Korean American New Orleans Solidarity Delegation
Channel: KRC 민족학교
Date: 24/04/2011

Solidarity Activities with Black and Muslim Communities

Korean Resource Center and NAKASEC dispatched two recovery effort solidarity delegations to the People's Organizing Committee (POC), a New Orleans organization committed to bottom-up organizing led by the poorest black peoples. The first team of Dae Yoon, Christine Lee, Morna Ha worked for one week during June; the second team was made of staff (Sungpyo, Juhyung, Seon-Joo, Yongho) and KRC's youth group ORAnGE (Sang Hoon, Eunice, Jessica, Esther, Susie, Hanna, Juyoung, Chungmok, Changryul, Sang, Taiyoun) and worked for ten days in August.

Those living in the 9th Ward are the poorest blacks who have been systematically discriminated by the United States and ignored by politicians and mainstream charity organizations. Many houses remain abandoned to the weather, and the government is applying eminent domain and selling property to corporations. New Orleans was a city of 500,000 where 350,000 was black; 250,000 blacks either died or have been transferred to other states with few ways of returning home. The city is being redeveloped as a white-centered city.

The 20 billion raised last year is only being given to certain developers and organizations. Other organizations demand the use of these funds for recovery efforts. POC, however, is fighting to rebuild the community from the bottom-up, led by the poorest and blackest blacks, without any help from the state.

On Thursday 24th, POC joined a Press Conference by the Immigrant Worker Coalition of New Orleans with hotel workers filing an unfair labor practices claim against their employer who had denied them paychecks trying to take advantage of the worker's status. High School Youth at ORAnGE and staff from the Korean Resource Center and NAKASEC followed the POC and joined the fight, shouting "¡No Más Represalias!" and "No More Reprisals!"

Staff at KRC and NAKASEC, and ORAnGE members participated in house gutting work, resident organizing through phone banking and canvassing. We also learned about POC's principles and bottom-up organizing from Curtis Muhammad, POC's founder.

Korean Resource Center
Hosts: People's Organizing Committee
June Footage: Morna Ha
August Footage: Esther Choi