There will be a test. Please memorize the following non-profits and government agencies and their functions for Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Omaha.
Red Cross - A short-term relief agency that gave evacuees $360 debit cards when they arrived and put them up in hotels. Now has a long-term program called Means to Recovery that requires evacuees to fill out an ungodly amount of paperwork. Red Cross has come under a lot of heat for making the application especially arduous and for not publicizing it (their defense was pretty much, "well, it was on our website"). Red Cross requires evacuees to go through a registered case manager to access the program. The contract for the Omaha evacuees' case management program, Interchurch Ministries, ran out before they finished their applications.
FEMA - Duh.
RON (Reaching Out Nebraska) - Crisis counseling program funded by an emergency 60-day grant from FEMA; FEMA was supposed to follow that up with a 9-month grant, but it came through 4 months late, forcing Reaching Out Nebraska to operate on a shoestring during until spring 2006. RON staff were supposed to recognize the difference between outreach and case management, but it was difficult, considering the case management void (how do you not give a sick man a ride to the doctor?). Their contract ran out in December 2006.
OHA (Omaha Housing Authority) - Over 100 evacuees applied for public housing. Over 20 were disqualified for a drug arrest or felony in the past three years. Many evacuees ended up in high-rise housing towers. Others went to Section 8 apartments. I don't know how many evacuees got signed up for FEMA's 18 months of rental assistance...it didn't sound like many. Maybe they never heard about it.
Open Door Mission - Fifty or so evacuees went to Open Door Mission, a local charity, for help finding housing.
ENOA (Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging) - ENOA did case management upon arrival, then transferred under-55 clients to Catholic Charities.
CC (Catholic Charities) - A few weeks after the storm, Catholic Charities hired SourceNet, a group that had worked with homeless veterans, to do case management with the evacuees. A team of two case managers ended up with close to 50 clients.
SourceNet - Did case management for many evacuees, and continued to work with them even after a separate case management contract--which excluded SourceNet--went into effect.
UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) - When FEMA got all those international donations, they turned $66 million over to UMCOR and told them to set up case management. They started a group called Katrina Aid Today.
Katrina Aid Today - They were several weeks late awarding the contracts, and their case management in Omaha, through Interchurch Ministries, didn't start till June 2006.
ICM (Interchurch Ministries) - Through the Katrina Aid Today contract, they launched a faith-based case management program in Omaha in June 2006. The contract lasted a year, but the director worked weekends through August 2007 trying to process Means to Recovery applications. In their quarterly reports, ICM criticized RON for stepping over the case-management/counseling line and for not letting go of their clients when ICM started up. ICM also criticized SourceNet for undermining their efforts.
(Okay, brief case management review: everyone under ENOA, then if you're under 55, over to SourceNet, until June 2006--10 months after the storm--at which point you go into a totally different program with Interchurch Ministries/Katrina Aid Today/UMCOR where someone from a local church becomes your case manager, and that person is supposed to recruit four volunteers, which may or may not happen, and then in June 2007, case management ends, just as you're realizing you need a case manager to access Red Cross's Means to Recovery program.)
Salvation Army - Providing clothing, furniture, phones, basically anything on an ad hoc basis; also had evacuees do volunteer work, although this didn't always lead to jobs.
Region Six - Division of Nebraska's state mental health agency that covers Omaha; they launched Reaching Out Nebraska.
Charles Drew Medical Center - Medical care for low-income Omahans.
One World Community Health Center - Another health care center for low-income Omahans.
Douglas County General Assistance Agency - This is where many evacuees have effectively gotten themselves on welfare.
There's more--Douglas County provides some mental health services, for example, and there's the year's worth of free bus passes the evacuees had in 2005-2006. And there are also many individual Omahans (Douglas County Commissioner Mary Ann Borgeson, ENOA Director Beverly Griffith, and many others) who went all out to help the evacuees transcend the bureaucracy.
