A Healthy Dose of Anarchy

After Katrina, nontraditional, decentralized relief steps in where big government and big charity failed.

Neille Ilel from the December 2006 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

That conversation was a sharp contrast with the measured words of the director of the New Orleans chapter of Habitat for Humanity, or the director of the Red Cross chapter, or any representatives of the large, traditional relief and post-disaster recovery organizations that normally claim the authority to perform this type of work. Those people had decades of experience managing crises. They had staffs of volunteers who expected leadership. They reported to national hierarchies and had a brand name to protect. “It’s not always wise to accept someone coming through the front door,” Quarantelli notes. And with all that money coming through the pipe, it’s not hard to see why. But these big groups end up turning away the Young Turks who are ready to ride their bikes around a deserted city with nothing but a hunch that they will find people in need.

In an April interview with NPR, acting Red Cross Director Jack McGuire admitted the organization had made major mistakes after Katrina, including not reaching out to community groups that were doing some of the best work in the area. The organization promises to implement a “cultural shift” that includes working more closely with grassroots organizations, a tack the institution has historically shied away from. Kay Wilkins, CEO of Red Cross’ Southeast Louisiana chapter, called Katrina “the great equalizer” of relief organizations. After its blunders with supplies and volunteers, the Red Cross’ reputation as the charity that could do no wrong has been squashed.

“I’ll go to any meeting now,” Wilkins says. “I work with groups I had never really worked with.” While the grassroots groups will gladly take help from the behemoth Red Cross, they emphasize that their lack of hierarchy and take-anyone approach were not merely born of necessity. They worked that way by design.

But couldn’t that design have flaws as well? It’s one thing to tear down Sheetrock on a house, but the liability issues involved in allowing amateurs to build a house are a lawyer’s nightmare—or dream. I asked organizers at both Common Ground and Emergency Communities what protections they had in place to avoid lawsuits from either residents or volunteers. They all answered with the same shrug.

And during hurricane season it’s not safe to have volunteers sleeping in Kelty tents in parking lots. In fact, the Made With Love Café closed its makeshift kitchen on June 15, leaving a permanent community center called Camp Hope in its wake. The United Way and the local government asked the café’s organizers to start a new food kitchen in neighboring Plaquemines Parish. They served their first meal there on June 1.

Common Ground scaled back its house gutting significantly during the hot summer months and housed more volunteers in more stable structures. The group is turning its attention to more permanent aspects of rebuilding, such as job training for returning residents in the construction and mechanics trades, and workshops on “rebuilding green”—that is, using environmentally sensitive tactics and materials in reconstruction. It’s too soon to tell if these grassroots organizations will grow into permanent institutions resembling the big groups they once railed against, or if the spontaneous network of activists will dissipate until the next big disaster. Iggy River, for one, was on his way back home to Maine when we last spoke in June.

For Rose and Gary Singletary, the help Common Ground provided has been invaluable, but in the end it wasn’t nearly enough. When I spoke to them again in May, their house looked much like it did when Common Ground volunteers picked up their tools and moved on. “Everything is at a standstill,” Rose said. They are still trying to get more help from their homeowner’s insurance; more important, the neighborhood’s residents aren’t sure the levee on the London Avenue Canal will protect their homes from another serious hurricane. Mardi Gras and JazzFest may go on, but a single drive through New Orleans remains breathtaking. The devastation is relentless. “It’s a struggle,” Rose told me. “You’re trying to do something in a year that it took your whole life to do.”

The ad hoc efforts of amateurs haven’t fixed the devastated Gulf Coast. But neither have the centrally organized efforts of government authorities and traditional aid groups. The large agencies trusted with caring for citizens in their time of greatest need have something to learn from the idealists in New Orleans: Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. Rules made when there was electricity don’t always work when all the lights are out.

Neille Ilel is a writer and reporter living in Los Angeles, California.

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|7.13.10 @ 4:14AM|#

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