Make Levees, Not War!
"I like the War Resisters League,” proclaimed Grammy Award-winning folk-country icon Steve Earle at the WRL’s 2008 annual peace award event, “because you’re about constant vigilance against any war, for any reason … anywhere in the world!” Earle headlined an all-star concert at Brooklyn’s Lyceum on December 12, 2008, in an evening that had people on their feet numerous times in response to the raucous music and to the revved-up politics of the inspiring New Orleans resisters who were this year’s award recipients.
In recognition of the courageous reconstruction work undertaken by many organizations in the wake of government negligence before, during, and following the devastating Hurricane Katrina of 2005, WRL bestowed the citation on two key activists as representatives of the New Orleans community.
Kali Akuno, executive director of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), was instrumental in putting together the 2007 International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, documenting basic human rights abuses carried out by local, state, and federal authorities. Akuno was also a leader of the Stop the Demolition Coalition, which used dramatic nonviolent direct action to prevent the destruction of public housing units in New Orleans, in order to make way for the development of New Orleans as a center for rich people and tourists.
Akuno shared the 2008 Peace Award with Shana Griffin, a national representative of the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence network. Griffin currently serves as interim executive director of the New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative, a multi-faceted community-based organizing project centered on improving the health status of women of color, as well as increasing their access to quality, affordable, and safe health care through an integrated analysis of sexual health and reproductive justice.
“It’s very important for me to center my work within the Black feminist tradition,” stated Griffin upon receiving the award. “But I must also have a vision for my son: to create another form of masculinity.” Linking this vision with a commitment to antimilitarism, Griffin noted that “the war in Iraq has directly pulled resources away from New Orleans. There is nothing unnatural about climatic disaster,” she continued. “What is unnatural is the undermining of a whole nation because of its oil. Imperialism not only devastates communities of color abroad, but here at home as well—disproportionately affecting women of color.”
Clare Bayard (left) and Liz Roberts (right) present the WRL peace award to Shana Griffin (center) and Kamau Franklin. Photo by John M. MIller.
Unable to accept the award in person due to ill health, Akuno was represented by evening co-emcee Kamau Franklin, a New York-based lawyer and leader of MXGM who also works with the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of last year’s WRL Peace Award recipients. “Louisiana is one place in the Black Belt South which is special to the Black Nation,” comment-ed Franklin in an interview with WIN. “We wanted to make certain that whatever work we would do in reaction to the crisis would continue after other “aid” groups went home. Fighting for self determination, and against some of the government’s gentrifying attempts to make New Orleans an ‘international’ city, has always been a priority.” Franklin emphasized that it was “extremely important for WRL to spotlight work around the country” such as the New Orleans resisters. “You don’t build unity unless you make these ties.”
A departure from WRL’s traditional peace award event with sit-down dinner, the 2008 festivities did include wine and cheese, Louisiana beer and homebaked desserts. There was no mistaking the musical nature of the evening, however, as guitarist Jan Bell, backed up by the Cheap Dates, took the stage early in the evening with some topical songs. The New Orleans mood was turned up a notch as Red Baraat Festival!, a band combining the traditional Punjabi dhol drum with a big brass jazz sound, had people dancing in the aisles. By the time rhythm and blues vocalist Stephanie McKay began belting out her self-penned tunes about contemporary city life, the audience was ready to clap and sing along.
“Mockingbird” Allison Moorer included in her three-song set the Sam Cooke classic “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Her strong, melodic voice does justice to the spirited piece, whose opening line—“I was born on the river”—was certainly appropriate on this night.
Steve Earle’s own songs and stories covered everything from gun control, the death penalty, and the Middle East conflict to his own pro-union anthem, “Christmas in Washington,” whose chorus pleads for an earthly return of Woody Guthrie. Earle’s encore and the event’s closing, Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” had people happily singing their way out of the venue. But his opening words must have stayed on the minds of most folks as they made their ways home. “I voted for Obama,” Earle stated, “because he said that he was going to end the war in Iraq. Come January 21, 2009, I’m going to do everything in my power to hold him to that.”
