Burners Without Borders
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From http://www.gaia.com/article/6804?from=community:
"“My personal philosophy,” Burners Without Borders co-founder Carmen Mauk intones, “is that this community is ready to do something more than just party. People are ready to make meaning of their Burning Man experience in their everyday lives. Whenever you bring that ethos off the Playa, that’s Burners Without Borders. And that’s precisely what happened in Mississippi.”
Mauk is referring to the small group of Burners who headed south to the Mississippi Gulf Coast following the 2005 Festival to help people rebuild their devastated communities. They first stopped in Biloxi to rebuild a Buddhist temple for a group of Vietnamese monks. Several months later, a slightly larger crew moved on to Pearlington, Mississippi, to help a community that had not yet seen any relief efforts. They lived in an impromptu tent village, spending their days clearing and constructing homes and their evenings building — and burning — incredible pieces of art made from the landlocked detritus of Katrina. They spun fire and played music and danced and sang. Never once did a dollar change hands for any of the services they provided.
For Mauk’s partner, co-founder Tom Price, Burners going to help with the recovery efforts was a no-brainer.
“People that attend Burning Man are pre-wired to know everything about how to survive in a disaster zone,” Price explained. “We intuitively know how to self-organize and know the basics of taking care of each other in a very challenging environment.”
Price filmed much of the experience, which he then edited into a short film he called Burn on the Bayou. Screened publicly only once, on the Playa during the one-year anniversary of Katrina, it is a sublime tale of the inspirational and transformative potential of art and gifting. It is also an unbelievable chronicle of the devastation wrought by the storm. Although plans for a feature-length film are in the works, Price, speaking from the ad-hoc San Francisco headquarters of Burners Without Borders, took special care to note that the success of the film lies elsewhere.
“Burners like to act autonomously, and not be told what to do. When people see Burn on the Bayou, they realize they too can do what we did down there. And for the uninitiated, we’re hoping this community can be a catalyst for all people, because I believe there is a Burner in everyone, and a way into this work for everyone.”
Burn on the Bayou’s narrative showcased the quintessence of Being the Change. It was also a personal crossroads in the lives of the participants, who found themselves on the Gulf Coast for a myriad of reasons many did not come to understand until months later.
Karine Wilson used to spend half of each year in New Orleans, where her three children lived with her ex-husband. She learned while on the Playa that her Lakeview neighborhood was under nine feet of water. A trained disaster relief specialist for the Red Cross, she tried desperately to get to New Orleans to offer her services “but they had no place for me,” she recalls, painfully. “I know New Orleans like the back of my hand, but all they cared about was following their bureaucratic procedures.”
She would eventually return to New Orleans to witness the devastation firsthand. Unable to help like she wanted, Karine knew via the Burning Man listserv that there were Burners who had gone to Biloxi. So after spending time with her refugee family in Tulsa and raising money for area relief groups, she decided to head south to join the efforts already underway. She knew there was at least one group that would just “get it done,” and not be beholden to any bureaucracy anywhere.
“After the trauma I experienced seeing my own home destroyed, and the stench I had in my head for so long, which made me so sick I would just throw up, going to Pearlington to help people clean up their homes was extremely healing for me.”
Other members, like Lisa Benham and “KK,” were drawn to the work while in the midst of chaotic personal change. Benham, a painter also known as “El Bee,” had always wanted to spend time in the Peace Corps, and saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“Burning Man means that if something needs doing, and you see it, you just do it, without wondering who’s job is this?” she explains." (http://www.gaia.com/article/6804?from=community)
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Full article originally from Article Sourced from http://cemagazines.com/. Author: Charles Shaw, Editor-in-Chief of Chicago’s Conscious Choice