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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview U-0252, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Malik Rahim argues that Hurricane Katrina highlighted the institutional racial and class divide he sees as being deeply embedded in New Orleans society. Rahim describes how his family's example of racial pride, civil rights activists' Black Power rhetoric, and racial indignities led him to embrace the Black Panther Party. He joined the military for economic reasons, but his service in Vietnam was a lesson in race relations for him: he recognized in himself racist attitudes toward Vietnamese soldiers. In 1967, he received an honorable discharge with 4-F status. After returning home, Rahim noticed the lack of desegregation in the industrial sector, even for war veterans. The interview is punctuated with such stories of white oppression. He explains that New Orleans had a large chapter of Garveyites in the 1920s, which he says made the area ripe for the founding of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s. In the early 1970s, Rahim formally joined the Black Panther Party, where he served in the Department of Security. He describes a growing cleavage among Panther members from a politically revolutionary ideology to an increasingly gangster mentality. The latter stance, Rahim argues, exploited people, while the former made people self-sufficient. He discusses the effective collective strategies and community uplift programs of the Panthers, including breakfast, anti-drug, and anti-violence programs. These programs frequently benefited public housing residents, who formed the Panthers' largest constituency.
Rahim discusses two shootouts between the Panthers and New Orleans police officers, the subsequent court cases, and the lessons he learned from these events. He discovered the local black community's support for the Panthers and the necessity of community organization, both of which reaffirmed his sympathy with Black Power ideology. Rahim also discusses his continued connection with imprisoned Panther members and his founding of the National Coalition to Free the Angola Three (an organization that focused on Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King, who in 1972 were accused of murdering a corrections officer in prison and were placed in solitary confinement for life). Rahim argues that the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina confirmed New Orleans' racist practices and maintains that police targeted blacks and poor people as criminals. He says that the residents who remained in New Orleans after Katrina were predominantly women, children, and elderly people and that the criminals reported on by the national newscasters had left the city. Rahim maintains that there is a lack of political organization and outrage among African Americans and low-income people throughout the city, and he expresses his frustration with Mayor Ray Nagin and local leadership. After Katrina struck, Rahim formed Common Ground to help provide remaining residents with basic goods and services. He hopes that the organization will serve as a global force in restoring hope and teaching environmental and civic responsibility. His fusion of environmentalism with his interest in sustainability practices led Rahim to run on the Green Party ticket for the United States House of Representatives in 2006.
Malik Rahim addresses the view of New Orleans that news organizations broadcast after Katrina devastated that city. He discusses his political activism and assesses the city's social and economic future after the storm.
[START OF DISC 1, TRACK 1]
This is Pamela Hamilton. It's May 23, 2006.
Oh, so you did know the date!
And I'm here with - if you could just say your name?
Malik Rahim.
All right - maybe you can tell me a little bit about how long you've been here in New Orleans.
I'm fifty-eight and I been here just about all my life. I've lived in other cities but New Orleans has always been my home.
And you've always lived here in Algiers?
Yes. I've only lived on the east bank of New Orleans twice. One was when in the 1970s as a member of the Black Panther Party, and the second time as a candidate for the city council, under the Green Party. So those was the only time I ever lived on the east bank. And I've never lived outside of a four-mile radius of where my first conceptions of life, you know, was established. So I've never lived outside of a four-mile radius of what we call the Oakdale , which is now called Fisher Project.
And what part of the city is that in?
The west bank, Algiers community.
Okay. So who were your parents?
My father was, to me, one of the greatest men that I knew. My mother
was, hmmm, she was the essence of love. You know? I was blessed with two
great parents. My mother supported me in my activism all the way until
the day she passed. My father afforded me a life without worries.
Whether or not I'm a-eat - the basics, for the first twelve
years of my life. And so I was blessed. Both of my parents are now
deceased. You
So, were you one of the three with not good qualities? You said there were three of 'em with not good qualities.
Three of who?
Three of the five children.
Oh, yes, I was one of those three.
And what wasn't the good qualities?
Like many young African-American males, we was caught up in the streets. Drugs, violence, you know, with the three of us, myself and my two older brothers, we was all around the same age, all of us wind up going to prison. We led our younger brother in a direction that wind up costing his life. So, you know, I've suffered all the ills that too many parents, too many families have to endure. So, yes, I was one of those, I was a knucklehead.
I brought a lot of grief instead of pleasure to my parents.
Well, when did you become an activist?
Probably when I was about fourteen. Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown came here to Algiers. Rudy Lumbard had brought 'em here, and I was able to meet with them, Aretha Castlehaley who is deceased, and I was able to see the essence. By then, I was acutely aware of the ugliness of racism, and I was seeing individuals courageous, individuals that was willing to make a change. Aretha and Rudy and them was going and doing the sit-ins at lunch counters here in New Orleans with Reverend Avery Alexander. I watched him being dragged up and down the stairs of City Hall, simply because he dared to sit at a lunch counter in City Hall. It was just seeing a community ask for, not to be integrated, just to be offered the same opportunities.
In Gretna, a city that's profound for its racism, we went before the city government and just asked for a swimming pool. I was about fourteen then, and they built us a swimming pool, a big, beautiful swimming pool, one with a nice garden area, but they built it on the city dump. Nothing else showed me, up until Katrina, just how racist one individual could be toward another, simply because of the color of their skin. I mean, when you just make a blanket definition of human character by saying "None of these people is worth living, none of these people is worth having or enjoying the life that we enjoy." Simply because they are all niggers. And that was my first example of seeing this, when they built that swimming pool and built it on the city dump.
You know, I can remember my father told me that he would rather see me
swim in a lake of fire before he would allow me to go in that damn pool.
I couldn't understand it. A couple of days after he sit down
and talk to me about dignity, that I understood when I went to that pool
and I seen that when the wind shift, the soot that was form on top of
it, because it was on a city dump. And when I seen picnic tables and
picnic areas that no one
I was told then that the only way, the fastest way of getting out of New Orleans, of getting out of Gretna, cause that's where I was raised at, was to join the service. My mother lived in Orleans parish, but I basically was raised by, to me, the greatest example of sacrifice that I have ever experienced: my grandmother. Cause I seen her sacrifice everything to make sure that we had a roof over our head, that we had food, that we had clothing, and many times we watched her do without. We was raised in an area, the street was Van Trump. They had an elementary school right next to us, one block from our house, with everything that you could want in a school, in that elementary school, and I couldn't even enter the yard, cause it was for white-only. So we had to walk something like about three miles, or two and a half miles, to go to school.
That lasted, the impact of that experience, when I finally came to the realization that the only reason why I can not go to that school, because I'm black. The only reason why I can not play in that playground was because they classified me as a nigger, and it was no niggers or dogs allowed. And it also put a resentment in me to date, cause I've never been in that school. If you asked me the name of the school - and it's right on Jefferson, I mean, Frankline and Van Trump - I never been in that schoolyard.
Is that in the Ninth Ward?
No, that's right over here in Gretna. And that's basically [the] concept of my early years. This made me want to act, it made me want to get involved. Then when I saw Rudy and them, I figured that that was my way, when I heard Fanny Lou Hamer speak.
Did she come here?
No, it was on an old reel to reel.
Ah, okay.
And I heard about how she was beaten, how she was savagely beaten, because of the fact that she didn't want to live in the environment or world that says that she wasn't equal to another human being simply because of the color of her skin. When I read about the death of Medgar Evers, it had an impact, but again, people was telling me, "Well, hey, you know." When I start seeing this happening, how can we get away from this, and people telling me, "Well, join the service," and there I went.
The next thing I know I'm in Vietnam, and I'm seeing there new types of racism, but this time as not a victim of it, but a participant. And then I swore that I would never do anything like this again. Cause I watch individuals demonize a people. When I realized what they was doing, sitting up there listening to them calling the Vietnamese "gooks," you know, "that gook," "this gook," and I asked somebody "What's a damn gook?" and a brother told me that had been over there, that's their way of calling Vietnamese niggers. So every time I heard it, it just angered me.
And then I'm hearing of those kids that was killed in Birmingham in 1963. I remember my father and 'em and how my grandmother, God bless her, always made me realize what had happened to Emmett Till. You know, so it was these things that sparked my interest into doing something. I was in the service, in Vietnam. I was in Great Lakes, Illinois, in boot camp, when Malcolm X was assassinated. I didn't know who Malcolm was. I was on guard duty when a guy tried to come in and tell people, but I didn't even know who Malcolm was, and he couldn't understand - "You mean to say, you don't know what's going on?"
