My Life. My neighborhood. My world. Mike Richards.

U.S. Congressman Dave Loebsack and City Council members Monica Vernon, Brian Fagen, and Chuck Wieneke joined 65 citizen volunteers to clear flood debris from 12 blocks of Ellis Boulevard in the Time Check neighborhood. Our distinguished legislators helped to make this first of our Saturday Clean-Up Blitzes a rousing success.

Michael Richards, President of Oakhill Neighborhood Assoc. organized the Americorps Green Corp.Team and 80 volunteers to carry out a block by block clean-up blitz in the flooded zone of Oakhill/New Bohemia on Saturday April 18, 2009. Don Steichen of Harbor Neighbors did the same a week or so before in the Ellis Harbor District. Now, this citizen initiative is a citywide effort in all of the flooded neighborhoods.

The Flood of 2008 in Cedar Rapids devastated the older core neighborhoods around Downtown Cedar Rapids. For one hundred years, these inter-generational, tight knit neighborhoods have provided modest, yet pleasant affordable homes. These are our working class, historic neighborhoods. Our City never officially designated these neighborhoods as historic districts, but the real fact is, the hands that built these historic homes are the very same hands that built the economic base of this City in factories, mills, machine shops and foundries.
 

This sentence captures the overall positive and supportive reply by Mayor Halloran to the Rebuild And Grow August 20th proposal to the Cedar Rapids City Council: "We share your confidence that the citizens of Cedar Rapids are capable of anything we undertake together, and we look forward to working together to help our neighbors." The full letter further explains some of the programs and resources available to our grassroots initiatives.

KGAN talks to Mike Richards

As a companion "human interest" story to the excellent feature story on the Rebuild And Grow petition to City Council and civic leaders, KGAN News talked with me to learn "more about the man behind the petition." This interview gave me an opportunity to drive home the message that each of us, whether flooded or not, need to reach inside ourselves and decide if we want to be pitiful or powerful.

The Green Shirts are coming to – or are already in – your neighborhood! We strongly encourage you to participate in the neighborhood assessments being conducted by the Linn Area Long Term Recovery Coalition (LALTRC).

Best Practice Recommendation – The title of this 124-page document says it all: The Broadmoor Community Planning and Implementation Process: A Guide to Community-Driven Recovery. This document is a shining best practices example of 'how' the grassroots-organized neighbors of the Broadmoor community of New Orleans are rebuilding their neighborhoods to be even better than before Katrina changed their lives forever.

One of the most important goals of Rebuild And Grow is to "help the self-helpers" as we work together to rebuild our lives and neighborhoods in flood-devasted Cedar Rapids. The Neighborhood Self-Help Resource Network will be a strategic program to address this mission.

Lynette and I are about to wrap up our extraordinary week here in New Orleans. We're completing an intensive training/mentoring experience organized for us by the good folks who created and run the Beacon of Hope Resource Centers. Although many of these wonderful people we've met this week were unknown to us just days ago, we can't help but feel comfortable among our new friends.

This morning Lynette and I left Cedar Rapids for the Big Easy! New Orleans and Cedar Rapids now have a connection that transcends so many other experiences. The Katrina Disaster and our Great Flood of 2008 have wrecked natural disaster on both our beloved cities. Now, like the good folks who founded and operate the Beacon of Hope Resource Centers, we have to be vigilant and engaged to make sure that we don't follow a natural disaster with a man-made one.