Common Ground Relief and Veterans for Peace Team Up in the Lower Ninth Ward

On March 19th, Veterans for Peace (VFP: www.veteransforpeace.org), Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Gold Star Families for Peace embarked on a caravan in Fayetteville, North Carolina to demonstrate their opposition to the Iraq War. The organizations traveled in the southeast and stopped at six different military towns. At each stop, VFP hosted an event for active duty military personnel and their families, and additionally collected signatures for the Appeal For Redress.

The caravan arrived in New Orleans on March 25th and immediately began volunteering with Common Ground Relief's rebuilding efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood. Some thirty VFP caravaners joined Common Ground's co-founder, Malik Rahim, and volunteers in beginning to reconstruct Walter Goodwin’s home at the corner of Roman and Jourdan Ave. in the Lower 9th Ward.

Mr. Goodwin’s home is an historically important house in the Lower Ninth Ward. First of all, the two story served as a local relief facility during Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and Katrina in 2005. It also is located at the Ground Zero of the Lower Ninth Ward where the Industrial Canal's levee wall broke. Despite flooding, levee failure, and hundred-mile per hour winds, Mr. Goodwin's home has remained one of the few still standing in the immediate area. But despite its strong structural integrity, the City of New Orleans continues to threaten to demolish the home.

Mr. Goodwin was raised in this Lower Ninth Ward home and had lived there with his mother, Ollie, who is 99 years old up until Hurricane Katrina displaced them. Common Ground volunteers are rebuilding this home so that it will be livable again by October, when Mrs. Goodwin plans on celebrating her 100th birthday. VFP volunteers did about $20,000 worth of construction work in two and a half days - repairing the roof and exterior walls.

At the end of the Veterans for Peace volunteer tour in New Orleans, Common Ground hosted the group for a Seafood Boil in the Lower 9th Ward so that they could meet some of the community members that have returned home to their neighborhood. About 200 residents, Common Ground volunteers and Veterans for Peace joined together to celebrate the area's rebuilding efforts. Prior to Katrina, the Lower 9th Ward was home to more than 14,000 residents. Currently there are some 1,500 people that have returned and every day more are coming home to reclaim their community.

Common Ground was thrilled to be able to work collaboratively with their friends at Veterans for Peace once again. VFP was one of the first organizations to travel to New Orleans and work in solidarity with the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Their commitment to the communities of New Orleans has been a major anchor in the struggle for peace and justice in the Gulf Coast. Thank you Veterans for Peace.