Sean Penn Gets Dirty in New Orleans
Actor-activist Sean Penn, who became a celebrity rescue-worker helping to pull people off their rooftops after Katrina and the New Orleans flooding, returned to the Big Easy this past week as part of a new mission: The Dirty Hands Caravan.
Penn launched the effort at last week’s Coachella Festival in Indio, California, urging festival-goers to join a three-biodiesel-bus trip across the country to volunteer their services in communities that need help.
“Revolution is a job for the young,” Penn told the festival audience. “This is the smartest, most technologically proficient generation of all time. This idea that I had was based on no experience necessary. What we’re gonna do is get on biodiesel buses, and I want you to go over to a booth today and go with us to New Orleans.”
The ensuing caravan, which garnered about 150 volunteers, went on to make stops in Tucson, where Dirty-Handers could help with AIDS relief and anti-deportation activism; Austin, where they could help the Environmental Conservation Society or take part in an immigrant rights rally; and Houston, where they could participate in projects led by TEJAS (the Texas Environmental Justice Activists Society).
Once in New Orleans (just in time for the city’s annual Jazzfest), the Dirty Hands Caravan planned to tackle several programs: working in a health clinic, planting trees, helping Common Ground Relief with wetlands restoration or creating baseball fields in parks damaged by flooding.
The group expects to leave New Orleans on Tuesday, May 6, and return to California the next day.
