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INCITE! Needs Your Help

Cara

A whole bunch of other feminist blogs have posted this, so chances are that you’ve already seen it.  But just in case . . .

Dear INCITE! friends and supporters,

On the eve of the 3 year anniversary of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and subsequent government criminal negligence and assaults on the low income people of color on the Gulf Coast, our sisters from INCITE! projects in New Orleans (including the local chapter, the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative, and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic) are bracing for the potential landfall of Hurricane Gustav, which is currently projected to hit the Louisiana coast on Monday or Tuesday at a category 4 or 5. Voluntary evacuation of New Orleans has already begun, and mandatory evacuation could be declared as early as today. INCITE! organizers in New Orleans have made over 700 phone calls to women of color and their families that make up the constituency of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic, working to prepare and implement evacuation and safety plans.

Your assistance is urgently needed to help the low-income women of color and their families evacuate safely if need be, stay safe for the duration of the evacuation, and return to the city as soon as possible so as not to fall prey to the pushout that has kept so many folks from being able to return to New Orleans since Katrina. Local organizers are using whatever resources and funds at their disposal to help women and their families evacuate, bond people being held in Orleans Parish Prison out, and support those who make the choice to stay in whatever way they can.

Your support is urgently needed: financial donations of any size are needed and would be greatly appreciated.

Donations online are preferred because we can more quickly send the funds to our folks in New Orleans .
You can send your donation to INCITE online by going to this website:
http://incite-national.org/index.php?s=137
Click the Donation button
Put New Orleans in the “Purpose” line

Or you can write a check directly to WHJI and send it to:
PO Box 51325
New Orleans , LA 70151

This money will go directly to supporting the hundreds of low income women of color that are the constituency of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic.

Once again, the particular vulnerability of low-income women of color and single female-headed households (including folks with disabilities, seniors, undocumented immigrant women, and incarcerated women) has been erased in the face of disaster and overlooked in the days leading up to the storm. With few resources, facing challenges and concerns for their families of their own, INCITE! New Orleans and WHJI have stepped in to fill the gap. Please send all your support, solidarity, sisterhood and strength their way, and join us in hoping for the safety and well-bein g of the people who are already suffering from Gustav in Cuba , Jamaica , and Haiti , and willing the storm to subside or veer off safely before it strikes the Gulf Coast .

We will keep you posted as things develop.

peace,
INCITE!

Good luck to INCITE!, and to everyone who is or knows someone in the path of Gustav. My thoughts will definitely be with you, and I’m hoping for the best.

24 thoughts on INCITE! Needs Your Help

  1. I tried donating yesterday. Tried three times, without success. Can someone confirm here that the donation form works? I think the first time I forgot to include the amount, but every time thereafter it still kept complaining that I hadn’t entered a number, even when I had.

  2. I still struggle to understand who this works – if a woman who is not from a “minority” needs help will she get it through this group or will she be told “Sorry, ethnographies wrong dear, best of luck then”?

  3. Oh, my fucking gawd, you’re kidding, right? You’re kidding, I know you’re kidding. no outrage at the fact that there even needs to be an organization like this, because so many poor/working class women were completly abandoned by the government that was supposed to help them–no, there are snarky questions over whether or not *THIS* org, NOT THE GODDAMN GOVERNMENT, denies people services.

    Why do you think that this organization formed to begin with? Why do you think that they are servicing the population of people they are to begin with? Some sort of racial superiority complex?

  4. Poor people are poor people. You think that the black ones need more help than the white ones do? That being racially distinct means that you require more assistance? Thanks to being racially inferior, no doubt.

  6. MDS makes me want to add to my already full load and start an INCITE! in Chicago. Grr…

    INCITE! was created to help fill the gaps and holes that our government created by not helping women of color. It was not started because a group thought, “Hey, let’s raise money, volunteer countless hours, to screw over white women!”

    I am so not a radical woman of color, but some days…some comments…

    viva!

  7. Mystery dyke squadron, have you ever heard of a poem called “Those Tears” by Chrystos? You should read it, it’s really good.
    Here’s a copy over at BlackAmazon’s from a post called The spectacle of tears. Read the whole post, in fact read the whole blog while you’re there.

    Anyway, whenever white women read that poem, they get the part that they shouldn’t whine and cry around WOC who have so little in comparison, but for some reason they don’t seem to get the part that white women always feel entitled to take the little tiny square that WOC have.

    It’s just so awful that since WOC are hung out to dry with no resources, no help, they got together and did something to help each other, when we all know everyone should be spending all their time and effort towards, above all, helping white women.

  8. What??? Where did “racially inferior” even come from????

    You think that the black ones need more help than the white ones do?

    I think that women of color are *entitled* to help. THEY. DID. NOT. GET. HELPED. DURING. HURRICANE. KATRINA.

    Which is why this organization formed. It is grassroots and is located in the specific community it services, which is largely women of color populated. They believe in the radical notion that women of color should not be left to die with their children simply because they don’t have the money to escape or any place to escape to. They are servicing a group of women that was literally left to die. and I KNOW it is not Incite! that needs to be held accountable for giving ‘more help’ to black people instead of white.

    And maybe you should read the call out page, look at some of those pictures, to have your question answered.

  9. Holy bejeebus. Am I really seeing that argument? Within a span of two posts somebody shows up angry that there might be an organization that focuses on helping WOC? “OMGZ Wut About Teh Whites???” — seriously? That one?

