieve this success. Like the state of the city itself, apparent paradoxes abound in organizers descriptions of where theyre at and what they need. The bustling French Quarters proximity to depopulated sections of the Treme neighborhood parallels Cyndi Nguyens desire for more aggressive funds management, contrasted with Jay Arenas wish for more lax administration of funds. These stories of rebuilding are confusing, but all true in some way. There is no single vision of New Orleans, no single answer to how we should rebuild, and what we are rebuilding. As such, this report does not provide a single set of directives for how and what to support in New Orleans, but rather draws a loose set of guidelines from the diverse observations and suggestions from the organizing community. More in-depth descriptions of these guidelines follow, but in short they can be organized into three basic principles: foundations and national organizations should work to 1) build fewer but deeper relationships, 2) meet community organizers in their own communities, and 3) listen to the needs and objectives of organizers, rather than telling them how and where to prioritize and allocate resources.

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Building fewer but deeper relationships, meeting community organizers in their own communities, and listening instead of telling: The diversity of perspectives present in even this small sampling, presents a challenge to funders established protocols around giving. This apparent confusion, however, should not deter resourcing of the Gulf Coast but should rather direct funders and national organizations towards a more individualized approach to supporting local organizations. National players should seek to cultivate what Shana Sassoon described as fewer, but deeper relationships with grantees. They should feel free to surrender some of the formality, losing the suit as Cyndi Nguyen put it, and meeting organizers on their own turf rather than confining interactions to conference calls and business lunches. Building sincere relationships with organizers and their communities is how, despite shifting media and public attention, national players will remain aware of the needs, and continue to support New Orleans through this marathon. On most days, in most communities in New Orleans, truly successful organizing doesnt take place in formal meetings, but on peoples front porches, at coffee shops, corner stores, and church pews. Rather than taking organizers away from their work to meet in hotel conference rooms, funders and national organizations should make time to see what they do and how they do it. For much more than touristic appeal, visitors should try not to miss the chance to see the local brass band play, or to attend a neighborhood block party. Ultimately, it is always true that organizers know more about their communities and their needs than funders and national organizations do. National partners must practice listening and asking, rather than telling and demanding. Although the process of working with organizers to develop reasonable evaluative standards and spending guidelines takes longer than simply applying rote instructions, the likelihood of success and mutual satisfaction on the part of funder and grantee is much greater. Finally, Cyndi Nguyen aptly asserted that organizers are ordinary people. We dont bite, we really dont, she laughed. When in doubt, ask the people organizing in their communities how to support them and how to structure a relationship such that the ultimate goals of both the funder and the organizer can be reached most effectively and efficiently.

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APPENDIX I. INTERVIEWEES BIOS Lauren Anderson has served as the Executive Director of Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc. since 1993. Having earned her law degree from Rutgers University, Lauren has extensive experience in public interest law and community and economic development. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor at the College of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans, where she taught classes on Housing and Community Development and Collaborations, Partnerships and Coalition Building. Jay Arena is an active member of the anti-war, pro-public housing group C3/Hands Off Iberville and also a long time community and labor activist in New Orleans. He is now completing his dissertation in sociology from Tulane University on the privatization of the St. Thomas public housing development. Steve Bradberry currently serves as the Head Organizer of the New Orleans chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). His work has centered on organizing public interest campaigns to actively involve low-income families in addressing the social problems they face everyday. He has led campaigns promoting a living wage, preventing predatory lending and lead poisoning in children, and increasing voter participation. In the aftermath of Katrina, Steve has become a voice for the displaced poor of New Orleans, collaborating with Community Labor United and Urbanheart, organizing the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association, uniting survivors to have a real say in how their communities are rebuilt. He has been working to assure New Orleans poor have a right to return to their city, the means to take care of themselves, access to housing and credit, and that their concerns are treated with fairness and dignity in the rebuilding process. His social change objective is to have full participation of the poor in government decisions impacting their lives and their communities. Jacqueline Jones is the lead organizer of the Jeremiah Group, the local affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). She is a native of Louisiana, having spent her entire life in Jefferson Parish. She has studied at both Xavier and Southern Universities. By profession, Jackie is an educator. She spent much of her career working in the Jefferson Parish school system. Jackie has worked with the IAF since 1994, first as a volunteer leader, then as organizer and now as lead organizer for the Jeremiah Group. She is a member of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, one of the founding churches of the Jeremiah Group. Jackie has spent her career addressing social justice issues from the education field and from the religious community, as an insider of the community to which she has ties. Cyndi Nguyen, co-founder and director of the Vietnamese Initiative in Economic Training, the first Vietnamese nonprofit organization in Louisiana, received her Bachelor in Social Work in 1993 from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. In 2002, she received her Masters in Management from the University of Phoenix in New Orleans. She has been honored by the Louisiana Women in Philantrophy from the Louisiana Association in Nonprofit Management (LANO) and has received the Making Things Brighter Award from Entergy. Cyndi also serves as the President for the Einstein Charter School's Board of Directors and Vice President for the Vietnamese American Community. She is married to Sean Truong Nguyen and they have three children, Serina, Alexis and Shawna. 18

