intro
1.6.06
I’m sitting in o’hare airport in the midst of a 2.5 hour layover in between New York and New Orleans. I’m going down to New Orleans to help, in whatever way I can, the post Hurricane Katrina world. I have to be vague about what I will be doing because the person in charge of emailing me information about the organization I will be with was less than helpful. A general email promised in response to my completed registration form never arrived; nor did an informal response indicating that they had even received my completed registration form. In this registration form, I answered questions such as: what can you do to help? ie. What skills do you have? Do you have any dietary restrictions, etc. so as far as I know, they have no particular plan for me, which is fine, but does that mean that they just accept anybody off the street and put them to work? If so, then what could that say about my future roommates?
I’m imagining New Orleans to be some kind of Old West anarchistic (not in the idealist sense of the word) free for all – a futuristic Deadwood, where the golden hearted and the slimy convene to do battle in shattered skyscrapers that house squatters who eat rats. Mold evolving into flora. Opportunistic business fat cats slurping oysters dressed with horseradish, blood and gasoline embedded in their endemic waters. And all the bars are strip clubs and beer is $1 per pint – laws are laxed. I may have to shoot someone. Things like that. The fourth world; the post-apocalyptic first world.
I did receive an email that told me some of the things I might be doing, such as construction, furniture moving, food distribution, etc., but my last email went unanswered, so I'm holding a grudge. But to be positive, I’m assuming that what with all the good deeds being done, little cosmetic details get overlooked. I’m imagining that there is a team of emailers – anyone who has a spare second sending missives to the outside world, breathing deeply, fingers caked in various residues… I guess the keyboard would have to have one of those plastic coverings on it, or else deadly bacteria would hide in the crevices of the keyboard and eventually find their way into the hard drive…
The reason I’m going is because I have the time and the inclination and it’s a $170 flight. What with my recent Christmas bonus, that’s no money at all! It’s a good thing to do things that you have the time and inclination to do.
1st impression
Last time I went to N.O., I took a bus from the airport to near the French Quarter. Since I knew it was possible, and since I had done it before, it seemed only right to save my money and do it again. I figured that wherever it is that I was set to go couldn’t be too far from the French Quarter. And this is the problem with people who travel: we become experts on things. My assumption that commonground was near the French Quarter was akin to when I tell someone that I’m from New York, them asking me if I know their cousin’s girlfriend’s friend Ralph who is tall.
The first destination I saw was not what I expected, but I was feeling pretty poetic about it all, so I kind of pumped it up to something it wasn’t. You see: the bus costed $1.25, but only brought you near the downtownish area (city line might be a better word there). From there, you had to take a free FEMA bus. However, the free FEMA bus (a FEMA bus is just a bus, but you don’t have to pay to get on because FEMA has already paid the fare) is not waiting for the connection, the would-be passengers are. Here’s what I originally wrote about the scene:
The bus stop itself had been (the shelter of) knocked off its axis and beer bottles were strewn all over the place. My first impression was that someone had been partying pretty hard out there – but then the thick layer of dust covering those bottles mixed with some of the other semiotic clues told me that it was a Katrina related pile. The road was a main road, yet not one store was open, most were boarded up, and some had cracked windows. All had mounds of debris outside. A ghost town. The people who walked the streets were like phantoms. There was no immediate explanation as to where they were coming from – and if they were going home, there was no way to tell where that was either.
See, a bit too much poetry and unrealistic emotion for my taste…
Eventually, the bus came and I rode it and a guy from Arkansas and a guy from Georgia came on. They were looking for some hotel that had been recommended to them. Somewhere along the way in getting rejected from various construction jobs, they got a hotel recommended to them. Evidently they were surprised not to have found jobs: the “government is taking all the money” allotted for such projects. They were here for the work. I told them I was here to visit a friend. I have no idea why I lied.
I got off at Canal street and I was somehow stuck on the idea that perhaps things were back up and running and that maybe common ground was closed because of it. Maybe it worked. So even on Canal street, which is the border of the French Quarter, when I saw still-fallen palm trees, and busted-in windows, I conceded: ok, well there was a hurricane. I thought that I remembered there being lots of tourists, but I could have been wrong – I certainly was now if I expected any. Just locals – all black folks lined the streets. And if I still thought that things hadn’t changed so much by the time I got to Bourbon Street, everything changed right then. This was Friday @ happy hour and I have a very clear memory of the expected mayhem. Yet at the intersection, there was an all black New Orleans jazz band playing, “I got 5 on it” to the listening pleasure of only a few other black folks. Some dancing, some not. Where were the white people? Where were the tourists?
I walked down bourbon street a bit and the music was blaring out of the bars as fierce as ever, but the bars were empty. Stores that sold shirts that had written in bold letters over the chest things like: FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass – empty, no shoppers.
Desperation = the act of pursuing something with all your heart that you know is unattainable.
The combined sound of the blasting music didn’t even reach the next street, much less the ears or the hearts of folks around the country who desire a place to do debauchery. It had become dark and I stopped in a place to get a daiquiri. I saw a place I had once been to to get a good sandwich and I repeated the event – only this time alone, that is, the only customer in the place from the moment I walked in until the moment I left. This had been a place where customers obtained seats by relying on the fact that by the time they got on line to order their food, waited, ordered and were prepared to search for a seat – there would have been complete turnover in the restaurant and the seat they got would most likely have been just vacated by whomever was first on line when they arrived at the back of the line.
kirk
My intention, however, was not to go to bourbon street. This, I have done. The rest, I had not. So I got in a cab and gave the driver the address I had been given. At this point I was still unsure whether or not Common Ground even existed and I was contemplating just getting a hotel room in the French quarter and seeking things in the daylight. But again, this was not what I had come for.
