Plea from Biloxi

I shot this image in January. Although things are getting cleaned up in Biloxi, the people there are still in great need of help.



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Sharon Hanshaw, the Executive Director of Coastal Women for Change, recently issued this open letter:


My name is Sharon Hanshaw, and I’m the Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Coastal Women for Change, headquartered in Biloxi, Mississippi. As I watched CNN’s recent Katrina anniversary coverage, I saw story after story about New Orleans sandwiched between heartwarming stories about dolphin rescues and the adoption of stray animals.

Believe me, I have nothing against media coverage of the plight of people in New Orleans or the fate of lost animals. But I am angry with CNN, and here are the reasons why.

First of all, I doubt many people around the country realize that New Orleans received only a glancing blow from Katrina, whereas people along my part of the Gulf Coast took a direct hit. We lost everything we had and everything we had ever known.

Katrina made landfall just up the road near the town of Waveland, which was essentially obliterated, so much so that its nickname ever since has been “Wasteland.” My own community of East Biloxi was similarly flattened, as were parts of Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, and other towns along the Mississippi coast.

The poor in New Orleans suffered not from the storm itself, but because the levies failed. As horrible as that was, it is quite different from having your house explode into a million splinters, your possessions blasted into bits and splattered in the trees and bushes, numbers of your friends and neighbors swept out to sea, and the aftermath of a giant coat of toxic mud sprayed over your entire community – the smell of death.

That is what happened to us, but I didn’t see a word about this on CNN or other major national media outlets. In fact, the only contact I had from CNN was word that they had put a story about us “on hold,” apparently permanently.

The sad thing is this kind of treatment is what we’ve grown to expect from the media, from politicians, and from everyone with any power over whether or how our coastal communities will be rebuilt.

The big relief agencies put us on hold; FEMA put us on hold; the local, state, and federal governments put us on hold, and now CNN has put us on hold, too.

Well, guess what? I’m tired of being put on hold. The people I work with in Coastal Women for Change have already endured too much pain. Do you realize that in the days following Katrina, when we tried to reach the assistance centers set up in Houston, Texas, we were turned away because they told us they were only able to help victims from New Orleans!

Sometimes, sympathetic volunteers called over their supervisors to ask whether they could help us too. It became embarrassing and frustrating to be required to explain over and over again that though we weren't from New Orleans, we needed help nonetheless.

That is one indication of the effects of the saturation media coverage of the fate of New Orleans, to the relative neglect of what happened to the people along the Mississippi Coast, who were the ones at Ground Zero of Katrina’s wrath. To this day, my insides quiver when I hear people speak about the storm with the ignorance created and perpetuated by imbalanced media coverage.

My own family traces back to 1835 right here on the Mississippi coast, and EVERYTHING I ever knew is gone. Some of my family and friends were washed away. Almost immediately, following the storm, developers seized the opportunity to turn what is left of our community into a resort area that would finish the demolition Katrina started.

Here, we remain desperate for someone to notice how badly we are hurting a year after the storm. Except for the small groups of grassroots volunteers and church people who help us, month after month, we would have nowhere to stay, little to eat, nothing to wear, and nowhere to go for the emotional support we need to keep going.

Please circulate my open letter to anyone who might be able to help. Consider it an urgent appeal from the people of America’s forgotten coast.

Thank you for listening.

You can visit CWC and find out more about this remarkable group of women at Click Here.