Katrina One Year Later: Never Forget...Never Forgive

1. One year later, Never Forget, Never Forgive! The Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

2. Message to teams

3. This week's events
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. One year ago. August 29, 2005.
New Orleans. Katrina.

We remember:

Whole families wading in chest-high floods.
Bodies floating in toxic water, a dead grandmother left to bake in the sun.
Desperation, hunger and thirst emanating off scorching rooftops.
People, most of them Black, packed into a modern-day stadium slave ship.
Over 100,000 -- abandoned and criminalized.
Soldiers and cops and even Blackwater mercenaries pointing guns at -- and yes, beating, shooting at, and killing -- people trying to survive.
Families separated by heartless evacuation.

Many, many needlessly dead....

And we remember Bush, fiddling like Nero when Rome burned, heartless. We remember learning how first Congress and then Bush had slashed funds for the levees – in the face of warnings that they would blow. We remember his mother saying that things “were working out very well” for the Katrina victims, as families were split apart and people waited for word of their loved ones. We remember the Louisiana Congressman who said they had been trying to get rid of public housing for years, and now “God had done it” through the hurricanes.

We remember. And we must never forget . . . and never forgive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Message to teams

The editorial provides very important orientation for taking out the anniversary, from the message from the rooftops to the understanding of Bush as a perverse extension of this capitalist system and his aims for s different social order in the U.S., to delivering the verdict of "guilty of mass murder" in the most powerful way at this time, going all-out on October 5.

Check the wcw website as well as this blogspot frequently for orientation and plans. Plans in the wcw website should be supported and taken out to masses.

Teams should strategize with people they know and meet in the various neighborhoods on how to mark the anniversary.

In Harlem, there are plans to have a New Orleans type jazz funeral march this Sunday. Stay tuned.

We should take out the Revolution paper, the flyer, the New Talks by Chairman Bob Avakian (particularly the first couple and the NBA), and the Mass Murder T-shirts. WCW is doing armbands and you can contact them.

Please send in progress reports every 2-3 days. Again, these should be quick and can be in draft form.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. This week's events.

Thursday, August 24th,

7pm to 9pm - We Will Not Forget Katrina. A Special Evening to Commemorate Hurricane Katrina presented by MoveOn.org and ColorOfChange.org with THE ROOTS MOBY. A Special Reading by Black Thought and Julia Stiles, plus much more! at Crobar, 530 West 28th St., New York, NY 10001

Saturday

3:00 PM Marcus Garvey Park - Chico Hamilton, George Coleman, Sonny Fortune Quartet, Greg Osby. ** Directions to Marcus Garvey Park, south of the 125th Street at Fifth Avenue. Take the number 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 trains

Crosby, Still, Nash and Young Concert at Madison Square Garden. Time to be provided.

Sunday

New Orleans jazz funeral march in Harlem. Details to be provided.

1:00- 3:30pm - Malcolm X Grassroots Movement/Political Education Committee Screening and Roundtable Discussion of Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" (Acts 2 and 4) Special Guest: Dasaw Floyd, Associate Editor. MXGM Office, 388 Atlantic Ave, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY (Between Hoyt and Bond Street) Trains: A/C or G to Hoyt, 2 or 3 to Nevins

PLANS FOR TUESDAY, AUGUST 29 TO BE PROVIDED

Also, Mother Courage (rest of name?) by Brecht, promoted as an antiwar play, has just opened featuring Meryl Streep. Details to be provided or look online for them.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revolution #58, August 27, 2006
http://revcom.us/a/058/katrina-editorial-en.html

Join a discussion of this week's editorial -- "Katrina One Year Later: Never Forget...Never Forgive" on Wednesday August 23rd, 7:00PM, at Revolution Books, 9 West 19 Street (Between 5th & 6th Avenues), New York, NY 10011 212.691.3345

Now, a year later, tens of thousands are still suffering, getting cut off government aid, and are unable to rebuild their homes and move back to New Orleans. They are up against a system that sees devastation and dislocation as an opportunity to get rid of public housing and the “problem” of poor people. The people are there, the desire to rebuild is there, the means to do it are there -- but nothing can happen until it’s figured out how the profit is going to be made and who’s going to make it.

Katrina shows how the institutions of white supremacy and the ideas of racism are woven into the very workings of U.S. capitalism and how all this is consciously reinforced by those who rule it.

“George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People”

That of course is the remark that Kanye West caught hell – and applause – for. But it goes way deeper than that. And it points to the most crucial struggle of the day – the need to unite millions to DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME.

What are you and your friends and coworkers thoughts on this anniversary? Join in this discussion and be part of making plans to distribute Revolution newspaper and raise money for teams building networks of Revolution newspaper supporters in this area as well as in New Orleans.


“We don’t need religion, we need revolution. We don’t need to ‘get right with God,’ we need to get rid of this system.” Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA