Yesterday, we had 300 students, Katrina evacuees, and community members participate in our march and rally in San Jose, CA, to commemorate the 2nd Anniversary of Katrina.

A Cal State Monterey Bay student, Estee Blanchard, who is from Louisiana, made this 1 minute promo of what took place. It is incredibly powerful!

It is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7vXXm3Fnh0

Comments Received:

"I am so touched and impressed that young people so far away in CA are this sensitive to our needs. You guys care more than the different levels of government do." Thank you, Gilda

"Hurricane Katrina: The Second Anniversary Commemoration hosted by SJSU and the GCCWP was both inspiring and heartwarming. I believe that the GCCWP is the ultimate solution to bringing back the Gulf Coast and its people. Applied in various disciplines, as was done by the New Deal's WPA, can shorten the rebound of the city of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by at least five years. I will recommend to all I come in contact with to support the GCCWP. Thank you and the SJSU students for the vision of the GCCWP."
-- CC Campbell-Rock Survivors for Survivors, Inc. Pleasanton, CA

"As NOLA resident, I want to thank you for your activism. It means so much to us that people care. In the face of government indifference and lack of vision, the heroic acts of the region's residents and all the many thousands of volunteers who continue to help us as we struggle to survive and rebuild is a powerful beacon of hope. Please ya'll, pass this video on and join with GCCWP in this effort. " -- martwide

2nd Anniversary Commemoration of Hurricane Katrina - San Jose

Our march and rally at San Jose State University went VERY well today, as we had 250-300 people in attendance for the commemoration.

Incredibly, the GCCWP march/rally was the lead or second story at 5 pm on EVERY news show in the Bay Area: i.e., CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. And live on the San Francisco local CBS morning show.

Check out this news clip from ABC: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5617486

We have been told that we will be on the front page tomorrow of the San Jose Mercury News. The story is already online at: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_6754336.

In addition, we had an op-ed piece in the Mercury by Speaker Pro Tempore Sally Lieber ( http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_6747291).

We were also on the 3 major news radio stations: KGO, KCBS and KPFA. I will post on our blog a list of all the web sites that covered our story in the next day or two.

We definitely have incredible movement. We go up to Sacramento tomorrow for the vote in the full Assembly for AJR 22, which calls upon the California Congressional delegation to support the development of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project.

Great job!

best, scott ml

Download Katrina Facts

Tell Time Magazine about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project!

Tell Time Magazine about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project!
http://time-blog.com/talkback/neworleans.php

TIME.com is asking readers for their suggestions for how New Orleans can be rebuilt.

This is an opportunity for Gulf Coast Civic Works supporters to have their voice be heard in the mainstream media.

Please visit the link above and tell TIME.com displaced residents need to be able to return home to jobs rebuilding their communities through the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project!

Below is a sample entry. Feel free to cut and paste this and possibly edit with your own thoughts before submitting:

"Two years since Hurricane Katrina and the failures of the federally constructed levee system devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, as many as 250,000 from New Orleans alone are still internally displaced. Federal dollars remain strangled in the red-tape of slow moving programs built to respond to much smaller disasters while schools, hospitals, and homes continue to lay in disrepair. Its time for a "New Deal" for New Orleans and Gulf Coast.

Gulf Coast residents are developing a bold, realistic plan to help Katrina survivors realize their human right to return and rebuild their communities. The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project (GCCW) calls the federal government hiring 100,000 Katrina survivors to rebuild their homes and communities, similar to the New Deal's WPA. It would provide them with temporary housing, services and job training to help them build and repair houses, schools, parks, flood protection and other public works projects determined by local officials and communities.

The program would be an investment not only in rebuilding hard hit communities in a manner that would allow all of this national disaster's survivors to be able to return home but also an investment in working families which would be empowered with the necessary skills for high wage work helping to rebuild local economies and the middle class.

Louisiana alone suffered $31 billion in damage to infrastructure and public facilities. New Orleans saw 79% of its affordable housing whipped out by the levee breaks. Recently Louisiana predicted it will need 90,000 additional skilled construction workers. Underfunded hands-off federal efforts to date have not sufficiently tackled the many interrelated issues threatening the future of displaced families who want to return and courageous returning families whose communities need additional help. This provides a ripe opportunity for bringing displaced people home and employing them to do this necessary work to rebuild a better Gulf Coast. The United States has not met its human rights obligations to help displaced survivors return and participate in rebuilding their communities.

In other countries across the globe the United States funds similar programs helping displaced people to return to their communities and find work to rebuild their lives and communities after a disaster.

In Iraq the United States' international aid agency, USAID, currently has a program hoping to employ 100,000 displaced Iraqis in temporary public work projects.

Why can't we do the same in for our own displaced citizens?" --Jeffrey Buchanan

MARCH AND RALLY COMMEMORATING HURRICANE KATRINA'S SECOND ANNIVERSARY

NEWS RELEASE

Monday, August 27, 2007

Scott Myers-Lipton (510-508-5382, smlipton@sjsu.edu)

Pat Lopes Harris (408-924-1748, pat.harris@sjsu.edu )

MARCH AND RALLY COMMEMORATING HURRICANE KATRINA'S SECOND ANNIVERSARY

Event to Begin at Noon, August 29, at the San Jose Municipal Stadium [MAP]

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project -- a national effort founded at SJSU -- will lead a march through downtown San Jose on August 29 in commemoration of Hurricane Katrina's second anniversary. The march will begin at noon at the San Jose Municipal Stadium and end at 2 p.m. at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. The commemoration will be held from 12:30-1:30 pm at the Tommie Smith and John Carlos Statues on San Jose State's campus. (See attached flier and map of the route.)

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is gathering support for federal action to create 100,000 jobs for Gulf Coast residents so they can rebuild their communities. The model for the project is the Works Progress Administration, which helped the nation recover from the Great Depression with a federally funded jobs program that resulted in the construction of many civic landmarks including San Jose's Municipal Stadium and Civic Auditorium.

"By gathering at public work projects, we will remind the nation on the second anniversary of Katrina that there is an effective solution for the problems of the Gulf Coast," Myers-Lipton said. "The Gulf Coast still needs to rebuild homes, schools, hospitals, roads,bridges, parks, and forest lands. This is exactly what our public work projects have historically built."

Read more at http://www.solvingpoverty.com/

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Gulf Coast Civic Works Mention on News & Notes

Wow, we went national today!

Check out this NPR report that highlighted the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13999579

We also have been getting a ton of local press in preparation for the march and rally:

ABC news last night: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5610869

KPFA 94.1 Morning show this morning at 8:05 am
http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=21978

Then, the Spartan Athletics put this out: http://www.sjsuspartans.com/ViewArticle.dbmlDB_OEM_ID=5600&ATCLID=1179218

I will be on the local CBS Morning show tomorrow at 5 am and 6 am.

Join us tomorrow at a commemoration event: Boulder, CO; Chicago & Lincoln, Illinois; New Orleans; San Diego; San Jose ; Geneva, NY; Fullerton, CA.

best, scott