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Communities reach
out to help their own in Katrina aftermath

Communities reach
out to help their own in Katrina aftermath

First_aid

Gay couples are taking in other gays. Indian tribes are offering new homes on nearby reservations. And the NAACP has sent thousands of relief workers into black communities to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. After the storm hit and even before, ethnic, social, and religious communities--from Greek-Americans to the National Association of the Deaf--scrambled to help their own.

Gay couples are taking in other gays. Indian tribes are offering new homes on nearby reservations. And the NAACP has sent thousands of relief workers into black communities to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. After the storm hit and even before, ethnic, social, and religious communities--from Greek-Americans to the National Association of the Deaf--scrambled to help their own. With so many black families displaced, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sprang into action, mobilizing more than 500,000 members and volunteers across the nation, primarily focusing on the needs of impoverished black families who might have trouble being reached by relief workers. NAACP spokesman John C. White said the organization has been involved in disasters in the past, but primarily when those disasters affected black communities. In Houston, Michael-Chase Creasy and his friends who had fled New Orleans walked into the first gay bar they could find after settling into a hotel. The bartender gave them his number and said to call when they needed help. A few days later, when it became obvious they weren't going home and hotel bills were racking up, they called that bartender. "He said, 'Well, darling, what took you so long? We've got people all over the gay and lesbian community who want to provide our people from New Orleans with rooms to stay,"' recalled Creasy, who is now staying with two friends in a lesbian couple's home in suburban Houston. Meanwhile, the mayor of Eureka Springs, Ark., posted "a special invitation to all gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered" storm victims on an online bulletin board, offering "a safe, nondiscriminating town in which to help evacuees rebuild their lives." "This seems to be a somewhat forgotten group, especially throughout the South," said Mayor Kathy Harrison. Representatives of almost all faiths have been fund-raising and volunteering for general relief efforts--from Catholic Charities USA, which has launched a massive relief effort, to about 2,000 Muslim volunteers, who marked the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks Sunday by working at Houston's convention center.

Barbara Raynor, spokeswoman for Houston's Jewish Federation, estimates that about half of New Orleans's 12,000-member Jewish community is in Houston now. The Jewish High Holy Days are approaching, and Raynor said Houston synagogues have offered free membership and free enrollment in religious schools to the displaced families. In Jackson, Miss., where about 100 Jewish evacuees have been welcomed into Jewish homes, Rabbi Valerie Cohen of Jackson's Beth Israel Congregation told The Jewish Week newspaper that her congregants want to do more. "There's also a lot of guilt that you're not doing enough, no matter how much you're doing," she said. (AP)

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