Shana Sassoon is a community organizer and New Orleans Network founder. Originally from India, she grew up in Houston. She moved to New Orleans in 2001 and founded the League of Pissed Off Voters, producing community endorsed voter guides and working to empower historically non-voting young people. Her work locally with the League and the anti-war movement got her involved with the funding and development of the League of Young Voters Education Fund nationally. She served as the National Board Chairperson for almost a year, stepping down in September to focus her work on post-flood New Orleans. Previously a school teacher in the Latino community in Houston, Shanas passion is for gathering and disseminating tools that educate and empower people to advocate for their communities. She is co-director of New Orleans Network, which helps residents rebuild their loves and communities by gathering and disseminating reliable information about New Orleans-led projects, organizations, community groups, and coalitions working for our common aid and advocacy. NON works to amplify and strengthen these efforts by building relationships between communities and organizations. Currently, through New Orleans Networks partnership with Neighborhood Housing Services, Shana has been working with residents in the 7th Ward and Freret St. Neighborhoods in New Orleans to create neighborhood centers and build capacity for neighborhood level organizing. Khalil Tian Shahyd, an organizer with the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, is a recent graduate from Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management with a MA degree in Sustainable International Development. He has been a community organizer and activist for over 10 years working on a diverse section of issues from education reform, juvenile justice and anti-domestic violence. He has served as a mentor to a number of high school youth and as a peer counselor for males on issues of masculinity and violence. In the fall, Khalil will start a doctoral program in Political Ecology at the University of Delaware. His plans are to return to New Orleans to work on issues of sustainable human development. II. DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATIONS ACTIVITIES ACORN is a nationwide grassroots membership organization working for social justice and equality. Since Katrina, ACORNs semi-autonomous New Orleans chapter has been involved in lobbying Washington for federal funding for rebuilding, anti-bulldozing and voting rights class action lawsuits on behalf of city residents, organizing residents to prepare for the neighborhood planning process, and wide scale pro-bono gutting of flooded houses. C3/Hands off Iberville and New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NOHEAT) form the nucleus of a public housing and tenant advocacy coalition that brings together public housing and rental tenants, activists and attorneys. Since Katrina, the coalition has been fighting for the reopening of New Orleans public housing projects and for eviction protection for renters and FEMA hotel voucher recipients. IAF-Jeremiah Group is a consortium of local churches organized before the storm. PostKatrina the Jeremiah Group has worked to help pastors locate evacuated parishioners and identify and meet their needs. The Jeremiah Group is currently exploring homebuilding and homeownership programs for its members.

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Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc. (NHS) was founded to help move low and moderate income residents from renting to homeownership. Post-Katrina NHS focus has expanded to include partnering on nonprofit homebuilding and the development of a network of interconnected community centers offering a variety of social services including housing and homeownership counseling. New Orleans Network emerged post-Katrina as an information sharing tool for organizers and community members. Housed on the internet, the New Orleans Network's function is to provide a community calendar and database with information on organizations, services, events and fundraising. Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee (PHRF) is a broad-based coalition whose activities are spread across fourteen working groups and whose stated focus is the needs and perspectives of marginalized, poor, African-American survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Currently PHRF is engaged in developing affordable housing, opening a workers center, and developing a Peoples Plan as a response to the citys call for a neighborhood planning process. The Vietnamese Initiative for Economic Training (VIET) is based out of the large Vietnamese community concentrated in New Orleans East. Prior to the storm, VIET was involved in a variety of advocacy and job training programs as well as offering an annual summer day camp for kids. In the wake of Katrina, VIET has broadened its focus to include advocacy and support in navigating the bureaucracies of insurance, taxes, FEMA aid packages and absentee voting. VIET has been extremely successful in mobilizing residents in this hard hit neighborhood; now the organization is trying to expand its tax and legal support programs, reopen its summer day camp, establish a recreation center for neighborhood youth, and prepare its community for hurricane season. III. AUTHORS BIOS Jainey Bavishi is a first year Masters candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT from Charlotte, NC, focusing on international development and regional planning. After graduating from Duke University in 2003 with an AB in Public Policy Studies and Cultural Anthropology, Jainey spent a year in the town of Cuttack in Orrissa, India, an area still recovering from a deadly super cyclone in 1999 that killed more than 10,000 people and left over 1.5 million homeless. Her work focused on creating advocacy materials for a movement to start daycare centers in communities below the poverty line through documenting the voices of poor working mothers. Jainey spent the last year working as a research assistant at the Fannie Mae Foundation. She researched lessons and best practices from domestic community revitalization work. Rachel Wilch was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She received a BA from Reed College in Portland, Oregon where she studied labor movement narratives through the lens of cultural anthropology. Her interests focus on economic justice and altenative approaches to affordable housing. She grew up in and later worked on establishing low-income mutual housing cooperatives. She is currently pursuing her MCP (Masters of City Planning) in the department of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is

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excited for the adventures and opportunities she is finding across the country, though she is eager to eventually set up shop back in the great Northwest.

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