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Many thanks to those of you have supported my film/photography/writing work over the years.
Today, I need your help.
I've just returned from New Orleans, where I shot New Orleans: A Labor of Love, a ..ary that follows a group of college students who spent their spring break building homes for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Let me tell you, what you see on TV is a fractional account of the mass devastation and corruption that have come to embody the Big Easy. Growing up in the rural south, I often saw boarded up homes, so, sadly, at first glance, the ghostly structures that haunt the city were familiar reminders of poverty. After several days touring the city, I was overwhelmed by the block-to-block, parish-to-parish devastation - miles and miles of uninhabitable homes that once housed people, and, unfortunately, too often, still do.
Imagine living in a home where all signs that you ever existed have been washed away, including the very financial records that you need in order to secure safe, affordable housing through the limited, overly competitive housing programs that are available. You go to the bank to request those missing records, but the bank doesn't have them – the bank's records washed away too. You try to cash your $1,000 social security check. Can't. The banks, both national and local, have limited cash on site.
So you go home to sit on the porch and chart your Plan B or, at this point, a Plan Y or Z, however, there is no porch. That too is gone. Even if it were there, would you really want to sit and look at the boarded up homes of neighbors, graffitied with ominous hieroglyphics announcing the death toll of people you used to greet everyday?
Now approaching the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, this is the true state of New Orleans. It is people who were disenfranchised before the storm being made to feel even more indigent and powerless in the face of bureaucracy and corruption.
It's elderly people like Mr. Dilbert, living in a FEMA trailer, supporting his dependent wife on $600 per month while he tries to find someone to help him gut and rebuild his duplex. It's Mr. Perkins, a proud homeowner of 35 years, who recently lost his life savings to a crooked contractor.
These people are stuck and they need our help. From their own mouths, the only sources of aid they trust are the volunteers who come to rebuild their homes.
By most liberal estimates, it will take 3 to 5 years to reconstruct the city. Volunteers will be needed every single day. My goal is to use the power of independent media and grassroots outreach to motivate and mobilize a civic movement of 5,000 student volunteers to aid in the reconstruction of New Orleans during 2008 and subsequent years.
To that end, I'm asking you or your organization to make a tax-deductible donation so that I can turn New Orleans: A Labor of Love into a full-scale public awareness campaign targeting volunteers.
This fall, New Orleans: A Labor of Love will screen at colleges, universities, community centers and churches, where volunteers will be recruited on site. It will also be edited for web distribution at www.nolaboroflove.com. There, potential volunteers will be able to connect with information about lodging, banking, transportation, and other necessary travel details provided by veteran volunteers and relief effort organizers.
The funding goal is $125,000. I have invested $5,000 in making this public awareness campaign a possibility. I hope you will match my gift.
In Love/Struggle,
Katina Parker
Director
New Orleans: A Labor of Love
1:54 AM
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