Day 5 Hurricane Katrina Relief efforts led by Veteran For Peace members. Pat, Dennis, Gordon and Fred

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Day 3 Hurricane Katrina Relief provided by Veterans For Peace Impeachment Tour Bus members Pat, Freddy, Gordon and Dennis

Day Three kicked off fast and furious. We woke up to a trailer sent in from Crawford, Texas The Peace House loaded up the stuff and Michael and his daughter made the drive. When Michael left Covington to go home, he took one passenger to Hammond, where the VFP Mendocino President Pat Tate put a hundred of his own dollars out to get our guy to Memphis; Michael also took a mother and daughter to Houston on his way back.

We are hearing offers from as far away as Cleveland for housing. And after Michael arrived, Ian arrived from Texas, and a bus load of supplies arrived. The names elude me now, the driver is from Santa Cruz. he bought a bus in Kentucky. After stocking it up, he drove here. Than.... he went out and evacuated victims from the Airport and got them to our shelter. He is now out restocking the bus and bringing it back. James, from Camp Casey, is here. He took a crew into New Orleans and did boat evacuations. Footage is hopefully coming soon from the journalists he transported. He is a wonderful point man, a veteran for peace, and he can show you the way to Lake Orleans. He came back full of Spirit, and we are preparing an evacuation tomorrow with all vehicles on premise. Trucks arrived throughout the day. Fred Danforth oversaw the collection of thousands of tons of food and supplies, while Alex, Ella’s mom from Camp Casey, ran the outreach programs for the communities. We were able to distribute food in Covington and Folsom today. The Mayor of Folsom has been AWOL for over a week, and they are in desperate need of support. This is only day three, and we can expect to find more communities all over this region like this when the dust settles. On location here at Casey we were able to distribute an incredible amount of food to local residents in the Covington Community as well. Now that they know we are here and have something to provide other than MRE’s, they are visiting us at our base camp and have obtained everything from Toothpaste to Pinto Beans, and they are talking about places we need to go, and people who need supplies. VFP donations replaced a starter for Jaime’s truck, from Camp Casey who is here with her step son Wally, as her truck is the one that has made all the food distributions that have been done. VFP donations paid for the water pump and fly wheel replacement for a local resident who needed a few dollars to get on the road. We continue to request support from the world, we think the failure of this government to address the basic human needs of its citizens is not only criminal but it is beyond treason.

Day 2 Veterans For Peace Efforts in Hurricane Katrina

Originally published on Michael Moore .com

Day two started with Fred in the Kitchen, he is already keeping the camp running.

The Generator has ran twenty four hours and the police department is bringing us all the gas we need to keep it going.  Katrina victims are finally getting some coffee after days without some.

 

Supplies start coming in early morning.  Water, Water and Water is stacking up while canned goods are packing the little doorway we started in.

The day was spent organizing an impressive departure point for a food distribution program,

 

Having heard the local cities were not getting support we started planning for distribution. 

 

The first truck went out under assignment from the Red Cross, and at that point we were working with them in getting food to shelters that had not been getting the supplies as quickly as they needed.  

Reports keep coming from people that help is plentiful and they don’t need assistance,

this is a farce.  The problem with that analysis is that most victims have a roof still, and don’t need a shelter, so it requires us getting into the community.  In Folsom the Mayor has been AWOL for over a week.  Other cities are worse, and the human experience is horrific as we keep hearing accounts of people who are still being airlifted from New Orleans.

 

Trucks arrived from all over the place with more food than we could imagine, we had only been on the web overnight.  The response was great, and it lasted until nightfall. 

 

We were well stocked to start the next day and prepped up two truck loads to go out.

 

That is the goal, the stores are un lit.  The gas lines are longer than you can imagine. 

 

We need to provide for the people where not only government, but corporations cannot.

We are on the frontline of what some are calling Baghdad South,

how about that, the war is now here in America.

Day ONE Veterans For Peace arrival in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Originally posted to Michael Moore .com

We hit Covington, Louisiana as the trip from Austin, Texas became Day 1 of Camp Casey Three.  The Veterans for Peace bus from Mendocino County, CA arrived with food and supplies that Camp Casey had sent in from Crawford, Texas. 

 

The initial staging is in The Reverend Peter Atkins Park, which sits as the front yard to the Red Cross agency.  Sadly, the headquarters for the Red Cross was reported to have moved from New Orleans to Covington.  Sadly, because nothing was going in or out of this building the entire afternoon, we distributed food.

We were able to assist a number of families and also served two hot meals.  As sun set, the information we gathered indicated that the armory had been attacked and the guard was bunkering down the Covington Armory. 

 

So, we ran for cover.  A Covington Officer informed us that there was no generator at the Shelter we were near.  We were told there were twelve new born’s just released, that there were newborns already at the shelter, and there was not even an air conditioner on.  So as we ran for cover, we found our new assignment. 

Fred set up a generator and a swamp cooler, and we also found we had a young man with cystic fibrosis at Pine View, which is the middle school at the end of 28^th Street in Covington.  So,

the generator also provided the power this young man needed for his treatment.

 

Later in the evening we had a Red Cross Nurse, who traveled from New York, visit our bus and tell us about the blood pressure cuff she had, it was slashed on the hose and there was no pump.  We provided a cuff and some other medical supplies such as an electronic thermometer as they only had a mercury one here for them.

 

We set up a kitchen and began providing hot food, as the young children were only being given MRE’s and Pop Tarts to get through the few meals we witnessed as we set up the sattelite and started to tell the world that the supply line was open and to get there provisions to

Send it to Veterans For Peace Chapter 116 C/O Ward Reilly, 

Our mission is to open a supply line into Southern Louisiana that cannot be broken.

We need help, as day one closed, our first hitch hiker arrived.  We sent him to meet with others who had traveled from Camp Casey.

 

We sat with the Red Cross Nurse and learned that they need Baby Formula, and other provisions. So Gordon and Dennis sat up all night tirelessly requesting the supplies from anyone who could bring them to us. 

 

We will sit tirelessly in this ditch in Covington until a reasonable amount of aid from this government comes, I imagine if we have the same luck as Cindy Sheehan we will wait in the heat while he plays golf.