Soon, but not in a walkable amount of time, I arrived at the House of Excellence. There was a sign on the door stating the “Volunteer Computing Hours”, and though it was dark out, it was still well within that time, so I walked in. There were about six computers there, a person at each. They all glanced at me at once and then looked back to their screens at once so I figured no-one there was anyone who was in charge. As I came to find out, Common Ground’s general plan is to be a scenario where no-one is in charge. This leads, of course, to questionable organization of the administration of projects, but not, as you may fear, lack of participation in projects. Everyone at Common Ground is here with a staunch desire to help – in fact I’ve never seen a more realistic portrayal of the saying, “get in where you fit in.” any skill you have or wish you had can be utilized and nurtured in a way that will help the relief effort in one way or another.
Or not.
I stood in the doorway for a while longer, assuming that the next person who would look up will have, Darwinistically, appointed themselves leader. And I knew someone would look up as it would certainly become obvious to at least someone that my presence there was awkward, and that I had a backpack on. Yet I couldn’t just start walking into the building as I did not know the building well enough to effectively do so.
A guy named Kirk with matted brown hair and a G.I. Joe do-gooder look in his eyes did so, and after telling him my story: that I had arrived from New York and had been instructed by Sam to come here, (nobody seemed to know who Sam was, but my presence alone was enough to prove that at least one aspect of my story was true) he told me that this was the wrong place for me to be. The House of Excellence was the media center for Common Ground. The small, fluorescent lighted room that I entered was where volunteers could come to check email. From somewhere in that building, a radio station was broadcasted. Yes, some people stayed there, but they were mainly the people who worked there and all the space, both inside, and outdoor tent space, was taken up. Most everyone else stayed in the community center, and so would I, and Kirk even offered to walk me there. “Aww, you’re so nice.” Said one of the girls, of Kirk.
As we walked, he informed me, “This is the 9th ward. All this was under water during Katrina, and the people who live here are being scammed out of their property because they’re poor and black.” I was vaguely aware of this. He also told me that he had been at Common Ground for about a month and had previously worked at Foot Locker in San Diego. He described the process by which Common Ground was created. Then, told me the ways in which longevity within Common Ground affords you a position of status. This last was irrelevant information as I saw it at the time. I was only to be there two weeks, and surely did not need to be clued in on the ways in which status could be attained. Sadly – and a tribute to my lack of anything interesting to say, I found myself repeating this fact to a newcomer only five days later. It was the type of place where knowledge – even wisdom could be attained in five days. “Mainly people go out and gut homes. We take the homes, strip it of its furniture, the sheet rock, the insulation, the mold – everything except the flooring and the roof and the frame. After we’re done, the contractors take over. Some people also go out protesting.”
“Yeah, I read on the website that something big happened yesterday.”
“That’s right. They were going to bulldoze a whole block, and Common Ground got in there and brought some media and protested and made sure it didn’t happen.”
“And so Common Ground’s position is that these houses don’t need to be bulldozed, but they’re doing it anyway so that they can clear the land for the benefits of big business?” I had read the website.
“That’s right. Most of the homeowners are scattered all around the country and will have to come home to nothing. We’re representing them.” Just then we began crossing over a bridge. “Over this bridge, we’ll be entering the upper 9th ward. Some of the things you should know are that the neighborhood is basically abandoned – nobody is living here – as you see, there are no street lights and all of the homes are totally unliveable at the moment. If the police see you walking around, tell them you are with Common Ground, but don’t be antagonistic – they will arrest you. In general, anyone walking around here at night is up to no good.”
christianity
As much as I dislike Christianity – for its role in convincing black people to accept their plight – and to somehow have given white people the moral backing to do the horrible things that they have done, I have to admit that the attitudes of the pastors I met were ones of extreme positivity and hope for the future. The pastors proved themselves to be true community leaders. Pastor Lester Jackson drove us to the church we gutted and because I had the longest legs, I got to sit shotgun in his van, and talk to him. He remarked, “our church needs to get back up and running. This area has been a big area for drugs and guns and things like that. Before Katrina we had begun setting up youth groups and programs and things have gotten much better.” The streets were filled with debris, and there were no residents to speak of, but still: he spoke of a continuing, uninterrupted project.
I met another pastor in the lower 9th ward during my first day of outreach. He was outside a home, gutting it along with his wife and son. “They were blessed with a big house, but that backfires at a time like this,” is what one of my outreach-mates said. The pastor was a short man, fat so that his steps were not straight and his arm swing was altered. When he talked, his eyes closed and his head tilted back as though he were singing. His son wore the only respirator I saw in the whole lower 9th. “We definitely could use some of your services.” His skin was caked with dust. He was living in Memphis. CommonGround was already working on his church. He was working on his own house and then the houses of some of his parishioners that couldn’t get back and forth as easily as he could.
He walked us into each of those houses so we could survey the damage. Each home, like all of the homes, was surreal. The walls black with mold. The furniture shifted around the house so that it was nearly impossible to get from one room to the other – beds having smashed TV’s, blankets and couches squishy and covered by a film. He walked straight into these houses without so much as a cloth over his face. We, as outreach, were not equipped with respirators, but I followed him in anyway. Commonground is very diligent about safety precautions. My thinking was that as long as he can go into the house, so could I – especially considering, “Solidarity not Charity.” I think, and I think commonground would think too (though commonground does not advocate breathing mold) that if we are to do any long term good for the community, then we cant be putting up physical or psychological barriers beyond those which already exist. I knew a volunteer who immediately sanitized her hand after shaking those of a resident. Tsk. And I figured that a smidgeon of mold wouldn’t kill me. However, there came a time when I couldn’t stand to breathe in another molecule of mold, and this happened well before the pastors’ breaking point. My partner suggested that he visit the “distro” and pick up a respirator for himself because he was putting himself at a health risk. “Ok,” he said in a bashful, aw shucks, Southern way, “I’ve just been doing so much - going back and forth to Memphis, trying to get my members situated here again – working so hard every day, I don’t even be thinkin’ about myself. But I’ll stop by the premises, though.”
Freedom in job choice
For example, if you don’t like gutting houses – no worries – build beds for volunteers. If you don’t like doing that – no worries – cook, wash dishes, make picket signs, etc. only sitting around all day will make you feel uncomfortable and out of place, and New Orleans isn’t fun enough at the moment to draw volunteers who want nothing else but to have a free place to stay and eat while they party all day.
