National and International Disaster Relief Tip

Just a reminder to include a few good used bikes inside shipping containers of relief and medical supplies going into catastrophic disasters. Providing a means of rapid distribution and communication for survivors is just as important as the relief supplies when dealing with broken infrastructure. Good used bikes can be purchased at stores such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, other thrift stores, used bike shops, etc. Only send bikes in good working order, with good tire tread and without rust. They must be ready for immediate use.

Bikes are a disaster response tool. They can be used immediately for:
1. Distributing supplies
2. Communicating information
3. Connecting survivors
4. Generating cell phone power.
Before sending, you can attach a label or tag to each bike suggesting these uses. Be sure to use language familiar to the survivors.

Thank you,
RenegAID.org

Misunderstanding the Gravity of the Situation

Looting? Really? Less than 48 hours into a catastrophic disaster?
I don’t think so.
Yet again news providers are reporting that looting is occurring. This time within the devastation that is underway on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island following the latest earthquake and tsunami.

The things psychologists have identified that give people resilience are all wiped away in catastrophic disaster yet survivors locate and utilize creative resources to start connecting torn up pieces of what and whom may be left after the giant and relentless eggbeater has made the region unrecognizable even to surviving lifetime residents.

Looting and its synonyms refer to violent acts. In the case of catastrophic disaster, the violent act has already occurred and the survivors are neither criminally destroying nor trying to profit from finding creative resources to help save lives and minimize the devastation within the community.

Heroes help save lives and minimize the devastation within the community of survivors.
What is really happening is Neighborhood Resuscitation.

News providers.…your premise is wrong and so is your narrative.

Eunice

Catastrophe Disaster and The Pursuit of Artificial

Catastrophe Disaster and The Pursuit of Artificial

A hallmark of western modern age medicine and health care has been to strive to not only imitate nature but to outdo nature. Where this influenced me the most in my primary field of work was the generation-long debate of which is better…breastfeeding or formula.  For a long period of time, marketers of formula had strong influence over the entire population in the US, backed by the education system for healthcare providers including doctors, nurses and government public health officials.  The Pursuit of Artificial (and its profit-making schemes) came at the expense of the natural.  If you wanted to breastfeed your infant, you had to go outside of the system because not only did the system shun you, it inferred you were not following best practices as a parent since breastfeeding was inferior to artificial and might even contain dangerous chemicals.

During those dark days in modern obstetrics, care givers even forgot how breastfeeding was suppose to work. If you were in most US hospitals during those days and you wanted to breastfeed, your baby was still given a bottle of glucose water by the nurses first.  Or you were given that bottle to feed your newborn before you attempted breastfeeding.  There were all kinds of “medical” reasons put forth as to why that bottle was policy.   Truth was that artificial formula does not contain the mother’s first milk, the natural laxative to start the bowels working.  Glucose water was given to be the artificial substitute.  Another example from my early RN experience was the policy that only the delivering mother and the medical team were allowed to witness the birth.  And during labor, support persons were not allowed to stay at the bedside, only to visit at the bedside a few minutes each hour.  Natural childbirth as we know it today with its support system was never an option.

…..then one day things began to change and the natural way began to gain ground again against the Pursuit of Artificial. Like a quiet rebellion.  Like a quiet resistance. Nature regained its rightful place.  Nature refuses to follow this path.

In our rush to fill in the void created by catastrophic disaster, let’s remember to respect Nature’s lead in supporting those survivors left behind.   The new neighborhood is self-stabilizing.   It does not need the Pursuit of Artificial (and its profit-making schemes).

-Eunice

Cash is King for Disaster Donations?

A donations food drive feels like a real way to support people in need. Donating cash at a checkout line, or on a website doesn’t usually give that same feeling. In contrast, it feels depersonalized, uncertain.  Where’s the money go from there-  what’s the impact?  Where’s the feeling of solidarity and support?

