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included multi-million acre nature preserves across the country. The group
travelled in a Volkswagen bus from northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New
Mexico, spreading their visions of radical environmentalism. They gained a
wide audience and Earth First! groups formed throughout the world, includ-
ing in the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, India,
Germany, Poland, Nigeria, Slovakia, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.
Modern environmental activist and anarchist scott crow [the lowercase is
intentional] dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that smashed into
portions of southern America on August 29, 2005, as a Category 5 storm.
Hurricane Katrina resulted in the death of 1,836 people and caused over $81
billion in overall damage. The historic city of New Orleans, Louisiana, suf-
fered especially; as predicted years before, the aged and rotting levees protect-
ing the city toppled and nearly 80 percent of the city flooded as a result of
breached levees. Images of the city abounded—mostly of African Americans
stranded in dirty water, hungry and thirsty and, in some cases, dying in the
streets. But federal help was nowhere to be found and hundreds of thousands
of people were left stranded and thousands of people left dead. The Federal
Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], led by Michael Brown, who had no
experience in disaster management [prior to leading FEMA, Brown was the
commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association], unsurprisingly
proved to be a lousy leader.
Left to survive on their own, residents were forced to fend for themselves.
Luckily, community solidarity and volunteerism supplanted government
detachment. One example of such was the Common Ground Collective.
Common Ground Collective formed in the first week after Hurricane Katrina
in the New Orleans community of Algiers, a predominantly black area on the
west bank of the Mississippi River. Activist scott crow from Austin, who also
had worked at a recycling center and ran a thrift shop, was integral in the
formation of Common Ground. The story of Common Ground, which in
three years attracted over 23,000 mostly middle-class and white volunteers
with no previous experience in disaster response, reveals how volunteerism
made up for government inactivity. “The government had lost control,”
writes crow. “Everything disappeared underwater, leaving thousands to die or
fend for themselves.” He recalled that the federal agency only brought paper-
work, legal books, computers, rules, regulations, and more paperwork.
Demonstrating how out of touch they were, FEMA officials bragged how