Labors of Love two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

The Second Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is tomorrow, August 29. Two years after the storm slamming America's Gulf Coast region and bludgeoning one of its major cities, New Orleans, La., some Americans remain immensely concerned and passionate about rebuilding the region and the city. Many of those concerned are not tied by family to these communities. They simply want to be part of the solution, to help. Katina Parker, resident of California and the founder and director of New Orleans Labor of Love is one of those people, and she believes part of the solution is bringing more volunteers to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

At 32, Parker wants to match college students who want to help disaster-stricken areas with organizations that need more help to serve survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "I have a friend who organized a group of student volunteers (to work on building homes for Katrina survivors in New Orleans)," said Parker in a phone interview last weekend. "I followed them around to document their experiences on film. Over the course of the week observing students, I saw them go from being excited about gutting homes to really forming bonds with the people they helped."

She was drawn also into the people who'd lost everything and still needed safe, adequate housing and stories of families still scattered and shattered because they have no homes or jobs to which they may return. Parker said it's the plight of young children and the elderly that she finds the most compelling and disturbing. In particular she remembers Mr. Dilbert, a senior citizen in her public awareness documentary for New Orleans Labor of Love. Mr. Dilbert lives with his sick wife in a FEMA trailer and receives $590 per month. He's unsure about how to rebuild or how to find the money to rebuild.

"What I saw made me want to do something," said Parker who has a background in film production, photography, and multimedia. She received her undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University and a graduate degree in film from the University of Southern California in film. "I want to go back at some point and find out what happened to Mr. Dilbert," she said.

Envisioning New Orleans Labor of Love as "a clearing house of information" that connects organizations who need volunteers with people who want to volunteer," she said that nonprofit organizations that provide services to communities "are usually too overextended" to match the right volunteers with the right projects. Usually it's volunteers working the volunteer lines, she said, and those people change; therefore, while one volunteer answering your phone call may point those who want to volunteer for projects in the right direction, the next may have recently arrived herself and be unsure.

She plans to inspire and rally volunteers and find funding for the New Orleans Labor of Love project through its website, a full-throttle public awareness campaign, and her documentary about recovery and volunteers, also entitled New Orleans Labor of Love. Starting in November, Parker will book screenings of the documentary with colleges, churches, and social-action groups.

During the intro of the documentary's trailer, Parker says that "2007 is a crucial turning point. If we don't rally to rebuild now, New Orleans may never be rebuilt." I asked her why this moment is so crucial and she explained, "In my assessment, when we look at the news cycle, there are some things that happen every two years to take our minds off the last thing that happened--Tsunami, 9-11--about every two years. God forbid, but chances are within the next two months there will be something else that gets our attention.

"Initially it (Katrina destruction) was day-long coverage, reporters breaking down on how dire the situation (people dying). That coverage has dwindled to FEMA's blunders, corruption, crime: It doesn't move people to act. People think it's too complicated to get involved," she said. It looks complicated and overwhelming, but Parker believes people will help if given options such as ways to volunteer service or donate money.

She hopes New Orleans Labor of Love becomes a program that offers options to those who want to help following disasters, and she also hopes the project will eventually reach beyond the Gulf Coast. Despite her inspiration coming from watching student volunteers build houses for survivors, she anticipates rallying college students around the country with a variety of skill sets, skills in medicine, law, and business, for instance, to volunteer.

Parker's optimistic but also troubled by the slow progress made in rebuilding the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans and its surrounding parishes such as Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard Parish. She hopes that while she matches volunteers to service organizations, she'll find out what's causing the hold-ups.

She said she understands the frustration of Essence Magazine Editorial Director Susan Taylor who brought the Essence Music Festival back to New Orleans this summer, which donated more than $100 million toward rebuilding New Orleans. Taylor's also helped organize the
Day of Presence, an awareness and protest event which will be held at New Orleans' Convention Center tomorrow.

"I think that Susan Taylor is exactly right," Parker said. "It's taking too long. When you think about the World Trade Center, there was an immediate response. The government didn't want there to be a hole in the middle of the Financial District. But when you get to New Orleans, ... government's missing in action, resources are missing in action."

"It's not that it should have been restored in two years," she said, calling the flooding of New Orleans an epic disaster, "it's that we should be so much further along in the process."

Parker also said that she would attend the UNITY Day of Service, which was held today in New Orleans, organizing volunteers from around the country for clean-up and rebuilding projects today. Furthermore, she plans to be in the city tomorrow for the Day of Presence. You may read about events for Katrina and Rita action at The Black Collegian Blog.

Additional information about the Second Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

• President Bush descends upon the City of New Orleans this evening. The Secret Service required that the Canal Street Streetcar close for his visit.
• Scout Prime at First Draft has a good post about progress of the lack in the New Orleans' Ninth Ward.
• "Time Inc. Returns to New Orleans" two years after Katrina.
• The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation remembers Katrina with a "Sisters of the Gulf Coast Wellness Journey."
• Presidential candidates Clinton, Edwards, and Obama all have plans regarding Katrina and Rita recovery on their official campaign websites. If candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have related plans on their sites, I could not find them.
• "The Architectural Soul of the City" is at stake in the rebuild, according to an article at Nola.com.
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie want to see sustainable housing built and New Orleans rebuilt in the green, and they're not all talk.
• Tomorrow the Oprah Show kicks off its new season with a Hurricane Katrina special asking these question: Two Years after Katrina, what will it take to recover? and If it were your house, wouldn't you want someone to care?
• Death toll still rising?
• The Bay Area, California, remembers Hurricane Katrina
• Richard Prince at the Maynard Institute has a excellent round-up of journalism pieces on Katrina's second anniversary. Thank you, Professor Kim, for sharing that link.
• Trailer living two years after the storm, WWL TV New Orleans
• New Orleans news video clips from WWL TV such as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards speaking at Hope and Recovery Summit

Blog Note: If you'd like to add the Labor of Love documentary trailer to your blog, you may check this link for instructions. I think the scenes are very compelling, especially the one featuring a mother and her small son. She couldn't find a school for the little boy, and as one of the few who's found housing in New Orleans, she's facing high rent for cramped quarters. Parker said in her interview that some families are living in gutted homes and "squatters" are moving into unsafe conditions in abandoned homes.

Photo Credits: Katina Parker photo comes from New Orleans Labor of Love. Man recovering photos from flooded home comes from Time photo essay, "Broken City".

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer Contributing Editor who also blogs at this link.