Rahim, who will be speaking in Seattle this week, is the co-founder of Common Ground Relief, a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid, and support for victims of hurricane disasters in the Gulf Coast region.

Founded one week after Hurricane Katrina, Common Ground has put over 11,000 volunteers to work providing direct services to 140,000 people. Beginning with one health clinic, the organization has since helped start five more clinics, a school, and a community center. Their multiple communication stations help displaced people find each other, and volunteers are available to assist residents with insurance and FEMA paperwork.

But Common Ground’s impact, though positive, remains limited. A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, Rahim describes a stark reality.

“It’s like there’s two New Orleans,” he says. “The New Orleans that has recovered from the hurricane, and the New Orleans that hasn’t even begun to recover.”

The public and private sectors have supported the return and rebuilding of the moneyed, white communities, and the tourist industry is up and running again. But the lack of response for poor New Orleanians, Rahim says, has further marginalized the people who, even before Katrina, were struggling to get by. “You become acutely aware that the level of recovery is based upon wealth.”

Rahim describes a number of what he calls “disincentives” that stand in the way of displaced people returning home. The education and health-care systems, he says, have hardly been rebuilt in Black communities.

“If I’m coming back as a single parent with children — which is the largest group of displaced people — I want to know, ‘Where’s the school? Where’s the hospital?’ And these systems are nowhere near equipped to handle the need.”

One institution that is working at full capacity is the criminal justice system. According to Rahim, poor Black neighborhoods are being heavily policed, and people are being incarcerated for petty infractions. But he has a proposal. “We should offer amnesty for all misdemeanors and non-violent offenses,” he says, “and that amnesty could be based upon them helping, and putting in quality time to the rebuilding of this city.”

Even after the terrible consequences of the city’s poor planning in 2005, New Orleans has yet to establish a storm protection system that will protect its most vulnerable residents. “It don’t take a rocket scientist,” says Rahim. “The city has to have some kind of emergency response system, an evacuation plan that people can not only understand, but participate in drafting. So that people will not lose everything in case this happens again.”

“Katrina was a disaster,” Rahim says. “But our government’s response to it was a tragedy. And we can correct this tragedy to make sure it don’t happen nowhere else.”

[NOLA in Seattle]

Malik Rahim speaks about Common Ground Relief in New Orleans, the organization's recent struggle to obtain housing so that Katrina exiles can return home, and its efforts to secure support and assistance for over 5,000 Katrina survivors at several events: Fri., March 2 at 7 p.m. at Freedom Church, 9601 35th Ave. SW; Sun., March 4 at 11 a.m. at Peoples Institutional Baptist Church, 159 24th Ave. S.; and again at 4 p.m. with the Total Experience Gospel Choir at 2716 E. Cherry.