Anyway, just kidding, there won't be a test. But you can see how one way to succeed as an evacuee in Omaha might have been to just get as far away from the system as possible as soon as possible. Soon, I'll be writing about Brian Wickem and Darlene Anderson, a brother and sister from the September 10 flights who did just that...
Monday, August 27, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Road Rage!
This might be my favorite moment from the last trip to Omaha. It highlights a side of Bobby I didn't get into the Weekend America piece. That piece is about Bobby the rabblerouser, Bobby who starts conflicts (with a noble intention, of course). But Bobby's good at resolving conflicts, too. He comforted Miss Kittye at North Omaha Days when she was having an awful time, and on this piece of tape, he sorta saves my ass.
We were pulling out of the grocery store. I was behind the wheel of my rental car, a Chevrolet that was somewhere between sports car and economy car. I didn't see anyone coming, so I pulled out on 30th Street. Well. Some aggro dingbat in a big ol' truck was going about 75 m.p.h. and found himself on my bumper right quick. He pulled up alongside the right side of the car, and Bobby rolled down his window. Then...
We were pulling out of the grocery store. I was behind the wheel of my rental car, a Chevrolet that was somewhere between sports car and economy car. I didn't see anyone coming, so I pulled out on 30th Street. Well. Some aggro dingbat in a big ol' truck was going about 75 m.p.h. and found himself on my bumper right quick. He pulled up alongside the right side of the car, and Bobby rolled down his window. Then...
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Vitality
There's one word I kept grasping for over the past couple weeks, a word that characterizes New Orleans and all the people I met from there. I stumbled across it rereading Tom Piazza's Why New Orleans Matters: vitality.
One of the things that bothers me when I'm writing about evacuees is that I don't have enough room to express that sense of vitality. To some degree, I have to put all my sources in one category--evacuees--and I have a frame through which I'm writing: poor people who have been displaced through a mix of natural forces, governmental incompetence, and a culture-wide apathy. So each person I write about appears in that context--each scene, each quote is noting the similiarities between these people. It doesn't leave much room for their differences.
Their differences are why I have such affection for them and their city. One of the highest compliments I think you can pay people is that you couldn't mistake them for anyone else. That's the case with most New Orleanians. And vitality is what defines them.
One of the things that bothers me when I'm writing about evacuees is that I don't have enough room to express that sense of vitality. To some degree, I have to put all my sources in one category--evacuees--and I have a frame through which I'm writing: poor people who have been displaced through a mix of natural forces, governmental incompetence, and a culture-wide apathy. So each person I write about appears in that context--each scene, each quote is noting the similiarities between these people. It doesn't leave much room for their differences.
Their differences are why I have such affection for them and their city. One of the highest compliments I think you can pay people is that you couldn't mistake them for anyone else. That's the case with most New Orleanians. And vitality is what defines them.
Omaha in Black and White
I didn't know a thing about Omaha when I flew out there, especially what it's like to be black in Omaha. So I called State Senator Ernie Chambers.
You may have heard of Chambers. Last year, he introduced a bill through the Unicameral to break Omaha's school district into three smaller districts that would roughly correspond to the white, black, and Hispanic parts of town. It passed. His argument was that schools were already segregating and that minority-heavy schools had less resources: why not give the parents of the kids in those schools more control?
Chambers has long been a rabblerouser, back to his days in the local civil rights movement. When the legislature imposed term limits on itself, he was convinced it was just to get rid of him and his filibustering ways. (He's the only African-American in the state legislature.)
When I called his secretary answered, and I asked if I could schedule an appointment. She put me right through to him. I was a little unprepared, so I mumbled something about being in town to report on evacuees and was trying to get a sense of the culture in Omaha.
"Omaha is one of these time warp places," Chambers said. "If you look at the buildings, the streets, the highways, it has the appearance of any city its size. But it is backwards, racist, and very intolerant."
We talked briefly--he had been in contact with the evacuees at first, but he told me what he remembered. As we were about to sign off, he said, "When you say culture...you don't mean arts. If you discover any culture, call and tell me."
