Envisioning a Solidarity-Based Response to Disaster

Partial Transcript:

"These fires broke out, the first full day was the 22nd of October. There was nobody who went to visit these people that live in the canyons. These are human beings like any of us, and thanks to them we have the vegetables and fruits on our tables, they take care of kids, serve our food, the so called forgotten community. So we started going up there and with those 500 truck loads, we made many runs to sure that they got supplies."

"These people were bent over working, working while these mercedes, and jaguars and volvos were pulling out... The supervisor of the camp said they can leave if they want to leave. I spoke to they guy - these people that are here have crossed one, two, three borders to get here, they would never qualify for visas. They literally sacrificed everything, 10,000 of them have sacrificed their lives crossing the border in the last 13-1/2 years, and you're asking them to stop working, stop working voluntarily? They are not going to stop working. And they didn't stop working. They kept on working, They knew that the moment they stopped, there were three people who were going to take their job."

[At Qualcomm Evacuation Center] "Anglo families were getting things off the trucks, 'hey take as much as you want.' A Mexican family doing it, 'they're looting.' They called the authorities, the San Diego police department, ask them for documentation and they don't have documents, that's why they are called undocumented. So they call the border patrol, which deports this family. The fear that the people had about evacuating or going to these centers was realized and the word spread everywhere. These people not only would not stop working, those that didn't work in the fields and lived in apartments, three families to an apartment, were also scared to go to the evacuation sites. And those that did leave were stopped by the sheriffs and asked for their IDs, and these are undocumented people. So they were terrified by this, because they could be deported."

"When the leadership of this city, this state, divides us and treats us like slaves, non-human beings, then we have to rise up."

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"There's no escaping what happened to us in these fires, the big winds came up and the flames started coming you weren't going to stop those. It would have been so much worse, if the wind had shifted or it had blown one more day, there would have been a horrific holocaust, with lives lost over the place."

"I think that the aid organizations that are out there do have the right idea, if you read their mission statements, they don't care about what your status is. In San Diego, the only ones who stopped anyone out there were various law enforcement agencies, uncalled."

"While you are helping people, you can also help people directly who are being intimidated by saying 'just a minute, we're here to help these people, I'm going to take care of this family. No one asked you to come over here and bother these people.'"

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"Some of the problems early on in Qualcomm, were volunteers - no matter what the mission statements of their parent organizations were, these volunteers chose to decide who had a right to get some of the supplies."

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"I think what we are seeing here is a dichotomy of activism, and that is the individual responses that we can all do in terms of our individual actions. But we are also facing systemic evil here, a systemic ideology that victimizes people. So those individual responses are very good but they don't address the systemic racism and evil that exists in our community. I think that, as an organization, Activist San Diego is going to have to step up to the plate, all of our organizations are going to have to step up to the plate, and develop a kind of proactive response."

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"I volunteered with the Red Cross and it was a life-chainging experience for me... One of the big problems we had with the Red Cross is that there were not enough spanish-speaking volunteers. Red Cross has a very strict nondiscrimination policy. The Red Cross was out in the canyons looking for the undocumented, and the homeless, who have not been mentioned yet here. It would be very helpful for me if I had some document or some web site or some place that i could go and say for the undocumented in an emergency situation, these are the organizations that will not discriminate."

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"Can we have a year-round mobilization of resources, food, vehicles and all those things readily available for us to call on demand? We have to have a parallel organization to the city, we have to have a shadow government working just for this type of alleviation of pain and suffering."

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"One of the things we need to learn to do is to empower ourselves. And the more knowledge we have and the more we know what to do, that is empowering. And I think we should encourage everyone to get as much information as possible."

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"The reason that I am here tonight is i am interested in community-based, direct action, solidarity-based responses. I am really not interested in working with the Red Cross, or getting city ordinances, or asking for money from the city, but in us figuring out who can do t next time there is a fire. And who we should be working with to make sure that we're all moving next time something happens."