Toby said something interesting about this, which is that places that are poorly organized do more, while places that are well organized do less. Common Ground: horrible organization, but all over the city helping where they feel it’s necessary. Red Cross: very well organized, but doesn’t do shit. I buy this. If people spend so much time organizing, then they spend less time doing – more time allocating and maintaining hierarchies. And most good (however you define good in a particular situation) is done because of the passion and energy involved in split decision making, not because of good planning. Athletes become extraordinary by making good decision that expand on their coaches X and O’s. Look at the American revolution. Once the focus shifted from becoming free to maintenance and expansion, all the democratic ideals were lost. Likewise, if Common Ground were to ever achieve its goals, the last thing it should do is to start expanding into general worthwhile causes in various places. Projects, I believe, have a beginning and an end, and anything past that becomes a beurocracy that has a stated, idealistic purpose, but is really alive to be profitable for a small minority of people.
Here, people eat communally, people gather in a circle each morning and are given a choice of many jobs to do – are encouraged towards nothing, yet each position is filled.
racism/classism
The 9th ward is most likely a place that I would never find myself in if it weren’t for this particular thing I’m doing. And now, what I’m seeing is representative of nothing in particular except that it is obviously an area that was deemed not worth fixing up. Or, as Cool Black, who is a person who runs anti-racism seminars along with his brother Tyrone the Pastor, and came here to do a mini seminar with the basic thesis addressed mainly at the while people here of: ‘even though you think you might be the most left wing and radical thing to ever exist, the folks around here have seen this act before, so don’t go into this with a missionary attitude because black folk can do without you’, (white people found it combative) put it: ‘There are many ways to tell that this was a poor neighborhood even before Katrina hit.’ These ways included, profundity of liquor stores, the fact that it was easy to confuse (in some cases) houses that were still standing with ones that weren’t. Parts of the 9th ward make it difficult to believe that ever there was anything going on. Sometimes you would see a barber shop or a Chinese restaurant and try to mentally reconstruct a working neighborhood around it, but that took some work. The neighborhood – and I think that would encompass any part of the city that isn’t the French Quarter, is totally abandoned. That is - if there weren’t any hopes and/or expectations that the people who had traditionally lived in those areas would return, New Orleans would basically be a clean slate. Government/Corporate interests as well as real estate aim to treat it as such, while Common Ground treats it as such for their own purposes, and if purposes have to be placed on a continuum, theirs would certainly be on the side of good.
I’ve always held a sort of middle class reverence for cynicism. This is something I’ve tried to extricate. It is many a middle-class kid that you will hear say things like: “I’m not being cynical, I’m being realistic.” We don’t believe in things, we act against our conscience, and we expect everyone to do the same. It was my belief, before going to New Orleans, that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt because a below-sea level city was obviously a bad idea in the first place. It’s also how I feel about the world trade center, and 100 story buildings in general: they must come down one way or another. Now, I feel that it is of the utmost importance that New Orleans be rebuilt. New Orleans is a blank page right now, with every opportunity in sight to be rebuilt in a positive way – the right way – free of the constraints of pre-existing hierarchies and stagnations.
It wasn’t until my second day of gutting that I heard my first bit of dissent from the commonground crew. One girl, who was a touch petty – as a human – began doubting the way we were going about achieving our end, or any end at all, for that matter. Her contention was that we were just a bunch of middle class kids coming in and telling poor people what to do in order to achieve a political end. That is: without even having all the facts straight about whether or not, environmentally, it’s safe for people to live here, we’re coming in and telling people to live here and that it’s best for them to do so, so that the government doesn’t annex their property. That we’re coming in as volunteers, gutting houses without experience, bleaching mold without experience and telling people that everything is ok. We don’t even consider that the foundations of these houses are fucked. Hell – they’re still moldy from Betsy!
To her I responded, “I would have to agree with you about the class issue – that’s always dubious and worth examining. I would have to agree with you that commonground volunteers may not be the most qualified to do such work, however, here we are doing it. And, if it weren’t for us doing it, who would it be? It wouldn’t be no-on! To be against the restoration of New Orleans is to be against community organization, to be against self-empowerment, to be on the side of government. If you wanted to say that perhaps New Orleans should be shut down for a while, and that during this time, the displaced citizens would be justly compensated and fitfully housed, while independently hired scientists surveyed what needed to be surveyed and the rebuilding process began after that, with the assistance and best interests of the people in mind, then maybe. But as reality stands – if it weren’t for the work of commonground alongside the people who want to live in N.O. then the 9th ward would have been casinos and hotels and corporate offices and the people would have been gotten a meager payoff.”
The house we were gutting was the house of a man who was currently living somewhere in Northern Louisiana and the person we were helping gut was the man’s cousin. He had already gutted his own house and was doing a favor for his cousin. This was the most morose man I met. I never quite got his name. He spent most of the day sitting with his back turned to us, and he looked off into the distance, perhaps surveying the devastation around him, perhaps not – and there was one point during the day where he was working out back and a car pulled up out front bearing a chirpy, clean, white girl: “I’m from uptown and I’m just driving around trying to spread some cheer.” We thanked her and she was on her way. She had set down a Mardi Gras cake, which is some green and purple contraption with plastic babies inside. When the man came from out back to front again and learned of the cake, it was clear that the donators stated purpose would not be met. The man acknowledged the cake without the slightest of cheer and the only time I heard him speak more than three words at a time was to tell of how his cousin, whose house were were gutting, was stranded on the roof for two days after Katrina.