Collecting donations is something real. It feels like you are already making a difference.  This past holiday season my employer did this, and the pyramid of cans  that we collected was a visible, in your face display of our solidarity with those who needed that food.  The can drive collected food to donate to a nonprofit that handles the logistics of distributing it to a flooded community. It was a great team project, it brought us together, and it felt like we were helping this community. Over the course of a couple weeks, we pilfered our own pantries, cleaned the shelves of the surrounded supermarkets- drove all those cans back to the office and lugged them to the 3rd floor where we made a pyramid of them. You could see this monument to charity before your eyes.

Beyond our office- what was the impact in the flooded community ? We can’t say for sure, but we do know what happens to a flooded neighborhood.  Perhaps no water or power, kitchens largely out of commission, people living in hotels or shelters or out of their car-  and those in greatest need lacking the ability to cook and prepare food.  Even not in a disaster, cans are usually only a small part of the food source for families.  The greatest problem- we don’t really know what happened to the food we donated and if our goal was not just to come together as a company, but to impact a flood-stricken community- then we should care as much about the cans as much as the cash.

In the months after a disaster, interviews with surivors relay a common response:  somewhere in that flooded community was a warehouse full of cans- perhaps still is.  It’s called the “second disaster” to those in the disaster recovery community- the challenge of making well-intentioned donations available and useable to the community.

The point is that we have to differentiate between feel-good projects, and those which make a difference. Mayne we can zero in on other goods that are essential. Like diapers, medicine, tarps.  Maybe outsiders have no idea what that “short list” of useable donations is, on any given day. That sort of analysis would best be conducted in the locality.

This, then, provides a useful intersection of the survivors and the supporters. Survivors provide the analysis, the certainty of what the feel-good support project ought to be- and the supporters do the can drive. Or the diaper drive. Or whatever the case may be.  Here there are two issues:

  1. Efficiency- get the rights resources to the right place at the right time, with the right distribution and support.
  2. The Story- give supporters a reason to support. An understanding of what the other person is going through and why a diaper drive has such an impact to that community. You can’t do this with numbers alone. Something as tangible as a pyramid of canned goods.

Sometimes cash is the better donation- it supports the community’s ability to decide for itself what needs are most urgently met.  Sometimes those needs can’t be met with cash- and well-intentioned volunteers should be ready to listen for those requests- for time, labor, and other resources they may be able to provide.

How to create a non-profit organization in Washington State

For those interested in creating a non-profit organization, the following list lays out how we did our organization in 2005, which you can use in conjunction with any other information you get from others to figure out your own style.
Pre-1. Everything else rests on this. The name you choose must be researched. It must be an original and not a close copy of another organization’s or business’ name, word, phrase or logo. Do a copyright search and document/keep your findings.
1. Business license – Olympia
2. Decide if you want to be For-Profit or Non-Profit
3. Choose a name and any DBA (doing business as) names
4. Choose what type of corporation you want to be (we are an S-Corporation)
5. Choose how many board members you want (we have 3-9)
6. Decide if you are a doing org. or a mentoring org.
7. How will you get your money to operate and meet your mission?
8. Do you want a membership organization?
9. Choose a simple Purpose (we chose: relief, product, distribution and consultation). The purpose is unchangeable so make it simple and broad.
10. Choose a beginning Mission Statement that fits within the Purpose.
The board can change or refine the Mission Statement within the Purpose parameters.
11. Go online to the Washington Bar Association and choose a format that fits your needs. You will need: Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, Conflict of Interest Statement.
12. Choose your Incorporating Board (we had 3 people)
13. Have an Incorporating Board meeting and take minutes. Have each member sign the minutes. At the meeting also have all the Incorporators sign the Articles of Incorporation.
NOTE: the Purpose and the Articles of Incorporation are not changeable!!!!!!! If you mess up, you can dissolve the corporation and start over…I had to do that twice😀.
14. Take the completed and signed original and a copy of the original signed Articles of Incorporation to the Washington Secretary of State in Olympia and get it registered. You keep the original and give them the copy. Show them the original but you keep it.
15. While at the Secretary of State (SOS), ask to speak with the Charities Division and get registered with them. This is very important.
16. Get a map from the SOS so you can find your way around Olympia.
17. Go to the Department of Revenue in Olympia. Introduce yourself and your Organization.
Ask if there is anything you need to do at that office.
18. Go to Labor and Industries in Olympia. Ask if there is anything you need to do there.
19. Choose your Initial board members and set up a meeting time.
20. Make a tight agenda and make sure it is followed and everything is recorded correctly during this Initial Board meeting. Make sure to have the Bylaws and Conflict of Interest statement filled in and ready to be presented, edited and approved. If you have a Logo, present it for board approval. From here on out, you are no longer a single person on a mission, you are a body of people making decisions together. For ease of business flow, you might want a Quorum to be 50%. also, you might add a bylaw that board business, including voting, can be done using technology. (We amended our bylaws to be 50% and accepted technology. It is so much easier since we are not in one location. If the Organization has to pay to bring the members together for decision making meetings, it can be very expensive and time consuming which delays meeting your mission.) Also, choose if you want monthly meetings and if so, choose when and where.
Choose a bank or Credit Union at this first meeting. Put some thought into it. You will also choose the first year positions at this meeting: president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. The Secretary and President cannot be the same person. The board needs to agree to go ahead and file for Federal 501(c )(3) status. It’s best to follow parliamentary rules of order or something everyone can agree on in order to keep meetings short and to the point.
21. File for Logo trademark through the Washington Secretary of State office. (This is optional. It is what we did.)
22. Download and fill out all the required paperwork for the Federal 501(c)(3) status.
23. Contact an Accountant to review the paperwork before sending to IRS.
24. Be sure to keep copies of everything. Originals, if possible.
25. As a board, decide on 3-5 Core Values that make up your org. Keep them short.
Example: Every situation will be different – value that community
Example: Honor the next generation

