Hello friends!
Just wanted to update you about some of our recent activities.
On September 1, Hurricane Dorian, a category 5 storm, decimated entire communities in the Northern Bahamas islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco. After stalling over the Bahamas, Dorian continued on a destructive path, scraping the southeastern seaboard of the U.S., and causing flooding and tornadoes up the coast, especially in Coastal North Carolina.
Together with community partners, we’ve launched an autonomous supply line to funnel needed supplies to impacted communities. Collection hubs were quickly developed throughout the southeast and are currently continuing to accept donations for impacted areas and communities. Please consider donating items at a collection hub near you.
To learn more about what we’ve been calling the Dorian Response Autonomous Supply Line, click here for details, including exact locations of donation collection hubs. Also, please email us at [email protected] if you are interested in starting a donation collection hub in your community.
In Florida, our efforts have focused on getting supplies to the Bahamas and supporting Bahamians in exile.
In North Carolina, we are engaging in supplies distribution and community cleanup efforts. In the Outer Banks we have worked to help the Frisco Native American History Museum, which was flooded in the storm, and developed a lot of mold. The museum is a very small nonprofit collection, curated by a couple in their 80s who have been at it for many years. Sadly, one of those founders died days before the hurricane, and his widow now has an immense amount of work to do in her state of grief, which is now compounded. Volunteers have been able to help with clean up, repairs, ripping up carpet, and mold remediation, and especially mold remediation on the very old, and culturally significant, in many cases sacred, items held in the collection there. Being pushed to re-open, there is still a lot of work to do, and many of those artifacts are being moved into storage where they will continue to need remediation and attention. This will be ongoing work that the museum is very eager to have help in.
Check out a recent interview we did with Act Out! about these efforts and mutual aid in general here.
Imelda caused widespread flooding in Eastern Texas, including in many communities that experienced flooding during Hurricane Harvey, just two years ago. Our friends at West Street Recovery and Bayou Action Street Health have already begun mobilizing. One benefit of being local, instead of national in scope, is that these organizations can maintain relationships in their locale indefinitely. Consider donating to them here and here. As always, folks can donate to us and find partner organizations and affinity groups to donate to on our website at MutualAidDisasterRelief.org/donate
Over on the west coast, folks are preparing for fire season by organizing drills and skillshares.
In addition to the volunteer opportunities above, we are also attempting to get a team of volunteers out to the Oglala Lakota Cultural Economic Revitalization Initiative at Pine Ridge before winter, to help with some building projects. If you are interested in helping out in any of these efforts, please reach out.
Lastly, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is excited to announce that our training team has more workshops coming up in the Northeast. Folks can check out the details here.
Love and solidarity,