I was there when US Organization was formed, when Ron Karenga, who established Kwanzaa, and I was blessed to be in Los Angeles at Fremont High School. That's where my first wife was going, to Fremont High School. I was in the service so I was able to be there when Ron Karenga was just teaching Swahili there, so I had a chance to sit and listen to him. Then I was there during the Watts Riot. And watched brothers doing something that had really angered me about being in New Orleans, cause I said, "Here I am, I'm raised with cowards, here was the essence of blackness standing up for what is right."
And seeing this and then seeing what happened in Vietnam, to come back.
In Vietnam, I was literally kicked out of the service, simply because I
had a picture of Malcolm X and Ron Karenga in my locker. One of those
old Uncle Toms went and told some white boy,
What year was that?
That was in 1967. I was given my discharge, an honorable separation, but
with a 4-F status. You know, 4-F means that you're not fit
for military enlistment. So with that done, that barred me, cause after
I got out of the service, like most of us at that time, they was just
then opening up governmental jobs to us, like at the Post Office,
firemens and police, and I tried to get a job first at the Post Office.
Now, looking back with hindsight, I'm glad I
didn't get it!
I tried being a merchant seaman. That didn't work even though I loved it, cause I was away from America, but I was away from my family. Then I tried welding. At least I was hired at this dock, at H.C. Price, which had the most profound effect upon me because the racism in the class was so brutally enforced, you know. The blacks was the last hired and the first to be laid off. The only job that we was capable of doing was the most physical, you know. You couldn't be a crane operator. The most advancement you could do is to become a truck driver, a welder's helper. I got into it and was fired for simply asking how to become a welder. I was told, "Why you wanting to know how to become a welder? We don't hire niggers as welders." And I'm looking at this white boy, who's telling me this, just a little bit older than me, never been to the service, never done anything other than came straight out of high school and became a welder, didn't feel no kind of compassion about calling me a nigger, cause that's the way, I guess, he was raised. He didn't know nothing about Negroes, or blacks. These are niggers, you know, and you don't get too close or too friendly with niggers, and that's the way he treated me.
And when he called it to me, I exploded, we wind up getting in an argument, and then that argument ensued into a, not even a good fight, but a scuffle. They immediately came in, fired me, right on the spot. They didn't ask who started it or nothin': "You - get out."
And this was also in Branton?
No, this was down Peter's Road, in Harvey. And I left from there full of rage, full of rage against all whites. . .
How did you get involved in founding the Black Panther Party here in New Orleans?
Soon after that happened, a couple of friends of mine, we went out and beat up a couple of white guys, and I knew that wasn't the answer but just a way of relieving that stress, that rage. Went home and one evening after seeing Miriam Makeba, I believe I'm pronouncing that name right, Miriam Makeba, she had just put out an album called Pata Pata, she was a South African. She was married to Nelson, I mean to Hugh Masakela and she had put out this song, again this album "Pata Pata." On that album they had this song, "Our Own Piece of Ground," and I sit and I listened to that song, over and over, me and a couple of my friends. We was over by his house, smoking weed, just drinking and talking and listening to that song, over and over, over and over, cause I said, "Well, shucks, you know we can't find no justice here in America. Let's leave." Cause I had spoken with some old Garveyites, cause New Orleans had [the] second largest chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. I said "We should leave." We didn't have no money, so we was talking about, "Well, let's, I don't know, let's arm ourselves and raise some money and leave." So that was our inspiration, talking about this.
Then one of the guys came up to us Monday evening and told us that cause
I had spoken to my wife and she said we need to go, let's go.
So we were starting to make those kind of moves, where we was gonna go
at in Africa, and an individual came in and told
All set.
Yeah, well, again, I showed Ed around the project. He gave me the
address of the house that they had right off of St. Thomas in Jackson,
and that next day I was over there. I spent about a week over there, you
know, just going there every day, meeting with these young people, you
know I met all of them. I was one of the older ones, I was twenty-two.
These young people was talking about how can we save our community, and
I went back the next meeting. For the political education meeting, I
brought my family. I was married and I had two kids, and we attended
that meeting, and we went home and discussed and the next day I went
there and told them that we gonna join. The guy who was over the Party
at that time, Steve Green, he [said], "Man, listen, you got two
small
I quickly rose within the Party to be over security, and that's the position I held all the way until I finally left the Party. I was in the Party from 1970 until the end of '72. I left at the beginning of '73.
Why'd you leave?
There's a very thin line between a revolutionary ideology and
a gangster mentality. And I seen too much of that gangsterism on a
national level and I didn't want to get involved in that. So
that's when I basically left the most glorious time of my
existence. Up until now. It was when I was in the Panther party. Cause I
seen us going to which was classified as the most dangerous housing
development in the country: a Desire housing project. It was in the
Ninth Ward. And within a month, we had made it one of the safest
communities in New Orleans. And it's not because of the fact
we was no bad dudes or nothing like that, cause I was one of the biggest
members, and I was only weighing about 150 pounds. So it
wasn't that we was no big guys, and with no black berets and
all this, but what we did do, we went in to the community and cleaned it
up. We made sure that people understood the importance of establishing a
drug-free zone for our kids and our elders. We stopped the
black-on-black violence by creating alternatives. We was feeding
children. We was cleaning up these. Our pest control program was a total
success
You know, and then the crime. By letting people know that, "Hey, we will not tolerate nobody breaking in to anybody homes here. Break in to someone's home, and we find out, you have to leave this development, or you's have to deal with us." And most people understood it, because we protected their homes and their parents' homes just like we protected anybody else home. You know? So with the drugs, we had came to the decision after the New York Panther 21, I can't remember the exact party member, wrote that piece on "Dope + Capitalism = Genocide." It had a profound effect upon my life. All the way up until today when I see so many young men losing their lives. Like yesterday, these young men shot a police. That was probably drug-related and I thought about that "Dope + Capitalism," it still equals genocide.
So we started dealing with those things. Our free breakfast program at
one time was feeding as many as up to four hundred kids a morning. My
wife was in charge of the breakfast program, and I used to take great
pride in that. By the fact that I was over security, most of my days I
wasn't out above ground. I spent most of my time what we used
to call underground. I wasn't the person that was in front of
the camera, you know, but I was the person watching the person with the
camera. I gave lessons on firearm safety, self-defense. These are the
things that I did and again, within one month, within that same little
month, we did so many great things. I mean to walk around the community
that was full of crime, and then to come back and see that same
community, you know. You could start seeing the elders, you know, out at
night, sitting outside, not
And then when the shoot-out came, [I was] blessed to be around the greatest inspiration in my life, [my] young brother. He was younger than me, he was nineteen, I was twenty-two. Charles Scott, from outta New York, came down. Steve Green was out of town, and the police waiting until he left to wanna raid our office, because if he would have been here, I believe it would have been dealt with in a different way. But Charles was such a remarkable young man.
Cause once we knew that it was going to be a shoot-out, we got all the women and children out. Like I said, I had two. My oldest son and daughter. We got them out of the house, and all the women with children. And we had a meeting and told people that probably many of us will be dead, you know, by the end of the next day, and those who are wanting to leave had the option of leaving, and seeing eleven people, three of 'em women, saying "Well, hey, we are not leaving. We gonna stay here. Whatever happen, we gonna live together, we gonna die together." By the fact that, again, I was over security, they asked me to leave, but I said it wasn't my place to leave because I was sworn to protect Charles. So whatever happened to Charles, had to happen to me. So we went through the shoot-out.
Next morning [there] was eleven of us in a two story wooden structure. We
had a chance to sandbag one side of the house, cause we had literally
turned the office into a bunker. Everybody knew that a shoot-out was
gonna happen. And Brokie, Leroy,
So, when was this, what year was this?
It was September the 15th, 1970.
And where was the office located?
