Reprinted from Counterpunch: Article by Bill Quigley

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu

One. Build and rebuild community.

When disaster hits and life is wrecked, you immediately seem to be on your own. Isolation after a disaster is a recipe for powerlessness and depression. Family, community, church, work associations are all important –get them up and working as fast as possible. People will stand up and fight, but we need communities to do it. Prize women –they are the first line of community builders. Guys will talk and fight and often grab the spotlight, but women will help everyone and do whatever it takes to protect families and communities.

Powerful forces mobilize immediately after a disaster. People and politicians and organizations have their own agendas and it helps them if our communities are fragmented. Setting one group against another, saying one group is more important than another is not helpful. Stress and distress is high for everyone, but community support will multiply the resources of individuals. Build bridges. People together are much stronger than people alone.

Two. Self-reliance.

Your community must be ready to re-settle your property as soon as possible and care for those most in need. Prioritize help for the elderly, the sick, children and women, especially the poor. The prime cure for helplessness is taking control over your own life and joining others to fight for justice.

Groups and people will want to treat you like a victim –say you are traumatized and incapable of making basic decisions about yourself. They will tell you they know best and act like they know best. Tell them to get lost.

[… please, read the whole article at CP! …]

Resist the tendency to think someone else is going to come save you. There is no leader out there. We must each become leaders and followers in order to bring about the change that is needed. Each of us is challenged to get beyond our pre-disaster comfort zone. New leadership is essential to avoid just repeating the mistakes that contributed to the disaster.

[… did I mention that the whole article is worth reading?…]

Building communities of resistance and working for human development is long-term work. Love is a tremendous source of energy. But we have to love ourselves as well so we can keep living this resistance with others. We have and will continue to make mistakes. We have to get back up, dust ourselves off, forgive ourselves and others, and get back to working in community to create a more just world.

It is important to laugh too. Remember that last job held by the guy in charge of disasters for the entire US government was as head of an association of dancing horses! We can’t make this stuff up.

Katrina was a small scale localised disaster. Peak Oil and climate destabilisation are ongoing, global-scale disasters that, I suspect, will colour and condition the rest of the lives of all people living today. Bill Q’s Ten Lessons learned by our brothers and sisters in NOLA are applicable to all of us, everywhere on earth, where an ongoing disaster (and accelerating Disaster Capitalism — as if there had ever been any other kind) is now the environment in which we live and raise our children.

Community. Women. Food. Solidarity. Resistance. Priorities — every single day, from now on.

Posted by DeAnander in Analysis