Through My Eyes: Louisiana’s First Independent Evacuation Shelter Monitoring Report
Evacuation can never be effective, humane or legal without prioritizing community community input and decision making in evacuation planning, preparation, and implementation. This grassroots monitoring report is one step towards building adequate transparency and accountability into Louisiana’s emergency preparedness and response.
The purpose of this report is to provide families of Southeast Louisiana with a comprehensive and honest assessment of Louisiana’s evacuation plan and sheltering readiness prior to a mandatory evacuation. The information comes from community assessors - 90% were former evacuees in state run shelters during the 2008 mandatory Gustav evacuation.
STAND’s specific priorities were: (1) to determine the readiness of the State of Louisiana’s 2009 Evacuation and Sheltering Plan: (2) to assess the humanitarian standards in place at ‘State-run’ Critical Transportation Needs Shelters (CTNS) and Medical Special Needs Shelters; and (3) to evaluate the state’s shelter management and organization.
“Monitoring Reports on Retaliation Against Detainee Human Rights Monitors at the South Louisiana Correctional Center, Basile, Louisiana”
Compiled by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice based on the firsthand accounts of detainee human rights monitors. These detainee human rights monitors’ testimonies demonstrate the risks detainees take when they decide to complain about human rights conditions and detention standards. In Basile Louisiana, even amidst increased regional and federal ICE monitoring of the facility, contract jail staff have continued to aggressively retaliate against detainee human rights monitors. Detainees have been threatened with criminal prosecution, placed in solitary confinement, and otherwise denied access to fundamental basic necessities in order to quell their complaints and coerce others into remaining quiet.
“Detention Conditions and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration”
Immigrant Detainees Report from Basile, Louisiana. This report compiles the accounts of detainee Human Rights Monitors, revealing that the facility falls below ICE’s own standards- and all standards of human decency. Compiled by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice based on the reports of over 100 detainee human rights monitors.
“Never Again: Lessons from Louisiana’s Gustav Evacuation”
A report by STAND, a grassroots project of NOWCRJ, that exposes the impact of Lousiana’s unjust and inequitable evacuation policy during the Hurricane Gustav on the state’s poorest evacuees, based on hundreds of interviews with evacuees. The report was highlighted in a New York Times masthead editorial on Sunday, September 21, 2008.
“And Injustice for All: Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans”
The most comprehensive report on race and labor after Katrina, based on interviews with over 1,000 workers. Released with the Advancement Project and National Immigration Law Center.