In Desire, on Piety. That night, before the shoot-out, we knew, cause it
was sporadic shooting between us and the police all night. I was always
trained that a guerilla will never allow himself to be conned, you know,
that a Panther never allow himself to be conned. So I was out in the
community, and with many of us, we had dug bunkers under the project. We
felt like this is what we is gonna fight. We had devised mechanism[s] of
getting out, and my contention was let's fight a good battle
and then hijack one of these tugs and go to Kielb, you know, get out of
New Orleans. But Charles in his wisdom said, "No,
uh-uh." He said, "If you fight up in the community,
[you] destroy the people that we
The shoot-out lasted about twenty or thirty minutes. Seemed like it was
all day. But the night before, a lady in the community came and put a
prayer cloth on the wall, and said, "If anybody in here
praying, nothing gonna happen to y'all." And you
know, we was all drunk, half-tooled up on weed, we's been
smoking weed, drinking that old Thunderbird wine, so
And after the shoot-out, after the twenty minutes of actual gunfire, the
police had an armored car that they would pull up in front of our office
with a 50-caliber machine gun, and just fire. And it was literally set
the walls on fire. Then all of a sudden was a quiet. And I guess they
figured that by then they had killed all of us. The place was full of
tear gas, you know, and they was pumping [it] in. As fast as they shoot
a canister in, we'd throw it out, but it was coming in so
fast that you just couldn't throw them out fast enough. And
there was eleven of us in the house with a hundred police shooting at
us. When it stopped, Charles asked me, he said, "Go to the
rooms, find out how many people is injured, and how many people is
dead." So I was in the second room, the second, the
And so I crawled back and I told Charles, I said,
"Man," I said, "Bro, you ain't
gonna believe this." He said, "What? How many of them
is dead, bro?" I said, "Bro, nobody is dead."
He said, "How many of 'em is shot?" I said,
"Nobody is shot." He said "What??" I
said, "Man, nobody is shot." He said, "Man,
you mean these motherfuckers have been shooting at us"
—excuse my expression, but that's what he
said—"You mean to say these motherfuckers been
shooting at us for this long and they ain't shot
nobody?" I said, "Bro, nobody is shot." And
he said, "Well, then, brother, listen, we done did what we can
in here. Now we gonna take it to the courts." That's
when I told him again, "Hold up, brother, you know, this is
Louisiana. They don't take blacks to court. They
ain't gonna do nothing but kill us, bro. If we gonna die,
let's die in this house." He told me, he said,
"Well, I'm gonna tell you, if they gonna kill us,
they gonna have to kill us but we gonna walk out of this house as black
men and women, and as members of the Black Panther party. We gonna come
out of this house and we gonna come out of here with our heads held
high, and we gonna come out here letting the community know that we are
here and
So I went and got everyone, told Leroy and them to jump down from up in
the attic, come on down, and all of 'em was saying the same
thing: "Man, Charles, the law sits by, we gonna walk outta
here, these people
I was the last one to come out, and after we came out, the people in the community wouldn't leave, that's the reason why they wouldn't kill us. And a couple of 'em was asking me to, cause we had to come out some winding stairs, and some of them was keeping the police attention, a couple of them was telling me to run under the house. And I think I could've made it if I would have went under the house but I didn't. Many times where I was sitting in jail I thought about what I shoulda did, but I didn't. Cause I couldn't abandon my comrades, and we went on, we left from there. They brought Ryan and I, we was the biggest members of the party, made us go back in the house, and that's when we really saw just how blessed we was, and what we had survived. Then they took us from there straight to court. We was all charged with five counts of attempt murder, and I don't know why, to this day, why we was just charged with five counts. But we was all charged with five counts for murder on police officers, and after that arraignment, we was taken straight from there to Death Row. And we stayed up on Death Row until after the second shoot-out.
The second time, when they went to shoot out, it [was] probably cause as soon as they took us to jail they re-opened the office. Out there, Francois, my wife at that time Barbara, Carol, these sisters, and Crack, Noels, Head , these was the brothers from out of the Calliope project. Cause most of us had hung them projects. We had the only chapter of the Black Panther Party that was basically made of ninety percent people from out of public housing.
They re-opened the office. Now, Head and 'em, they was from out of the Calliope. Shelly Baptiste, one of the most courageous black men I ever had the privilege to be around, he was from out of the Magnolia. So we had St. Bernard, Magnolia, the Desire, and we did things that never happened before in the history of New Orleans, cause never before had you ever had people from public housing going to another housing development and do anything. Or even be accepted, but we was embraced. And protected by residents from the Desire housing project, when we only had two members then, and both of them joined while we was in Desire—Brokie, he's deceased now, who was a cook, and was able to cook his way into the party, because we had our bunch of women, but none of 'em could cook. My ex-wife left much to be desired at that time. But Brokie came in and he cooked, and next thing you know he cooked his way into becoming a member.
We was all up on Death Row that night, and that was my first time I met Moonlandrew cause that night, while we was all on Death Row, he came around just to tour us. I can remember Ed telling him, "Man," cause he wanted to say something to Ed, and Ed told him, "Man, this ain't no damn zoo." You know? And that was my first time ever seeing him.
By that time, right before the second shootout, we had told Crack and 'em what they could expect, but Bread was with 'em and Bread was the true essence of a guerilla. He was with the Black Liberation Army. He was in there with 'em for the second shoot-out. That's only time I remember the Panther Party here in New Orleans was shot, a sister by the name of Betty Toussaint, the second time. When they first tried to raid our office they came with a battle tank. The city had bought a battle tank. So I said, "Now, boy, here they bought a tank and there's nothing but about, I mean, it was never over forty of us."
When they came to raid the second time, the community surrounded the office. That's a picture of it, right there, and I always keep that to remind me, you know? And they wouldn't allow 'em to raid the office. Cause they refused to move. And the police was steady trying to force 'em to move, and that was in the act of non-violence defiance, because we was hopin' that all those young guys was gonna pick up guns, you know, but they didn't. And they stood there, without guns, and stood before the police, and said, "No, you ain't raiding our office, you ain't going in there and destroy our community, and if you going do it, first you gonna have to kill us." I could remember sitting in my cells. "Man, what in the world is wrong with those guys?" Boy, you know the police don't kill 'em. But it forced them to wait through.
Now they came in and raided the office, but they came in dressed as priests. They had some priests from Loyola that had been working with us off our free breakfast program. They was coming around, cooking food with us and all this, and then
[END OF DISC 1, TRACK 1]
[START OF DISC 1, TRACK 2]
They gave their uniforms to the police, told us that they was coming
back to bring us some breakfast supplies. And this was right before
Thanksgiving. And they came in under the guise of the mans of the
cloths, and raided our office. Betty opened the door,
By then it was too many of us to keep on Death Row and that's when they sent us down in the hole. C-1 was the hole there, and that's when we met, that's when we did most of our organizing in prison. We organized first a hunger strike, that involve not only the black prisoners, but white prisoners, we got them involved. Because we showed them that we was all being oppressed. Through this they send down what they call "black gangsters" in the hope that those black gangsters and those black militants was gonna kill each others off. Told us that they was gonna come and rape us and make bitches out of all of us. So we told 'em, "Well, just send 'em on down, you know, they can make whatever they want outta us," because I knew they wouldn't. I don't care how many people they send down, they wasn't organized, but we was organized. So they sent down about 30 of us and they sent down about forty or fifty of these so-called black gangsters, and it was one of the most tensest moments I have ever experienced. But when they sent them down, Albert, cause Albert was the first one to come on the till with us, came on and hollered, "Power to the people!" And we hollered that and it kinda broke their spirits, you know, saying, "What! Power to the people?" The next thing you know the majority of the brothers that they did send down as black gangsters, they joined the Party, because of that collective spirit that we had developed, that way of life. That's the only time I seen black men that wasn't motivated by greed. You know, where brothers were looking out for each other, as being brothers.
We moved to Ward 10. Many of 'em had nothing to lose, cause
many of these guys had, uh, I know Herman had two hundred years, Gilbert
Montague had twenty-five years, Albert Witfox had about fifty years.
Angola was already becoming a death camp, so most of 'em knew
that they was gonna die there. And they joined the Party, and chose our
way of life, and it was the best time I had. I mean, I hate to say it,
but the best time that I ever had as a black man was when I was on C-1.
Cause that's when I saw the greatness. I seen where they shot
so much tear gas down there on us and made us live in it and they had
steel plates on the windows. It still wasn't no compromise,
you know, and we stayed there. We used to laugh at the guards when they
come through trying to do the count, and they'd be crying, or
with gas masks on. We called 'em all kind of names, because
we didn't have 'em, and then, "Take that
gas mask off! Punk!"
So it was just a glorious time, and we took it to the court, and we was found not guilty. And I never forget the foreman of the jury was a white guy, and his statement when they asked have they came to the decision. He said, "In the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, we find these defendants not guilty." How the city erupted, how our community erupted.
