New Orleans, Year 2

Last December, I went to New Orleans for an org-wide confer-ence. The Big Easy had been hit by the Big Storm a year and three months before I got there.


I flew in a day before the December conference and gutted houses; attended meetings for a few days and partied at night, then had another day to walk around and take some pictures (with a disposable camera, ug).


I posted here about that adventure, meeting West Virginian women (Danielle and Traci) and some New Orleans residents.


The conference had lots of summary from our successful 2006, some strategery looking into 2008, and little spurts of bonding fit in around the edges. I learned about other operations priorities; talked with the development department about the plans for expansion and the work necessary to run big programs; in general, the whole shebang was pretty fun.


And the whole thing is scheduled to happen again... just announced last week (was yesterday when I first drafted this post, but the photo editor was slow so I'm delayed). So I thought I'd celebrate with a little throwback to last year (above summary and below pictures) and some added stories. That's right, it takes me 10 months to get film developed...

When I first thought of New Orleans and its levees, this is what I thought of:


In actuality, the levees are just long embankments of mostly dirt. That depends on where you are in the city, of course, cause the cement and wooden levees like the one to the right do exist, too.


When the levees broke, I imagine the water came rushing through neighborhoods leaving little more than a couple homes... little sign of life had returned to New Orleans a full year after Katrina. And this neighborhood picture, taken as I stood on a levee, shows it :


When water rushed into the ninth ward and other sections of the city, we know that the people who hadn't evacuated went up into their attics and on top of their roofs. That turned out to be an awful idea as those in the ceilings suffocated from being sandwiched between the water and the roof.


Seeing a house and car - sometimes entire properties and blocks - completely abandoned and open to the elements wasn't rare in the area I went gutting and photographing. Here's an example:


Another rarity in the rest of the country but now normal in New Orleans is random placement of RVs. I didn't see the oceans of unused RVs and the ghettos of FEMA trailers that Spike Lee's documentary showed.

But it was strange to see a house's drainage diverted to a trailer -- resources don't exist for people to rebuild their home, but some people were still not leaving their property. And the FEMA gifts went along with that, being lived in in people's yards. Here you can see one of those:

Lots of work was being done to gut houses and do other things around the city. ACORN and other organizations had set up ways for volunteers to help the gutting and rebuilding. But some of the most important work that can be done is to build community capacity to work for themselves, to organize and build power, and to fight for what neighborhoods need.


And so ACORN marches on. I saw some inspirational speeches and heard Dr King's voice through a Stanford-hosted website about the civil rights leader. Lots catch my eye when I read and listen to the man, but right now what I like about what he says is in the combination of his anti-poverty, anti-militarism, and anti-racism work to build power in the Black community. And that comes out when Dr King says,

"Let us march on poverty until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat. March on poverty until no starved man walks the streets of our cities and towns in search of jobs that do not exist. Let us march on poverty until wrinkled stomachs in Mississippi are filled, and the idle industries of Appalachia are realized and revitalized, and broken lives in sweltering ghettos are mended and remolded.

Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena

Let us march on ballot boxes until the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs will be transformed into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Let us march on ballot boxes until the Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence.

Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress, men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God...

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." "