-
What I learned shortly after arriving is that what most people picture when they think of Omaha--the downtown "Woodmen of the World" building, new roads and housing sprawling out into the prairie and corn fields--is not what most African-Americans experience there. Majority-black North Omaha is pretty desolate. There are some solid middle class neighborhoods, but a lot of it is small, rickety houses with little yards (it actually reminded me of New Orleans in some parts), boarded up storefronts, and a high rise housing tower here and there. It's not menacing; it just looks past its prime. There are few jobs, and the transportation system is ranked dead last out of America's fifty most populous cities.
Actually, maybe the stats will give you some idea. The third highest black poverty rate (40 percent) in America. The highest black child poverty rate: 60 percent. The eighth largest white middle class of America's 200 most populous cities and the fifth smallest black middle class. In July, there were 31 shootings in 31 days. The state got a grade of "D" for its mental health services.
I don't mean to rag on Omaha. Most people I met, white and black, were very nice. In fact, Nebraska ranks number two in the country for frequency of community service and number three for charitable giving. But that almost drives the point home harder: Something's obviously being ignored.
So that's the irony of the evacuees being dropped off in Omaha. Most of the evacuees were poor and black, and although they were also picturing--in the 30 minutes they had to think about it before they landed--corn and Huskers Red and Warren Buffett, they ended up where many of them had been: in the poor black part of town, ignored by the vast majority of middle class whites.
Hmmm...this is getting a little long for a blog post, huh? It's funny--my editor at Weekend America kept telling me to write into my tape more quickly, and this gigantic post is just to introduce this next mp3. I'll learn to rein it in someday.
Anyway, the mp3. I had given Bobby a ride to the grocery store, so I decided to go in and interview him while we walked the aisles. Eventually, a manager saw me with my mic in Bobby's face, and walked up to ask if we were together (mp3). He said he was just concerned that I was walking around interviewing strangers in his store, but both Bobby and I got the feeling there was more to it than that.
It happened on the first trip, too. Bobby and I were at a pizza place, and one of two blonde teenage girls behind the counter looked at us and asked, "Are you two together?"
"Yes," Bobby said, laughing. "Are you two together?"
I don't know that store manager well enough to divine his motivation for approaching us, and even after two trips, I don't know Omaha well enough to say whether Ernie Chambers is right. But I think I can at least say that I don't think it's really different than any place else.
--
I do have to give props to the Omaha World-Herald for a series called "Omaha in Black and White." They seem to be putting the resources into this and are addressing the disparities head-on. It's encouraging after seeing some really fluffy articles about the evacuees in both the daily and the alternative weekly.
You may have heard of Chambers. Last year, he introduced a bill through the Unicameral to break Omaha's school district into three smaller districts that would roughly correspond to the white, black, and Hispanic parts of town. It passed. His argument was that schools were already segregating and that minority-heavy schools had less resources: why not give the parents of the kids in those schools more control?
Chambers has long been a rabblerouser, back to his days in the local civil rights movement. When the legislature imposed term limits on itself, he was convinced it was just to get rid of him and his filibustering ways. (He's the only African-American in the state legislature.)
When I called his secretary answered, and I asked if I could schedule an appointment. She put me right through to him. I was a little unprepared, so I mumbled something about being in town to report on evacuees and was trying to get a sense of the culture in Omaha.
"Omaha is one of these time warp places," Chambers said. "If you look at the buildings, the streets, the highways, it has the appearance of any city its size. But it is backwards, racist, and very intolerant."
We talked briefly--he had been in contact with the evacuees at first, but he told me what he remembered. As we were about to sign off, he said, "When you say culture...you don't mean arts. If you discover any culture, call and tell me."