And I guess one of the saddest times was when I was leaving, cause I was
leaving some people that I truly grew to love. Albert, Herman, some of
the others, who was the essence of black manhood. And Ryan did something
that I had never heard of being done before, and never since. Ryan went
to the dentist to have a tooth pulled, and allowed the dentist to pull
his tooth without any anesthesia—that what they call it?
Malcolm used to talk about it in his speech, the stuff they inject into
your mouth, to deaden the. . . Novocaine. And Ryan just had them to pull
the tooth without novocaine. I mean, these
So I went to California and met with David Hillard, who was at that time
the Chief of Staff for the Black Panther Party. And asked David,
"What do you want 'em to do?" Because they
hadn't joined the Party on the street, and many of
'em was in there for heinous crimes against other blacks. But
I told 'em that these guys, they adhere to the principles of
the Black Panther Party, and I just wanted 'em to accept
'em as political prisoners and as part of the Louisiana
chapter. After we sit and talked, David and his brother, June Hillard,
and Big Man , those three, they said, "Well, if these brothers
feel that way, then maybe they need to form their own chapter, because
there's nothing that we can do on the street
that's gonna relate to people that's gonna live
and die in prison." So I went back and I told 'em
and they formed the only prison chapter. And they have lived under those
principles. Now, Albert and Herman is entering their thirty-fourth year
of solitary confinement. And they have been through some of the most
brutal things
Same thing about Albert. I guess one of the proudest moments is when I finally made contact with him, after almost twenty-five, twenty-six years. When I became an advocate for the abolition for the death penalty, working with Helen Prejean, we was all part of, founded this group called "Pilgrimage for Life." I went to Angola because of a clemency hearing for a person who they was about to execute. I was able to ask about, and I asked this one guy, I won't say his name, I just asked him how he was doing. And he told me straight blank, he said, "Listen, brother, don't you never ask me any questions about that. I don't know you and you don't know [me], don't ask me any questions about that." I said, "Damn, brother, you feel this way about this," and then I seen all the other inmates. "Listen, can you get a message—" "I can't get no message to him." And this was in the eighties, he had been in solitary then about ten, twelve years, and there still was that kinda impact. And '98, I was able to slip into Angola to visit him for one time.
What do you mean, "slip in"?
I had changed my name. See, all my records here was under "Donald Guyton" but I had embraced Islam and had changed to Malik Rahim. So I was able to slip in for that one-time visit as Malik Rahim, dig, so that was the time I was able to see the three of 'em. King, Albert and Herman at one time. Only other time I was able to embrace him and talk to him, I seen Albert in court, when we was going to court, and I saw King when King came to testify on Albert's behalf, and I never forget the stare that he had, cause that was his first time coming out of solitary, I believe he told me in about twelve or thirteen years. So it was his first time ever being in the area, being in the open room. I can remember seeing him while he was on the stand, and how he would just look past us, out of that window. And Bryce, a white guy who became a very dear friend of mine, who's going to court with us, Bryce would ask, "Man, what is he looking at?" And I say, "Bro, he trying to absorb all the scenery that he could, cause he gonna take that back to his cell with him." And that's what he was doing.
We joked about it when he got out, cause he did twenty-nine years. And
that was just under investigation for a murder that they knew he
couldn't have committed, because when the murder happened, he
was in New Orleans. But they still made him do twenty-nine years, and
that's one of the greatest fears that I have for so many of
these young men now. Cause usually, when we really find ourselves, we
are caught up in those type of situations of being locked up, especially
all the young men now. One young guy had been given a life for looting
during this hurricane, and how many more of 'em gonna be
railroaded into prison for the rest of their lives. To see that, and to
see the essence of it, was such a great thing. I know one thing it
always showed me, that I don't care what kind of condition
you are under or forced to live under, but as a black you have that
collective
But that was a part of my Panther experience. Most of the things that I do now is based upon those experiences.
How is it the same, the organizing and the everything?
Well, to start a health clinic or a first aid station wasn't nothing, because this is things that we did in the Panther Party. So I knew that after seeing that this city was without health care, that it was something that had to be developed, so it wasn't nothing. I knew that it could be done cause we had health program[s], so it wasn't nothing for me to make a call for health care professionals because I knew that they was out here. I knew the doctor that had been in the Party, working with us in Oakland. I made a call out to her, she called other health care professionals, told me she couldn't come right then but she was gonna make sure that others came. So it wasn't nothing to start the health care program and health clinic that eventually became a health clinic, the first aid station.
There's talk about doing mold remediation, there's
nothing but a continuation when I sit down with Brandon to start this,
of our pest control program. Everything that we did was based upon
self-sufficiency, so it wasn't nothing to start or to
re-establish, because I knew that it was workable. I could've
been in the Ninth Ward doing all kind of things because of the fact that
most of the residents, the young adults in the Ninth Ward today, I fed
their parents. You know, they came to our breakfast program. They had
their
All my life I've ran across brothers who come up and tell me, "Man, I was one of those that's right up here, you know, we was there, bro." Cause it was 2,000 of 'em that surrounded our office. I mean on any given moment at any given morning we was feeding four hundred kids. Every evening when we come in from doing the community education, everybody used to meet at the beginning of the project and we would march through the project singing Panther songs, [singing] "Hold your head up high, Panthers passing by! We don't take no jive, got red book by our side! Am I right or wrong? Right on! Am I right or wrong? Right on! Sound off! One—free Huey! Sound off! Free Barbie! Bring it on down: free Huey, free Barbie, free Huey." I mean these was the things, and the kids used to just gravitate to us. So by the time we would leave the beginning of the Desire project and march back to our office, sometime it might be about three, four hundred kids marching behind us. Seeing the people used to just pass by and seeing the discipline. They used to love to watch my son do push-ups—he was just two years old, but some of the first words that he was learning was "Power to the people." And he used to love to see things like this and seeing the community coming out, embracing it. And that's something that people tell me to this day.
The first Tenants' Association, and Black Tenants'
Association in New Orleans, we helped create. You know [the] sickle cell
program, we the one who brought that here. Our breakfast program, cause
before then they wasn't no feeding program or no free lunch
program in the school. You went to school hungry, you went hungry. Until
we started making sure that kids going to school went in there with a
full belly. I mean, just
Marshall Fawke, a football player now, I can remember feeding his
parents. Master P, you know, I can remember personally. He
wasn't in the Party, but he was Knows, and Crack, and
Head's partner, up in the Calliope project. I can remember,
remember them, remember him, and seeing now with his child became cash
money, coming out of the Magnolia project. I can remember talking to
some of these individuals up in there, even though I didn't
agree with that movie they'd done, cause I believe they
misrepresented the true essence of
So I could remember this, I could remember seeing the essence and the
greatness of being around individuals. I could remember us going to
Central Staff meeting, where you meeting individuals from all over the
country, and then being embraced by 'em. Where a brother tell
ya, "Man, listen, this is a friend of mine." Yeah,
right, then another one say, "But this is my comrade,"
you know, "Power to the people." Seeing this and
But again like I said it's a very thin line between a
revolutionary ideology or a revolutionary conscious and a gangster
mentality. And most of us don't know how to distinguish those
two. So I seen too many times individuals start organizations under the
pretense of doing good, but later just become a[n] exploiting force
within that community. I really lived a blessed life, cause I have lived
around giants. I've seen individuals, how they grow and how
they lived.
Tookie Williams, from right here, his daddy, right here in Algiers, I can remember him when he was first forming the Crips. Geronimo, right here, Morgan City, seeing him come here. H. Rapp Brown, Baton Rouge. Huey Newton, born right here in New Orleans. Charity Hospital. And I had the pleasure of meeting and knowing, understand, the brother Avery Alexander. Jim Singleton. Dirk Taylor . And I can remember, because Dirk's stand on integrating these Mardi Gras crews and on investigating prison reform. I could remember that the whole House of Representatives put out a petition against us to the Governor to declare that she was insane. And I can remember the great work that she had done. Of Lois Eli. I mean, these are giants! You know, and the great things that they are doing.
