When Hurricane Katrina clobbered the Gulf Coast in 2005, women bore the brunt of the chaos that ensued, facing sexual violence and abuse at the hands of relatives and strangers. It was out of that devastating period that Coastal Women for Change was formed, an organization devoted to bringing women’s voices to reconstruction efforts.

Founded in 2006 by a hairdresser and community activist named Sharon Hanshaw, CWC organized community forums, drawing attention to the need for childcare facilities in east and west Biloxi, and calling for an increased police presence in certain areas to protect the elderly living alone in trailers. “We believe there is value in coming together as a community, because some issues can seem insurmountable when considered alone, but when you get together with others, there is strength in those numbers,” reads the CWC web site’s About Us section.

Now, in the wake of the British Petroleum oil spill, CWC is contending with a new challenge: how to bring disaster relief to people who are already scarred by disaster. In an interview with American Prospect, Sharon Hanshaw describes the impact that the spill has had on the Gulf region’s collective psyche. “I can’t describe it. It’s like a death sentence or something,” she says. “When we think of any type of devastation, we think of Katrina automatically because people still live in the cottages. Others don’t fully understand what people who live in it feel; they think people should be over that. But if you don’t have a house, and you’re still paying for a mortgage, but it’s only a slab there…that gives you a sense of hopelessness.”

As the spill creeps closer to the coastline, Hanshaw’s biggest fear is that it will decimate the Gulf’s commercial fishing industry, leaving the 13,000 people employed by fisheries and restaurants out of work. “If it comes, you won’t have any jobs,” she says. “You would have to think about, what could we do besides clean up? What else can people do? They really want to know what their career is. They want work for a paycheck. If you can’t fish now, it’s like, OK, let’s clear the debris.”

But organizing the fishing community to prepare for a potential disaster isn’t as simple as it sounds. “A majority of fishermen are Vietnamese, but there are black and white fishermen. But they’re having their own meetings, and it’s like, ‘Oh, here we go.’ It’s redundant to be separate, and you got the same plight here. I see it all the time,” says Hanshaw. “All these different constituents are having meetings. They’re having meetings separately, and I’m like, do you know that you all have the same plight? But that’s our problem. We don’t know how to think that way.”

For now, CWC is acting as an information line from the Environmental Protection Agency and British Petroleum to local fisheries, keeping Gulf Coast fishers apprised of changes during the oil spill. “We’re just trying to not put fear in people. We’re trying to stay positive and hopeful, but we still know that we should be active in this.”

Image: Jay Fox Photos

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We’re all familiar with the human and environmental tolls that immediately follow natural disasters. But there’s one aftereffect of hurricanes and earthquakes that often goes overlooked: rape. In Haiti, the aftershocks of the January 12th earthquake continue in Internally Displaced Person camps as men rape women. According to a story in Women’s eNews, aid workers in the Champ-de-Mars camp in Port-au-Prince – home to 50,000 internal refugees and pictured above – field reports of rape on a daily basis. And United Nations workers say that sexual violence has increased in recent months.

There is no concrete data on the number of rapes that have occurred since the earthquake. Haiti’s formal tracking system, created by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, was destroyed with the quake. But the uptick in rapes is a typical phenomenon in the wake of a natural disaster.

After Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, aid workers cited an increase in the number of rapes. Exact statistics, however, are difficult to come by because police officers refused to document rapes that happened outside of their jurisdictions. This meant that women raped in New Orleans and then evacuated to Houston could not report their assaults with Houston police. While aid workers scrambled to piece together a picture of post-Katrina sexual assault, one high-profile rape brought national attention to the epidemic. Charmaine Neville, daughter of musician Charles Neville of the Neville Brothers, recounted her rape on Baton Rouge television, saying that she and several other women were assaulted after they sought refuge on the roof of a school.

“I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys who had come (into)… the neighborhood where we were, that were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and… and they started killing them,” Neville said. “And I don’t know who these people were. I’m not going to tell you I know who they were because I don’t. But what I want people to understand is that if we had not been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn’t have happened.”

According to the New York City Alliance on Sexual Assault, rape following natural disasters can be explained by a number of reasons – some of them preventable. First there’s the fact that societal support mechanisms – social norms that stigmatize rape and crime, for instance – dissolve during crises. Then there’s the fact that psychological strain and deep-seated sexist attitudes lead some men to see unaccompanied women in refugee and IDP camps as public sexual property. But other causes may be more easily prevented. Refugee camps are often hastily constructed out of necessity. That means that large groups of unrelated people sleep in the same rooms, creating opportunities for sexual assault. Additionally, the lack of police officers in refugee camps means that crimes go unpunished.

In Haiti, the United Nations is addressing the rise in sexual violence by sending a unit of 130 female Bangladeshi soldiers to protect Haitian women and serve as their allies. While similar deployments have been successful in post-war Liberia, Haiti’s anti-rape workers remain skeptical that this will stem the tide of sexual assault. “What we need is security,” Marie Eramithe Delva, a co-coordinator at a Haitian grassroots female empowerment organization, told Women’s eNews. “Right now we have none and the rapes are happening not only at night, but in the daytime.”

Image: BBC World Service

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It takes a village and and some of the best graphic artists around to rebuild after the devastating Southern California wildfires of 2007. Using the model of the Hurricane Poster Project for victims of Hurricane Katrina, artists and designers from around the globe donated posters to raise money for victims in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego Counties.

The So-Cal Fire Poster Project was the brainchild of Josh Higgins, a graphic designer from San Diego. Sold from $35 to $75, proceeds from the 52 designs are sent to the Salvation Army California Wildlife Relief Fund which will help residents in need.

Repopulating Hope and Long Live Southern Cal (below) are part of a series of four posters designed by the Metropolis magazine art department (MAKE0OUT) using 100% recycled papers. All of the posters are available at Relief Posters. For the price, you can add some meaningful art to your walls and help the fire recovery at the same time. These are so cool, you don’t even need to frame them. Just mount them on foam core and find a great spot in your house, perhaps near a fire hydrant as a reminder of fire safety.

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