Climate on Tap: Stories of Remembrance & Restoration

Day 1: Remember

August 23, 2022 Teresa Bettis
Climate on Tap: Stories of Remembrance & Restoration
Day 1: Remember
Show Notes Transcript

We’re excited to launch the first episode of our podcast – Climate on Tap: Rituals of Remembrance and Restoration! Rooted in memories of Hurricanes Katrina and Ida, this episode acknowledges people whose lives and livelihoods were upended when the superstorms struck.

Guest Speakers:
Teresa Fox-Bettis // Executive Director, South Alabama Center for Fair Housing

Introduction by:
Colette Pichon Battle // Vision & Initiatives Partner, Taproot Earth

Tap into REMEMBER by…
Setting a time to connect with an elder or younger person (or both) who you share a sacred relationship with. Take some time to share a meal and have a conversation with that person. 

Connect with us @taprootearth on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook

Day one. Remember, a lesson learned from Katrina is that no one is coming to save us. We're excited to launch the first episode of our podcast, Climate On Tap, Rituals of Remembrance and Restoration. Rooted in memories of Hurricanes Katrina and Ida, this episode acknowledges people whose lives and livelihoods were upended when the storm struck our communities. This episode features the brilliance of Teresa Fox Bettis, a frontline organizer in the South, an Executive Director of South Alabama Center for Fair Housing, and a Taproot Earth Inaugural Board Member. Teresa is committed to remembering the past and building towards the future with community as the medicine, the guide, and the lighthouse. We are deeply honored for Teresa to join us today. Passing the mic to Teresa. With Hurricane Katrina, it was the worst of the times. It was a dark time. But then in the aftermath of Katrina, it became one of the best times. And so lifelong relationships were built out of that, it's kind of like out of the ashes. You know, these relationships were built after the storm. I remember, gosh, I'm thinking 17 years— and my son is 17 years old. He was a baby when Hurricane Katrina hit. And it was a very scary time because I couldn't remember a storm of that magnitude coming into the Gulf. And I can remember it being dead headed for Mobile and it was like, oh my god, what are we going to do? We went to bed at night it was one way, and then we woke up it was like dead center for Mobile. And then yet it shifted again to the left and it had hit Louisiana. But we were still in that trajectory for a lot of bad weather and dangerous weather. And then just afterwards, just seeing the devastation that occurred along the Gulf Coast after the storm had passed. The lack of resources, the communities of color, the poor communities that were just literally ignored and just really left to figure it out for themselves. So it was actually from some of the convenings that happened after Katrina that I met Colette and she's like one of my three "Sheroes," I call my super women.[laughter] That I had the opportunity to meet her. She's just like a sister to me. I absolutely love her. So it was a scary time. I can say that initially and right after the storm, for here in the Mobile area, that was the first time I heard the term "saving ourselves," and there was a organized group of people and they were called "Saving Ourselves." And I was like, okay, that's interesting. But then I really, really realized, and that's the one thing that I can say, that a lesson learned from Katrina is that no one is coming to save us. After disaster, after disaster, after disaster, it is up to our communities to figure out that when the next catastrophe happens, when the next environmental catastrophe happens, what is it that we can already have in place or be prepared to address the potential fallout? Because if we're waiting on the federal government, they're not coming. If we're waiting on the local government, they're not coming. If we're waiting on Red Cross, they're not coming. If you're waiting on Salvation Army, they are not coming. The communities of color where I live, and the communities that I know about, they are overlooked. And so you have to figure out— and it's usually those identified leaders within those areas— you know, we try to go and find the resources. What are—and then say, "Hey, listen, you all aren't serving these communities. They need your help." And, you know, I've always said if you're in a place of position and if you have some pull, and you have the ability to get to somebody's ear, that's what you need to do. You know, use that. What I say God has blessed you with, that capacity to get to certain people, you need to use that to help those who don't have that. So like, being a voice for those who don't have a voice, or if there's certain doors that you as a leader or community advocate that can walk through that everybody can't walk through, that we walk through with everybody on our backs to say,"Hey, we represent this group of people." I think the real eye opener in one of the life lessons, and I think the most important lesson, is we have to be prepared to save ourselves and we have to be prepared to step up in the face of adversity because others are not gonna step up. Those folks who actually have the resources and the power, it never trickles down to the communities that truly need the help. And it really is a sense of resiliency. There's just