With our assignments all finished, we all went out last night to bid a final farewell to this wonderful city. I believe that I speak for most when I say that the feeling is bittersweet. Over the past week I have become so attached to this city, it almost feels like a second home for me; the people, the sights, the smells, the food, and of course, the music have become a part who I am. Yet, despite it all, it is time for us to come home. Boyfriends, Girlfriends, Husbands, Wives, Children, Family and Friends are waiting for us to return and speak of our experiences. But most important of all, the people of New Orleans need us to come back and tell their story for them.
They don’t need our help, and they don’t need our support, they need us to join with them in solidarity on the road to “RENew Orleans.” It’s really interesting, as when Professor Abriel, Gemma Daggs, and I all sat down and planned out this trip oh so many months ago, we referred to it as a “recovery trip,” and although that is what New Orleans is doing, it’s not what they need. As we were told on one of our first nights here, this is not about support, or help, it is about solidarity; one speaker put it so eloquently, “If you are here to help, I don’t need it; if you are here for support, please go home, but if you are here to walk beside me in solidarity, I welcome you to New Orleans.”
The pictures that have be posted thusfar, and those you see in this post, can not tell the tale. The numbers and statistics you read about, can not tell the tale. The city of New Orleans is on its deathbed. We were able to meet with Judge Calvin Johnson yesterday, who was the Chief Judge of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court when Katrina hit. His analogy to New Orleans was one of the most powerful I have ever heard; he said “New Orleans is like a funeral without the recovery process. When you lose someone you love, you are able to bury them and afterwards you gather with all of their friends and reflect not on the person’s death but about their life, and how wonderful of a life it was. New Orleans is like the loved one who dies, yet there is no reflection, only the death, and you repeat that death everyday.”
The Katrina tragedy is not about race, even though the majority of those displaced and left behind were people of color. The Katrina tragedy is not about wealth, even though the majority of people who stayed behind did so only because they did not posses the resources to escape the city. And most importantly the Katrina tragedy is not about the city of New Orleans, even though that is what received the majority of the attention in the press. The Katrina tragedy is about us: our friends, our families, our “people,” those who were left behind and those that have not come back. To this day less than half of those displaced from New Orleans have returned, and the number is even lower for those displaced along the gulf coast in Mississippi and Alabama.
Many have moved on and will not come back, but after 19 months, there are signs of hope. While driving around today, we were lucky enough to meet Jeff and Jim, who were working on Jeff’s porch in Lakeview, one of the “suburbs” of New Orleans. Lakeview sits on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and as you can see from the photos below, it was inundated with 8-12 feet of water. Jeff is standing on his front steps and his hand is how high the water line was in his home.
Jeff was lucky, as this is his neighbors’ house:
Yes, that is a tree laying on her roof, and no, she doesn’t have any insurance to cover the damage; plus the home has also been condemned. Needless to say, Jeff doesn’t expect she will be returning to her home…ever. But hopefully, this family will keep their promise and return to Jeff’s neighborhood again…
A little further down the road this shot was snapped, keep in mind my hand is approximately 8 feet off the ground, and the brown line is the water line at the peak of the flooding…
As the sun began to set on the city, I made one last turn towards the hardest hit area in the city, the lower 9th Ward. As Lorraine has mentioned, the 9th Ward is unique in the fact that while the majority of residents are among the poorest in the entire city, there is an extremely high percentage of home ownership, however without the resources available to repair their homes, their is a very good chance that few of these residents will ever return. Driving down the empty streets I often wondered what this area was like before Katrina. I imagined children walking home from school hand in hand, teenage boys playing basketball in the streets, and hard working mothers and fathers returning home after a hard days work; all of that is gone…
Most will never return to this street, and they will forever be missed by friends and family.
In the early morning hours of August 29th, 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck the coast of Louisiana with such force and power to send over 20 feet of storm surge racing over the top of the 4-6 foot levees that surrounded the low lying city of New Orleans, she displaced over 300,000 people, over 1800 people lost their lives because of her, and she caused over $80 Billion in damage.
This must never be forgotten…but the people are coming back. We came here with the intention to help the people of New Orleans, but we left here feeling like we were a part of New Orleans, as they say “standing in solidarity” with our brothers and sisters as they try to bring this city back from the brink of death.
In closing I want to once again thank all the students and faculty that were able to participate with us on this trip. All the attorneys at NOLAC, the Student Hurricane Network, the staff at India House and the Dominican Conference Center. But most importantly I want to thank Gemma Daggs and Professor Evangeline Abriel, as without the two of them this experience would never have taken place.
Best,
-Dan
