Solidarity, Not Charity! Organizing Common Ground in Portland
author: Finding Common Ground in Portland
 e-mail: brush@tryonfarms.org
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A Call to attend an organizing meeting for an autonomous working group in Portland that is in solidarity with Common Ground and the relief network growing in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
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SOLIDARITY, NOT CHARITY
(Tue. April 11, 7pm @ Free Geek)
Join us for an organizing meeting! We grow:
:Common ground across difference in Portland
:Mutual aid with Katrina survivors and activists
:Grassworks networks to prepare for disaster
:Ecological sustainability through people power
Remember the spectacle of New Orleans? Sudden crisis, social order breakdown, "shoot to kill" police state, mismanaged evacuation, scattered communities, total establishment failure to provide basic services.
But what you probably didn't see is the other side of the story: during the flood, and in the days and months that followed, groups of people worked together in overwhelming circumstances to protect and provide for each other. Common Ground, an organization founded days after the storm by Malik Rahim (former Black Panther and long-time New Orleans community organizer) and a small group of friends, has played a major role in facilitating such mutual aid, along with allies like the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, ACORN, and Emergency Communities and other Rainbow kitchens.
Common Ground has coordinated thousands of volunteers gutting houses, staffing clinics, distributing supplies. It has also founded dozens of projects that provide critically needed services to an increasingly abandoned populace: from a women's clinic to bioremediation, from a free media center to workers' co-ops, from a newspaper to education programs for kids, and more. In some of the most devastated parts of the city, Common Ground is the go-to source of help.
Now, Common Ground is inviting organizers around the continent to form solidarity networks that address their own communities' needs, while learning from and supporting the powerful ongoing work in the Gulf.
How can Portland respond to the call? How can our emerging social economies and grassroots networks prepare to fully engage people-power when disaster (of whatever kind) strikes?
At this meeting, we'll discuss various actions already in motion, as well as new ideas for collaboration. As an autonomous network in solidarity with Common Ground, we will focus on our capacity for mutual aid: at home and across the land.
Lessons from Common Ground:
When social services and the economy break down, mutual aid and sharing are the only viable response.
Building solidarity (not charity) with poor and marginalized communities offers activists incredible opportunities to learn skills, build experience, and improve organizing effectiveness.
White activists working in alliance with radical organizers of color is perhaps the greatest opportunity for practical interracial collaboration since 1960's.
Necessary response to state repression is to out-organize, to build relationships that can survive/thrive under martial law.
Common Ground is an attitude:
Work with everyone, regardless of ideology, as long as everyone is committed to working together.
Focus on the practice of organizing to address immediate (economic, social, political) needs: a variety of approaches, many flowers blooming, in coordination.
Local leadership: learning the practice of respect, humility, responsibility.
Addressing climate change and ecological destruction is crucial for social justice everywhere.
Specific needs of Common Ground:
Common Ground has called a national conference on education reform in New Orleans in June. Organize progressive educators, schoolkids, and activists to address the crisis in education where it's most obvious. Take on a panel, a workshop, or local outreach.
Common Ground is launching a wetland restoration campaign to address one of the key long-term causes of disaster in the Gulf Coast. It is also calling for sustainable urban designers to collaborate in providing grassroots, affordable strategies to support the restoration of communities while living in symbiosis with natural systems.
Common Ground's women's shelter is one of the only such resources in the city available regardless of income. The desperately need supplies, funds, and staff! Organize solidarity with the social services community here in Oregon.
For more information, email  brush@tryonfarm.org or call 503-245-0484.
Sponsored by Tryon Life Community Farm
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phone: 503-245-0484
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add a comment on this article
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People need to come here - to see it, cause words don't describe -
to help out - people power most urgently needed -
to experience Common Ground and the power of community
Happy to hear PDX remembers Katrina