-
What I learned shortly after arriving is that what most people picture when they think of Omaha--the downtown "Woodmen of the World" building, new roads and housing sprawling out into the prairie and corn fields--is not what most African-Americans experience there. Majority-black North Omaha is pretty desolate. There are some solid middle class neighborhoods, but a lot of it is small, rickety houses with little yards (it actually reminded me of New Orleans in some parts), boarded up storefronts, and a high rise housing tower here and there. It's not menacing; it just looks past its prime. There are few jobs, and the transportation system is ranked dead last out of America's fifty most populous cities.
Actually, maybe the stats will give you some idea. The third highest black poverty rate (40 percent) in America. The highest black child poverty rate: 60 percent. The eighth largest white middle class of America's 200 most populous cities and the fifth smallest black middle class. In July, there were 31 shootings in 31 days. The state got a grade of "D" for its mental health services.
I don't mean to rag on Omaha. Most people I met, white and black, were very nice. In fact, Nebraska ranks number two in the country for frequency of community service and number three for charitable giving. But that almost drives the point home harder: Something's obviously being ignored.
So that's the irony of the evacuees being dropped off in Omaha. Most of the evacuees were poor and black, and although they were also picturing--in the 30 minutes they had to think about it before they landed--corn and Huskers Red and Warren Buffett, they ended up where many of them had been: in the poor black part of town, ignored by the vast majority of middle class whites.
Hmmm...this is getting a little long for a blog post, huh? It's funny--my editor at Weekend America kept telling me to write into my tape more quickly, and this gigantic post is just to introduce this next mp3. I'll learn to rein it in someday.
Anyway, the mp3. I had given Bobby a ride to the grocery store, so I decided to go in and interview him while we walked the aisles. Eventually, a manager saw me with my mic in Bobby's face, and walked up to ask if we were together (mp3). He said he was just concerned that I was walking around interviewing strangers in his store, but both Bobby and I got the feeling there was more to it than that.
It happened on the first trip, too. Bobby and I were at a pizza place, and one of two blonde teenage girls behind the counter looked at us and asked, "Are you two together?"
"Yes," Bobby said, laughing. "Are you two together?"
I don't know that store manager well enough to divine his motivation for approaching us, and even after two trips, I don't know Omaha well enough to say whether Ernie Chambers is right. But I think I can at least say that I don't think it's really different than any place else.
--
I do have to give props to the Omaha World-Herald for a series called "Omaha in Black and White." They seem to be putting the resources into this and are addressing the disparities head-on. It's encouraging after seeing some really fluffy articles about the evacuees in both the daily and the alternative weekly.
Frank
Frank wants out. He didn't ask to come to Omaha. After Katrina, he "just wanted to wait that little water out." Frank lives in a big elderly housing tower way out on the edge of town, and he hardly ever leaves. He doesn't like the residents there--too uptight. (And I'm guessing by his boisterousness, more than a few are cross with him, too.)
I met Frank the last day of my reporting trip in September 2006 during a "relaxation session" held by some local mental health workers for the evacuees. He was the only evacuee who showed up. It was me, three young ladies from Reaching Out Nebraska, Sister Pat Ferrell, and Frank. In the 1980s, Sister Pat counseled torture victims in El Salvador, so she was ready for the evacuees' trauma. We did body exercises and gave each other massages. I wish I had recorded the session, because Frank broke everybody up every couple of minutes with some sort of puerile joke or persnickety aside. He didn't need help, thank you very much. He has the Lord.
But by the end of the day, Frank was very friendly with the ladies and excited by their proposed trip to the zoo.
When I saw Frank this time, he wouldn't even talk on mic. But his cuddly side won out over his persnickety side, and the result is this interview, full of confusion, humor, anger, and longing for home.
I met Frank the last day of my reporting trip in September 2006 during a "relaxation session" held by some local mental health workers for the evacuees. He was the only evacuee who showed up. It was me, three young ladies from Reaching Out Nebraska, Sister Pat Ferrell, and Frank. In the 1980s, Sister Pat counseled torture victims in El Salvador, so she was ready for the evacuees' trauma. We did body exercises and gave each other massages. I wish I had recorded the session, because Frank broke everybody up every couple of minutes with some sort of puerile joke or persnickety aside. He didn't need help, thank you very much. He has the Lord.
