For many local activists,
Common Ground Collective is a
familiar cause, and one that is close to their hearts. Formed in the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina, the organization is a community volunteer effort that
provides long-term sustainable assistance to residents and neighborhoods of the
New Orleans
area. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a number of Mainers have volunteered
with Common Ground; Maine-native
Meg Perry was working with
the CGC before her
untimely
death in 2005. If they weren’t already, that tragedy inextricably linked
Maine with
New
Orleans.
Indeed, the fight for peace and justice knows no regional
boundaries, and thus two prominent and powerful New Orleaners, Malik
Rahim and Robert
King, traveled to Maine last week – to “link the struggles here with the
struggle in New Orleans,” to remind us that the work in the Gulf Coast region is
far from over, and to show how Common Ground’s mission has evolved from
hurricane relief to broader social-justice concerns.
“I don’t believe there can be any progress until we analyze
what happened,” Rahim said in a wide-ranging interview at the Phoenix office on Friday. Rahim, a Common
Ground founder, worries that people
have yet to learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina – whether they be
economic, social, or logistical. He described an “adversarial
relationship between the government and the activist community,” and said
there is still a dearth of educators and social safety nets within
“traditionally disenfranchised” communities – that is, the poorer parishes of Louisiana.
He also detailed the connection between Common Ground and
the Angola 3, of which Robert King is
one. The story of the Angola
3 is symbolic of the prejudice and disenfranchisement that existed in Louisiana long before
Hurricane Katrina brought these problems to the surface. Long story very short:
When three young black activists (all in prison for armed robbery) tried to
expose prisoner maltreatment at the Louisiana State Penitentiary – a/k/a Angola
Prison – in the late 1960s, they ‘mysteriously’ were accused of having murdered
a young prison guard. All
three of them spent more than 25 years in solitary confinement for a crime they
did not commit. Robert King Wilkerson is the only prisoner to have been
released thus far.
“There wouldn’t be the Angola 3 without Malik,” King said
of his friend on Friday, describing Malik’s
efforts to free these prisoners of conscience. Negotiations to free the
remaining Angola 2 are ongoing,
as is King’s quest to overhaul not just Angola,
but America’s
industrial-prison complex.
(Several aspects of King’s story – including prison
officials using increased security as a punishment, insufficient money spent on
rehabilitation, and less-than-adequate treatment of mentally ill prisoners – sound
awfully familiar.)
Rahim and King spoke at the Meg
Perry Center on Saturday evening, at what was apparently a well-attended,
moving discussion. Rahim is
scheduled to speak at Bowdoin on April 29.