Curtis Muhammad: A Farewell Letter on the Second Anniversary of Katrina
Tim Murphy
ZNet
www.zmag.org
A Farewell Letter on the Second Anniversary of Katrina
A Message from an Organizer to the Left and Progressive Forces inside the
USA
by
Curtis Muhammad
With this second anniversary of Katrina upon us, there are a few words I
wish to speak. This letter is written to the progressive, left movement for
justice in the USA. In the last two years, every left organization has been
in New Orleans, but despite that there is still no sign of a mass movement.
There is still no sign that most activists are willing to put their
knowledge and resources at the service of the grass roots and take their
leadership from the bottom. I have found myself wondering, have poor black
people been so vilified and criminalized that they are completely off the
radar even of the so-called left? When Katrina happened, I hoped and
expected that this would be the trigger to once again set off a true mass
movement against racism and for justice in the US, led by those most
affected: poor, black working people. When it became abundantly clear that
this was not happening, I found myself at the crossroads of hope and
hopelessness, and began to wonder how to spend the last years of my life in
the service of my people.
The thing that I remind myself when I'm contemplating hopelessness is the
beauty of humanity and the fact that people have always fought for what was
right even when they knew they couldn't win. They tried because they loved
each other; I think it's because it's built into human beings for people to
look out for each other. There is a drive in humanity to be just, to live in
a society that is just, equal and respectful. I believe that ultimately
people will achieve a just society; I believe humanity came out of a just
society and will create it again.
I do believe that there was a time that the lovers of life, the lovers of
humanity, the lovers of justice dominated the world. Some say this was so
during the hunter-gatherer days, when though there were evil people they
could never gain dominance. Their numbers were always small, less than 1%;
people ran their lives collectively, and therefore the greedy could not
dominate. Well then, I say what happened, there is only that same 1% who
dominates the world now.
This thinking, this logic has been the motivating factor in my life of
movement work: the belief that there is a basic humanity that is inside the
soul of most people. That this humanity can be harvested and organized into
a movement for justice to free our people from slavery, bondage, oppression
and exploitation. That the 80% of the world who live on an average of $2 a
day can and will overcome the 1% and return us to a collective life
organized around love, justice and equality.
Most of you who know me also know I'm a storyteller and believe story to be
a universal language that can be a vehicle for voice, the voice of all
regardless of status, class, cast, race, gender. Story is an egalitarian
language. So I wish to share with you my story, an abbreviated story of my
organizing work from SNCC in Mississippi through the ghettoes of the US to
the villages and jungles of Africa, to CLU, PHRF, NOSC, POC and finally the
International School for Bottom-up Organizing. My story is meant to clarify
why I now choose to live, work, teach and write outside the US and away from
the grip of a drastically de-energized and often opportunistic and
reactionary left in the USA.
* * *
I grew up in a community that, of necessity, had to take care of its own. In
rural Mississippi in the 40s, 50s and 60s, mothers and fathers,
grandparents, uncles and cousins protected the children from the hostile,
racist world and collectively helped each other meet their needs.
Nonetheless, when I was a child traveling to church on Sundays, I had to
pass the tree from whose branches my cousin was lynched. The community of my
birth gave me both my strength -- my faith in the people, my dedication to
egalitarianism, and my undying hatred of racism and the oppressive few that
control the world.
When SNCC came to town, I found my direction. It was both a community of
love and a set of organizers devoted, at the risk of their lives, to the
folk on the bottom: the poorest black folk in Mississippi, those who had
nothing, not even the knowledge of how to read. SNCC introduced me to the
struggles of my brothers and sisters around the world, and particularly in
Africa. I became an internationalist and a revolutionary. The lessons of
Ella Baker and SNCC have stayed with me throughout my life; I labored to
make them a reality from Mississippi to the ghettoes of our major cities,
from my time in the revolutionary movement in Africa to my work as a labor
organizer, and I have done my utmost to apply them in post-Katrina New
Orleans.
In 1998, I helped to organize Community Labor United (CLU), a coalition that
was founded with a commitment to bottom-up organizing. (CLU principles
included "ending the exploitation of oppressed peoples everywhere;
educating, organizing and mobilizing the masses within our organizations and
communities from the bottom up.") After eight years of organizing in some of
the poorest areas of New Orleans, it became the "first responder" after
Katrina, and led the formation of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF).
As a founding member of PHRF and an organizer and New Orleans resident, I
was back in the city within 8 days of the flood, struggling with
overwhelming pain and anger. I felt that Katrina represented an historic
moment. Never before had all levels of government united to attempt genocide
of 100,000 black people at the same time. Even in the 60s in Mississippi,
they were murdering us in ones, twos and threes. I threw myself into the
attempt to put the knowledge and resources of the left and nationalist
organizations and "movement" people under the direction of the bottom: the
poor and working class black folk who had been left to die in New Orleans.
PHRF became a coalition that committed itself on paper to that goal.
What followed was a dramatic learning experience for me and for all those
whose commitment is truly to the people and not to their own particular
grouping. Within months, mainly as a result of a speaking tour I went on for
PHRF, we had raised about a million dollars from folk across the country who
were deeply moved by the attempted genocide of over a hundred thousand black
folk. And by December, there was already conflict over who controlled that
money and how it was to be used.
