President of Louisiana NAACP Calls for Shelters to Organize

Dr. Ernest Johnson is calling for evacuees to organize themselves and form shelter communities. "Each SHELTER COMMITTEE should elect a Chairperson and a Secretary and begin holding meetings, organizing, and working as a team for better treatment," said Johnson, the president of the Louisiana NAACP. "In unity there is strength." The idea is to get people working from the inside out in order to take control of their destiny.

The initiative came out of a partnership between our blog team and the Louisiana NAACP. Bob Brigham from Swing State Project proposed the idea of starting something to get people organized within the shelters around 9PM last night. We were constantly hearing about mistreatment in the shelters and felt that something needed to be done. Dr. Johnson came in and we ironed out the idea of a shelter committee.

In under an hour, we had a minute and a half video of Dr. Johnson, a public service announcement to be run on all Hip-hop stations here in Baton Rouge and an official press release ready to go. The hope is that the message gets out to the evacuees while at the same time applying pressure to force FEMA , Red Cross and local authorities to step up and take some positive action to get evacuees back to some sense of normalcy.

We need bloggers to stand together in solidarity with the NAACP. Write about this and spread the word. Help the evacuees organize themselves.