always that segment that says, "Okay, let's put our boots on and let's go get it." You know, "Let's see what we need to do to help our community." And you just have to step up and you can't be afraid to do that. You see the level of devastation, you see so much that is happening, and usually it is something from within. It's almost like a Fannie Lou Hamer moment. You know, it's this thing of just being fed up. It's something I think that's innate, that you just know that,"I have to do something," and not that you really know what to do. When Katrina hit, although I had been with the Center for some time, it was something unlike anything else that I had ever experienced. And I can remember, I remember this, there's an area called Coden. It's in the south part of Mobile County. And I don't even remember now how I got called down there, but I got called down to come and just help, you know. And it may have been at the issuance of HUD because I think they were asking us to just kind of go within our service area. Who were the people that needed help, and how could we help them? What was it like on the ground? And I remember the first time I went down there, and I met people, and I saw people, and it was like— people had concrete slabs. Everything had washed into the Mobile Bay. They literally only had the clothes on their backs. So much devastation. And I left, and then I was going back another time. Seems like I remember distinctly it was my second time going down, and as I was driving down I just began to pray and I was like,"Lord, I don't know how—this is overwhelming. I don't know how to help these people, so I need you to show me how to help." I think when you're called to a place of leadership, I think you just know it. And I think that you know that you have to draw on something that's bigger than you. Whatever that thing is, whatever that spiritual belief is, whatever it is that grounds you— to just know that there's something, you're being called to something that's bigger than yourself. And you understand that it's not anything that you can do on your own, right? And that you need guidance from the ancestors, from God, and everybody else on how to help people who are looking to you, who absolutely don't know what they're going to do from one minute to the next, right, they're experiencing something that they never have. It's an innate knowing that you are being called to do something. And it's like, you can't have peace in it. It's not something that you can just walk by and just say,"Okay, well I'm sorry about that, but, you know, I can't get involved." It's different. It's a knowing that you cannot just sit by on the sidelines, that whatever it is that you can do, whatever that thing, whatever that work, whatever it is, that you have to do it. I can remember watching the nightly news and looking at New Orleans. The levees had broken, the city was flooding, the 9th Ward was flooding, people were trapped. I couldn't believe my eyes, what I was seeing. I'm like, "Surely not in America. This is not happening." And the majority of the people that I was looking at were people that looked like me. And I was like, "We're not a third world country. We're talking about New Orleans, what do you mean you can't get water and supplies and food to people?" You have them trapped inside of a dome with no electricity, no air conditioning, no basic supplies for human needs. Here in Mobile, visiting people in certain areas that people are already on the ground and giving supplies, and FEMA was there, and then in other communities, again, where folks that kind of look like me, they hadn't heard anything from anybody. Nobody had showed up. And I had the kind of in to know the people on the ground and doing things because I was dealing with HUD. It was real obvious that some people were getting help, and it was very obvious that there were certain people that weren't getting help. And the only real difference that I could see was the color of their skin. And it became really clear to me that, okay, this is enough. You know, I'm watching what's happening in New Orleans. I'm seeing what's happening here in this area. Those that know me, they know I will pick up the phone and call people and say,"Hey, I need some help." I think as leaders, you have to really, really understand that you cannot do it all yourself. I don't profess to do it all myself. And I'll be like, "Listen, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I know you may know what to do and I just need you to come and help.""I've got to help this group of people. It's something that I need to do and I need help. I know I can't do it myself." When I just realized, you know, like, just enough is enough, you know? And I just, from that point in time to now, just how we continue to see the disparities in communities of color, where you have Black and brown people, where you have people who are of low wealth, even our communities where there's limited English proficiency. And, you know, down in the south part of the county, the Asian community. Nobody was there translating, and helping them, and making sure that they knew how to get resources and where to go, how to get assistance. So there were—I just saw a real lack from those underserved communities, historically. I met the mayor, Bayou La Batre at that time, it's this guy named Stan Wright. And I went to a meeting and he started identifying— people