Why we fight.

Brandon Darby and Ms. Sharon came to talk with us tonight.

Brandon was sick, but he had something to say. This is what he said, abbreviated.

"So listen... I'm real sick. But there's a lot going around, and people are concerned. I wanna talk about what we're doing. The upfront functions and the latent functions.

Crackheads --- taking the most marginalized, marginalized, marginalized of people, labelling them and making them worthless. I don't like it. So we said, why don't we start a treatment center for them? Providing food and shelter. That's what we're about. Drug dealers, they don't like that we're trying to get people help.

[about the police incident and a few volunteers leaving] I was dehumanized. I'm not gonna let the police officers watch me roll around in urine... so I stood strong in the cell. I felt completely neutered. And then to have all those people stand with me outside, I felt empowered. But inside, there were people scared, wanting to go home, and it shocked me.

It shocked me because if you read about it, if you read it on the website, it's like a pill, and these are the possible side effects. Gutting houses is civil disobedience. If you are priveleged and come down here and it takes one crooked cop to make you say, 'Screw those African Americans, I'm going home' --- then I'll be glad for you to leave.

It's fucking scary to be here. And it's not comfortable. I'm uncomfortable most of the time, but I stay because it's what I have to do. You are all here in New Orleans. Tens of thousands still don't have water, electricity, and then you get weirded out cause a cop shows up?

I look back on the 60s and the Holocaust and think, if I had been there, I would be risking my life to make sure it didn't happen. And then Katrina happened and now I can do something about it. I feel like I have a key, a key from stopping cruel ships to come down to this planet. You can leave and go to therapy about it because it depresses you, or you can do something about it."

And then Ms. Sharon, friend of Malik, told us to close our eyes and imagine our house filling up with water, water rising so rapidly that there is no time to save your drowning sister or grandmother. Imagine then seeing all the dead bodies, floating in the water. And imagine being black, and being shot at from helicopters overhead, instead of being saved.

This is why we're here. We've had doubts in this first week but they are gone now. We're here because an appalling injustice happened sixteen months ago and injustice is still happening, and we are here to do something about it. Most are content to remain at home because they are too frightened to make a difference or assume that there is none needed to be made; but bad things are happening here, folks, and something needs to be done. I think about the very beginning of this, when I was considering going, and some people asked me to reconsider because of the health concerns. It always struck me as a selfish reason not to go. Yeah, maybe gutting houses will give me a bad cough, nerve damage, traumatic stress disorder, and all these things, but so what? People need help.

This week is shaping up to be a very interesting one. We are moving in to the 7th Ward soon, to clean up all the trash that the government has neglected to remove. And things might get dirty. I'll keep you posted.