I guess it was a greater honor when a couple of months ago, we gave our
health clinic that we started, cause right now, no longer is Algiers
without a community health clinic. We established the first common
ground, and we gave a celebration about it. I was always told by this
doctor that we had volunteering with us, a black doctor that come every
Monday and volunteer with us, and never did I knew until that day for
that event,
Like Charles Scott. From the time I left him in jail, I had never seen him again. Until he was about to die from cancer. But we had that opportunity, and because of Geronimo. Geronimo got out of jail, he's the one who put me at that meeting that we wound up organizing the Angola Three support committee. I was going to New York and he gave me a list of persons to contact that took care of me when I went to New York. This is thirty years later. I was doing an interview with a guy about the Panther Party, and I mentioned Charles Scott name, and he asked me and the sister that was sitting there, "You know Chuckie?" And I almost collapsed. Say, "Yeah, do I know him?!" And she says, "Yeah, well, you know Charles is right here in New York!" I say, "You know where he's at?" She say, "No, I don't know, but I know somebody who do know." And next thing you know, we at Bullwhip house. I never met him before in my life. I'm sitting up in his house with him while he is talking to me, listening to some Coltrane and smoking some weed while he's getting on the phone and just standing, talking, you know, making calls, "Hey, brother, listen, I'm trying to get in touch with Charles. Hey brother, listen, I'm trying to get in touch with Chuckie," until finally he said, "Bro, here's an address for him." And I go over and see him, and God gave me the opportunity of meeting him and the opportunity of coming back and passing that information on that before he died he was able to see many of his comrades.
Leeane Hodges, she's spearheaded an organization for the
evacuees that was left on the I-10. She was with him until he died. But
many of the old comrades went to there
Uh, no, uh-uh, but I'll tell you what we need to do.
Tell me—okay.
We need to
Alright,
Right after the hurricane, we came to the realization that the city wasn't going to provide any services. The first couple of days we was doing rescues, then we moved into doing relief work, cooking food for the people that was coming across, trying to feed them, giving them water, I'm talking about those that was escaping the flooding. Once they walked across the bridge, Gretna, and the Jefferson Police, and the Jefferson Parish police, would turn blacks around. If you was white, you was able to find refuge in Gretna, but if you was black, you wasn't able [to] even enter, you couldn't pass through it. They were literally quarantining, and they would literally tell you, "Take your black ass back to the Ninth Ward."
I've heard people say that what the police were trying to do was just keep order on the other side of the West Bank. Do you think that's what they were trying to do?
No. No. But it's under the chaos that we founded Common Ground. We knew that we had to develop some type of lasting mechanism to assure that everyone that is in need of aid would receive that aid and that we could learn and develop a mechanism to make sure that this never happened again. We was under dusk-to-dawn curfew that only applied to blacks. Raspis, the white guy that was staying here from Denmark, he left today, we had to use him to go get supplies, and he is from Denmark, not even an American citizen. But he came here and had more rights than I had as not only a citizen, but a veteran. He had more rights than I had. He was able to go through Jefferson Parish when I couldn't. He was able to go and buy supplies and bring 'em back to me, that couldn't go and buy myself.
Do you think that would have happened in any other city in America?
Not would, I believe it could. It could still happen. One, cause we as African-Americans, we ain't learn. Here in New Orleans most people done forgot about that, most blacks. And there's all that "Let bygones be bygones!" but they never let bygones be bygones with Nagin and talking about a chocolate city. Let me tell you, if Nagin would have denied access to the whites leaving, Nagin'd probably be in prison, or dead. So under that environment of blatant racism and total abandonment by the federal government, we founded Common Ground, Scott Crow and I. Sharon Johnson, she put up $30, I put up $20. Scott and I basically with Sharon and Ferris Bowles, no longer active in Common Ground, we sit and we organized our organization. Did we have the foresight to see that Common Ground would being done all that it had done in a short amount of time? No. But it's ours, we made a goal to make sure that a mechanism was in place.
The first thing we did, we made a call. Because by then, some black doctors that we had called, and had asked them to call for health care professionals, they was on their way here with supplies, [and] was turned around and sent back because they was black doctors. That's when I realized how dangerous the situation we was in. Because there was no medical entity even operating in Algiers, and it wasn't operating especially for black folks. When we see that, when those guys called me and said they was turned around, I said to myself, "My God, these people just mean for us to die." That's when I told everybody that was still here that would meet with us, "Man, it's time for you to do whatever you got to do to survive."
We made a decision that we wasn't gonna allow the buses that could have removed everybody out of New Orleans, that they allowed to be flooded across the river, that we wasn't going to allow that to happen here. And guys went over there and started commandeering buses to make sure that they could park 'em in front of the community. And that was some of the proudest times that I seen, cause I seen young black men that really wasn't organized, cause see if they would had been organized? Right now, they'd be still writing stories. But they did some remarkable things. They got those buses parked in there, made sure, cause most people around the country don't realize that most of the people was abandoned. And the reason why I'm saying abandoned is cause if you tell me to leave, and I have no way to leave, and you don't help me leave, then you have just abandoned me! And that's what happened. And most of 'em was women, single women with children, and the elderly.
Cause as for the young black men that they was demonizing, most of them
had stole cars and left, just left or was out there doing rescues. That
was the saddest part, you
Again, it was under this that we founded Common Ground. After seeing this first four days, when it was basically hunting season on black men. Seeing black bodies laying here in the sun till they literally explode, that any person of conscience would have picked up and removed. And seeing this happening in a city that was predominantly black. Seeing white vigilantes riding with car blunts through the streets of New Orleans, challenging and shooting at any black that they feel fit to shoot at. One of my neighbor's grandson, they had marked him [to] kill him whenever you see him. And nobody doing nothing. Seeing the black police chief sitting up there lying and crying about how they killing babies and raping women in the Super Dome. And knowing that he made people stand out in the rain for five hours to get in to the Super Dome. Cause they was checking everybody for three things: drugs, alcohol or weapons. They even checked the babies. Now he's talking about they doing all this killing. Where they get the weapons? You checked 'em. How could they be using drugs in the Super Dome when you checked for it? How could they take control of a police force that's known, world-renowned, in crowd control? How could they take advantage of those police, to do all these dastardly deeds? What happened to the National Guard? The Ohio National Guard was right there. How could they do all this?
So you don't think that there were any rapes or other criminal acts?
Yes! I'm not saying that, but not to the degree that he's stating it. There's been a rape at Common Ground! Alright? So things like that gonna happen. But not to the degree that you gonna demonize all the males there. And that's what they done. "They shooting at helicopters." People shooting up in the air to let individuals know where they's at. They killed some young men, just slaughtered them on I-10. Nobody saying a word about it. I bet you this: most men that died between the ages of, I'm gonna go as low as fourteen, from fourteen to probably forty-five, most of 'em that died during Katrina probably died from gunshot wounds.
Most men that died during Katrina.
During that time, probably died from gunshot wounds. I bet you that was probably, if not the first, the second leading cause of death.
Why do you think that black men were being targeted? Was that something, is that a New Orleans phenomenon?
I believe that's an American [phenomenon]. In this country before we destroy anything, first we demonize it. And that was their intent.
Who was demonizing?
Basically the social plantations that run this state, this plantation syndicate, these racists.
And who are these people?
Well, you can look at it, I mean, go on the web site and see where most
of your white supremacists, your hate groups, [are] and look at the
address. It's in Metternich. Where's Metternich?
Jefferson Parish. Look at when David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of
the Ku Klux Klan, when he ran for office, look at where he got the
And that's the part that gets me - we went on back to life. Something happens to us that was far more barbaric and far more shameful for a nation than even our capture and taking into captivity and becoming slaves here in America. We talking about women and children and elderly fleeing for their lives. If Gretna would've said "Only women and children is allowed," you know, I could halfway understand that. Cause as for men, we shouldn't have been over there, we should've been right here, making sure that our community is safe, doing what we can to save our community. But they said none of us. See what kind of impact that had on one of those mothers that was turned around. See what kind of impact they had on her. And some of them lived in Gretna.
Where are these men now, the men who were helping with the rescues and all? Are they back now, helping—?
Some of 'em are, some of 'em is still away, some of 'em is in jail. But they are definitely around. Dietrich, how many of the brothers that had them buses parked in front of, in the Criss , how many of them are still around?
I don't know, not all of 'em.
But some of 'em are?
Yeah, some of 'em still lives - quite a few.
Yeah.
There's a few.
And if you want to talk with 'em, we could arrange it. Cause their stories should be told. Cause they was demonized, and I mean, that's all you heard. "They looting. They stealing clothes. They stealing TVs." Nobody said, "Well, God damn, they just lost theirs!" They go to talk to somebody in that Ninth Ward that done lost everything, and then finally get to safety, and come to find out that the city ain't helping with nothing. Come to the realization of it. And understand that the only way you gonna survive, [is] that you got to take law into your own hands. Other than that, you ain't gonna make it. And that's what was shown. I mean, wasn't nothing given.
