Families & Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC), New Orleans & Lake Charles, Louisiana
“People need to hear that it’s not ‘ok’ down here. A lot needs to happen: funders need to invest; academics and organizers are all needed. It is an ongoing disaster, a national disaster. For people who care about human beings in this country, if we loose New Orleans it’s a huge blow. You can’t have the largest displacement of black people and not have it have an effect. The most profound trauma was that the world could see and recognize that kind of racism and poverty and do nothing.” Co-Executive Directors: Gina Womack & Xochitl Bervera
Gina and Xochitl’s Story Gina Womack and Xochitl Bervera, both of New Orleans, started Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) together over six years ago. What began as an informal support group for the mothers and grandmothers of juveniles in detention or at risk of detention has now grown into a bona fide advocacy organization, passing legislation such as the 2003 Juvenile Justice Reform Act; working to close the 700-bed Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth (widely agreed to have been, “a horrific place”); and reducing the number of juveniles in detention in the state from 2,000 to 400. Womack and Bervera have succeeded by making these young people and their families a priority when few others do—and at no point was this more evident than during and after the storm.
When Womack and Bervera learned they would need to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina they headed to the home of organizer Grace Bower, who lives in Lake Charles. Still uncertain about the status of their own homes, they immediately began worrying about the well-being of their members. They knew that many of the families they work with would not have been able to evacuate. And, they were soon to discover, 240 juveniles were in detention in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Many of these juveniles had been moved to Orleans Parish Prison, where they found themselves stranded in water up to their necks, covered in sewage, and starving.
Bervera and Womack knew they had to do something to help their members. Despite warnings that people were being turned away from the city at gun point, they found their way back into New Orleans and began the search for juveniles and their families. In that first week, they also decided to raise money to help the families. And at the same time, they began to deal with their own personal losses: they discovered that Womack’s Broadmoor home had taken on 5 feet of water. “It was really disheartening,” Bervera remembers.
FFLIC: Providing immediate aid for youth and their families after the storm Once state officials learned about the young people detained in Orleans Parish Prison, they contacted FFLIC to help them locate their families, so that the kids could be released into their custody. The FFLIC team went to the Convention Center and the Superdome in New Orleans, asking people if one of their family members was a detained juvenile. They went to shelters in Houston and other cities asking the same question. “We put on our FFLIC t-shirts and walked around,” Bervera said, “and it worked. I’ll never forget finding my first grandmother.” With the help of 40 volunteers in at least 15 states, FFLIC was eventually able to match every single one of the detained juveniles with their families and have them released into family custody.
With this “reunification” project underway, FFLIC sent out an e-mail to its friends and acquaintances asking for support. The staff relocated to Lake Charles, found office space—and then Hurricane Rita hit. Bervera remembers, “It was our next blow. Everyone was roaming Lake Charles in a daze, drinking FEMA water—but Lake Charles bounced back.”
Soon, thanks to that early email, FFLIC started receiving donations, mostly from individuals, but also from the Twenty-first Century Fund. They raised over $100,000. The funds were then split among the families in the program, allotted according to need. In the Lake Charles office there is a framed collage of the hand-written cards that came in with the donations.