Best wishes,
-Eunice

Looming Shocks – Part 3: theft of Indigenous land underlies our shock-susceptible racial hierarchies

Referring to increasing “right-wing nationalism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and straight-up white supremacy,” Naomi Klein says the following in her recent article:

“The only way to justify such barbaric forms of exclusion is to double down on theories of racial hierarchy that tell a story about how the people being locked out …deserve their fate, whether it’s Trump casting Mexicans as rapists and ‘bad hombres,’ and Syrian refugees as closet terrorists, … or successive Australian prime ministers justifying those sinister island detention camps as a ‘humanitarian’ alternative to death at sea.

This is what global destabilization looks like in societies that have never redressed their foundational crimes — countries that have insisted slavery and indigenous land theft were just glitches in otherwise proud histories …all of it taking place on the violently stolen indigenous land on which North America’s wealth was built. And now the same theories of racial hierarchy that justified those violent thefts in the name of building the industrial age are surging to the surface as the system of wealth and comfort they constructed starts to unravel on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Trump is just one early and vicious manifestation of that unraveling. He is not alone. He won’t be the last.”

Klein alludes to a connection, here, that is noticeably absent from most conversations about current violence, racism and dehumanization: the connection between ongoing military occupations of stolen Indigenous land and the violence and racism that surfaces in various ways in Canada and the United States of America.

Folks often act shocked or surprised by present-day manifestations of violence and racism here in North America, yet our Settler nation-states were founded on white supremacist notions of terra nullius and the Christian Doctrine of Discovery, casting Indigenous people as sub-human in order to justify our own settlement and occupation of the land.

Canada and the USA, as Settler-colonial states, are houses actively haunted by the ghosts of colonial treachery, and are currently occupied by the descendant beneficiaries of that violence. Why then, do we think we are not going to be affected when we refuse to pay attention to that history and refuse to presently return stolen land to the Indigenous people who continue to exist?

I think the answer is this: it is inconvenient and uncomfortable and would require each of us to give up things we think we own.  That’s no fun, so we figure we’re better off feigning confusion or surprise every time the white supremacist foundations of our land ownership rear their heads again and again in the form of racially charged violence.

As long as we, as Settlers, remain committed to ignoring the ongoing military occupation of Indigenous land in Canada and the USA, our attitudes and hearts likely will not undergo the necessary transformation toward respecting the dignity of all people.

Klein describes the work of righting past wrongs and repairing our relationships with one another as “work that is the bedrock of shock resistance.”