How you gonna get out of these clothes that is now full of toxins? How
you gonna get on shoes? Because a lot of time when that water came in,
it hadn't time to get dressed. So you seeing lot of
'em trapped in the attic. And then finally after spending
days in the attic when they finally is rescued, you can't
even get water, so that's what kicked off the looting. And
people was taking everything that they could. Anything they feel that
they could sell, or use for bartering, in order to get out of here, they
took. And I think that they should have took that and more. Because I
believe it's a total disgrace, what this government did, and
as a black man I feel totally offended that the black community did not
come up and [rise] up against this. I believe that's more
than what's going [on] with the immigrants, and look what
they're doing. I think it's more than
what's going on anywhere else. After that, they
wouldn't even give us the right to vote. Wasn't
saying, "Well, hey, how you gonna get that absentee ballot? Who
gonna show you how to do it?"
Well, how do you make sure that those people have a role in helping you build the city?
I believe rebuilding the city is secondary. I believe the first thing we have to do is develop that mechanism on how we gonna survive in case this happen again. To me, that's more important than this damn city. How we gonna prevent this from happening again? How we gonna be prepared? How we gonna be prepared this time if the government refuse to. And Ray Nagin has already said that he ain't opening up no shelters, so I mean how we gonna develop the shelters? Cause it's gonna be our women and children that is here. If we have any sense of community. How we gonna develop this? How we gonna work with the city? And how we gonna make the city understand the importance of making a call for volunteers? Cause there's enough black men in this city right now, and enough men in this city right now, that in case of a[n] emergency you could ask for volunteers and get enough volunteers to get people out of harm's way.
That we could develop the mechanism of taking people to a safe place and
housing 'em in a dignified manner. That we could bring the
health care professionals there to make sure that their health care is
provided. That we could have the trauma councils there to make sure that
they could deal with the trauma that people is under in this time. And
if Jefferson or any other parish refuse [to] open up the doors, to let
the citizens of this city in, that we would be there. To help
'em to force those doors open. I think if Pendleton
would've been mayor, that wouldn't have happened.
The guy who Nagin beated, in the first time he ran. I know he
wouldn't have had no weak police chief,
How important is it that people other than black men be involved in the sort of activities you're talking about?
I think that's the only way that it can work and have the type of positive result that everybody would see. There is no longer two Americas. And that's what we should dispel, that two Americas. Let's make this one. I saw young white men, after I had a confrontation with some white vigilantes, stand on my porch to protect me, risking their lives to protect me. I experienced this. I experienced seeing young whites coming down here, taking advantage of their white privilege to do things that I could not even dream of doing. I seen a time where I couldn't go into Gretna to buy anything, but again I seen whites go over there and have to get it for us. Cause if Common Ground would have been founded by just young black men, right now we would be dead. When the army came in, it would've come right here and slaughtered us. Here I am, I got that reputation of being a black militant, people is looting in the area where I'm at, guns is being stolen by blacks, and I'm known for that in my past history. This would have been a black organization. Then we would have had sixty black men in this yard—like I had sixty predominantly all-white in this yard—if it would've been sixty blacks in this yard, they would've came in here and killed us.
You could see the example of that by just seeing what they was doing to
us. I never saw a white body in Algiers. I saw many blacks. And they was
left to rot. It made
And what's the role that people from outside New Orleans play in Common Ground?
Right now we centered in New Orleans but we not just a New Orleans organization. And we just not a state-wide or a national organization. Common Ground will be a global organization. What role can people play? If we don't come together first, to understand the lessons that we can learn from this situation, we can never develop the mechanism to make sure that it won't happen again. Katrina was a natural disaster, but it became a national tragedy. And what we can do, and what others can do outside of New Orleans. . .
[END OF DISC 1, TRACK 2]
[START OF DISC 1, TRACK 3]
. . . is make sure that no disaster have to become a tragedy in America. Hopefully nowhere in the world. But first, I know we can stop it from happening here.
See, nobody can tell me what we can't do. Cause I done been
here to witness it. I done seen individuals right here in my year,
distributing food, and after all that. And all the while we
distributing, the only obstacle to us is the police. They're
not here to help us. One young man was arrested in front of my house,
which was a distribution center, for the heinous crime of
double-parking. A nineteen-year-old kid, a white kid, arrested for
double parking. Because my neighbors, who haven't been here
nowhere near as long as
People came and they was dealt with with dignity. And they was coming here seeing that the racial divide isn't as great as they thought it was. That all white isn't as evil as those in Jefferson and in Gretna. They was coming here and seeing this. Man, I believe it did more to bring racial harmony than anything else. And this was without government assistance. We have yet to be visited by any elected official, you know, and we have served over 80,000 people or close to 80,000 people in this region. And out of six or seven parish that people come and get help from us, we have served almost 80,000.
And not one - and that's since September - and not one elected official have came in to see what we have done. We have established three health clinics that have served over 12,000 people. And not one elected official have come in there to say, "Well, hey, this is what you doing." We have given coats to kids in the first elementary school to reopen in New Orleans. We made sure that they had coats, we made sure that they had a good Christmas. We went down with the candy and the toys.
What elementary school?
Excuse me?
Which elementary school?
Murmur
You know, we didn't take no existing health clinic and just transform it and re-open it. We created one. And we created one under the most hostile conditions that one could be created under. We didn't do no year's planning. We made it happen. If we was working with the city and this emergency happen, maybe together we could get that 1,500 doctors that Fidel was trying to send here to help us and Bush deny. Maybe we could get them here. We could establish this. With the city we could make sure that nobody could go hungry. We could start making arrangement with some of these grocery stores, because they had to write it off anyway. They all wrote it off, you know, their insurance paid for it, so they could've gave that food away. People didn't have to loot for it. It could've been an organized way of distributing food.
Men who was doing rescues side by side with the police and the Coast
Guard and the National Guard and the Fire Department didn't
have to be turned upon. One minute they working with 'em, and
the next minute they was being handcuffed and charged with looting. We
could make sure that that don't happen again. One of the most
amazing
Do you see a point where you're gonna be working with elected officials, city officials?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Cause I believe my personal feelings don't mean a thing in comparison to what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to figure out a way that I could make sure that I could save this planet for my grandchildren. You know. That they can enjoy this planet the same way I enjoy it. That if they come down here that maybe they may fall in love with these bayous. That's the thing, if that mean working with these individuals then yeah, I'm-a work with 'em. I'm a man who believes in a higher power, and I can't go and ask for forgiveness if I can't forgive. So, yeah, I work with 'em, and I'm all for that. I'm willing to work with 'em. I'll work with 'em cause I believe it has to happen.
I mean, just think how beautiful it would be if the worst-case scenario
happened again, but this time instead of every entity working against
each other,
Any time you go back to the Common Ground some people look at it and they don't understand the significance of it. When they see all these white kids riding around on bikes, some saying that these whites don't understand. Well, when in the history of Louisiana have it ever been whites in this kind of number in a black community, other than trying to oppress it? Never. So again, yeah, I would work with 'em and like I said, I believe that if we was working together instead of against each other, if we could develop that partnership, I believe it would increase the time that this city would truly be open for everyone. If the city would give us the facility and just help us by making sure that the basics—electrical, gas, water—is being supplied there, we could develop enough of this bacteria tea that we make that we could clean this whole damn city. And clean it to a level greater than it was during pre-Katrina. We could develop that, working together.
If we was working together you're seeing [in] all the toxic areas sunflower[s] being planted, because sunflowers'll pull all the iron and the heavy metal out of the ground. So we could clean it up. If we was working together there'd be parks open for our kids to go and play in. If we was working together. And it's sad that we don't. We have to develop the mechanism to make sure that people wanna come back to this city. We would look at more than just putting out them FEMA trailer parks which look more like prisons and prison cells than anything else. We would be finding other alternatives. It would be gas on and lights on and night watch for everyone. If we was really had a partnership—.
What is Common Ground [doing] in the Ninth Ward?
Doing two things, which we hoping that they're doing
everywhere, that they exists: restoring hope and teaching civic
responsibility. We opened up women's centers, you know,
there's no other women's center that was open
before in this city until we
You were saying white people might question what are these white people doing here. They ever question, "Well, what are these people who are not New Orleanians doing here? Why can't we do for ourselves?"
