Andrew Kling, Seeking Katrina Relief Volunteers
7th Sep 2005, 20:00 GMT
Gothamist spoke last night with Andrew Kling, Professional Magician, Campaign Coordinator for Eric Cesnik’s City Council campaign and concerned American about an ongoing NYC-based grass roots effort to offer assistance to Hurricane Katrina victims. This interviewer will put all pretense of journalistic objectivity aside and urge the Gothamist readership to step up to the challenge of this urgent national emergency. Website Andrew, you’re involved in an ongoing effort to bring disaster relief to Hurricane Katrina victims. But you’re also involved in local politics. Before we even begin, could you touch on concerns people might have about politicizing Katrina? I’m an American and I want to help. It’s that simple. A friend approached me with a project and I happen to have some expertise in coordinating people, throwing things together. I offered that support. Then, I described that situation to the people I work with every day and they wanted to offer up the resources that we have. But… here’s… I need to make this clear. Holding our leaders accountable is not playing politics. Expecting our leaders to do their job and to protect their people is not playing politics. It’s not playing the blame game. It’s being reasonable. It is being a citizen of this country. The fact of the matter is that our leaders have let us down. We have a situation where we are not able to get through even to offer help. This is a problem. So, how can people help? What we’ve done -- people keep asking me “What group is this from? What group is this from?” This isn’t any group. What’s happened is that a couple of ordinary everyday people, Jessie Roberts and her husband Mark, banded together to start filling in the gaps. They took initiative upon themselves to open their house to victims of the hurricane. Now the problem is… you can list availabilities on the Internet, on Craig’s List or hurricanehousing.org, but the fact of the matter is that people in the refugee centers don’t have Internet access. And the workers down there are so overwhelmed they’re unable to put one with the other. So, what Jessie and Mark realized is “we need to bridge the gap somehow” because there are all these people in the Northeast who have opened their homes to victims of the storm and you have all these victims of the storm living in horrible conditions, but there’s no pairing going on. We’re compiling a database of people who are willing to offer their homes, open up resources.. psychological counseling, job placement, basic necessities that need to be met…