The other time cynicism crept into play was a time I was squarely in the middle of the fray. That is: not seeing someone else’s cynicism, but instead experiencing my own. There was a day I had decided to take off. Actually, it was impossible for me to get onto a team that I wanted to be on that day, so I was left with nothing. Instead, Toby and I attempted, in vain, to join the bike repair team only to learn that we hadn’t the slightest idea how to repair bikes. Then we went over to help this guy out who was evidently building a hand-wash laundry station and therefore needed to clear out some brush from the area in which he hoped to build. However, in his estimation, the job was too dangerous, what with spiky nails and heavy branches needing to be cleared, for him to involve others in his project. That is: if we hurt ourselves while on his ‘watch’, he couldn’t live with it. So instead we sat in the main courtyard as I assisted ever so slightly Toby’s construction of a crystal set radio, which I have no idea what it is, but it involved a box of cornflakes and masses of red wire and chips. During this construction, we walked over to the gas station (the nearest open thing, some 1.5 miles away) and picked up some sandwiches and went to the House of Excellence to hang out in the air conditioning for a spell. While we were there, a guy came in and announced that there would be a protest somewhere downtown in regards to a hotel that was evicting people for the purposes of freeing up space for potential customers willing to pay double for rooms as it was the Mardi Gras season coming up. I looked up and around and tried to work up a sense of having been wronged. Nobody at the House of Excellence was tremendously keen on going – in fact, the bearer of the news was only that, as he entered the house and sat down with a sigh of finality.
?
For example, where the common ground community center is here in the Upper 9th ward, and also in the 7th ward, where I worked for the first day I was here, there is debris everywhere – but the houses are still standing. Front porches are often fucked, with wooden beams cracked and warped and the homes obviously abandoned throughout the entire neighborhood adding to a general creepy effect, which is devastating when you think about it – when you consider that there was once a thriving population and now there is none, when you see all of the ingenuity and outward, structural signs of human civilization without people, which adds to the disconcerting feeling, but doesn’t drive home the true extent of the devastation here the way being in the lower 9th ward does – or even more – talking to a person who has just returned to their home for the first time since the hurricane.
One man said: “All my memories are in that house there.” His house had shifted off of its foundation. The foundation sat intact about 10 feet from the rest of the house. The roof of the house had shifted off of the rest of the house and would have fallen to the ground had it not fallen onto the house next, so it lay bent over like a slinky. A freelance news crew from CBS was interviewing the man and I was talking to his friend, who wore an earring and an orange sweatshirt. They had come to borrow a saw and Tyvek suits so as to go cut a tree that had fallen and blocked access to the front door of another friend’s home. That house had a dead dog on the porch and another inside. These would go in the garbage along with the rest of what was to gut.
The friend was less sentimental. His house was across town and only had about 2 feet of water come in, and wind damage to the roof. They were both currently living in Houston. “They need to just bulldoze all of this. Aint no way I’m coming back here – not to live like this. Who would want to live in this? All them people out in Houston who talkin’ about comin’ back aint seen this!” He was smiley and friendly and pragmatic. He was referring to the complete blocks that were reduced to planks of wood. Also, right next to where the Lower 9th ward distribution center is, in what is now a vacant lot, there is a barge sitting on top of a school bus. This barge is what is said to have broken the levee in the area. The conspiracy theorists say that the barge was purposely placed there so as to break that particular levee – in combination with the other few spots that were bombed, to allow the water in to decimate the neighborhoods and facilitate the impending corporate land grab. Either way, the barge, legally, should not have been docked where it was.
We came to another older man, who appeared to be surveying his property for the very first time. He was with some other family members, and he didn’t want his house gutted. The reason why, however, was that the house before which he stood was not in the place it used to be. His house had been pushed all the way from the corner into the middle of the block. “That space there – that was my back yard – you know – where I used to plant my flowers and things.” That space was now taken by another house from another part of the block. Cars were overturned, cars were at an angle propped up by houses and fragments of front yard gates. Cars were vertical.
This was just some of the story. This was just the part about houses that shifted. There were spray painted codes on each house. I never figured out the extent of their meaning. One aspect was the initials of the inspector. One was the date of inspection. One was a proportion such as 3/8, which I believe meant that out of 8 people rescued from this house, 3 were DOA. The clearest signs were posted by the SPCA. These read, “Dead Dog,” or “3 dogs found. 1 black, 1 tan, 1 white.” Or, “2 cats under,” or, “2 cats found – 1 kind of friendly.” There was a distinct odor of death detectable upon passing by many of the houses.
Everyone was nice. Even though there were times that we were the first people people saw upon seeing for the first time the extent to which their lives as they knew it were fucked, nobody really came off as antagonistic. Even though we offered free gutting services, a free health clinic, free lawyers, free food and clothing distribution, and free tool lending – which at face value is a great deal, but beneath face value could be very realistically seen as just another promise made by people of a different economic bracket that will go unfulfilled and in the end separate them from their remaining money and/or property – people trusted us. Either they saw that we were honest, or were just desperate.
There were sons gutting houses of their neighbor. Friends gutting the houses of friends, neighbors - neighbors, and granddaughters single handedly gutting the houses of their elderly grandmothers and their neighbors. Most of the people were ill equipped. Most wore no suits, no gloves, no goggles, no masks, nor respirators. The people gutting their houses believe, and rightly so (in a way), that their homes are still exactly that.
The first day I worked, I got on a team with a bunch of other people who I’d never met before and who had never gutted a house. We got dressed up in our tyvek suits and were impressed by the fact that we looked like aliens. Our job was to gut a church. A small church, but one nonetheless; one with a lot of furniture, molding and insulation that needed to go outside. There was also a dead cat decomposing behind a file cabinet. Only the whiskers remained intact. The fur could be (and was) mistaken for fiberglass insulation, and only splotches of it remained. The rest was some manner of skeletal matter. I threw it in the garbage with the rest of the sheetrock and furniture.
When I got back to the community center, I relayed this story to a group of people in the context of adding to the pre-existing plethora of evidence pointing to the fact that this city is in ruins, and many aspects of being here are depressing. However, I was speaking with a vegan. Here at common ground, there are many vegans and vegetarians and they are all accommodated. There is food made specifically for them, and since people here fancy themselves political and radical and activists, there are those vegans who bring all of those elements together in an amazing display of self-righteous criticism. Vegans are never so just for health reasons.
“you threw out a cat?”
“yeah, what did you want me to do – bring it a bowl of milk?”
“no, but don’t you think you should save it so that hopefully we could get in contact with its owner and have them make the decision as to what to do with the remains?”
