Curtis Muhammad’s Farewell

Curtis Muhammad, one of the original organizers of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and then, then People’s Organizing Committee (POC) and New Orleans Survivor Council, has spoken to members of People’s Organization for Progress (POP) here in New Jersey, and at a workshop on Katrina at the Left Forum this past spring. The concept of bottom-up organizing put forth by Curtis and POC is well worth learning and implementing in whatever political work you take on.

Curtis sent out the following open letter to say goodbye and to explain his decision to move on to other fights than the one here in the U.S.:

A Message from an Organizer to the Left and Progressive Forces inside the USA
by Curtis Muhammad

With this second anniversary of Katrina upon us, there are a few words I wish to speak. This letter
is written to the progressive, left movement for justice in the USA. In the last two years, every left
organization has been in New Orleans, but despite that there is still no sign of a mass movement.
There is still no sign that most activists are willing to put their knowledge and resources at the service
of the grass roots and take their leadership from the bottom. I have found myself wondering, have
poor black people been so vilified and criminalized that they are completely off the radar even of
the so-called left? When Katrina happened, I hoped and expected that this would be the trigger to
once again set off a true mass movement against racism and for justice in the US, led by those
most affected: poor, black working people. When it became abundantly clear that this was not
happening, I found myself at the crossroads of hope and hopelessness, and began to wonder
how to spend the last years of my life in the service of my people.

The thing that I remind myself when I'm contemplating hopelessness is the beauty of humanity and
the fact that people have always fought for what was right even when they knew they  couldn't win.
They tried because they loved each other; I think it's because it's built into human beings for people
to look out for each other. There is a drive in humanity to be just, to live in a society that is just, equal
and respectful. I believe that ultimately people will achieve a just society; I believe humanity came out
of a just society and will create it again.

I do believe that there was a time that the lovers of life, the lovers of humanity, the lovers of  justice
dominated the world. Some say this was so during the hunter-gatherer days, when  though there
were evil people they could never gain dominance. Their numbers were always small, less than 1%;
people ran their lives collectively, and therefore the greedy could not dominate. Well then, I say what
happened, there is only that same 1% who dominates the world now.

This thinking, this logic has been the motivating factor in my life of movement work: the belief that
there is a basic humanity that is inside the soul of most people. That this humanity can be harvested
and organized into a movement for justice to free our people from slavery, bondage, oppression and
exploitation. That the 80% of the world who live on an average of $2 a day can and will overcome
the 1% and return us to a collective life organized around love, justice and equality.

Most of you who know me also know I'm a storyteller and believe story to be a universal language
that can be a vehicle for voice – the voice of all regardless of status, class, cast, race, gender.
Story is an egalitarian language. So I wish to share with you my story, an abbreviated story of my
organizing work from SNCC in Mississippi through the ghettoes of the US to the villages and jungles
of Africa, to CLU, PHRF, NOSC, POC and finally the International School for Bottom-up Organizing.
My story is meant to clarify why I now choose to live, work, teach and write outside the US and
away from the grip of a drastically de-energized and often opportunistic and reactionary left in the USA.

*	*	*
I grew up in a community that, of necessity, had to take care of its own. In rural Mississippi in the 40s,
50s and 60s, mothers and fathers, grandparents, uncles and cousins protected the children from the
hostile, racist world and collectively helped each other meet their needs. Nonetheless, when I was a
child traveling to church on Sundays, I had to pass the tree from whose branches my cousin was
lynched. The community of my birth gave me both my strength -- my faith in the people, my dedication
to egalitarianism – and my undying hatred of racism and the oppressive few that control the world.

When SNCC came to town, I found my direction. It was both a community of love and a set of
organizers devoted, at the risk of their lives, to the folk on the bottom: the poorest black folk in
Mississippi, those who had nothing, not even the knowledge of how to read. SNCC introduced me
to the struggles of my brothers and sisters around the world, and particularly in Africa. I became an
internationalist and a revolutionary. The lessons of Ella Baker and SNCC have stayed with me
throughout my life; I labored to make them a reality from Mississippi to the ghettoes of our major
cities, from my time in the revolutionary movement in Africa to my work as a labor organizer, and
I have done my utmost to apply them in post-Katrina New Orleans.

In 1998, I helped to organize Community Labor United (CLU), a coalition that was founded with a
commitment to bottom-up organizing. (CLU principles included "ending the exploitation of oppressed
peoples everywhere; educating, organizing and mobilizing the masses within our organizations and
communities from the bottom up.") After eight years of organizing in some of the poorest areas of
New Orleans, it became the "first responder" after Katrina, and led the formation of the People's
Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF).

As a founding member of PHRF and an organizer and New Orleans resident, I was back in the city
within 8 days of the flood, struggling with overwhelming pain and anger. I felt that Katrina represented
an historic moment. Never before had all levels of government united to attempt genocide of 100,000
black people at the same time. Even in the 60s in Mississippi, they were murdering us in ones, twos
and threes. I threw myself into the attempt to put the knowledge and resources of the left and
nationalist organizations and "movement" people under the direction of the bottom: the poor and
working class black folk who had been left to die in New Orleans. PHRF became a coalition that
committed itself on paper to that goal.

