Hurricane Gustav Threatens Gulf Coast...
INCITE! New Orleans Urgently Needs Your Support!
August 30, 2008 Dear INCITE! friends and supporters, INCITE! organizers and supporters in New Orleans have made over 700 phone calls to women of color and their families that make up the constituency of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, working to prepare and implement evacuation and safety plans.
On the eve of the 3 year anniversary of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and subsequent government criminal negligence and assaults on the low income people of color on the Gulf Coast, our sisters from INCITE! projects in New Orleans (including the local chapter, the Women's Health and Justice Initiative, and the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic) are bracing for the potential landfall of Hurricane Gustav, which is currently projected to hit the Louisiana coast on Monday or Tuesday at a category 4 or 5. Voluntary evacuation of New Orleans has already begun, and mandatory evacuation could be declared as early as today.
Top left & above: Volunteer interpreters calling patients
Your assistance is urgently needed to help low-income women of color and their families evacuate safely if need be, stay safe for the duration of the evacuation, and return to the city as soon as possible so as not to fall prey to the pushout that has kept so many folks from being able to return to New Orleans since Katrina. Local organizers are using whatever resources and funds at their disposal to help women and their families evacuate, bond people being held in Orleans Parish Prison out, and support those who make the choice to stay in whatever way they can. You can send your donation to INCITE online by clicking the button below and putting "New Orleans" in the "Purpose" line: Or you can write a check directly to WHJI and send it to: Your donation will go directly to supporting the hundreds of low income women of color that are the constituency of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic.
Your support is urgently needed: financial donations of any size are needed and would be greatly appreciated.
Donations online are preferred because we can more quickly send the funds to our folks in New Orleans.
PO Box 51325
New Orleans, LA 70151
Shana Griffin, INCITE! New Orleans member, calls patients
Once again, the particular vulnerability of low-income women of color and single female-headed households (including folks with disabilities, seniors, undocumented immigrant women, and incarcerated women) has been erased in the face of disaster and overlooked in the days leading up to the storm. Folks in New Orleans women's prisons are being evacuated to the Angola men's prison, with little thought for safety. With few resources, facing challenges and concerns for their families of their own, INCITE! New Orleans and WHJI have stepped in to fill the gap. Please send all your support, solidarity, sisterhood and strength their way, and join us in hoping for the safety and well-being of the people who are already suffering from Gustav in Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti, and willing the storm to subside or veer off safely before it strikes the Gulf Coast.
We will keep you posted as things develop.
peace,
INCITE!
*** Photos of INCITE! New Orleans members, volunteers, and supporters calling over 700 clinic patients, mostly low-income women of color and their families, to organize safety and evacuation plans. Mandisa, INCITE! New Orleans member, researching options Workers packing up clinic charts for safekeeping Shanika & Justina packing up patient charts Volunteers calling and working with patients 
Learn more about INCITE! organizing in New Orleans.