Miracle on the Bayou
How one Louisiana parish is resurfacing from disaster
By Jane Livingston
Editor’s note: Livingston is a Maine-based writer with extensive
co-op experience.
laquemines Parish was the first part of
Louisiana to feel the wrath of Hurricane
Katrina in the early morning hours of Aug. 29,
2005. The hurricane barreled up the Gulf of
Mexico and slammed into Breton Sound,
spewing its fury on this southernmost parish that stretches like
a long finger from the outskirts of New Orleans deep into the
Gulf.
The very tag end of the Mississippi River splits
Plaquemines right down the middle, into Left and Right
Banks. Long before Katrina and Rita hit them, residents of
the two banks have harbored some hard feelings toward each
other. These residents include African Americans whose
families have lived on the bayous for generations, Native
Americans whose families have lived here even longer and
newcomers from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian
countries, many of whom are willing to work for less than a
living wage in order to establish their businesses.
All of them feel the pressure of trying to make a living
from doing the same thing: fishing. The waters here afford
some of the best commercial fishing grounds in the world,
but the people who catch the shrimp, oysters, crabs, red
snapper and other seafood have long watched most of the
profits go to the big commercial enterprises.
“Even before the storms, residents of the lower portion of
the parish were living below the poverty line and earning an
income of less than the average median household income,”
says Cornelius Blanding, disaster recovery coordinator for
the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.
“For generations, the fishermen of Plaquemines Parish
have had no alternative to the commercial docks for
purchase of essential services and sale of their catches at
consistently low prices,” he explains.
80 percent of fleet lost
The situation was even worse after the storms had passed.
About 80 percent of the parish's commercial fleet was wiped
out. Nearly every dock was gone. In addition to their boats,
their equipment and their businesses, many people living
along the water's edge lost their homes.
Today, even though recovery has been achingly slow in
coming (the parish is just now getting most of its water and
electricity restored, and many families still live in FEMAsupplied
trailers), the multicultural fishing community is
coming together, surmounting overwhelming obstacles to
take the future into their own hands by forming a
cooperative business.
The South Plaquemines United Fishermen's Cooperative
plans to provide its members with docking facilities and
services, and a marketing and distribution system that is
looking to re-establish the parish's devastated commercial
fishing industry from the bottom up.
The Plaquemines miracle began in September 2005, soon
after the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC) began
setting up workshops in hurricane evacuee camps and
community centers to teach people about the cooperative
business model.
Historically, co-ops have a lot to offer people in an
economic crisis. FSC was formed 40 years ago to assist Black
farmers struggling to become masters of their own destiny,
and it has helped thousands of families working together
achieve what would have been impossible to achieve working
alone.
When the FSC team brought their information to a group
of fishermen in Plaquemines, it started a chain reaction. As
more people heard about the idea, old differences and biases
began to seem less important than did the possibility of
finding a silver lining behind the huge dark cloud that roared
ashore on the twenty-ninth day of August 2005.
Co-op grows rapidly
FSC staff continued to work with the rapidly growing
group, helping it through the initial stages of forming a
cooperative. An FSC co-op development specialist continues
to provide the co-op with technical assistance and training.
Early in 2007, the FSC initiated the process of developing
a feasibility study and business plan.
In early March, Bill Brockhouse, a cooperative development
specialist with USDA Rural Development, met with the
co-op steering committee as the first step in drafting a
feasibility study for the co-op. Brockhouse advised the
committee on the process he would follow in developing a
feasibility study, including its assumptions, format and
contents. He also suggested surveying prospective members.
“The survey will help gauge how strong the interest in the
cooperative is, and can help the steering committee identify
issues they will need to address,” says Brockhouse. Based on
prior meetings, the co-op's leadership estimates there is a
potential of 50-100 members for the co-op, representing
both the Left and Right Banks of the parish and a cross
section of its ethnic and cultural diversity.
“I was impressed with the 15-person steering committee I
met with in Plaquemines,” Brockhouse says. “They have
obviously been meeting regularly and, with assistance from
the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, have thought a
great deal about the important issues in forming a co-op.
There are fishermen (and women) who fish for different
species (crabs, oysters, shrimp, finfish) who are all focusing
on one goal: forming a co-op. In the past, I am told, it was
difficult to even get these different groups in the same room
together. So the prospect of them pulling together to form a
co-op is exciting.”
Additional technical assistance, funds and support have
been committed by the Cooperative Development
Foundation, Louisiana State University, Southern University
in Baton Rouge and Oxfam America.
South Plaquemines United Fishermen's Cooperative
decided early on to open membership to any small fishing
enterprise in the designated area.
Members recognize that there is not only an opportunity
to rebuild a local economy that is more robust, more
democratic, and more efficient than the pre-Katrina
economy. There is a "co-opportunity" as well, to create a
more robust community that can meet the challenges of life
on the Louisiana bayous.
