Help, Help!: Storm Refugees in New Orleans, Louisiana need help - 50,000 to 100,000 poor, sick, incapacitated, old, young and black or with no car remain behind
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network Sept. 1, 2000
A prayer we send out, to the people of New Orleans and for Bill Quigley Help, Help!: The estimated 50,000 to 100,000 storm refugees remaining in New Orleans, Louisiana are people who are poor, sick, incapacitated, old, very young, mostly black or with no car. We-Haitians living abroad know what they need, the same thing the poor people in Haiti, especially in Site Soley and Bel Air are starved off - the poor and sick left behind in New Orleans need help: to get to safety and they need food, clean water, medicine, medical help, compassion and connection with friends and family. They do not need a bullet in the head for looting, for being scared; they do not need police-mace and the disdain of the privileged, safe, healthy and wealthy.
Many in our Network has asked for a way to volunteer to help. Haitians in the U.S. may not have a lot of money but HLLN has been contacted by many Haitians wanting to and willing to go down to New Orleans and lend whatever physical help we may. We would like to make a public call for more information to pass on to the Network on how to help. But according to Governor Howard Dean, M.D., "many local Red Cross chapters are organizing volunteers to travel to affected areas -- doctors and nurses to provide medical care, workers to build shelters, first responders to assist in rescue operations." (See, Howard Dean letter to Jennifer < jvb000@earthlink.net > copied below.) Governor Howard Dean writes further: "You can find your local chapter here to learn what you can do: http://www.redcross.org/where/chapts.asp
We are still learning the full story of the devastation, but there is no time to wait. Please do something now." Bill Quigley is in New Orleans with his wife Debbie, an oncology nurse at Tenant Memorial Hospital in New Orleans who would not leave her patients. Right now Tenant Memorial Hospital is without electricity, phone service and full of the dead and dying. (See message from Bill Quigley below.) Bill Quigley is a good friend to the poor majority of Haiti and a good friend to the Haitian community abroad. He supports our right to self-determination and asylum in difficult times and has volunteered his legal services many times to represent the illegally incarcerated Father Gerard Jean Juste, even getting himself beaten by the same group 184-mob who attacked Father Jean Juste at the church during the Jack Roches funeral. (See, http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Jean_Juste/explanation and http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaignone/presswork/freejeanjuste.html )
Today, in this time of danger in New Orleans, our prayers and moral support go to Bill Quigley, his wife Debbie, the patients at Tenant Memorial Hospital they are trying to keep alive and safe, the people still left in the Superdome and all throughout the city of New Orleans and those in Louisiana, Mississippi and Albama suffering in a similar manner from the deadly ravages of Hurricane Katrina.
As we-Haitians abroad brace ourselves for another July 6-type-Iron Fist UN military assault on the poor, sick, starved and Black in Site Soley, we know well the idea of feeling helpless while people die. We know how it feels to walk amongst corpes and not be able to even bury your dead. We stand in solidarity with the people of New Orleans in need of help, in need of reaffirmation of their dignity and humanity and in need of civilized, humane compassion and connection.
If anyone in our Network has any further suggestions other than the Red Cross one provided on how we may collectively bring more help to these people or besides making donations (see donation link and Red Cross information below), please advise. Please let us know if there are any organized civilian-invited rescue operations needing volunteers.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network Sept. 1, 2005
.