  10. Well at least some good came out of MDS’s appalling comments. They angered me enough to go to the page and donate… is what I would like to say. 🙁 But for some reason it’s not working for me either. Hmm…

  11. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that MDS will shortly bust out the “reverse racism” crap. Anyone want to place a bet on it?

    That is some tired-a$$ shit right there. If you missed where the Fed and state governments totally and UTTERLY failed POC – many of whom are, coincidentally, women ::SHOCK!!:: – during Katrina/Rita, then you WERE NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

  12. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that MDS will shortly bust out the “reverse racism” crap. Anyone want to place a bet on it?

    I think she already did.

    I can’t donate online but I see you can mail them money. I think it’s great that INCITE’s involved.

  14. Seriously, let’s focus on the real shit here. INCITE! Women of Color against Violence was formed for a reason — MDS please go read up on it before jumping to conclusions.

    INCITE! has done some amazing health infrastructure work in New Orleans after Katrina. The Womens Health Clinic and the Womens Health and Justice Initiative are two of the most beautiful and sustainable products of this work. Books could be written about this work, movies could be made. Absolutely phenomenal work.

    Let’s bring it back to that. Let’s celebrate them by dropping some $$ QUICK to them — they need money fast.

    I saw that the donate online page didn’t work for you. I donated online yesterday and the form worked. If you have a paypal account, log into it first before clicking on the icon. If you don’t, remember to put a number amount up top before clicking to enter your cc or bank account info.

  15. You know what? This shit is truly stupid. Mystery Dyke Squadron is simply playing the role of provocateur. Attention hogs crop up whenever they think they can get a reaction out of people who would normally ignore their illogical and erroneous theories. Anyone who looked at the link can see that there are white women right there alongside everyone else. Of course the majority of women that the clinic helps will be “minorities” because they/we are the ones who make up the majority of folks who need the services they provide.

    Mystery Dyke Squadron is a dunce and the worst part of it is that she is not even a particularly amusing dunce. I mean, “racially distinct”? What the heck does she even think that means?

    No one is racially distinct. Whether someone is perceived as being a part of a particular race depends on so many factors that there is no one race that a person will always labeled as regardless of where they go. However, those who are labeled in particular ways are often discriminated against to an extent that certainly isn’t equal to how others are treated. “Poor people are poor people”? Yeah, riiiight! Poor people who are noticeably physically disabled have the same experiences as non-disabled poor people, right? And poor people who speak English with a “foreign” accent aren’t ever treated differently than those poor people who can pass for being born here, right? And poor people who have a lot of children have the same needs as those without any kids, right? The only part that Mystery Dyke Squadron got right was when she said

    “I still struggle to understand who this works”

    That part is definitely true. She is clueless. My suggestion to her:

    Lurk moar. It might help you figure out how to avoid exposing your stupidity.

  16. For the record, I know several of the women in that chapter and they are amazing women who have been committed to helping this community for many years. I’ve worked with Shana in the past, back when we went to college together. She and I and several of the other pictured women go way back and, for what it’s worth, I can vouch for the amazing work that they are doing. There are many white sisters who do “get it” (i.e. they can easily understand why the “poor people are poor people” assertion is simply nonsense) and they are just as committed to serving the under-served population of “minority” women here in the Greater New Orleans Area.

    Uhh, I feel disgusted by the fact that I’m answering the question that Mystery Dyke Squadron asked but I figured I might as well do so for those who may have been wondering the same thing but at least had the good sense not to make an ass of themselves…

    Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts, people! I can’t believe we’re going through this again so soon after our lives were torn apart by Hurricane Katrina.

  17. Folks — my sincerest apologies for MDS. Sie has been leaving really obnoxious comments for a couple of days now, many of which have already been deleted. I thought we had hir on moderation, but I’m guessing sie found a new IP. In any case, this definitely crossed the line by a few miles, and Mystery Dyke Squadron is now banned. I regret not following my gut and making it happen sooner.

    What an asshole.

  18. Thanks Cara, at a time like this when so many are suffering the insensitivity of someone who clearly harbors such racial intolerance is upsetting and not needed.

  20. Hey everyone,

    Alisa from INCITE! here. Thanks so much for the support on all the blogs!! The response has truly been incredible and we’re really moved by the love and solidarity.

    We’ll probably send another e-mail soon, but wanted to mention that paypal was occasionally not working over the weekend b/c of some paypal bug. We called them up to see what was up, and they were working on fixing it. For those of you who couldn’t donate, please try again and holla back about how it worked out.

    Many thanks, warmth, gratitude!!!

  21. A little off topic from post and discussion of MDS’s racism but just a warning, MDS has really, really triggering content on site that has no warnings. Like depictions of violent gruesome, sexually violent murders. please stay away if that isn’t going to sit right with you.

  23. Alisa – thanks for the update and clarification (now I can donate)! I’m glad that they’re reporting that Gustav was downgraded to a Category 2 by the time it arrived at NOLA. Yet, I guess we have to wait to see the true impact. Please let us know how the folks over at WHJI are doing!

    Thanks Cara for removing the links to her blog. I was going to comment on it, but I didn’t want to push this thread off-topic. Although, yes, besides absolutely incoherent, (I don’t think I ever said that many “huh’s” and “wtf?’s” in my life; I was seriously considering sending her links to some writing guides, but I didn’t want her to make her sh*t coherent for anyone) the content was…umm, yeah, what Puppycat said, disturbing and in absolute contrast to this site’s content.

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