AFT backs major fundriaising effort for
hurricane victims

The AFT executive council in October approved a $3 million fundraising campaign to boost the union’s disaster relief fund and directly help thousands of AFT members devastated by the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast region.

AFT vice president Herb Magidson, who is chairing the fundraising effort, reported to the council meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 19 that the losses among AFT members—15,000 along the Gulf Coast were affected, including 6,500 in New Orleans alone—are unprecedented in the union’s history. The need is so great that an extraordinary effort must be undertaken to increase donations, he said.

Even as the hurricanes fade from the headlines, the plight of thousands of AFT members—including those who have lost their jobs and soon their healthcare coverage—must not be forgotten, he told the council.

In late September, AFT president Edward J. McElroy and secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour traveled to Houston to meet with AFT leaders from Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. They discussed the immediate and long-term needs of AFT members and affiliates in the Gulf Coast region.

They also brought in former Federal Emergency Management Agency officials to advise the AFT and affected affiliates on working with FEMA on recovery and rebuilding efforts. This guidance is critical, the AFT believes, to help the union expedite assistance for AFT members who have suffered losses and to ensure that rebuilding the school infrastructure in New Orleans and other areas is a top FEMA priority.

The council unanimously approved a resolution, “Rebuilding After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” that pledges support for the disaster fund.

The union has sent a letter to every state federation asking affiliates to participate in the campaign and to meet minimum fundraising goals based on membership in each state.

The national AFT has committed to no less than $1 million of AFT funds to the relief effort, and the New York State United Teachers, the union’s largest state affiliate, has pledged to raise at least another $1 million. All affiliates outside of New York, combined, have been asked to raise another $1 million. This base will provide a sound start in the union’s initial quest to provide affected members with immediate individual grants of $500, Magidson said.

As part of the campaign, the union also has created special donation categories for members: the President’s Solidarity Circle ($500), Gold Solidarity Circle ($250), Silver Solidarity Circle ($100) and the Bronze Solidarity Circle ($52—the equivalent of $1 per week for a year).

At the council meeting, AFT vice president Pat Santeramo, president of the Broward Teachers Union in Florida, turned over $30,000 in donations from members there, and AFT vice president Roger Benson pledged $50,000 from the New York state Public Employees Federation.

Send contributions to the AFT Disaster Relief Fund, Attn: Connie Cordovilla, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001 or donate online at www.aft.org/katrina.

In the path of total destruction

Two crystal crosses are among the few relics Mauffray, a fourthgrade teacher at Thomas L. Reeves Elementary School and a member of the Long Beach Federation of Teachers, has recovered from her home—her neighborhood, actually. “Our stuff is not even on our property,” she says. “It’s to the north, the east, the west—and probably the south.”

Like many coastal homes along the Gulf, Mauffray’s house was reduced to a slab of concrete by Hurricane Katrina’s winds, which seemed to devour most of the family’s belongings. Only some dishes, a couple pieces of jewelry and those treasured crosses from her daughters’ baptisms were found nearby.

Although her family—husband Bobby and daughters Emma, 4, and Ryann, 2—have lost their house and nearly all their possessions, they have a roof over their heads. She and her family are living with her mother and stepfather, whose home was not in the path of  Katrina’s destruction. Mauffray went back to work at Reeves in late September (students returned Oct. 3).

“Knowing that I can never go back to that house” is difficult, she says.  “We brought both of our children home from the hospital to that house.”

Local puts together 'Bear Necessities' for displaced kids

The families displaced by Hurricane Katrina include 1,500 New Orleans schoolchildren who arrived in Shreveport, La., in early September and enrolled in the city’s schools. Many came with nothing more than a backpack. Their clothes, schoolbooks, beloved toys—all were out of reach and mostly ruined.

“The measure of our community is not just in how we welcomed families on the run from hurricanes in September, but also how we care for them as their long months of displacement unfold,” says Jackie Lansdale, president of the Caddo Federation of Teachers and Support Personnel.

For the Caddo federation, that caring has evolved into the “Bear Necessities” project. Local members observed that while immediate necessities—food, shelter and piles of second-hand clothing—were provided, children also needed basics like underwear. So the local raised money to purchase briefs and T-shirts in children’s sizes, including attractive cotton camisoles for the girls. Each Bear Necessities bag contains something to wear, something to read, and a bear lapel pin to wear as jewelry, attach to back packs or pin on anything they wish.

AFT locals from New York and Florida contributed generously when they heard of the local’s project. The national AFT contributed funds and literature for parents.

“Hurricanes come and go in New Orleans,” says George Bordenave, an AFT national representative and resident of New Orleans, who is now an evacuee himself. “We all told our kids we’d be back home soon. This time, however, the tremendous displacement and loss of possessions caused by Katrina means many of these kids and families will not be returning home anytime soon. So we all have to do more to help those victimized by this disaster.”

Lending an ear and a hand

Patty Chantrill has done a lot of listening over the past two weeks. She’s heard homeless people worry about where they’ll lay their heads. She’s heard families distraught over losing health insurance. She’s listened as teachers recount harrowing waits, sometimes on rooftops, as floodwaters rose.

Chantrill, an associate professor of communications at Eastern Washington University and a member of United Faculty of Eastern/AFT, is one of the many AFT volunteers who flew to the wreck of Hurricane Katrina and started putting things back together. She’s answered phones, cleaned out refrigerators, folded stacks of sheets for the shelter and transformed a training center into temporary housing where she stayed with other volunteers. She’s recorded grocery card distribution, handled Red Cross intake, edited a press release and traded stories with her grown daughter who is working in a nearby shelter. But the most important thing she’s done is listen.

“It’s one desperate story after another,” she says, and people need to talk.

By a stroke of fate, Chantrill was set for sabbatical when Katrina blew through the Gulf states, so when AFT’s Connie Cordovilla put out a plea for volunteers, Chantrill was ready to pitch in. She flew to Baton Rouge and went to work for the United Teachers of New Orleans, directing members to the resources they needed, dealing with questions about Red Cross, FEMA and AFT assistance, then shifting over to the Louisiana Federation of Teachers for similar work.

Teachers who left assignments written on their chalkboards the Friday before the hurricane were left grasping the harsh reality of all the storm had erased besides the weekend homework, she says. Obvious, but the realization that leaving home was not a temporary situation proved difficult. Only now, months after the storm passed, do people understand they must find homes, and jobs, elsewhere.

Among the most immediate problems: “Disaster leave” makes teachers eligible for unemployment but leaves them on tenterhooks about whether they’ll get their old jobs back. Finding new work is impossible; despite burgeoning classrooms in Baton Rouge, where the population has doubled since hurricane evacuees flooded in, schools are not hiring.

Also heavy on the minds of displaced teachers: Healthcare runs out Nov. 30. One woman, scheduled for a caesarean delivery Dec. 15, is considering an earlier birth to ensure the procedure will be covered. “It’s just unbelievable that they’re having to go through this,” says Chantrill.

She plans to continue helping when she returns to Washington. “Part of my job is to raise awareness with the people in the Northwest,” she says, “but also to continue to do whatever it is I can,” even from across the country.