Burners heading south for the winter

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Starchild
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:56 pm
Location: biloxi soon
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Burners heading south for the winter

Post by Starchild » Thu Nov 17, 2005 1:28 pm

im in michigan, and am planning on moving to biloxi to help the BM voulenteer effort down there, anyway, i was wondering if anyone else was planning on traveling down south between now and the end of the month, if not i'll need to catch a bus, but i would rather hook somone with some gas money, plaus it would be more fun, let me know
peace an love
relax, this will only hurt for a minute :) www.geocities.com/kingdeluge/one.html

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Isotopia
Posts: 2848
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 11:26 am

Post by Isotopia » Thu Nov 17, 2005 7:41 pm

Starchild,

Looks here like the Powers That Be have decided that folks in the impacted areas need to start paying for services. The article mentions that the New Waveland Cafe has been asked to cease their Tool Time program where free distribution/use of tools ia allowed for folks to start repairs on dmaged property. Also mentions that the Cafe has been asked to cease serving food at some point.

risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2005/...e.html

My understanding from other sources in New Orleans is that such requests are 'old news' and tha NO has been trying to get groups to ramp things down - especially services being provided in the poorer neighborhoods. Seems that some of the more affluent returning folks have already started raising hell about the poor people flocking to higher ground areas to pick up a free meal. A check of the New Orleans Craigs List (neworleans.craigslist.org/) and the Katrina Relief Forum link suggests some pretty simmering and negative feelings starting to percolate up from residents who have resentments that many of the underclass are being served by non-Red Cross volunteer groups. It's pretty unfortunate but not unexpected seeing as all of this seems to be a preamble to the next phase of relief. Namely, the serious re-building efforts that'll be bringing in HUGE capital for some of the larger construction projects. Follow that with land specualtion by corporations who have their eyes set on huge buy outs of people too poor to rebuild what's been theres for generations. I suspect the same thing is starting to happen in Mississippi though on a smaller scale.


I was down in Gulfport/Biloxi just after Burning Man was over. Have been keeping in touch with some folks there. Before you go send me a PM. It looks like all the volunteer groups are ramping down. The New Waveland Cafe' is probably not going to be around much longer due to FEMA issues, county issues and state stuff getting both phased in and out (see above link). New Orleans is getting somewhat bitchy about groups - mostly Rainbow folks - still feeding the poor. Don't want to discourage you from putting in the effort but you might want to get a fair overview of the situation before investing time, resources, money, etc. only to find that folks - exhausted folks - are packing up and heading back from whence they came.

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