(I promised that I would write about it, so here it is)
Once again, it was a short trip. I would have preferred to have stayed for a week but I couldn’t. So here’s the skinny. She’s in much better shape then the last time I visited. Last time I went back, I couldn’t believe the level of devastation. There was so much trash piled up in front of people’s houses. The trees were covered with muck from the dirty flood waters. Everything was very gray and depressing. But on my last visit, the green has come back. I went during the first week of May so Spring was already in full swing. I forgot how many types of flowers grew in New Orleans—especially in the Uptown area. Everything seemed brighter and cleaner.
But I would be lying if I told you that things are back to normal. No New Orleanian wants things to be back to normal. Normal was awful. As you may have seen in my flickr photos, my neighborhood is still in pretty bad shape. The whole Gentilly area is in a strange state. On each block, you may see one or two houses that are newly renovated and in great shape. But on that same block, those renovated homes are surrounded by abandoned shacks. The flood lines are still etched on the homes. While driving around and viewing my neighborhood, I had to wonder if these homeowners had any intentions of selling or fixing their homes. Will they return? Will they sell? Will they finally gut their homes and sit on it? They can’t simply let their property sit and go to waste.
But the insurance companies are not as helpful as they promised they would be. After the storm, everyone thought that the insurance companies would come through on their promise and cut everyone that check that they needed to rebuild. Of course, that turned into a game of what really qualifies as flood and wind damage. If you haven’t seen Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, please do. I wish I could remember this actor’s name but he tells the story of how his father spent his adult life paying for insurance on his house, only for State Farm to tell him that he was not properly covered. Or as the actor said, “They’re not paying for it. You are not in good hands.”
It was at this part of trip that all of those old feelings of anger welded up inside of me. The injustice of the whole thing—the response, the so-called recovery—is so blatant. I could live to be hundred and I don’t think I will ever forget how we were treated by this current administration. And that’s not just a slam on Bush but on Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, too. May God prevent another terrorist attack from happening because we are not prepared and certain elements of home security are a joke.
My father figured out just how secure National Homeland Security really was when he went on a trip to Washington, DC. Let me just veer off for a second. J While he was in the DC airport, he noticed that most of the airport workers were recent immigrants. Not only that, most of them were Muslim! For all the right-wing batter about how America needs to be protected from the Mozzies, there was my Muslim dad getting screened by mostly Muslim airport workers. I listened to a recent talk from Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and he talked about how he was screened by Muslim workers in an airport. Shoot, I once got on a flight from New Jersey to New Orleans with a medieval dagger (in my hands!) that a bought in Carcassone, France. Okay, I’ll stop here with the stories about so-called security!
Anyway, I had to leave my neighborhood and go driving elsewhere because staying there made me too upset. I checked out the campus the University of New Orleans, one of the few colleges that were able to bounce back quickly after Katrina. Because of the fundraising efforts of former presidents Clinton and Bush, they were able to get money for new dorms. Unfortunately, the art building is still the mold-ridden shack that it was pre-Katrina.
But I would get upset again because I had to go and check out the Ninth ward. Brothers and sisters….how can put it? It’s clean but in a lot of ways, it’s a ghost town. There’s less progress there then there is in Gentilly. My paternal grandmother’s house is still there but it’s all rotted out and filled with debris. It’s really ridiculous. I was sorta speechless because…subhan’Allah, I played with my cousins in the playgrounds of the lower Nine and it’s gone. My grandmother’s Misbelieve tree, the house of the lady who sold frozen cups, the corner store where my cousins and I got high on Now-Laters and Fireballs—all gone. My old nursery—gone. The buildings are shells.
The powers that be, whoever they are, have decided that the Ninth Ward is not a priority. The houses are just sitting there. You may see a trailer or two but that’s it. I can only assume that land developers want the residents of the Ninth Ward to give up and sell their property. To be honest, the Ninth ward and neighboring Chalmette are not the best places in the world. You’re surrounded by industrial canals and chemical plants—so you can see why poor, working class Blacks and Whites lived in these areas. But…what is the word that I’m looking for. So much of this is class and racial warfare. It’s like they’re saying, “You’re poor so you’re not important. Why should we help you? You don’t make more than $40,000 a year so why should we listen to you? Why should we help you rebuild when you can just buy your rotted homes, redo the neighborhood and make chic urban centers for rich folks?”
Well, at least Chalmette is faring better than the Ninth Ward. Besides, I figured that I had to go Uptown and see how things were.
(I may finish this later…maybe)