had kind of warned me about him, that we think that he's involved in some racist kind of stuff. Be careful with him. You know, you never know. And I was like, well, he's a man. And I sit there in a meeting with him and he's sitting at their City Hall chewing tobacco and spitting in a cup. And I thought, really? And he started talking about his "Blacks" and his "Asians." And I was like, what are—what does he mean his "Blacks" and his "Asians?" I was like, oh my gosh. Okay. So now I see what we're dealing with. The word was in the community because I grew up Lutheran. And the Lutherans were in the Bayou La Batre area, and they were providing resources and, you know, help, food and water assistance to people in the community and folks that lived in Coden. And Coden is like this multicultural kind of community. There's Black, there's White, there's Native American, there's Cajun— it's just some of everything, right. And—but they're a close knit community. And when I can remember Ms. Nancy, God bless her soul, we lost her last year from COVID. But she said, "Well, we went to the Lutherans and they said, if we didn't live in Bayou La Batre, they couldn't help us. They wouldn't even give us any water." So, you know, I went to—[laughter] And I'm like, I understand that, you know, people are asking, coming up— I said "They don't live in Bayou La Batre, but they're right here in the surrounding areas and you guys have water. They need clean water." And she said, "Oh, well, the mayor told us that, you know, if they don't live in Bayou La Batre we can't help them." I said, "Do you work for the mayor or do you work for the church?" I said, "He can't dictate to you. The church is providing this stuff. The Lutheran Church is providing the resources." And I just called them out on it, I said,"You guys are wrong in what you're doing. And if you're gonna be about the business of helping, you have to help everybody." So that's when I say, when I bring up some of those larger groups, some of the things that they do, you know, I think that you forget what your real mission is. And, you know, we can't be afraid to challenge them on it. When we see them doing things that we know go against what their mission is supposed to be. When hurricane season was fast approaching and we were in the throes of COVID, and I was on calls and talking to people and I was saying, "Well, what's the plan if we get a major hurricane, are shelters gonna open? And if they're gonna open, are they gonna— what's gonna be the capacity? Because we're looking at social distancing measures now." And I said, "So what's the plan for the community if a major storm happens and people have to go to a shelter, What happens to people with disabilities? Where are they gonna go, and how are we gonna handle this?" And nobody could give me an answer. And I got a call from a reporter during that time leading up to hurricane season in 2020. And they were asking me if I knew what Mobile's response was going to be, that they had talked to Florida, they'd been over to Mississippi and Louisiana, but Mobile really didn't have a response. They really didn't quite know what they were gonna do. Other areas were opening up hotels, they had made arrangements in the event of a major storm. And what I found out after calling around and talk to some folks, that there really wasn't a plan. And I was really kind of livid because I felt like after Hurricane Katrina, we spent millions, upon millions, upon millions of dollars on disaster preparedness. Y'all don't have a plan, are you kidding me? There's no plan of how we're gonna handle this? And there really wasn't. There was no plan. Nothing had been thought about what to do now that we have a disaster. And then we have to layer that with COVID. For all of the millions of dollars, taxpayer dollars that were spent for local governments and states to create disaster preparedness plans, I don't know if they really didn't do them, or if they really just put something together, but it was clear to me that we were still not prepared. I think that's the one area that we really kind of failed at. And I just have to say that, because we've seen that the powers that be really don't have a plan. And so where we have really missed the point is that we haven't really created our own plan. So what is it that you would do? What's the plan if we get another Hurricane Katrina, if we get another pandemic on top of a hurricane season, right? Here, we're looking at climate change and we're looking in Europe where people are literally dying. They're not prepared for the heat. They don't have proper things in place to combat these record breaking temperatures that they have. I'm saddened by that, but then I also feel a bit of guilt about it because I feel like I should be a part of that solution and I really haven't focused on that like I should, because we should have a plan. There should be a ground level plan so that if nobody else shows up, people know who to reach out to. They know where to go. And we have amassed some type of base or resources of just basic things that people will need. One, we have to admit that. It may be true in other communities that maybe they have done that. Here in my area, I don't see that. I don't see it at all. We don't have that. And so that's a failure on our part. If we get a major storm this year, here in the Gulf that could impact my area, I don't think