1.6.06
I’m sitting in o’hare airport in the midst of a 2.5 hour layover in between New York and New Orleans. I’m going down to New Orleans to help, in whatever way I can, the post Hurricane Katrina world. I have to be vague about what I will be doing because the person in charge of emailing me information about the organization I will be with was less than helpful. A general email promised in response to my completed registration form never arrived; nor did an informal response indicating that they had even received my completed registration form. In this registration form, I answered questions such as: what can you do to help? ie. What skills do you have? Do you have any dietary restrictions, etc. so as far as I know, they have no particular plan for me, which is fine, but does that mean that they just accept anybody off the street and put them to work? If so, then what could that say about my future roommates?
I’m imagining New Orleans to be some kind of Old West anarchistic (not in the idealist sense of the word) free for all – a futuristic Deadwood, where the golden hearted and the slimy convene to do battle in shattered skyscrapers that house squatters who eat rats. Mold evolving into flora. Opportunistic business fat cats slurping oysters dressed with horseradish, blood and gasoline embedded in their endemic waters. And all the bars are strip clubs and beer is $1 per pint – laws are laxed. I may have to shoot someone. Things like that. The fourth world; the post-apocalyptic first world.
I did receive an email that told me some of the things I might be doing, such as construction, furniture moving, food distribution, etc., but my last email went unanswered, so I'm holding a grudge. But to be positive, I’m assuming that what with all the good deeds being done, little cosmetic details get overlooked. I’m imagining that there is a team of emailers – anyone who has a spare second sending missives to the outside world, breathing deeply, fingers caked in various residues… I guess the keyboard would have to have one of those plastic coverings on it, or else deadly bacteria would hide in the crevices of the keyboard and eventually find their way into the hard drive…
The reason I’m going is because I have the time and the inclination and it’s a $170 flight. What with my recent Christmas bonus, that’s no money at all! It’s a good thing to do things that you have the time and inclination to do.
1st impression
Last time I went to N.O., I took a bus from the airport to near the French Quarter. Since I knew it was possible, and since I had done it before, it seemed only right to save my money and do it again. I figured that wherever it is that I was set to go couldn’t be too far from the French Quarter. And this is the problem with people who travel: we become experts on things. My assumption that commonground was near the French Quarter was akin to when I tell someone that I’m from New York, them asking me if I know their cousin’s girlfriend’s friend Ralph who is tall.
The first destination I saw was not what I expected, but I was feeling pretty poetic about it all, so I kind of pumped it up to something it wasn’t. You see: the bus costed $1.25, but only brought you near the downtownish area (city line might be a better word there). From there, you had to take a free FEMA bus. However, the free FEMA bus (a FEMA bus is just a bus, but you don’t have to pay to get on because FEMA has already paid the fare) is not waiting for the connection, the would-be passengers are. Here’s what I originally wrote about the scene:
The bus stop itself had been (the shelter of) knocked off its axis and beer bottles were strewn all over the place. My first impression was that someone had been partying pretty hard out there – but then the thick layer of dust covering those bottles mixed with some of the other semiotic clues told me that it was a Katrina related pile. The road was a main road, yet not one store was open, most were boarded up, and some had cracked windows. All had mounds of debris outside. A ghost town. The people who walked the streets were like phantoms. There was no immediate explanation as to where they were coming from – and if they were going home, there was no way to tell where that was either.
See, a bit too much poetry and unrealistic emotion for my taste…
Eventually, the bus came and I rode it and a guy from Arkansas and a guy from Georgia came on. They were looking for some hotel that had been recommended to them. Somewhere along the way in getting rejected from various construction jobs, they got a hotel recommended to them. Evidently they were surprised not to have found jobs: the “government is taking all the money” allotted for such projects. They were here for the work. I told them I was here to visit a friend. I have no idea why I lied.
I got off at Canal street and I was somehow stuck on the idea that perhaps things were back up and running and that maybe common ground was closed because of it. Maybe it worked. So even on Canal street, which is the border of the French Quarter, when I saw still-fallen palm trees, and busted-in windows, I conceded: ok, well there was a hurricane. I thought that I remembered there being lots of tourists, but I could have been wrong – I certainly was now if I expected any. Just locals – all black folks lined the streets. And if I still thought that things hadn’t changed so much by the time I got to Bourbon Street, everything changed right then. This was Friday @ happy hour and I have a very clear memory of the expected mayhem. Yet at the intersection, there was an all black New Orleans jazz band playing, “I got 5 on it” to the listening pleasure of only a few other black folks. Some dancing, some not. Where were the white people? Where were the tourists?
I walked down bourbon street a bit and the music was blaring out of the bars as fierce as ever, but the bars were empty. Stores that sold shirts that had written in bold letters over the chest things like: FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass – empty, no shoppers.
Desperation = the act of pursuing something with all your heart that you know is unattainable.
The combined sound of the blasting music didn’t even reach the next street, much less the ears or the hearts of folks around the country who desire a place to do debauchery. It had become dark and I stopped in a place to get a daiquiri. I saw a place I had once been to to get a good sandwich and I repeated the event – only this time alone, that is, the only customer in the place from the moment I walked in until the moment I left. This had been a place where customers obtained seats by relying on the fact that by the time they got on line to order their food, waited, ordered and were prepared to search for a seat – there would have been complete turnover in the restaurant and the seat they got would most likely have been just vacated by whomever was first on line when they arrived at the back of the line.
kirk
My intention, however, was not to go to bourbon street. This, I have done. The rest, I had not. So I got in a cab and gave the driver the address I had been given. At this point I was still unsure whether or not Common Ground even existed and I was contemplating just getting a hotel room in the French quarter and seeking things in the daylight. But again, this was not what I had come for.
