New Orleans Survivor Council Turns to Venezuela for Support

[ProudDad]

At least there's one government in the world that folks can turn to for help:

http://www.peoplesorganizing.org/breaking_news.html#nos

"The events of the past year have caused us to re-evaluate the
direction of the progressive and revolutionary movement. We noticed
that those left in New Orleans to drown were the poorest and
darkest-skinned people of the city. Looking around the world, we see
that the most oppressed and cast-aside peoples are those with darker
skin. We are looking deeply at this intersection of skin color and
poverty and asking everyone to do the same. We are committed to
building an egalitarian society. We have concluded that the only way
to accomplish this is to look to those very people who have been
relegated to the bottom of society's heap for leadership. We call this
bottom-up leadership.

Our people have also been deserted by most members of the progressive
community at home. We know that everyone comes to you for help; the
Harry Belafontes, the Danny Glovers, and the very organizations that
we helped to start and that later deserted us: they have all come to
you. Often, their talk is of oil money. Our appeal to you is something
quite different. We think the most exciting thing happening in your
country is the communal council movement, and that is why we are here."

[Cha]

1. JUST WOW!

"Greetings to the People of Venezuela from the New Orleans Survivor Council

"We therefore come to you with four requests:

That you send 25 of your organizers to work with us for 18 months to 2 years and support them while they are with us.
That you provide support for 25 of our own organizers for the same period, to include a trip here to see your model and learn from it.
That you provide engineers and resources to help us build a small demonstration levee to world-class standards.
That you provide resources to help our people take back our public housing communities and provide alternative energy sources for our people who are moving back in because the U.S. government has refused to reopen these communities or provide heat light, or repair assistance to those of our community that have reoccupied."

I hope this happens. Chavez and Venezuela know what the bushits have wrought..they don't even want the damn man in their country.

[ProudDad]

2. Yeah, I caught that!

What a concept. The good folks from N.O. don't want a hand out they want training.

What a marvelous concept. Bolivarian cells in the cities of the U.S. staring in New Orleans. So much for the bushie's idea -- a disneyland version of N.O.

I'm going down to Venezuela soon myself for the same reason -- to learn from them. We can't learn democracy in the U.S. since there's not a lot of it going on here.

[ret5hd]

3. I am almost in tears! What a simple but dynamic idea. As much as I...

read about Chavez and Venezuela on this board, and this idea NEVER crossed my mind!

[Peace Patriot]

4. Wonderful idea! And there is one thing we can learn from Venezuela without even

going there: TRANSPARENT elections are the key to good and decent and lawful government.

In Venezuela, they use electronic voting, but the code is open source (anyone may review the programming code by which the votes are tabulated), and they hand-count FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots as a check against the machines.

In the U.S., we let rightwing Bushite corporations "count" all our votes, using 'TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, and you know how much we hand-count, as a check against the machine totals? 0% to 1%, depending on how big a stranglehold Diebold and ES&S have on local election officials and legislators. ZERO PERCENT (no paper trail at all, or no audit requirement at all) and in the best states--the best!--a 1% check.

These extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines should NEVER have been put in place without a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT audit, at least for the first go-rounds!

0% to 1%. Fast-tracked into place all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period, by $3.9 billion in boondoggle electronic voting funds, engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney--and directly abetted by corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd, and indirectly abetted by the mind-boggling silence of our Democratic Party leadership.

We wonder how Dick Cheney can be planning a SECOND war--with an 18% personal approval rating, a 29% approval rating for Bush, and SEVENTY-FOUR PERCENT of the American people opposed to the first war and wanting it ended, and EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT opposed to any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war?

We wonder why they feel NO accountability to the American people? This is why. We did not elect them, and it will take us decades to extract ourselves from their disasters and undo the enormous damage they have done to our country and our democracy. Their legacy of crippled soldiers, of $10 trillion in federal debt, of wreckage of our justice system and of every federal agency, and of hatred of the U.S. throughout the world, will continue to enrich them and their buddy war profiteers for as long as these bastards live, while the American people--56% of whom opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb. '03), and 63% of whom oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04), and 60% to 70% of whom oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, and have for some time--are left with grave crises on every front.

We MUST restore transparent vote counting. That has been one of the chief keys to the success of the huge, peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) movement throughout South America. The OTHER is grass roots organization. And the third is this: Think big.

[rodeodance]

5. This comment puts the WH (and the US)----to SHAME!

......."The events of the past year have caused us to re-evaluate the
direction of the progressive and revolutionary movement. We noticed
that those left in New Orleans to drown were the poorest and
darkest-skinned people of the city.

[rodeodance]

6. They met with several of the Venezuelan Communal Councils ...............

......... Poor and Working Class Black Hurricane Survivors Visit Venezuelan Communal Councils and Expose “Hatred” of the Poor by Progressive and Government Forces in the U.S.

New Orleans, LA, March 1 - A delegation of four members of the New Orleans Survivor Council and two bottom-up organizers have just returned from a truly inspiring and life-changing trip to meet the people of Venezuela. True to their commitment to bottom-up leadership in New Orleans, they went directly to the bottom: to the everyday, grassroots folk of Venezuela. They met with several of the Venezuelan Communal Councils (organized groups of neighbors within Venezuela who run their communities, and control the resources for their communities; much like what the New Orleans Survivor Council is attempting to do within their poor and working black New Orleans community), and told their stories of survival and struggle to an undeniably attentive audience. The Communal Councils were equally excited and inspired by the meeting with the survivors, and leaped at the chance to bring their needs and requests to the Venezuelan government.

This was the first time a group of poor and working class black people visited Venezuela representing themselves and their own organizations and were not just a backdrop or exhibit for other groups led by the privileged. The effort of the New Orleans Survivor Council delegation to develop camaraderie and a direct working relationship with Venezuelans who are also struggling through class and racial oppression is unheard of in the modern era. Most relationships between the masses of the people throughout the world have not been developed by the masses themselves but by people who claim to represent them, or advocates for them, or those who have styled themselves as their leaders.
..........

[rodeodance]

7. Needs some Recs

[rodeodance]

8. and send this to all your Congresscritters!!

[rodeodance]

9. and to Joe L.

[donsu]

10. kick

nt

[rman]

11. kick

[Cerridwen]

12. Too late to recommend, but I can kick this

:kick:

As much as I've known through the years how messed up the U.S. is, I still never thought I'd see the day when U.S. citizens would have to appeal to another government, country and her people to help U.S. citizens in the U.S.