But by the end of the day, Frank was very friendly with the ladies and excited by their proposed trip to the zoo.
When I saw Frank this time, he wouldn't even talk on mic. But his cuddly side won out over his persnickety side, and the result is this interview, full of confusion, humor, anger, and longing for home.
Miss Kittye
Everyone calls Kittye Ellis "Miss Kittye." She's a short, wiry, and doesn't mince words. She's affectionate, stern, and sometimes she seems like she's ready to explode. She won't change her New Orleans ways for Omaha, and her overflowing hospitality seems almost abrupt in the middle of the Great Plains.
In August 2006, one of the evacuees' case workers told me, "If you want to know the story of these evacuees, you have to talk to Miss Kittye." I only met her on this trip, and I still haven't sat down with her to get her whole story. But you can get a real good sense of it out of this mp3, recorded at Native Omaha Days.
In August 2006, one of the evacuees' case workers told me, "If you want to know the story of these evacuees, you have to talk to Miss Kittye." I only met her on this trip, and I still haven't sat down with her to get her whole story. But you can get a real good sense of it out of this mp3, recorded at Native Omaha Days.
Bobby
The whole story of the Omaha evacuees sort of revolves around Bobby Leonard--whether the evacuees like it or not.
When a leader emerges out of pure chaos, those being led sometimes develop a more serious dependency on that leader. And chaos is what these evacuees walked into in Omaha. They had spent 12 days in the flood. The National Guard had shown up waving guns around and dragged them out of town. FEMA put them on a flight and didn't tell them where they were going. They didn't know they were going to Omaha until the captain told them just before they landed. They walked off the plane into a sea of white faces in a prairie city. On top of that, many of them had brought the problems of poor New Orleans with them--criminal records, mental illness, chronic unemployment, substance abuse. Not all of them. But enough of a critical mass to keep things, uh...interesting after they got settled.
Bobby stepped up. He put himself in front of the cameras. He beat his head against the bureaucracies' brick walls. He drove the evacuees to doctor appointments and counseled them when they freaked out. He knew what it was like to have a helping hand lead you over seemingly insurmountable odds. He was full of gratitude for that. And, believing that he could surmount these new odds, too, he held his own hand out this time.
See, Bobby learned to read in prison. He grew up illiterate in the Louisiana boonies, learned to communicate with--as he says--fists instead of words, and got himself a 100-year sentence for bank burglary by the time he was 19. When he got there, he says, he punched the warden. He also says he punched a man who kept showing up to try and teach him to read. The reading lessons eventually took, though, and when Bobby was transferred to a prison that had teamed up with a local university, he got a degree.
When Bobby got out in the late seventies, he started a youth program called Rebirth. Yes, that Rebirth--the brass band named themselves after his program. He kept mostly straight for the next 30 years; when the storm hit, he was helping to counsel drug addicts.
Here was his time to give back. He says he pulled bodies off of bridges and pestered the National Guard to pick them up. He stayed at the treatment house where he'd been helping out--they had a generator, so he cooked for those left behind. And in Omaha, he worked so hard for the evacuees that the state "crisis counseling" agency hired him as an outreach worker.
By the time I got out there in August 2006, though, Bobby wasn't working anymore. And he was barely holding it together.
more to come...
When a leader emerges out of pure chaos, those being led sometimes develop a more serious dependency on that leader. And chaos is what these evacuees walked into in Omaha. They had spent 12 days in the flood. The National Guard had shown up waving guns around and dragged them out of town. FEMA put them on a flight and didn't tell them where they were going. They didn't know they were going to Omaha until the captain told them just before they landed. They walked off the plane into a sea of white faces in a prairie city. On top of that, many of them had brought the problems of poor New Orleans with them--criminal records, mental illness, chronic unemployment, substance abuse. Not all of them. But enough of a critical mass to keep things, uh...interesting after they got settled.