Soon, but not in a walkable amount of time, I arrived at the House of Excellence. There was a sign on the door stating the “Volunteer Computing Hours”, and though it was dark out, it was still well within that time, so I walked in. There were about six computers there, a person at each. They all glanced at me at once and then looked back to their screens at once so I figured no-one there was anyone who was in charge. As I came to find out, Common Ground’s general plan is to be a scenario where no-one is in charge. This leads, of course, to questionable organization of the administration of projects, but not, as you may fear, lack of participation in projects. Everyone at Common Ground is here with a staunch desire to help – in fact I’ve never seen a more realistic portrayal of the saying, “get in where you fit in.” any skill you have or wish you had can be utilized and nurtured in a way that will help the relief effort in one way or another.
Or not.
I stood in the doorway for a while longer, assuming that the next person who would look up will have, Darwinistically, appointed themselves leader. And I knew someone would look up as it would certainly become obvious to at least someone that my presence there was awkward, and that I had a backpack on. Yet I couldn’t just start walking into the building as I did not know the building well enough to effectively do so.
A guy named Kirk with matted brown hair and a G.I. Joe do-gooder look in his eyes did so, and after telling him my story: that I had arrived from New York and had been instructed by Sam to come here, (nobody seemed to know who Sam was, but my presence alone was enough to prove that at least one aspect of my story was true) he told me that this was the wrong place for me to be. The House of Excellence was the media center for Common Ground. The small, fluorescent lighted room that I entered was where volunteers could come to check email. From somewhere in that building, a radio station was broadcasted. Yes, some people stayed there, but they were mainly the people who worked there and all the space, both inside, and outdoor tent space, was taken up. Most everyone else stayed in the community center, and so would I, and Kirk even offered to walk me there. “Aww, you’re so nice.” Said one of the girls, of Kirk.
As we walked, he informed me, “This is the 9th ward. All this was under water during Katrina, and the people who live here are being scammed out of their property because they’re poor and black.” I was vaguely aware of this. He also told me that he had been at Common Ground for about a month and had previously worked at Foot Locker in San Diego. He described the process by which Common Ground was created. Then, told me the ways in which longevity within Common Ground affords you a position of status. This last was irrelevant information as I saw it at the time. I was only to be there two weeks, and surely did not need to be clued in on the ways in which status could be attained. Sadly – and a tribute to my lack of anything interesting to say, I found myself repeating this fact to a newcomer only five days later. It was the type of place where knowledge – even wisdom could be attained in five days. “Mainly people go out and gut homes. We take the homes, strip it of its furniture, the sheet rock, the insulation, the mold – everything except the flooring and the roof and the frame. After we’re done, the contractors take over. Some people also go out protesting.”
“Yeah, I read on the website that something big happened yesterday.”
“That’s right. They were going to bulldoze a whole block, and Common Ground got in there and brought some media and protested and made sure it didn’t happen.”
“And so Common Ground’s position is that these houses don’t need to be bulldozed, but they’re doing it anyway so that they can clear the land for the benefits of big business?” I had read the website.
“That’s right. Most of the homeowners are scattered all around the country and will have to come home to nothing. We’re representing them.” Just then we began crossing over a bridge. “Over this bridge, we’ll be entering the upper 9th ward. Some of the things you should know are that the neighborhood is basically abandoned – nobody is living here – as you see, there are no street lights and all of the homes are totally unliveable at the moment. If the police see you walking around, tell them you are with Common Ground, but don’t be antagonistic – they will arrest you. In general, anyone walking around here at night is up to no good.”
christianity
As much as I dislike Christianity – for its role in convincing black people to accept their plight – and to somehow have given white people the moral backing to do the horrible things that they have done, I have to admit that the attitudes of the pastors I met were ones of extreme positivity and hope for the future. The pastors proved themselves to be true community leaders. Pastor Lester Jackson drove us to the church we gutted and because I had the longest legs, I got to sit shotgun in his van, and talk to him. He remarked, “our church needs to get back up and running. This area has been a big area for drugs and guns and things like that. Before Katrina we had begun setting up youth groups and programs and things have gotten much better.” The streets were filled with debris, and there were no residents to speak of, but still: he spoke of a continuing, uninterrupted project.
I met another pastor in the lower 9th ward during my first day of outreach. He was outside a home, gutting it along with his wife and son. “They were blessed with a big house, but that backfires at a time like this,” is what one of my outreach-mates said. The pastor was a short man, fat so that his steps were not straight and his arm swing was altered. When he talked, his eyes closed and his head tilted back as though he were singing. His son wore the only respirator I saw in the whole lower 9th. “We definitely could use some of your services.” His skin was caked with dust. He was living in Memphis. CommonGround was already working on his church. He was working on his own house and then the houses of some of his parishioners that couldn’t get back and forth as easily as he could.
He walked us into each of those houses so we could survey the damage. Each home, like all of the homes, was surreal. The walls black with mold. The furniture shifted around the house so that it was nearly impossible to get from one room to the other – beds having smashed TV’s, blankets and couches squishy and covered by a film. He walked straight into these houses without so much as a cloth over his face. We, as outreach, were not equipped with respirators, but I followed him in anyway. Commonground is very diligent about safety precautions. My thinking was that as long as he can go into the house, so could I – especially considering, “Solidarity not Charity.” I think, and I think commonground would think too (though commonground does not advocate breathing mold) that if we are to do any long term good for the community, then we cant be putting up physical or psychological barriers beyond those which already exist. I knew a volunteer who immediately sanitized her hand after shaking those of a resident. Tsk. And I figured that a smidgeon of mold wouldn’t kill me. However, there came a time when I couldn’t stand to breathe in another molecule of mold, and this happened well before the pastors’ breaking point. My partner suggested that he visit the “distro” and pick up a respirator for himself because he was putting himself at a health risk. “Ok,” he said in a bashful, aw shucks, Southern way, “I’ve just been doing so much - going back and forth to Memphis, trying to get my members situated here again – working so hard every day, I don’t even be thinkin’ about myself. But I’ll stop by the premises, though.”
Freedom in job choice
For example, if you don’t like gutting houses – no worries – build beds for volunteers. If you don’t like doing that – no worries – cook, wash dishes, make picket signs, etc. only sitting around all day will make you feel uncomfortable and out of place, and New Orleans isn’t fun enough at the moment to draw volunteers who want nothing else but to have a free place to stay and eat while they party all day.