The New Orleans Survivor Council was organized by PHRF with the
understanding that it was to become the leadership of the organization and
the movement, and should control all resources. By April of 2006, when the
NOSC began to sound like it wanted oversight of the funds, the interim
leadership of PHRF took the money and ran, firing its own organizers for
daring to tell the poor black residents in NOSC that they had the right to
control the resources raised in their names. Undaunted, the young organizers
continued working for the survivors and formed a new group called People's
Organizing Committee (POC).
This event was a turning point for me. I realized that the words of those
who I had considered my comrades were empty, that their so-called commitment
to bottom- up was a fiction; that their real commitments were to various
organizations and their own egos. Our attempt to institutionalize bottom-up
had led instead to a coalition of opportunists.
When I had spoken to mass audiences about Katrina in the fall of 2005, I had
spoken of my discovery of the depth of the fear and hatred America has for
poor, black people. The images on the media of those left to die could have
been taken in sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean: those people were very
poor and very black. With the desertion of PHRF, I was confronted by the
knowledge that this hatred of poor black people extended into and throughout
the progressive movement, even within exclusively black organizations. I
felt very lonely in my continued commitment to lift up precisely that
segment of oppressed Americans to lead the movement.
But POC plunged ahead, still dedicated to that vision. Thousands of
volunteers came in the spring and summer, and many continue to come to this
day. The hearts of so many people are in the right place. The New Orleans
Survivor Council and its member group Residents of Public Housing continue
to work to put bottom-up leadership on the map and fight for the right of
our community to return and control its own destiny. But the past year has
also revealed further weakness and lack of vision in our movement.
From the days immediately following the flood, we recognized that
immigrants, brown people, some of the poorest and most desperate of our
brothers and sisters from countries to the south, were being brought into
our city. They were put to the dirtiest, most dangerous clean-up tasks, and
later to replace the forcibly dispersed black labor force, for slave wages
and in slave conditions. From the start, we called for organizing this new
part of the New Orleans community in unity with and under the leadership of
the black folk on the bottom.
This call was part of my message in the speeches I made in the fall of 2005,
and several immigrant organizers heeded the call and came to work with us.
However, despite many serious attempts to develop unity between black
survivors and immigrants, it has become clear that those organizers refuse
to unite with and take leadership from black folk. They have organized
immigrant slaves into separate groupings with no contact with the NOSC,
despite their initial commitment to unity. They are essentially, wittingly
or unwittingly, following the government's agenda, which is to build a
racist, assimilationist immigrant "movement" that will serve the needs of a
war economy and patriotism.
And so we come to the second anniversary of Katrina. Bottom-up organizing is
still embryonic, though hanging on to life and with a small, dedicated band
of survivors, organizers and volunteers. But the rest of the movement is in
shambles, or under direct or indirect influence of our enemies.
Through the experience of the last two years, I have also come to the
conclusion that the infiltration of and direct attacks on the movement that
started (in my lifetime as an activist) in the late 60s and early 70s with
Cointelpro have never stopped. Our movement has been successfully divided
into thousands of groupings, non-profits and NGOs, and the left has been
rendered ineffectual. It is not an accident that, for forty years now, the
movement has been so totally reformist, or that those who want to be
revolutionaries are so isolated as to be irrelevant. The government and its
agencies have a stranglehold on the people, the culture and even the left. I
do not think it is possible in the U.S. at this time, for me, to develop and
train organizers with a real understanding and commitment to the folk on the
bottom.
And thus, I find myself at the crossroads of hope and hopelessness. I find
myself possibly in the position of writing not mainly to the current readers
of these words, but to those future revolutionaries who will learn from our
impasse. I find myself deciding to work toward creating an international
organizing school as a vehicle to discover, recruit and train radical
organizers. I want to continue my investigation of the movements in Mexico
and South America among very poor -- members of the informal economy,
workers, campesinos and landless people -- learn more about how class and
hue interact to shape oppression, take inspiration from the fact that the
struggle continues, un-abandoned, worldwide, and share my own knowledge and
experience with the rebels of today and tomorrow.
I have lived 64 years and have struggled intentionally for justice for about
forty-six of those years. I am thankful and appreciative to all those who
have traveled some of that distance with me: those who helped nurture my
children, who stood with me when I was imprisoned and tortured, those who
have always supported my work and stood by me when all seemed to stand
against me. To these worthy friends, comrades and loved ones, I will always
honor you, be there for you, and know you are there for me.
Still, I have arrived at a place in my life where I wish to share everything
I have and know with the "sufferers." My principle continues to be the
struggle to engage the poor, oppressed, voiceless, and those who have the
least and suffer the most. The only struggle that matters to me now is
finding justice for those who have never had it.
This is me, where I am, trying to figure out how to organize our folk in a
way that we always look at need as the principle of justice. If you are
looking for me, look among the youth, the poor, and the struggling masses
trapped in slave-like conditions throughout the world, for I am no longer
available to an opportunistic and racist left. I NOW SEEK REFUGE AMONG THE
POOR.
This is my struggle.
Wish me well,
Curtis
People's Organizing Committee
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