by Bill Quigley
“If this happened in India, there would be
a revolution!”
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at Loyola University
New Orleans. Bill recently returned from India where he and other Gulf
Coast community activists toured hundreds of miles of coastal communities
devastated by the Tsunami. They met with Indian community members to
discuss common challenges and strategies to rebuild their communities.
In August, the Indian people will be visiting the gulf coast. The trips were
sponsored by ActionAid International and the Charles Stewart Mott
Foundation.
The tiny old woman with the tanned deeply lined face stood up and
told us what happened to her coastal village of 130 families in Tamil
Nadu India, along the southeastern coast. Before the tsunami,
villagers survived by gathering prawns by hand from shallow waters
and by hiring out to work for people who owned fishing boats.
Without warning, on December 26, 2004, a thirty foot tsunami wall of
water roared through their coastal village sweeping aside everything
in sight. The elderly woman was knocked down. With her hands she
demonstrated how she was violently tumbled over and over by the
powerful following waves. Finally able to wrap her arms high around
a coconut tree, she clung to it as her clothes were ripped from her
body by the surging waters. When the waters receded, every house in
her village was gone. The tiny woman, now quietly crying as she told
her story, was ashamed as she searched for something to cover her
nakedness. She started searching for her missing family and the rest
of her village. Many were dead. Some are still missing today. Those
who remained were homeless.
“Our Indian friends were incredulous.
One said,‘This would never happen in our country.’”
Today, some families in her village live in newly constructed 340
square foot concrete homes built by international relief agencies.
Others live in temporary thatched huts perched on top of their
neighbors’ new homes. All are trying to rebuild their lives.
The December 26, 2004 earthquake in the Indian Ocean measuring 9.3
in magnitude sparked-off a series of devastating tsunamis that
killed over 230,000 people and made millions homeless. Since then,
Indian community organizations have struggled in the face of
unprecedented problems to try to recover and rebuild.
A group of grassroots Katrina social justice activists were recruited
to visit with our Indian counterparts from the most devastated areas of coastal India to see what we could learn with and from each other.
Together we visited numerous villages up and down the Indian coast
and listened to hundreds of people describe how the tsunami and its
aftermath continues to impact them. We listened to displaced
families as we sat on woven mats in steaming thatched huts as the
temperatures passed 105. An entire fishing community told us their
story under towering palm trees backed by the brilliant blue Bay of
Bengal of the Indian Ocean. We ate rice, yogurt and fish off of
banana leaves with our fingers while we visited with one village.
Others shared what happened as we walked in the blazing sun through
fields of women and men digging dirt with shovels and pails to
construct a new road.
We shared the experiences of our gulf coast communities and the
massive and continuing human rights violations perpetrated against
Katrina survivors both at home and internally displaced. We shared a
slide show illustrating human and civil rights violations after
Katrina. After finding out that police fired weapons to turn away
fleeing people trying to escape across the Mississippi river in New
Orleans, the continuing displacement of hundreds of thousands, and
the government’s determination to demolish thousands of usable
public housing apartments, our Indian friends were incredulous. One
said “This would never happen in our country. If this happened in
India, there would be a revolution!”
Over hundreds of miles and days and nights of visits, we and our
Indian friends found tremendous similarities in our experiences
between the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
Our governments, on all levels, have and continue to fail us. The
needs of poor and working people have been mainly neglected.
Incredible incompetence and apparent lack of sustained concern have
combined to aggravate and amplify the effects of the disasters. It is
primarily through the efforts of small voluntary organizations that
any real progress is being made.
“Our communities have each been the victims of disaster
capitalism.”
We released a joint Tsunami-Katrina statement at the end of our trip
summarizing five of our joint observations.
We first agree that our communities have each been the victims of
disaster capitalism. After each of our disasters, the tremendous loss
and suffering of our people have been seized upon as opportunities for
profit by commercial and financial interests. The rebuilding
processes have been driven not by the needs of the people, but by
economic and corporate interests which have neglected and over-ridden
the needs and perspectives of local communities.
Second, we agree that technological and bureaucratic planning for
disasters is not enough. Communities at risk of disaster must be
respected and involved in all preparations for disaster. While we
recognize the important responsibility of government in preparing for
disaster, we have seen the failures of preparation that is based on
technology alone. We have also seen the failures of bureaucratic and
professional planners. These failures will continue until the
communities themselves are given a priority in preparing and shaping
and executing planning for disasters. All preparation must be
sensitive to community needs and traditions.
Third, before, during, and after disasters, the needs of the least
powerful must be made a priority. This is nearly the opposite of what
has been occurring. These needs include the full implementation of
human rights to housing, land, occupation and livelihood, freedom from
discrimination, and the right to return.
Fourth, we insist on gender equity. Our experiences have clearly
shown us that there is a systematic violation of the rights of women
in every phase of disasters. In planning, preparation, evacuation,
distribution of relief, rebuilding, the right to return, and in every
phase of policy and decision making, the presence and participation
and value of the role of women have been seriously inadequate. The
human rights of women must be immediately respected as their suffering
and disrespect continues today in both our countries.