Toby said something interesting about this, which is that places that are poorly organized do more, while places that are well organized do less. Common Ground: horrible organization, but all over the city helping where they feel it’s necessary. Red Cross: very well organized, but doesn’t do shit. I buy this. If people spend so much time organizing, then they spend less time doing – more time allocating and maintaining hierarchies. And most good (however you define good in a particular situation) is done because of the passion and energy involved in split decision making, not because of good planning. Athletes become extraordinary by making good decision that expand on their coaches X and O’s. Look at the American revolution. Once the focus shifted from becoming free to maintenance and expansion, all the democratic ideals were lost. Likewise, if Common Ground were to ever achieve its goals, the last thing it should do is to start expanding into general worthwhile causes in various places. Projects, I believe, have a beginning and an end, and anything past that becomes a beurocracy that has a stated, idealistic purpose, but is really alive to be profitable for a small minority of people.
Here, people eat communally, people gather in a circle each morning and are given a choice of many jobs to do – are encouraged towards nothing, yet each position is filled.
racism/classism
The 9th ward is most likely a place that I would never find myself in if it weren’t for this particular thing I’m doing. And now, what I’m seeing is representative of nothing in particular except that it is obviously an area that was deemed not worth fixing up. Or, as Cool Black, who is a person who runs anti-racism seminars along with his brother Tyrone the Pastor, and came here to do a mini seminar with the basic thesis addressed mainly at the while people here of: ‘even though you think you might be the most left wing and radical thing to ever exist, the folks around here have seen this act before, so don’t go into this with a missionary attitude because black folk can do without you’, (white people found it combative) put it: ‘There are many ways to tell that this was a poor neighborhood even before Katrina hit.’ These ways included, profundity of liquor stores, the fact that it was easy to confuse (in some cases) houses that were still standing with ones that weren’t. Parts of the 9th ward make it difficult to believe that ever there was anything going on. Sometimes you would see a barber shop or a Chinese restaurant and try to mentally reconstruct a working neighborhood around it, but that took some work. The neighborhood – and I think that would encompass any part of the city that isn’t the French Quarter, is totally abandoned. That is - if there weren’t any hopes and/or expectations that the people who had traditionally lived in those areas would return, New Orleans would basically be a clean slate. Government/Corporate interests as well as real estate aim to treat it as such, while Common Ground treats it as such for their own purposes, and if purposes have to be placed on a continuum, theirs would certainly be on the side of good.
I’ve always held a sort of middle class reverence for cynicism. This is something I’ve tried to extricate. It is many a middle-class kid that you will hear say things like: “I’m not being cynical, I’m being realistic.” We don’t believe in things, we act against our conscience, and we expect everyone to do the same. It was my belief, before going to New Orleans, that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt because a below-sea level city was obviously a bad idea in the first place. It’s also how I feel about the world trade center, and 100 story buildings in general: they must come down one way or another. Now, I feel that it is of the utmost importance that New Orleans be rebuilt. New Orleans is a blank page right now, with every opportunity in sight to be rebuilt in a positive way – the right way – free of the constraints of pre-existing hierarchies and stagnations.
It wasn’t until my second day of gutting that I heard my first bit of dissent from the commonground crew. One girl, who was a touch petty – as a human – began doubting the way we were going about achieving our end, or any end at all, for that matter. Her contention was that we were just a bunch of middle class kids coming in and telling poor people what to do in order to achieve a political end. That is: without even having all the facts straight about whether or not, environmentally, it’s safe for people to live here, we’re coming in and telling people to live here and that it’s best for them to do so, so that the government doesn’t annex their property. That we’re coming in as volunteers, gutting houses without experience, bleaching mold without experience and telling people that everything is ok. We don’t even consider that the foundations of these houses are fucked. Hell – they’re still moldy from Betsy!
To her I responded, “I would have to agree with you about the class issue – that’s always dubious and worth examining. I would have to agree with you that commonground volunteers may not be the most qualified to do such work, however, here we are doing it. And, if it weren’t for us doing it, who would it be? It wouldn’t be no-on! To be against the restoration of New Orleans is to be against community organization, to be against self-empowerment, to be on the side of government. If you wanted to say that perhaps New Orleans should be shut down for a while, and that during this time, the displaced citizens would be justly compensated and fitfully housed, while independently hired scientists surveyed what needed to be surveyed and the rebuilding process began after that, with the assistance and best interests of the people in mind, then maybe. But as reality stands – if it weren’t for the work of commonground alongside the people who want to live in N.O. then the 9th ward would have been casinos and hotels and corporate offices and the people would have been gotten a meager payoff.”
The house we were gutting was the house of a man who was currently living somewhere in Northern Louisiana and the person we were helping gut was the man’s cousin. He had already gutted his own house and was doing a favor for his cousin. This was the most morose man I met. I never quite got his name. He spent most of the day sitting with his back turned to us, and he looked off into the distance, perhaps surveying the devastation around him, perhaps not – and there was one point during the day where he was working out back and a car pulled up out front bearing a chirpy, clean, white girl: “I’m from uptown and I’m just driving around trying to spread some cheer.” We thanked her and she was on her way. She had set down a Mardi Gras cake, which is some green and purple contraption with plastic babies inside. When the man came from out back to front again and learned of the cake, it was clear that the donators stated purpose would not be met. The man acknowledged the cake without the slightest of cheer and the only time I heard him speak more than three words at a time was to tell of how his cousin, whose house were were gutting, was stranded on the roof for two days after Katrina.