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"People of color, especially African Americans - I'm speaking on a personal level - have a very heavy distrust of authority organizations, especially San Diego PD. They have not changed, I don't believe. When i have run-ins with them, they come at me with - you're guilty - you can tell it on their face, how they talk to you, you're guilty. The last time when we were witness to an altercation downtown. when they did come and talk to us, a lot of blacks and white folks, they talked to the white people, to get their side. Of course it had more weight, than our opinions on what happened."

"The fire department is the same way in a sense. I don't like having run-ins with them. And then also these aid organizations. I've had problems going to Kaiser hospital emergency room. I've had issues with a lot of these organizations. And that is something that has to be looked at in the future, because that is not going away."

"This is piggy backing on what you were saying about it being systemic. It is definitely systemic in this county. Definitely."

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"A lot of us are a lot better at pushing the activist button than meeting and doing and taking that compassion into action."

"When a disaster starts, we sit there looking for our bearings and meanwhile the politicos are out there campaigning... When there is aid and rescue everybody who is running for mayor or running for president is talking about helicopters and all their connections and all the good things they are doing. And they're on the TV shows doing jack shit, and you just want to nail these bastards."

"Solidarity and empowerment is what's going to bring the movement back... It wouldn't surprise me that we could get a helluva lot of organizations into the same room, create that phone tree, create some kind of web site, so we're not trying to knock on somebody's door for the first time, saying what are we going to do."

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"The idea of setting up an alternative mechanism is totally wrong. There's a difference between social groups banding together at Chicano Park, getting the word out and filling a gap that should have been filled by the government."

"We've got a [San Diego Immigrant Rights Coalition] Report. Great! We've got an American Friends Service Committee Report. Great! These are nationally respected organizations. Who are we letting off the hook by playing this game of alternative? The very people who have the reins of power right now. We should be as a group in front of the city council, saying: You lied. You screwed up. You perpetuated the damage, and you're still doing it."

"Either we take on the government and fight for the power, or they congratulate us for setting up some ineffective alternative. And that's what it will be, ineffective."

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"I got in touch with the health department. I worked up through the medical reserve corps and they wouldn't respond or come to this meeting. I went then to border health, and they said 'I'm sorry, this issue of what we do in a disaster, that doesn't pertain to us, you'll have to go somewhere else.' So we worked up the way... He said, 'It's very nice that you invited us to your meeting about disaster. And of course there is no way we could attend, but you be sure to let us know what you came up with.' I would like to respond, but I didn't want to put anyone into an awkward position, and I don't want to alienate the man. How would you have responded to him?"

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"I wouldn't have bothered with him... What I am talking about is taking on the city government in their agenda, at their doorstep, with these reports."

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"We have got to look around for our resources. We have to look around for stuff that already exists. We have to look for allies... You start in your back yard and you create a network, where to go for resources or what to do when something happens, so we're not standing there like a deer in the headlights."

"There's a lot of crappy things about the government, the way things are done and the way people want their photo-ops and all the rest of that stuff, but that doesnt mean that we can't mine the resources that are out there and utilize them to the best of our advantage."

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The idea of mining the resources I think is a good one. Just yesterday our property taxes were due. The government is well-financed. Most of the organizations we belong to are chronically underfunded, constantly in search of money."

"We paid the money to provide services, and we must demand those services. Any and all organizations that have something valuable for us to take, we need to take it. So we need to go to Red Cross and learn everything they've got to teach us and we need to go to whatever organizations that have something useful that we need go and get it. Go and get all that's there. And then use it how we need to use it. Definitely we need to take advantage of all of these well-funded institutions that have money."

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"There were a lot of good thoughts that came out of this meeting, but we all come together, we have these discussions, everybody goes away and then when the crisis comes we say, 'Oh yeah, we talked about that.' Time is of the essence, there could be something next week that we can't anticipate. So I would encourage people to follow the ASD website... We need to people to do the research, who are willing to spend the time."