that we're ready. I think we always have intentions, right? I think the intention is always to do what's right, to always be ready and stay ready. But sometimes, and I recognized this over the last several years, five plus years of just watching in our country a rise of traumatic events that have just kind of happened across our country, whether they're manmade or environmental or whatever it is. I don't think we really recognize the level of trauma that we experience, which impacts our ability to be intentional a lot of times about things because it's just a matter of being able to cope with the next thing. You're getting over one thing, and it's the next. With Taproot, I think being intentional in like a laser point type of intentionality about it— the goal is to be—is to get ready and stay ready and be ready. What's the intentional acts that we have to do to make sure that that's in place? We talk about and we plan about it, but it makes sure it's implemented. Right. And so that it's really laser focused. So if I know, just use the Mobile County Prichard area, right, I know we don't have a plan. So as a board member of Taproot, tapping just into our group, right, our partners that work, you know, this is something that I know in my community that we don't have. Well, but in Slidell they may have it already. Or in Biloxi, they may have it already, or in California, or you know, in Virginia, DC, wherever our folks are, they may already have it. I think it's just having those discussions to say,"Here's what I see as my needs that we don't have." And Mickie may say,"Well, we have that already." And I say, "Well, great, can you share that plan with me?" So then I can just implement that here. All I got—I know the people to pull to the table. That means we don't have to even create the plan, we just need to put our mark on it, right? You've already created the plan, so who are the players that we need to put to that plan so that when the next Katrina comes, right? All we're doing is implementing because we've already set it up. And what I begin to see is that there is a work happening that I didn't see in Mobile. I was seeing people that looked just like me, other people that I was familiar with no matter what their ethnicity was, but it was just everyday people who were passionate about their communities and about the people that they serve. We realized that the same issues that were happening in Mobile were happening in Pensacola, were happening in Jacksonville, were happening in Biloxi, were happening in Jackson, were happening in Slidell, were happening in— we were all experiencing the same things. And so we were more connected than we ever knew that we were connected. Right. And out of this work was birthed something. There's a Regional Justice Leadership Summit that we've been doing for over ten years now, and it was because I wanted to try to connect people along the Gulf Coast and bring people into the Mobile area to say,"Hey, here are everyday people that look like you, that are making a difference in their communities, and what can you learn from them? What leadership principles can you take from them? What is it that you didn't know that now you know because you've been connected?" And that I think if we remember that we are more alike than we are different, that at the end of the day we all want safe, healthy, vibrant communities. And we want a future for our children. We want them to have the best. And I think we do that working together, and keeping the lines of communication open, and being able to call upon people. And I'm reminded from the, 17 years ago, some of the people that I have met and worked alongside that are gone. Some of them died after Katrina. Some of them died after the BP oil spill. Some of them died after some of the other storms that have come through. Many have died after COVID. I'm reminded that life is fragile and it is short, and I'm reminded that we are each here for a purpose. We are each here for a specific moment in time. I am grateful to have been able to be allowed to exist, or coexist, in the same space with so many brilliant people, so many kind people. And I'm excited for our kids and our grandkids to come and our young people to be an example for them, that you cannot give up, good always overcomes evil, and love always overcomes hate. And so I think if we remember that, and to be true to our passions, and true to remember that on your worst day, you're still your best. In this work, on our worst days we're still our best. And so remember that. It's that fighting spirit, is that innate that just says,"You can never give up." We may take a break and we may take a breather and we have to regroup, but we can never give up until we see that beloved community that Dr. King talked about, right, we have to work on that and we want to have a place for the future that's ahead of us, for those that are coming behind us. Thank you, Teresa. Tap in to remember by setting a time to connect with an elder, or a young person, or both, who you share a sacred relationship with. Take the time to share a meal and discuss what it took, who it took, to put the meal together. Share your story tagging @TaprootEarth on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook using the hashtag #ClimateOnTap. We'd love it if you share Climate On Tap with your people. Send them this episode or invite them to sign up for the series.