-Bjorn

Looming shocks – Part 2: two disasters, the direct and the imposed

As described in a recent Naomi Klein article, disaster are not only disasters because of the immediate havoc and destruction they wreak, but also because of the strategic opportunity they provide for well-prepared people in positions of power to force undemocratic policy changes on a population during the disaster’s ensuing state of shock.

These two dimensions of disaster – the primary or direct disaster and the auxiliary or imposed disaster – may be similar in the disastrousness of their felt effects, but they differ in our ability to anticipate them. The imposed disaster that comes from opportunistic policies shoved through in a time of population-wide shock are now possible to anticipate with fairly high certainty.

Naomi Klein has documented the pattern extensively in her book “The Shock Doctrine,” and the favorite policies of the wealthy and powerful are eye-rollingly predictable and even clichéd: privatizing education and infrastructure, imposing states of emergency to supersede democratic processes, and austerity measures to curtail public spending and cut corporate taxes. So this stuff should be even easier to ‘disaster-plan’ for than storing supplies, practicing emergency drills and scenario-planning for weather events that happen at relatively random intervals and locations.  How could communities be ‘disaster-planning’ more strategically for the imposed/auxiliary disasters that regularly follow in the wake of primary/direct disaster?

To me, it is preparation for the onslaught against community autonomy when faced with a catastrophic disaster that prompts our fore fronting of survivor-driven community recovery.

My next post will discuss the same article’s connection between colonial violence/land theft and the violence of current racial hierarchies.

-Bjorn

Looming shocks – Part 1: two-tiered disaster relief

The June 10th 2017 Naomi Klein article that I introduced in the previous post articulates a noteworthy trend in disaster response. The powerful believe it is in their interest to create a two-tiered system for disaster relief. The wealthy who can afford it become members of private clubs that offer services of helicopter-extracting members from the chaos of disaster, leaving less motivation on the part of those with all the pesos to support broadly accessible publicly funded mechanisms to protect and assist populations in crisis.

In California, private firefighters are dispatched with protective fire retardant to the wildfire-threatened homes of the wealthy. The result is a palpable devaluing of the lives of those who are not wealthy. Naomi Klein says, “a significant cohort of our elites are walling themselves off not just physically but also psychologically, mentally detaching themselves from the collective fate of the rest of humanity.”

Walling themselves off from the masses, however, also means potentially walling themselves out of the type of connected and thriving community necessary for true resilience in disaster. Neighbors and community members respond first through efficient relational networks. There’s no price on that, nor should there be. Living relationally – in a community – is a wholly different paradigm of existence where supporting fellow people can matter more than achieving personal comfort and perceived financial certainty.

My next post will discuss this same article in relation to the existence of two faces of a disaster:  an initial direct disaster as well as an auxiliary imposed disaster that is experienced when the former is used as a shock opportunity to advance an agenda.

-Bjorn

Looming shocks – article introduction

An article published yesterday by “Shock Doctrine” and “This Changes Everything” author Naomi Klein cautions about the various looming opportunistic and predatory policy implementations that are likely to be coming from Mr. Trump and other corporate and political elites as various disasters and system shocks inevitably arise.  I intend to highlight a few important insights made in the article over the course of a series of three blog posts in the coming days, but will begin by linking to the full article. My next blog post will discuss this article’s concern about two-tiered disaster relief.

THE WORST OF DONALD TRUMP’S TOXIC AGENDA IS LYING IN WAIT – A MAJOR U.S. CRISIS WILL UNLEASH IT – by Naomi Klein (published June 10th, 2017 in The Intercept)

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Three Word Address

What do you think of this system that has now been adopted in some regions? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38262877 The three word system for precisely identifying every 3m by 3m location in the world seems like it could have some advantages particularly in disaster situations where the infrastructure of any former address system based on road names will like be destroyed, hampering attempts at a quick response. It also seems like the system is still heavily technology-dependent. In the context of broken infrastructure post-disaster it would potentially give an advantage to outsiders over locals in assuming authority for action if the outsiders where the only ones with working GPS devices to locate exact addresses. What might be other implications, positive or negative, for survivors of a catastrophic disaster in a region using this three word address system?

Bjorn