by James Parks, Aug 28, 2006

Today as we continue our series profiling union members who survived Hurricane Katrina, we highlight Michele and Alex Baker, among the lucky survivors.

After losing everything in the storm, Michele and Alex Baker have gotten back on their feet.

But they have jobs and a new start today not because of anything the Bush administration did. From the time they waded into the more than 6-foot-high floodwaters last Aug. 29 to well after they reached shelter in Baton Rouge, they were helped by the solidarity and support of their unions.

Today, their home is nearly 80 percent refurbished, and Michele has a new job as an organizer for AFSCME, which represents state, county and municipal workers. Alex, a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), still has his job with the regional transit authority.

Without the help of their unions, the Bakers would have been much worse off. But hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents have to rely on the Bush administration for help. And the Bush government has failed miserably.

Michele Baker has some choice words for President Bush when she talks about the progress that’s been made in rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

I feel so let down. It’s like the president is not doing enough to help us gain a portion of what we had. It’s like he cares more about the people of Lebanon and Iraq than he does about us.

I would say to him to come to my neighborhood and show me the progress. It looks like a war zone. All you see is the National Guard and very little construction. It’s like they don’t want us back. We need help. Generation after generation—we lost it all.

Instead, the White House seems bent on keeping the mostly poor, African American survivors of Katrina out of New Orleans. As Anya Kamenetz writes:

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in June announced its intention to demolish 5,000 of the city’s 7,100 public housing units—some damaged and some nearly unscathed—without any clear plan for the displaced residents. Now, a coalition of local and national civil rights groups has filed a class action suit to stop the demolitions and bring over 4,000 residents home.

The day Hurricane Katrina neared, the Bakers packed their SUV and were ready to evacuate to Atlanta. But Michele wanted to visit her seriously ill father in the hospital before they left. While she was at his bedside, he took a turn for the worse and died three hours later. Michele had lost her father and missed the opportunity to evacuate.

Alex Baker, a member of ATU Local 1576, waited for Michele at the building where he worked. Some 300 people—all transit employees and mostly union members and their families—also gathered there to weather the storm. Michele made her way there, and the two of them waited out the hurricane in their SUV on the three-story building’s rooftop parking lot. She describes the conditions:

The winds were blowing. We knew it was a hurricane, but we didn’t realize the magnitude. The truck kept weaving and rocking. The next morning we could see from the roof that the water was rising all over the city and we had to evacuate. So then the group took the air mattresses that we had slept on, and we all started walking to the nearest overpass.

The Bakers separated from the group and waded through waist-high waters to get to a relative’s home about a mile away, where they thought they were safe. But the waters kept rising, and they once again had to try to make their way to dry land. Michele panicked when the water level reached her mouth—she’s 5-foot-8. Alex lifted her out of the water and put her on the air mattress and pulled her along as they headed back to the overpass.

Along the way, National Guard troops drove past in amphibious vehicles. The Bakers pleaded with them for help, Michele says, but they said they couldn’t stop and kept going. The waves from their vehicles knocked her and Alex down.

When the Bakers reached the overpass, there were thousands of people there. After eating a bag of chips and a package of cheese crackers they found hidden on the bridge—the only food they’d had in two days—they went back into the water to walk the four blocks to the Superdome. By then, the water was up to their necks, and Alex had to lift his wife of 10 years over his shoulders and carry her to the domed stadium.

Here’s how he describes it:

I was just trying to keep her calm. I wanted to let her know that everything was going to be all right and that she just had to hold on. I wasn’t going to let her drown.

At the Superdome, the Bakers said, the toilets had not been flushed in three days and people were spread out everywhere. The couple sat in the bleachers, shared what little food they had with some children. Michele describes what happened when they were evacuated:

They put people on different buses—women and children on one, men on another and the elderly on another. They didn’t tell you where the buses were going. Alex and I said we had gone too far to split up now, so he walked around where we were lined up and sneaked on the bus. We later found out that our bus was headed to Baton Rouge and the bus he would have taken went to Arkansas.

In Baton Rouge, Alex’s union, the ATU, sent aid to the Bakers in the shelter where they were staying. Michele, a custodian supervisor for the New Orleans schools and president of AFSCME Local 872, called her union representative once she got to Baton Rouge. Within hours, a group of AFSCME members showed up at the church to bring money and other aid to the Bakers.

AFSCME asked her to join a press conference to talk about her experiences and travel around the country, telling people what happened. As a result, Michele was offered a job as an AFSCME organizer and now works in Milwaukee. Alex remains in Baton Rouge with the transit authority, but he will return to work in New Orleans Sept. 1. He says the two are committed to making a long-distance marriage work.

Says Michele:

I knew our unions would come through. I never had a doubt.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (1)