What followed was a dramatic learning experience for me and for all those whose commitment is truly
to the people and not to their own particular grouping. Within months, mainly as a result of a speaking
tour I went on for PHRF, we had raised about a million dollars from folk across the country who were
deeply moved by the attempted genocide of over a hundred thousand black folk. And by December,
there was already conflict over who controlled that money and how it was to be used.

The New Orleans Survivor Council was organized by PHRF with the understanding that it was to
become the leadership of the organization and the movement, and should control all resources. By
April of 2006, when the NOSC began to sound like it wanted oversight of the funds, the interim
leadership of PHRF took the money and ran, firing its own organizers for daring to tell the poor black
residents in NOSC that they had the right to control the resources raised in their names.

Undaunted, the young organizers continued working for the survivors and formed a new group called
People's Organizing Committee (POC). This event was a turning point for me. I realized that the words
of those who I had considered my comrades were empty, that their so-called commitment to bottom-up
 was a fiction; that their real commitments were to various organizations and their own egos. Our
attempt to institutionalize bottom-up had led instead to a coalition of opportunists.

When I had spoken to mass audiences about Katrina in the fall of 2005, I had spoken of my discovery
of the depth of the fear and hatred America has for poor, black people. The images on the media of
those left to die could have been taken in sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean: those people were
very poor and very black. With the desertion of PHRF, I was confronted by the knowledge that this
hatred of poor black people extended into and throughout the progressive movement, even within
exclusively black organizations. I felt very lonely in my continued commitment to lift up precisely that
segment of oppressed Americans to lead the movement.

But POC plunged ahead, still dedicated to that vision. Thousands of volunteers came in the spring and
summer, and many continue to come to this day. The hearts of so many people are in the right place.
The New Orleans Survivor Council and its member group Residents of Public Housing continue to
work to put bottom-up leadership on the map and fight for the right of our community to return and
control its own destiny. But the past year has also revealed further weakness and lack of vision in
our movement.

From the days immediately following the flood, we recognized that immigrants – brown people, some
of the poorest and most desperate of our brothers and sisters from countries to the south – were
being brought into our city. They were put to the dirtiest, most dangerous clean-up tasks, and later to
replace the forcibly dispersed black labor force, for slave wages and in slave conditions. From the
start, we called for organizing this new part of the New Orleans community in unity with and under
the leadership of the black folk on the bottom.

This call was part of my message in the speeches I made in the fall of 2005, and several immigrant
organizers heeded the call and came to work with us. However, despite many serious attempts to
develop unity between black survivors and immigrants, it has become clear that those organizers
refuse to unite with and take leadership from black folk. They have organized immigrant slaves into
separate groupings with no contact with the NOSC, despite their initial commitment to unity. They
are essentially, wittingly or unwittingly, following the government's agenda, which is to build a racist,
assimilationist immigrant "movement" that will serve the needs of a war economy and patriotism.

And so we come to the second anniversary of Katrina. Bottom-up organizing is still embryonic, though
hanging on to life and with a small, dedicated band of survivors, organizers and volunteers. But the
rest of the movement is in shambles, or under direct or indirect influence of our enemies.

Through the experience of the last two years, I have also come to the conclusion that the infiltration
of and direct attacks on the movement that started (in my lifetime as an activist) in the late 60s and
early 70s with Cointelpro have never stopped. Our movement has been successfully divided into
thousands of groupings, non-profits and NGOs, and the left has been rendered ineffectual. It is not an
accident that, for forty years now, the movement has been so totally reformist, or that those who want
to be revolutionaries are so isolated as to be irrelevant. The government and its agencies have a
stranglehold on the people, the culture and even the left. I do not think it is possible in the U.S. at this
time – for me – to develop and train organizers with a real understanding and commitment to the
folk on the bottom.

And thus, I find myself at the crossroads of hope and hopelessness. I find myself possibly in the
position of writing not mainly to the current readers of these words, but to those future revolutionaries
who will learn from our impasse. I find myself deciding to work toward creating an international
organizing school as a vehicle to discover, recruit and train radical organizers. I want to continue my
investigation of the movements in Mexico and South America among very poor -- members of the
informal economy, workers, campesinos and landless people -- learn more about how class and hue
interact to shape oppression, take inspiration from the fact that the struggle continues, un-abandoned,
worldwide, and share my own knowledge and experience with the rebels of today and tomorrow.

I have lived 64 years and have struggled intentionally for justice for about forty-six of those years.
I am thankful and appreciative to all those who have traveled some of that distance with me: those
who helped nurture my children, who stood with me when I was imprisoned and tortured, those who
have always supported my work and stood by me when all seemed to stand against me. To these
worthy friends, comrades and loved ones, I will always honor you, be there for you, and know you
are there for me.

Still, I have arrived at a place in my life where I wish to share everything I have and know with
the "sufferers." My principle continues to be the struggle to engage the poor, oppressed, voiceless,
and those who have the least and suffer the most. The only struggle that matters to me now is finding
justice for those who have never had it.

This is me, where I am, trying to figure out how to organize our folk in a way that we always look
at need as the principle of justice. If you are looking for me, look among the youth, the poor, and the
struggling masses trapped in slave-like conditions throughout the world, for I am no longer available
to an opportunistic and racist left. I NOW SEEK REFUGE AMONG THE POOR.

This is my struggle.

Wish me well,

Curtis