Oh, nobody gonna question that.
Why not?
No, cause see, listen. If I wanna mess over you, I could keep you
looking at your left when I'm about to hit you with my right.
Or that I'm about to take your community, all I got to do is
just do whatever work for, ever since we have founded this country.
Cause the same methods that they used to take Manhattan from the Native
Americans, it's the same method that they was gonna use on us
in the Ninth Ward. That they use on us every day in Public Housing. Look
how many Public Housing
Right now New Orleans was in the grip of a drug war. We are in the grip of a drug war and it had been continued, not one that just started. I found out how it started, it started in Public Housing, with the closing of the Saint Thomas housing project. No regards to the residents. That's all we don't wanna do, we don't wanna lose this money. Because our former mayor is on the payroll and our former governor got a vested interest in making sure that this happen. And look what happen. Look how many people done died as a direct result of not caring about what was going on, the dynamics that already exist in that community. You know, I mean, we was in a vicious drug war before the hurricane even hit. Our murder rate was ten times the national average. Ten times! Why? Because we was at war. Who was at war? Basically men, ex-offenders killing ex-offenders so nobody really cared. Until some innocent person got caught in the crossfire. Other than that, they didn't care, was just the worst kind of niggers killing the worst kind. Nobody cared.
So now we have a chance, we have the opportunity of changing that. The
opportunities that they made sure that blacks, poor blacks in particular
in this city, the opportunity they make sure that they could never have,
the opportunity now is here and they can't stop it.
It's up to us to make sure that these opportunities are
shared. You know, I ran for office under the Green Party. The thing that
I advocated more than anything else was the living wage. I did not win
but the Living Wage Amendment won, and that was just to raise the
minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15. Just one damn
dollar. And it been caught up in litigation ever since. Now, look what
Katrina done done. Now look what the
Do you think things will drop back to the way they were, or do you think that things will stay at this level?
If they drop back to the way they were, that is because we are damn fools.
And when you say we—?
I'm talking about "we" as adults in this city. Not just blacks—whites, Hispanics, I wouldn't care what nationality is. If we allow the city to fall back the way it was, we all are damn fools. And history gonna record us as being such. "How did they miss a golden opportunity of truly rebuilding?" No other city in America have been given this opportunity. And if we could do it here and do it right, it could be an example, not only for America but for the world, of what we can do. I mean, when have you seen this many people that could look at alternative energy? In America? Now you have a nation, Iceland, breaking their dependency on other nations. We could do it right here, we could break this dependency upon fossil fuel. So many things that we could open ourselves to doing to help in our recovery. I mean, we could do it, like I said.
I make this commitment right now, that if the city would just give us the
facility, that we would furnish the money and we would do a
bio-remediation program, a city-wide bio-remediation program. And
we'll clean up this city. That if they would work with us, we
would get the volunteers down here to make sure that we could develop
plans [to] establish the social safety-nets that this city need while
it's in this time of crisis. We'll do it. You
know. Just help us. Help us to create the idea, we'll train
people. Instead of being a hindrance to us, if you don't
wanna help us, just move out the damn way. I believe that's
And as for the levees, I mean, we were preaching against these levees from day one. Just preaching for the restoration of the wetland. We was the only organization that was out asking, "Well what happened to all this toxic water? What happened to it? Did somebody have a wand, did Governor Blanco came here with a wand and waved it over all this toxic water, or wave Nagin over the toxic water, and it all disappeared? What happened to it? Where it's at? What is gonna be the ramification in our wetlands when we released all this toxins? And what we need to do right now to make sure that it never happen again?" How can we develop the safeguards to know, because, you know, we blessed here. I mean, look at people that's in tornado country and earthquake country. They don't have the warnings that we have. We have at least five days notice.
Look at what big business did. Look how they got everything out of
harm's way before that hurricane hit. Look at where that
Avenil Shipyard did. Look at what some of these others have done. What
Chrysler, what Saturn, what they done, to get their things outta the
way. We could do the same thing. Cause we have that warning. We could
have everything out of harm's way. We could do what Castro
did. Category five hurricane hit Cuba, went straight through Havana. And
not one person lost their life. Now if they could do it, and we been
having that country under sanctions for damn near fifty years! And if
they could do it, why can't we? And I mean us as individuals.
Now I ain't talking the government, I mean, I know the
government can, if that's what they wanna do.
So why are there these differences between different types of people in the city?
It has always been. You know, it had always been free against slave.
Slaves have never been classified as equal. And you're
dealing with individuals that say that you not all the way human, but
I'm-a go to bed with ya. You ain't nothing but an
animal, but here, I'm-a have sex with ya, I'm-a
have sex with a dog. That's what they saying, that you just
another animal. But you steady raping our women. You dealing with
individuals that'd do such dastardly things, and you can have
this kind of, uh,
Is it just white racism, or does it have anything to do with socioeconomic issues?
Yeah, a black can't be a racist. You can't be
oppressed and be a racist
Will it be given to you in New Orleans?
No, New Orleans is in America. No, indeed.
You think it'll change after Katrina? You were talking about the racial harmony in Common Grounds—.
Oh yeah, I think it's already changed in New Orleans. This election showed that. Listen, Nagin won by two elements: blacks, and white conservatives. Not white liberals, white conservatives. I mean, you gonna take white conservatives and blacks voting together. The last time that was done was during Reconstruction. But then at the same time you had a white candidate that took the white liberal-minded vote, and blacks, and worked together, and badly lost. I mean it had never happened before. May never happen again.
So yeah, I think I could see a better New Orleans. If we take it out of state hands, I could see us creating a school system that'd be second to none. Globally. You know, cause I'm seeing some of the best minds in America come here and talking about helping us establish it. We done have students from Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Sarah Lawrence, Stanford, University of Virginia, Howard. We done had over two hundred universities that come and assist us. And just think if those two hundred would also assist our school system to re-establish itself. I mean, we have golden opportunities. The first thing we have to do, we have to stop and take the time to analyze the opportunities that we have.
So what type of opportunities do you have now?
Right now we have all the university and the focus of this nation upon us. We need to take the time to rebuild this city.
What types of changes should you be making?
I think the first thing that we need to do is live up to the inauguration statement that Moon Landrieu made when he was first elected Mayor, that's on the Moon Walk. We need to live up to that. I don't know the words verbatim, but you know if you go out there and you read that statement that's on that plaque that's there, if we live up to that, nothing else would be needed. And that's basically that we start off an opportunity to everyone only based upon their ability, not upon their race or their class or their religion. We need to start living up, we need to build that. If we saying that we want America, we have the opportunity now that we could develop one America. You know, we could make that crystal clear, dig, and if we not want one America and we are two Americas, then we need to also develop the mechanism that that second America, you know, is awarded the same opportunities. And I mean, not with that Number One, but in spite of Number One.
When you say "opportunities," are you talking about education or are you talking about money?
I'm talking about all of the above. I'm talking about everything that it takes to make a community, the only coping mechanism that the individuals that reside there need. I'm talking about somewhere where no longer would kids need to be getting high in order to live in poverty. Look at some of these young kids—their first brush with the criminal justice system is not for committing murder, it's for a marijuana charge. Because they feel like they got to get high to deal with the poverty that they see. They got to deal with this, this is the way they got to survive.
So the first thing that we do, we take these kids, some of 'em as young as nine and ten, and we chain 'em down like slaves. And we put 'em in the most violent environment that they could be in and then expect 'em to come out and be civil. All this got to change, and now we have that ability. We can change it. So these the opportunities that I'm talking about. We could change this. We could stop this, we could end it right now. We could make a call and get enough volunteers down here that these kids could start seeing some real positive role models. Other than somebody walking around with their pants hanging off their behind, talking all out the side of their neck. You know, they could start understanding that there's black men with dignity in this country. They could start understanding that with women, you could achieve the type of economic success you want for you and your family without being classified as a whore or a bitch. We need to understand that, but when we understand it, we got to address it. We got to address it and sit down and look at it for all the ugliness that exists. You can't hide or sugarcoat anything. We got to say, "Yeah, New Orleans was a mess. But now, the new New Orleans, it's gonna be a city that you gonna want to come to."
Do you think that that will happen? Will the change start happening by this August, a year from Katrina?
I believe the beginning of it have already happened. I don't believe it's going to [take] a year, might take ten years. But I can see us on that road.
What do you think the city would be in ten years?