Bobby stepped up. He put himself in front of the cameras. He beat his head against the bureaucracies' brick walls. He drove the evacuees to doctor appointments and counseled them when they freaked out. He knew what it was like to have a helping hand lead you over seemingly insurmountable odds. He was full of gratitude for that. And, believing that he could surmount these new odds, too, he held his own hand out this time.
See, Bobby learned to read in prison. He grew up illiterate in the Louisiana boonies, learned to communicate with--as he says--fists instead of words, and got himself a 100-year sentence for bank burglary by the time he was 19. When he got there, he says, he punched the warden. He also says he punched a man who kept showing up to try and teach him to read. The reading lessons eventually took, though, and when Bobby was transferred to a prison that had teamed up with a local university, he got a degree.
When Bobby got out in the late seventies, he started a youth program called Rebirth. Yes, that Rebirth--the brass band named themselves after his program. He kept mostly straight for the next 30 years; when the storm hit, he was helping to counsel drug addicts.
Here was his time to give back. He says he pulled bodies off of bridges and pestered the National Guard to pick them up. He stayed at the treatment house where he'd been helping out--they had a generator, so he cooked for those left behind. And in Omaha, he worked so hard for the evacuees that the state "crisis counseling" agency hired him as an outreach worker.
By the time I got out there in August 2006, though, Bobby wasn't working anymore. And he was barely holding it together.
more to come...
Arrival in Omaha
Thanks to Delta Airlines, I got to Omaha a day late, so the reporting was a scramble. I picked up Bobby at Florence Tower and headed to Native Omaha Days, a biennial homecoming for African-Americans who have left North Omaha for new homes all across America. Bobby had teamed with an old case manager to put together a food stall and concert, and he thought if he got a big enough crowd down there, he could get on the mic and tell everyone about how much help the evacuees still need.
Unfortunately, it didn't quite happen that way. The stage was several blocks away from the main festivities, and Bobby never got on his plan to have some old-school step dancers lead a second-line-style parade down to his site. Plus, he had a falling out with the other organizer--Bobby seemed to think he was getting a cut of the money he raised for the event, and he thought there would be a big "Katrina Survivors in Nebraska" banner flying prominently in the middle of the field. Neither happened, and hardly anyone came.
The other evacuees there weren't happy either--they were volunteering their time to serve food and raise donations, and with no people...no donations. And no people also means no getting the message out, and no hooking up with the local business community.
Bobby and I left early, and I took him to the grocery store. I dropped him off around 9 p.m., and, with Delta-derived sleep deprivation kicking in, decided to go back to my hotel room and crash.
By the next day, Bobby had pretty much written off Native Omaha Days as a way to help the evacuees get help. But he's got bigger fish to fry. Like the United Nations. More on that to come...
Unfortunately, it didn't quite happen that way. The stage was several blocks away from the main festivities, and Bobby never got on his plan to have some old-school step dancers lead a second-line-style parade down to his site. Plus, he had a falling out with the other organizer--Bobby seemed to think he was getting a cut of the money he raised for the event, and he thought there would be a big "Katrina Survivors in Nebraska" banner flying prominently in the middle of the field. Neither happened, and hardly anyone came.
The other evacuees there weren't happy either--they were volunteering their time to serve food and raise donations, and with no people...no donations. And no people also means no getting the message out, and no hooking up with the local business community.
Bobby and I left early, and I took him to the grocery store. I dropped him off around 9 p.m., and, with Delta-derived sleep deprivation kicking in, decided to go back to my hotel room and crash.
By the next day, Bobby had pretty much written off Native Omaha Days as a way to help the evacuees get help. But he's got bigger fish to fry. Like the United Nations. More on that to come...
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Back to Omaha
Tomorrow I'm flying back to Omaha to visit with some folks who were flown out of New Orleans after weathering the flood for 12 days. Check here for updates.
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