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Introduction
Malik Rahim was born and raised in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. He was a founding member of the Louisiana Chapter of the Black Panther Party and has organized for decades as a prison and housing activist. He helped found the anti-death penalty campaign, Pilgrimage for Life, as well as the National Coalition to Free the Angola Three. He was also founder and operator of the Algiers development center and Invest Transitional Housing, an ex-offenders' housing program which housed over 1,000 men, women and children. In San Franicisco, he was the co-founder and outreach organizer of Housing is a Human Right, an affordable housing non-profit organization. In 2004, he ran for New Orleans city council on the Green Party ticket.
On August 29th 2005, this nation saw the worst natural disaster of its history. Hurricane Katrina was a category five hurricane that hit land three times in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. The force of its, winds caused serious levee breaches along the Mississippi River submerging 80% of the city of New Orleans in water. The city's pumps broke and were not able to pump water out of the city. New Orleans sat in standing water as high as sixteen feet in the lowest lying areas for two weeks. This has left the city completely devastated and still, five months later, only a fourth of the city's population has been able to return to their homes. Three quarters of New Orleans residents remain scattered in 44 states.
Malik never evacuated for Hurricane Katrina, and his Algiers neighborhood was one of the few in the city that didn't flood. The neighborhood was without electricity following the hurricane but the phones worked and there was running water. Malik watched as the rest of his city flooded and quickly fell into chaos, while simultaneously exposing the biggest disaster relief failure by any government. "These people are dying for no other reason than the lack of organization" (Malik Rahim, Sept. 1, 2005). The racism and inequality were blatant in the treatment by police officers of the white hurricane "survivors" and the African-American "looters. " White vigilante groups were formed that shot at any African-American male they felt didn't "belong" in their neighborhood. Law enforcement did little to help....