Atlanta Moves to Motivate, Empower Katrina Evacuees

“Pump it up! Pump it up! Pump it up!” motivational speaker Keith L. Brown bellowed as he danced the electric slide with nearly 100 Katrina evacuees Wednesday at a downtown job center. “Aw, come on, y’all. Wave your hands in the air if you know you care. Let me hear you say: “I’m working! I’m working! I’m working!”

Most of the Katrina evacuees were not working, but they seemed happy enough to step, then spin and clap their hands with Brown.

Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina forced Gulf Coast residents to flee their homes, Atlanta officials hosted an “Empowerment Party” to motivate those in their city struggling to find jobs, many of whom are suffering from deepening mental health problems.

Part revival meeting, part therapy session, part job fair, the event was organized by the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency to help Katrina evacuees assimilate into the city.

It came on the same day that, back in Louisiana, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin opened a “Welcome Home Center” in an effort to entice more displaced citizens to return.

The evacuees at the party in Atlanta -- who were almost all from New Orleans -- prayed, sang, ate fried chicken and black-eyed peas, and won raffle prizes for Braves baseball games.

“We’re saying, ‘OK, you’re a Georgian now,’ ” said conference organizer Jennifer Moore. “You’ve been here for a year now. A terrible thing happened, but let’s move forward. Where are you going to be in a year?”

After watching an Atlanta promotional video, which declares “Every Day is an Opening Day” and extols Atlanta tourist attractions, evacuees listened to experts talk about job training, starting new businesses, applying for Habitat for Humanity homes and signing up for free mini spa days.

Wayne Mack, coordinator of reintegration counselors for the Georgia Department of Labor, urged Katrina evacuees to take advantage of computer classes, typing tests and free schooling.

“The Atlanta market is a competitive market,” he said to shouts of “Amen” from the audience.

“I’m in it to win it,” said Sadie Davis, 48, a part-time clerk who had come to the event in the hope of finding a permanent position and healthcare information. She ended up winning two tickets for “The Life Story of Marvin Gaye” at Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center.

For many, the highlight of the Empowerment Party was keynote speaker Brown, who calls himself “Motivator of the Millennium.”

As the height of his half-hour pep talk, he plucked a dazed 59-year-old Mary Robinson out of the audience and persuaded evacuees to raise her up into the air.

“When we work together and believe we were born to greatness, we will start rising a little higher,” Brown shouted as evacuees lifted Robinson above their heads. “I want you to show President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Gov. Sonny Perdue, Mayor Shirley Franklin just how high Katrina overcomers can go.”

More than 80,000 Katrina evacuees live in metropolitan Atlanta. Many have assimilated more successfully here than have evacuees in Houston and San Antonio, according to a recent national study by the Appleseed Foundation, a nonprofit social advocacy group.

Evacuees in Atlanta have been particularly successful, the report said, because many of them “self-evacuated” as they already had friends or family in the city.

Atlanta also attracted some Katrina evacuees because of its reputation as a progressive black city.

A large number of evacuees settled in DeKalb County, the second-most affluent predominantly African American county in the nation.

In 2005, Black Enterprise magazine ranked Atlanta the “Best City for African Americans to Live, Work and Play,” based on entrepreneurial opportunities, earnings potential, business, housing and education.

But many Katrina evacuees -- particularly older people -- are struggling.

“I look at the city and I think when I was younger I would have been all over the place, but at this stage in my life my energy level has disappeared,” said Robinson, the woman given a lift at the rally.

She ran a hair salon in east New Orleans for 25 years, but said she didn’t feel motivated to open a new one here.

After finding work in October, Robinson was laid off in January and said she had gone into “panic mode.”

In recent job interviews, she has found herself breaking out in sweats, too agitated to write, and crying.

“I thought I was OK, but this stuff has affected me more than I realized,” she said.

Tyrone Paramore, an outreach worker for Project Hope, which offers crisis counseling to Katrina evacuees, said he was starting to see more and more mental health problems, particularly as the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approached.

“A lot of these survivors are saying they didn’t have mental health issues before,” he said.

At the end of the day, clusters of Katrina evacuees stood outside the headquarters waiting for buses in the hot sun.

Emma Johnson, 59, smiled dreamily as she waited for a bus to take her to the train station. “It was a nice day,” she said. “It helped lift my spirits.”

Still, Johnson, who used to work for New Orleans’ Department of Safety and Permits and has struggled to find a job in Atlanta, said she had hoped more employers would be at the event.

“I guess once I start working, I’ll think of Atlanta as a land of opportunity,” she said.