Helpless and Empowered

For the past five days I’ve been in a place that has left me feeling both helpless and empowered, on many levels, but I’ll only speak of one. I just got back from spending five days in New Orleans, a city that’s like me and most human beings - looks put together at first glance and like a total mess when you take a step back. I went there for work and spent most of my time working, at least for the first few days. On Saturday I took a bus tour of the aftermath of Katrina, and although I didn’t feel it at the time, it was pretty life altering.

When disasters like 9/11 and Katrina happen I glue myself to the TV, engulfed in the coverage, trying to wrap my mind around what I‘m seeing and hearing. News has always been in my blood, which is why I do what I do now. But after a while, the footage looks the same, the story repeats, the TV is turned off.

A condition of being human is using a brain that sometimes makes it impossible to comprehend the human condition. As I watched people being rescued from the roofs of their homes, surrounded by murky waters, did I know how they felt. No. When it was reported that hundreds of bodies were being found around the city, did I understand what that really meant. No. But after two years, did I think that the tragedy was over. Yes. And that is perhaps what upset me the most.

When I bought my ticket aboard a Grayline bus which promised to show me what remained of New Orleans neighborhoods, I felt very consumerist…almost like tragedy was being capitalized on and I was supporting it. But it’s not like that at all. Knowledge, as they say, is power. And I bought a ticket to enlightenment.

As we drove past each neighborhood intrigue became amazement, amazement became sadness, sadness turned to disgust and disgust to anger. I saw homes marked with spray-paint signifying the date that help had come and what they found. Imagine walking down your street and seeing each house marked with red telling you that two bodies had been found inside. Our guide pointed out homes with man-made holes in their roofs where residents had literally sought higher ground by hacking out of their attics. Surrounded by undrinkable water, in unbearable heat, they waited, and waited, and waited. Some were rescued. Some died trying to rescue themselves and their families, like the grandfather’s daughter and granddaughter who fell off of their raft and drown in front of his eyes. A wreath is now nailed to the tree where their lives ended. I saw it.

In addition to spray paint, water lines are visible on nearly every home, showing just how high the water came and stayed for weeks on end after the levees broke - levees that the US Army Corps of Engineers knew were faulty, but chose not to fix. If there aren‘t lines, it’s likely that the entire house was underwater. Drowning homes and churches, drowning people and animals, drowning dreams and memories - the water was equal opportunity. Katrina was a bitch and the government only fueled the fury through years of neglect and a lack of foresight that could have saved lives.

But those things - the paint, the lines, the stories - are part of the past. What is being done now? That’s what I was upset by the most. Nearly two years later there are parts of the city that have yet to be combed for remains. There are bodies - likely hundreds, if not thousands, that are patiently waiting to be discovered, just as there owners were waiting some twenty months ago. One woman said that she hears screams occasionally as her neighbors discover things that no one should have to. Children can’t play outside for obvious reasons.

Insurance companies are answering claims with vigor - vigorously telling residents that despite having paid nearly $50,000 in premiums over the past eight years, they will only be given a check for $5,000. Those who want to move back face insurance rate hikes of 200 to 600 percent, discouraging them from making a home in the city that is part of them. The middle class is being hosed for contributing to society, while the poorest of the poor are rewarded, in some ways, for their poverty.

Did you know that post-Katrina local prisoners were given meals and cared for while thousands upon thousands of residents went without food and water? They were.

The people who have so bravely moved back and are rebuilding have to drive miles and miles away to get necessities because grocery stores, convenience stores and big box stores have yet to return. Home Depot is there and their lots are full. Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the country, allows their stores to remain closed. Makes me wonder if the mom and pop stores that they undoubtedly put out of business would abandon their neighbors in the wake of disaster? Probably not if they could help it, and Wal-Mart, among others can certainly help it. They should have started rebuilding long ago, if for no other reason than to offer stability and comfort to residents. But businesses don’t operate like that, now do they. Oh, poor, naïve me.

In the midst of the tragedy and the remains, there are glimmers of hope. The colorful Habitat for Humanity homes that line a block in the Ninth Ward are met with smiles. Delight is found in knowing that people from across the country are coming to the city to lend a helping hand. Tourism is slowly rebuilding as well. The bus company that hosted my tour only serviced about 20 percent of pre-Katrina tours last year. This year, they’re hoping for 40 percent.

There is lots to do and see in the city. Lots to experience and it’s certainly not all gloom and doom. If you have the desire to visit New Orleans, do it. Don’t expect to be depressed or down because the spirit of old New Orleans is alive and well. I can’t tell you how many people thanked me for coming to the city. They didn’t know why I was there and they didn’t care. What mattered to them was that people were coming to visit, to shop, to eat, to rebuild and to experience the city. Go if you can. If you can’t, help someone else go.

There is still great need. The people feel forgotten. We must show them that they’re not.

Visit www.levees.org to sign a petition to help improve the levee systems across the country so that future generations of New Orleans and other gulf residents won't have to live in fear that history could be repeated.