I think this gonna be probably the most progressive city in the world. I
believe it's gonna be a city that tourism gonna play a major
role cause everybody gonna wanna come here to see just what we was able
to accomplish. I believe
I could see the creation of another progressive hospital or a black hospital. We once had one, one of the few in America, Flint Goodwitch . I could see us developing that kind of mechanism again. I could see us becoming the example of community health clincs. And the importance of preventive medicine. I could, oh yeah, I mean I could see so many opportunities there ten years from now. I could see our community being economically on our feet to the degree that if we don't have the rights here that we wish to have, that we could leave and go anywhere in the world and help the community to uplift itself. I could see us doing this. I have great hopes for New Orleans, and I have great hope for America.
Do you think those things will happen?
Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I'd say cause we have no other choice. Cause if it don't happen we gonna destroy ourselves. Listen, we don't stop global warming now, and leave it for our children to stop it, it's gonna be too late. If we don't deal with the developing environmental response to our blatant neglect, I mean, we doomed. We got to set this. That's the duty of this generation here. We caused it, we need to set a mechanism to fix it. We need to deal with our national debt. To make sure that I don't leave to you a legacy of paying for things that I enjoy. Cause right now that's what we about to do.
You know, we nine trillion dollars in debt. Who gonna pay it? It ain't gonna be paid in my lifetime—you gonna have to pay it. So I mean we need to look at this. I could see this city having a storm protection system that's gonna be the marvel of the world. Where one time our canal system was the marvel of the world. I could see us developing that again. I could see us restoring our wetland. I could see that if we would come together right now by 2050, that half of the wetlands that we have lost are be restored. And on our way to restoring the other half. Nobody by the end of a hundred years, give us a hundred years, what'd that be, about 2106? Shit. I could see our kids enjoying the wetlands like our forefathers enjoyed 'em. I could see this being the most environmentally friendly, I could see us having a part of New Orleans that would be just like Venice. That we have learned that New Orleans is an area prone to flooding and we cannot prevent nature from taking its course so we gonna live within nature. And I believe it's gonna be a tourist attraction. Just think, if it was a full community in the United States where people was going door to door by boats. Everybody wanna come here and see it, especially in a city that's known for its food and its ability to throw a party. And New Orleans have those things.
I was once told that this is the most African city, outside of Africa, in America. New Orleans. So I could see all this. I could see our heritage, I could see it in my grandson, my son right here, in Dietrich's son. I could see it in him. I could see it when I go through these areas like Christopher Homes and the Woods and Fisher. I could see it in these kids' eyes. Some of them now, you know, they ain't looking at being no rap artist. Some of 'em talking about being doctors now. I could see it over with the kids in program[s] that Tyler have developed.
Cause I'm-a tell you, if you ever wanna see a tutorial program, go and see the one that we have developed at Second Good Hope. Go over there and look at the books, look at the fact that this is the only tutorial program in the city, and probably in the state, that will have two staff social workers right there, committed to making sure that these kids will get some kind of professional way of relieving that stress, of the trauma that they have been through, through this hurricane. Look at and see what they're doing. Look at and see these kids that we gonna take this summer and teach 'em civic responsibility. And see what these kids gonna enjoy come August. See 'em out there in the wetlands. Planting trees. See 'em cleaning up and helping the elderly.
Oh, yeah, I could see this being an example. Just like I told you earlier, you know I run across individuals that's telling me about how I fed their parents. Now I run across individuals that tell me how I fed their wives, you dig, and their children. You know, "Man, listen bro, come here bro and lemme show you some love." "Yeah, well, what's up, baby, I went around there to your health clinic. You know, that health clinic y'all started? You know, I went around there, bro, and I got a three-month supply of my prescription. I just went over there to get enough to last me till pay day. And they gave me a three-month supply of Cubadin, or blood pressure. Man, you know, they looked out for me." And with that there getting involved, I'm seeing individuals tell me, "Hey man, listen, what can we do to make sure that this clinic continue? I heard y'all needed help, bro." I mean, I see this, so I know that it's gonna happen. To what degree? I hope it be one that cover the whole city, but if not, I betcha it's gonna be a segment of the city that's gonna be truly progressive.
So can you see your children or your grandchildren living in this city?
Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed! I could see not only my grandchildren, you
know, I could see my
Why is there more money?
Cause one, they making more money away than they was making here, that's the first thing. Two, there's more money in the community now then there ever was. The construction money. That construction dollar never was as great as it is now. The wages. I mean, you having individuals that's coming back, like I said, they ain't working for $5.15. I don't believe there's a job in New Orleans for $5.15. I believe that you ain't gonna be able to get nobody working for under $8.50. Hey, I mean, it's a good thing. I seen families that one time was surviving on seven, eight thousand dollars a year, now got twenty-two, twenty-three thousand dollars coming into the house. And some of them jumped from seven to forty, because them and they mate is working. And in some cases, their kids now has got a job. You know, where all type of money coming in.
I mean, you wanna see how good this city is doing? Go to De Gaulle and
Landry, to that car detailing place.
If we make sure that the criminal element, those that are just bent on exploitation, whether they're black or white, make sure that they never get a chance to get grounded into the community once again. And again, we can't arrest our way out of it. We got to make sure that the opportunity for it is no longer seen as the only opportunity. The people need to see it for what it is. Because if that's the only opportunity that was given, then you can't expect a person not to take it. But now it's not the only opportunity. And we can make sure that it never again become the only opportunity. You know, I don't see it happening. I don't see New Orleans falling under that.
I know right now we are caught up into a lot and especially over here.
Come to find out that the little dude who shot that police from right
over here. That last few murders that done happen, quite a few of
'em happened right here in these communities. But we are here
and we making a difference. We gonna start creating jobs and other
opportunities for 'em. Cause I believe the best deterrent to
a life of crime is a liveable,
So what's the future for Common Ground?
Oh, like I told you the future for Common Ground is that next year, in our second year, Common Ground will be a global organization. And you will find that there's a Common Ground in Africa, you will find that there will be a Common Ground presence in Europe, in Asia. You will find that it will be a network between these organizations, to make sure that the same opportunities that's offered in the streets of New Orleans is also offered in the streets of Baghdad, in Africa, Asia, you'll see that. And you'll see individuals that is proud and honored to say that they have been a part in the building of this, and now that they will be sharing the opportunities that exist within. I'm gonna tell you, I look at these individuals that's coming down here, they're my saviors. And I can't wait till that day I can show my appreciation. And I could see that.
So that's for Common Ground, that's gonna be around
whether I be a part of it or not, I don't know. Cause I think
that you only could keep a child a child for so long. And some kids, it
takes a while for 'em to grow up, and some grow up quick.
That's my son, but I ain't trying to raise him.
What I look like, trying to raise a big ol' ugly boy like
that? I can't raise him. So all I can do now is become
friends with him, and teach him some of the things that I know. And
teach his friends some of the things that I know. Because
he's not guaranteed to be here, but if we could develop that
mechanism we could make sure
You just watch Common Ground. Man. Look what we done done in ten
months—we done had our ups and our downs, some people got mad
and ran off, others left in tears because they didn't want us
to leave, some been here damn near as long as I've been here
and still don't understand what this is all about, and you
have others that only come here for a day and understand what
it's all about and its potential. We done had 'em
extremely young and had extreme old. Had people to come down here to
volunteer with us that was in their seventies. Kay, I don't
know if she was here when you was here today, Kay is, I believe,
seventy-four, seventy-five years old. And down here helping us. Then we
done have some as young as twelve. I believe that when Sincere came, he
came
No, he was ten.
Ten? What was his name?
Logan
Eh? Logan, that's right!
Logan.
I can't remember all the names cause I done met so many
people, but I mean it's been such a great ride for me because
of the fact I've been honored to see it in the position that
maybe the average person couldn't. But I tell you what, I
know that anything is possible. And I'm a firm believer that
the key to success is faith and spirituality, second: confidence in
yourself, and the third is be willing to make sacrifices. I believe if a
Any final thoughts?
Huh?
Any final thoughts?
No, I just hope that in some way this time and the sacrifice we have both made, by you doing the interview and by me being interviewed by you, will inspire someone else to never give up. And to never allow someone to make you believe that we cannot work together. Cause if we stop working together at Common Ground tomorrow, we can show that we can endure, and we can come together even for how brief the moment it is, that we can enjoy, enjoy that sweet taste. So with that, all I can say is thank you.
END OF INTERVIEW