Katrina One Year Later: ‘I Knew Our Unions Would Come Through’

[Omaha Steve]

FULL story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/28/katrina-one-year-later-%e2%80%98i-knew-our-unions-would-come-through%e2%80%99/


Katrina One Year Later: ‘I Knew Our Unions Would Come Through’

Today as we continue our series profiling union members who survived Hurricane Katrina, we highlight Michele and Alex Baker, among the lucky survivors.

After losing everything in the storm, Michele and Alex Baker have gotten back on their feet.

But they have jobs and a new start today not because of anything the Bush administration did. From the time they waded into the more than 6-foot-high floodwaters last Aug. 29 to well after they reached shelter in Baton Rouge, they were helped by the solidarity and support of their unions.

Today, their home is nearly 80 percent refurbished, and Michele has a new job as an organizer for AFSCME, which represents state, county and municipal workers. Alex, a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), still has his job with the regional transit authority.

Without the help of their unions, the Bakers would have been much worse off. But hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents have to rely on the Bush administration for help. And the Bush government has failed miserably.

Michele Baker has some choice words for President Bush when she talks about the progress that’s been made in rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

I feel so let down. It’s like the president is not doing enough to help us gain a portion of what we had. It’s like he cares more about the people of Lebanon and Iraq than he does about us.

I would say to him to come to my neighborhood and show me the progress. It looks like a war zone. All you see is the National Guard and very little construction. It’s like they don’t want us back. We need help. Generation after generation—we lost it all.

Instead, the White House seems bent on keeping the mostly poor, African American survivors of Katrina out of New Orleans. As Anya Kamenetz writes:

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in June announced its intention to demolish 5,000 of the city’s 7,100 public housing units—some damaged and some nearly unscathed—without any clear plan for the displaced residents. Now, a coalition of local and national civil rights groups has filed a class action suit to stop the demolitions and bring over 4,000 residents home.

The day Hurricane Katrina neared, the Bakers packed their SUV and were ready to evacuate to Atlanta. But Michele wanted to visit her seriously ill father in the hospital before they left. While she was at his bedside, he took a turn for the worse and died three hours later. Michele had lost her father and missed the opportunity to evacuate.

Alex Baker, a member of ATU Local 1576, waited for Michele at the building where he worked. Some 300 people—all transit employees and mostly union members and their families—also gathered there to weather the storm. Michele made her way there, and the two of them waited out the hurricane in their SUV on the three-story building’s rooftop parking lot. She describes the conditions:

The winds were blowing. We knew it was a hurricane, but we didn’t realize the magnitude. The truck kept weaving and rocking. The next morning we could see from the roof that the water was rising all over the city and we had to evacuate. So then the group took the air mattresses that we had slept on, and we all started walking to the nearest overpass.

The Bakers separated from the group and waded through waist-high waters to get to a relative’s home about a mile away, where they thought they were safe. But the waters kept rising, and they once again had to try to make their way to dry land. Michele panicked when the water level reached her mouth—she’s 5-foot-8. Alex lifted her out of the water and put her on the air mattress and pulled her along as they headed back to the overpass.


My union is AFSCME. My wife and I gave to the hurricane fund the day it was announced!

[Omaha Steve]

1. Photo for the story