Do Not Demolish. I’m REBUILDING!

Ever since Hurricane Katrina hit I wanted to come down to New Orleans to volunteer and to bear witness to what I considered one of the greatest disasters and tragedies of our times. After the hurricane each day I watched the television, growing steadily infuriated, as people remained on their roofs without water, without food, and without any sign of the most powerful government in the world. As each day passed, I continuously said to myself, “the government has to do something today.” Unfortunately, I find myself uttering the same exact statement in my mind today…at least in part. What is probably most frightening about this experience is the inability, and/or unwillingness, of our government (by which I mean both state and local) to be able to handle a disaster of this sort and the disparity of both the impact and rebuilding effort.

The first week of the trip I volunteered at Just the Right Attitude (JTRA) located in East New Orleans, one of the hardest hit areas in the storm. Several people blogged about their experiences there (see below) but what really stuck out to me was the comparison between where we are staying and areas such as East New Orleans. We are in the South Carrollton neighborhood which was hit but a significant portion of the neighborhood is back in their homes. Driving through the neighborhood you see multiple construction workers hired by the homeowners to rebuild their homes. One day I saw a woman sitting in front of the infamous X mark on the house (containing search date, number of bodies found, agency, and chemicals present) and she was having a drink while working on her laptop. Cafes and restaurants are packed on Friday and Saturday nights and you can almost momentarily forget the storm. Driving around the area of JTRA, entire roofs of houses were removed by the storm and buildings lay in heaps, their former purpose unidentifiable. Entire neighborhoods are totally vacant like a scene from 28 Days Later. There is no rebuilding, only bulldozers tearing apart what used to be a home but is missing any human element required to be labeled as such. The impact of the storm and focus on rebuilding inevitably fell based on class and racial lines, with poor blacks bearing the brunt of the storm and facing the most resistance in attempts to rebuild. This paradigm is most prevalent in the Ninth Ward.

We had a chance to go on a Levee Tour, conducted by the People’s Organizing Committee (POC). The levee that was supposed to protect the Ninth Ward, a community with one of the highest areas of homeownership for blacks, was nothing more than a slab of concrete approximately 10 feet tall pre-Katrina. It’s important to note that most of the levees in other neighborhoods (particularly more white middle class neighborhoods) are triangular shapes and include more of a hill like formation. When the Ninth Ward levee was breeched it annihilated houses directly next to the wall leaving behind only a field and swept a significant portion of other houses in the Ninth Ward off of their foundations, leaving behind only concrete steps and remnants of where a home used to be.

Two years later most homes are still evacuated and the Ninth Ward is looking more like an old abandoned ghost town. Residents are offered “Free Demolition” and are encouraged to sell their property to the plethora of bidders. Developers are attempting to buy up the property at cheap costs with hopes of selling to potential buyers such as Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the residents of the Ninth Ward are being told the area is unsafe to live in because the new levee (several feet higher) is no safer than the previously breeched one. The question that this situation raises is if the area is so unsafe why are developers so eager to move in? The only answer I have been able to come to is that the developers know if they are able to build a mass casino on land previously occupied by poorer black people, the levees will be fixed. The people who lived in that community before did not have the political might to get the levees fixed (although it was known this particular levee was inadequate). In New Orleans, those people looked a certain way.

Hurricane Katrina, and what has unfolded since, is a story of have and have nots. Initially watching the events of the hurricane unfold on my television screen thousands of miles away I needed to come to New Orleans because I didn’t want to believe that this was happening in America. I didn’t want to believe we let our fellow citizens sit on roofs for three days without water or food. That we weren’t doing everything in our power to get people back in their homes and improve, not just patch, the levees. Unfortunately, what I saw on that television screen and what I initially thought has been confirmed. Almost two years later and there is still no overarching plan to rebuild Louisiana. Though what I’ve seen and heard here in terms of government involvement in rebuilding has been disappointing, the work of organizations, non-profits, volunteers, and individuals has been inspiring. Looking around at the other eighty plus people of the Magnolia Project and hearing why they became involved gives me hope. But most of all, the courage of those who faced Hurricane Katrina and refuse to give up on the only place they call home, posting signs such as “Do Not Demolish. I’m REBUILDING!” on the front of their homes, give me hope and inspire a commitment from me to continue to support the community of New Orleans in rebuilding the city that residents envision.