New Orleans      Help comes from some special and unexpected places for rebuilding New Orleans. Meetings over the years with our friends in the Canadian labor movement produced a call and a connection through Carol Phillips, the Executive Assistant to President Buzz Hargrove, and then to Colin Heslop, the CAW Skilled Trades Director, that asked if we could use some help on the ACORN Hurricane Relief and Rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Next thing you know Brother Buzz mentions the ACORN-CAW relief effort in his opening remarks at their convention last week in Vancouver, and the pressure is on!

CAW had already made a generous contribution to our work, but now they wanted to step up even farther and put some bodies into the fight with some of their skilled trades folks from the auto plants volunteering to help us do the rebuilding. Pinch me now! Can you believe it!

It took months to get all together but the first crew showed up this weekend and hit the job with us on Monday on Alvar Street. I went over this morning before 8 AM to say hello, and meet sister Terry Weymouth, the skilled trades coordinator from CAW, who is ramroding the first team. They had great spirit and the house was coming along quickly. An ACORN sign was in one window and a CAW flag was in another.

More reports of this great work will follow, but these first pictures will show where it all beings.

August 22, 2006