Barb Kucera and Howard Kling work tirelessly behind the scenes to orchestrate the grand experiment at ILCA 2007 in New Orleans

By the end of the weekend, ILCA conference attendees will have created a living narrative of labor conditions in New Orleans and fulfilled a mission Kling dreamed up months ago. “It was my idea to have it in New Orleans, to have a unique convention instead of like a media conference with the typical business meetings, workshops and plenaries where we sit around and yack at each other,” Kling says. “We are an organization that is dedicated to the well being of working people. The role we play is we tell stories. If we didn’t lend our voices to the people of New Orleans and try to find out the real stories with working class people, shame on us. As modest as it may be, as little as we can do, as much as we can do……….we needed to go.”

Safely tucked away in his office at the University of Minnesota, at the other end of the Mississippi River, Howard Kling watched the disaster unfold in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina made landfall August 2005. He knew what he was witnessing was greater than the physical implications of the disaster. “We all witnessed the collapse of government support for the people of New Orleans - the driving down of wages, eliminating rights for workers and making workers vulnerable,” Kling says.

With the collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minnesota, Kling felt a greater connection to the Crescent City and was more compelled to tell her stories. “There is another piece now, a connection for me and others coming from Minnesota,” he says. “At the beginning and the end of the Mississippi, we have a disaster that has somewhat the same cause.” That is the refusal to invest in the nation’s infrastructure. By that, Kling doesn’t mean merely bridges or levees that form the hurricane protection system, but the country’s most precious infrastructure – its people. Through policies and administrations, this country has refused to invest in education, health care and a host of other infrastructure that are vital to communities. “I think there is a story to be told right up and down the center of our country, from north to south in the heart of our country,” Kling says. “It’s a huge issue of priorities.”

- Angelle Bergeron is a freelance journalist living in New Orleans……still.