“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.
