Dear Plenty Friends,

“With the water rising in my house, I climbed up on my roof, but when the water came up over my roof I started swimming for my life. When I got too tired to go on, I looked up and saw a man on a high roof. I yelled for help and he dove in and swam over to me and pulled me onto his back and got me over to his roof and we climbed up. We were up there for three days before a boat came by and got us.” (As told to a Plenty volunteer by a Katrina survivor.)

Plenty’s response to hurricane Katrina began when we got a phone call from an old friend on Wednesday, August 31, two days after Katrina made landfall in New Orleans and across the Gulf coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. Gary Maclaughlin, now living in Santa Cruz, California where he has a construction business, wanted to know if Plenty was sending any buses down to New Orleans. We hadn’t talked to Gary in 25 years and had to say, “We don’t have any buses here.” The next day Gary flew to Nashville, bought a school bus and drove it to Plenty headquarters on the Farm, stopping only long enough to load it up with food, water and other supplies. Friday night, with Josh Heake, a schoolteacher at the Farm School, in the shotgun seat, Gary was on his way to New Orleans. Gary’s bold move sparked Plenty and the Farm community into action and catapulted Gary onto national television to tell the story of what one committed person can do to make a difference.

After arriving in Louisiana and giving out their food and supplies, Gary and Josh decided to get some stranded people out of New Orleans, but the city was locked down and most “non-official” vehicles weren’t being allowed in. When Gary got to the checkpoint entrance to the 25-mile causeway across Lake Pontchartrain, the guard asked for his “papers of authorization.” We had given Gary a letter on Plenty stationary that said he was authorized to assist the victims of hurricane Katrina by the Board of Directors of Plenty International. We call it “self-authorization” and it has worked for us all over the world for 30 years.

After getting into the city, Gary drove the bus to the airport where survivors were being brought to be flown out to FEMA camps and shelters all over the US. Trouble was, a lot of these people had relatives and friends they could stay with in other parts of Louisiana. After navigating a string of authorities, most of whom tried to prevent anyone from leaving, Gary was able to collect 14 survivors and take them out because the last authority he talked to, a compassionate MP, broke ranks and said, “yes.” Later he was able to drop them off with friends and relatives within 100 miles of New Orleans.

Since that first bus run, Plenty has sent down 8 more teams of volunteers in vehicles loaded with relief supplies. We see our role as seeking out the people who inevitably fall through the cracks between the efforts of the government and the giant relief groups like the Red Cross. In this case, that’s many thousands of people. Thankfully, dozens of other grassroots agencies and hundreds of individuals are out there working with the same idea. We’re especially grateful for what the Veterans for Peace and their supporters have been doing in maintaining a lively relief operations and communications center, and for the memorable generosity of our Plenty donors that is fueling our response.

Katrina has accomplished some positive things. It ripped aside the curtain of indifference that has covered the stark and disturbing reality of poverty and inequality in this and other parts of America. It shook America out of the mental and spiritual coma that has been so paralyzing since the shock to our nervous system of 9/11 and the mounting anguish about a catastrophic, senseless war drifting agonizingly beyond anyone’s control. People, groups and communities are opening their hearts and wallets, holding fundraisers, collecting and shipping food and supplies and sometimes just getting into their cars and trucks and driving down to the Gulf towns and cities to pitch in. Disasters of the magnitude of the tsunami of last December and now hurricane Katrina, compounded by Rita, require an extraordinary response, and one that continues after the disaster has receded from the headlines. The incredible grassroots mobilization that's happening is also contributing to the healing of the nation as a result of millions of people reaching out to complete strangers, even if it means diving into the deluge and risking their own life to save someone else.

Yours truly,
Peter Schweitzer
Executive Director

PLENTY INTERNATIONAL
P.O. Box 394
Summertown, Tennessee 38483
Phone: (931) 964-4323
Fax: (931) 964-4864
E-mail: plenty@plenty.org