The other time cynicism crept into play was a time I was squarely in the middle of the fray. That is: not seeing someone else’s cynicism, but instead experiencing my own. There was a day I had decided to take off. Actually, it was impossible for me to get onto a team that I wanted to be on that day, so I was left with nothing. Instead, Toby and I attempted, in vain, to join the bike repair team only to learn that we hadn’t the slightest idea how to repair bikes. Then we went over to help this guy out who was evidently building a hand-wash laundry station and therefore needed to clear out some brush from the area in which he hoped to build. However, in his estimation, the job was too dangerous, what with spiky nails and heavy branches needing to be cleared, for him to involve others in his project. That is: if we hurt ourselves while on his ‘watch’, he couldn’t live with it. So instead we sat in the main courtyard as I assisted ever so slightly Toby’s construction of a crystal set radio, which I have no idea what it is, but it involved a box of cornflakes and masses of red wire and chips. During this construction, we walked over to the gas station (the nearest open thing, some 1.5 miles away) and picked up some sandwiches and went to the House of Excellence to hang out in the air conditioning for a spell. While we were there, a guy came in and announced that there would be a protest somewhere downtown in regards to a hotel that was evicting people for the purposes of freeing up space for potential customers willing to pay double for rooms as it was the Mardi Gras season coming up. I looked up and around and tried to work up a sense of having been wronged. Nobody at the House of Excellence was tremendously keen on going – in fact, the bearer of the news was only that, as he entered the house and sat down with a sigh of finality.
?
For example, where the common ground community center is here in the Upper 9th ward, and also in the 7th ward, where I worked for the first day I was here, there is debris everywhere – but the houses are still standing. Front porches are often fucked, with wooden beams cracked and warped and the homes obviously abandoned throughout the entire neighborhood adding to a general creepy effect, which is devastating when you think about it – when you consider that there was once a thriving population and now there is none, when you see all of the ingenuity and outward, structural signs of human civilization without people, which adds to the disconcerting feeling, but doesn’t drive home the true extent of the devastation here the way being in the lower 9th ward does – or even more – talking to a person who has just returned to their home for the first time since the hurricane.
One man said: “All my memories are in that house there.” His house had shifted off of its foundation. The foundation sat intact about 10 feet from the rest of the house. The roof of the house had shifted off of the rest of the house and would have fallen to the ground had it not fallen onto the house next, so it lay bent over like a slinky. A freelance news crew from CBS was interviewing the man and I was talking to his friend, who wore an earring and an orange sweatshirt. They had come to borrow a saw and Tyvek suits so as to go cut a tree that had fallen and blocked access to the front door of another friend’s home. That house had a dead dog on the porch and another inside. These would go in the garbage along with the rest of what was to gut.
The friend was less sentimental. His house was across town and only had about 2 feet of water come in, and wind damage to the roof. They were both currently living in Houston. “They need to just bulldoze all of this. Aint no way I’m coming back here – not to live like this. Who would want to live in this? All them people out in Houston who talkin’ about comin’ back aint seen this!” He was smiley and friendly and pragmatic. He was referring to the complete blocks that were reduced to planks of wood. Also, right next to where the Lower 9th ward distribution center is, in what is now a vacant lot, there is a barge sitting on top of a school bus. This barge is what is said to have broken the levee in the area. The conspiracy theorists say that the barge was purposely placed there so as to break that particular levee – in combination with the other few spots that were bombed, to allow the water in to decimate the neighborhoods and facilitate the impending corporate land grab. Either way, the barge, legally, should not have been docked where it was.
We came to another older man, who appeared to be surveying his property for the very first time. He was with some other family members, and he didn’t want his house gutted. The reason why, however, was that the house before which he stood was not in the place it used to be. His house had been pushed all the way from the corner into the middle of the block. “That space there – that was my back yard – you know – where I used to plant my flowers and things.” That space was now taken by another house from another part of the block. Cars were overturned, cars were at an angle propped up by houses and fragments of front yard gates. Cars were vertical.
This was just some of the story. This was just the part about houses that shifted. There were spray painted codes on each house. I never figured out the extent of their meaning. One aspect was the initials of the inspector. One was the date of inspection. One was a proportion such as 3/8, which I believe meant that out of 8 people rescued from this house, 3 were DOA. The clearest signs were posted by the SPCA. These read, “Dead Dog,” or “3 dogs found. 1 black, 1 tan, 1 white.” Or, “2 cats under,” or, “2 cats found – 1 kind of friendly.” There was a distinct odor of death detectable upon passing by many of the houses.
Everyone was nice. Even though there were times that we were the first people people saw upon seeing for the first time the extent to which their lives as they knew it were fucked, nobody really came off as antagonistic. Even though we offered free gutting services, a free health clinic, free lawyers, free food and clothing distribution, and free tool lending – which at face value is a great deal, but beneath face value could be very realistically seen as just another promise made by people of a different economic bracket that will go unfulfilled and in the end separate them from their remaining money and/or property – people trusted us. Either they saw that we were honest, or were just desperate.
There were sons gutting houses of their neighbor. Friends gutting the houses of friends, neighbors - neighbors, and granddaughters single handedly gutting the houses of their elderly grandmothers and their neighbors. Most of the people were ill equipped. Most wore no suits, no gloves, no goggles, no masks, nor respirators. The people gutting their houses believe, and rightly so (in a way), that their homes are still exactly that.
The first day I worked, I got on a team with a bunch of other people who I’d never met before and who had never gutted a house. We got dressed up in our tyvek suits and were impressed by the fact that we looked like aliens. Our job was to gut a church. A small church, but one nonetheless; one with a lot of furniture, molding and insulation that needed to go outside. There was also a dead cat decomposing behind a file cabinet. Only the whiskers remained intact. The fur could be (and was) mistaken for fiberglass insulation, and only splotches of it remained. The rest was some manner of skeletal matter. I threw it in the garbage with the rest of the sheetrock and furniture.
When I got back to the community center, I relayed this story to a group of people in the context of adding to the pre-existing plethora of evidence pointing to the fact that this city is in ruins, and many aspects of being here are depressing. However, I was speaking with a vegan. Here at common ground, there are many vegans and vegetarians and they are all accommodated. There is food made specifically for them, and since people here fancy themselves political and radical and activists, there are those vegans who bring all of those elements together in an amazing display of self-righteous criticism. Vegans are never so just for health reasons.
“you threw out a cat?”
“yeah, what did you want me to do – bring it a bowl of milk?”
“no, but don’t you think you should save it so that hopefully we could get in contact with its owner and have them make the decision as to what to do with the remains?”
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