Dear colleagues,

Maureen Fordham and I would like to capture some of the rich discussion surrounding hurricane Katrina that is taking place on list servs.  As you may know, since 2001 RADIX has been a public electronic resource for discussion of contextual, deep background, and also neglected issues that shape social vulnerability to disaster.  We welcome submissions in the form of word documents you can send us as email attachments, suggestions of links to web based information, pdf files.

A hurricane Katrina page has been created on RADIX.

We are looking for material that will be valuable for lobbyists and activists who view disaster as a symptom of something wrong in the socio-economic and political order.  RADIX is also a place for experiences with innovative practices, especially those that are based in participatory and inclusive decision making process and planning.  Users of RADIX include practitioners, NGO workers, lobbyists, activists, researchers, teachers and trainers.

Opinion pieces and vision statements play a role in such an electronic library as well as more analytical and empirically based writing.  Case studies are also welcome.

In addition, comparative work is vital, as some contributions to these list servs have emphasized.  Just as workers and their families in Bhopal, India exchanged video and other communication with their counterparts in Institute, West Virginia, U.S.A. in 1984 at the time of the tragic release of poisonous gas from a Union Carbide factory, exchange between women and others affected by floods in Bangladesh, the recent monsoon flooding in Mumbai, India, and hurricane Katrina may encourage and support political struggle for their rights.  

Behind the glitzy image of New Orleans as a cultural and tourist center, it is a poor, Black, working class city.  It is the poor who will have the greatest difficulty recovering and least support.  Poor Black women will bear most of this burden.  The current U.S. federal administration's attitute toward the poor at home and abroad can be viewed in two instances (two sharp strokes of a caligraphy brush):  (1) 20,000 people who should never have been "warehoused" in the New Orleans Superdome are now being trucked like cargo some 350 miles to Houston's Astrodome.  Plans for evacuation to many smaller shelters outside New Orleans of those without means of transport should have existed and have been called for since at least the narrow escape from hurricane Ivan last year.  (2)  John Bolton, the nominal U.S. representative to the U.N. (unconfirmed by the U.S. Senate) is in the process of destroying the long anticipated U.N. meeting to assess the progress toward achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Ben Wisner
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