Fifth, we demand accountability and transparency. Anyone who is
raising, taking, or spending money in the name of our communities must
be accountable to our people. We call specifically for our
governments, our NGOs and our non-profits to let our communities know
how much has been raised, how much has been spent, how all funds have
been spent, how it has been spent, and each organization, corporation,
governmental unit or person who receives any funds. Our communities
must participate in all these decisions. In order to have true
community directed participation, we insist on our rights to
accountability and transparency.
Our joint tsunami-Katrina statement can be supplemented by many other
personal observations of this writer.
As social justice activists and organizers, we need to do a much
better job of developing solidarity. We are battling for the very
lives of our traditional communities and we need each other’s ideas
and support. We cannot afford fragmentation. We cannot afford to
consider one group more worthy or deserving than others. In the US,
we need to do much more to forge linkages between the needs of coastal
Louisiana and coastal Mississippi and the urban needs of the New
Orleans metro area. Nationally, we need to strengthen our alliances
with other communities fighting for justice. Internationally, we have
much to learn from each other and we must build much better
solidarity. Our Indian sisters and brothers told us if they knew what
was going on after Katrina they would have demonstrated in front of
the U.S. Embassy in India demanding the government respect our human
rights. It is a tactic of our enemies to divide and conquer, it is
our job to connect and conquer.
We must insist on rebuilding our own communities. In India, we found
examples where the communities decided how to rebuild, chose to use
local materials, and demanded and won the right for local people to do
the rebuilding so they could learn new skills. We were shocked to
find that many more new homes have already been built in India for
their displaced than in the U.S. Non governmental agencies and
non-profits, many with the best intentions have come to our
communities and have accomplished little good. They and the
government must be held accountable. India is trying, we have much to
learn from them.
“Our Indian sisters and brothers told us if they knew what was
going on after Katrina they would have demonstrated in front
of the U.S. Embassy in India demanding the government
respect our human rights.”
There is a universal need after the trauma of disasters for what the
Indian activists call “psycho-social counseling.” This need
continues now and will continue until it is met. Recovery is not only
about the physical aspects of rebuilding a place to stay or finding a
job or getting some compensation. It is also about relationships. On
the gulf coast in the US and India we know there are hundreds of
thousands of people who continue to deeply suffer the traumas of these
disasters. They cannot “get over it” without trained assistance.
The same is true in India, however, the Indians are training
volunteer community counselors to help villages and organizations
identify the non-physical effects and to help people and communities
heal.
In India the caste system creates invisible divisions and tens of
millions of invisible people. Dalits, or untouchables, built
magnificent temples as slave laborers but are met with violence if
they try to enter the temples their ancestors built. In the US, we
use the systems of color to create our invisible people. No just
solutions are possible without directly confronting the continuing
existence and legacies of these systems.
At the same time, economic lines have been sharply drawn in both our
nations. In the U.S. it is property ownership that draws the line.
Two people who lived different halves of the same house for the same
number of years are treated dramatically differently if one owns the
house and the other rents. Property owners may get up to $150,000 in
compensation in Mississippi and Louisiana – renters, nothing. In
India, fisherfolk are eligible for compensation for their lost boats
and new housing. Those who worked on the boats for the owner are
entitled to nothing. Like most economic injustices, these artificial
human distinctions, often codified into unjust laws by those who
profit from them, must be challenged and dismantled. Our shared
economic class issues must be a point of unity for us, across lines of
caste and race.
In both countries, if you plot the intersection of race (or caste),
gender, and economic status, you will find those who are left out of
the repair and rebuilding. In both our countries the disabled were
left behind at every step. This is not an accident. These are all
human decisions and can and must be reversed.
“Property owners may get up to $150,000 in compensation
in Mississippi and Louisiana – renters, nothing.”
As an important part of solidarity, we have to keep reminding
ourselves and our organizations that action cannot be confused with
progress. After a disaster, we are all very busy. We have all been
subject to countless planning meetings and consultations and we have
tried to participate in our communities. But the test of all actions
should be – “Does this help build, expand, or defend a movement
towards justice?” If it does not, we must re-think it. Because
unless we are building a more just world, the next disaster will prey
on the victims of injustice just as much as these did. Our Indian
friends reminded us that economic equity is the best way to reduce the
impact of disaster.
Disaster victims in both the US and India are crippled, confused, and
buried beneath bureaucratic paperwork demands. The approach in both
countries is that one must prove they are eligible and worthy of
assistance. Legal requirements and administrative schemes choke the
distribution of help.
Right, not charity, is our common demand. Human rights, not
bureaucratic eligibility criteria, must be the foundation for relief,
recovery and rebuilding. People have human rights to food and shelter
and the opportunity and assistance necessary to live a life of
dignity. The government must respect and implement human rights. The
degradations and delays and disrespect of eligibility applications for
basic human necessities must cease. Human rights must be our shared
basis for going forward. Internationally, if the bottom of the North
can link up with the bottom of the South, human rights will be our
shared language.
The final and best piece of advice I received was from T. Peter, head
of the Kerala Fish Workers Association. Their organization has
struggled with elected officials, private companies, and the caste
system in all phases of life. He leaned over, his dark face split by a
broad smile, and told me what we in the U.S. should be doing to bring
about justice for our gulf coast: “Less meeting, more fighting!”
And so we will.
Bill Quigley can be reached at [email protected].