MEDIA ADVISORY (Oakland, CA) Hurricane Katrina’s impact continues reverberating across the country, exposing the dangerous intersections of poverty, race, immigration status and toxic contamination for communities of color and immigrants. Now as rebuilding and clean-up are underway, U.S. federal, state and local officials are using Katrina to exploit immigrants, while scapegoating them for the emerging gentrification of the region, and imposing obstacles to the safe return of communities of color who lack adequate relief and assistance in order to rebuild their homes and workplaces. To offer solidarity to hurricane impacted communities and to participate in dialogues to forge a shared path forward, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) is participating in the “Gulf Coast Environmental, Racial, Social & Economic Justice Tour,” convened by Southwest Workers Union, Grassroots Global Justice, and Project South. Members of the Gulf Coast Tour delegation will be meeting with the Houma Indian Nation, immigrant rights, labor, faith-based, health, environmental and social justice organizations and community groups in Mississippi and Louisiana during November 2-6, 2005. Cancer Alley and Anti-Immigrant Racism in the Eye of the Storm When Hurricane Katrina hit Cancer Alley, as the region is called by communities of color who have been fighting for environmental cleanup and healthy community for decades, we knew that this was not going to be another natural disaster. Before Katrina, disproportionate numbers of African Americans and other people of color were suffering from cancer, respiratory ailments, hypertension and other serious illnesses caused by the contamination from the petrochemical industrial complex astride Louisiana and Mississippi. Katrina made unwilling refugees of millions of people in the Gulf Coast region. For tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents, this was not the first time they were forced to flee their homes. Some 30,000 Vietnamese in Louisiana lost homes, jobs and, in some cases, their entire livelihood as fishermen. Another 40,000 Mexicans, mostly from New Orleans, were also forcibly displaced by the hurricane. Central Americans in the region, including over 150,000 Hondurans and almost 10,000 Salvadorans, many of them, like the Vietnamese, had already lost their homes to U.S. intervention, war and hurricanes. In spite of the terrible devastation, anti-immigrant groups exploited Hurricane Katrina to spread their hateful anti-immigrant messages. Their attack impacted displaced immigrant communities seeking relief, deepening resentment and tensions against perceived and actual immigrant communities, and fueling abuses against immigrant workers brought in for cleanup and rebuilding efforts. Immigrant communities faced additional danger as the storm subsided in August. First, individuals and organizations associated with the main rightwing, anti-immigrant group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, began a campaign calling on Congress to deny all FEMA aid to immigrants. This was the result of a different type of storm that was devastating immigrant communities across the country prior to Katrina: the anti-immigrant movement spurred by the Minutemen, armed vigilante and racist groups harassing immigrants, day laborers, and patrolling border and non-border communities supposedly looking for undocumented immigrants. Then President Bush made immigrant workers even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. President Bush suspended I-9 or employer sanctions, the law that requires employers to verify that all new hires have authorization to work in the U.S. Then he froze the Davis-Bacon Act, ensuring that the prevailing wage of the region would be lowered in federal construction efforts. In both instances President Bush claimed this was to support the impacted communities who had lost their homes, documents and other important paperwork and that he lowered the wages to create more jobs and make federal relief dollars go further. This two-pronged attack literally exposed immigrant and non-immigrant communities of color to unprecedented and ongoing threats to their return and rebuilding their homes. Contract workers, overwhelmingly immigrant, brought in from outside the region to do hazardous cleanup and reconstruction work, are handling toxic materials without any or improper safety equipment. These workers were abandoned by their employers in the bayou, in the streets or, if they were lucky, in Red Cross shelters, where they were harassed, evicted or denied assistance. Latinos – or anyone who “looked or sounded” foreign – were evicted en masse from Red Cross shelters, accused of being undocumented immigrants or contracted laborers who were not pre-hurricane residents, stopping them from seeking disaster relief. Against this backdrop, the Gulf Coast Justice Tour will be a key national community-based effort to share the lessons that emerged in the wake of the hurricane’s sweep, where a “toxic gumbo” was already devastating communities of color and working people long before Katrina. The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights will express its solidarity with the communities and their organizations by calling for the protection of the the rights of all workers, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status, including paying living wages, providing safe workplace conditions and protections against health hazards and extensive support to build healthy communities. The revitalization of the Gulf Coast region depends on making it free from toxic pollution, racial discrimination, xenophobia and the eradication of poverty. To move the region forward, all communities must receive generous relief support that ensures their safe return to restore their homes and communities with justice and health. *** Representing the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on the Gulf Coast Justice Tour: Arnoldo García is
a Senior Program Associate at the National Network for Immigrant and
Refugee Rights, in Oakland, California. Arnoldo is the editor NNIRR’s
news magazine, Network News. He also heads up NNIRR’s enforcement
and justice project and is working to organize a California community-based
action network to document human rights violations perpetrated against
immigrant communities. During November 2-6, he can be reached through
cellular telephone number: (510) 928-0685 Genaro López Rendón,
Southwest Workers Union: cell (210) 286-6271; office (210) 299-2666
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