But, there is a reason why they can’t take questions right now, at the neighborhood association meeting I’m attending. In order for the presentation covering city services, such as school return, power restoration (except for the 9th ward, who knows when/if that will happen), national guard, favorite public landmarks, to run smoothly that woman has to put her hand down. Or else, she will break apart any sense of order; she will instigate a revolution in the crowd, open the suffocating lid, holding back the frustrations from people unable put their lives on hold any longer.
I am sitting in a pier of a church hosting a Broadmoor Neighborhood Association meeting and the tech savvy power point presentation makes me feel like everything in New Orleans is under control. Personally, though, I am rather desperate to make contacts with people here. So, mid-meeting, I rise and a professor whispers, there are people hanging out in groups outside. I put on my unemotional reporter guise which means that I must mask all of my nervous self-conscious insecurities that I am definitely feeling for the purpose of a story. But, I don’t listen to the people I talk to and that is what I regret the most.
One of my professors and another student are talking to a woman whose teeth have been damaged from the stress she’s been facing, they told me. (Please ask Antoinette or Gene). A man, who Antoinette had spoken to, says that there is someone who would be able to talk to us. Brandy and I meet a short older woman named Thais McKay, who says she’s sixty-seven years old, repeatedly, and that she’s not a “spring chicken” anymore like us, as she jabs the side of my arm. She has no trailer of her own, but has her niece’s trailer on her property, but even then she ain’t got no electricity, meaning she ain’t got no lights. She’s tired of moving from staying at other people’s places. Like many others, she has a lot of family here, so she can be a wandering vagabond. (Has it really been ten months of that?) Especially because she had so long had her own home in a neighborhood where she has seen little girls grow up into women, and she used to have a job where she could cook her famous gumbo at a hospital, it must be hard. When we visited her at the trailer site later, she said that she didn’t want to go to work that day if she had to walk five blocks to get to the bus stop. The neighborhood meeting did not help her; she says she’s going to try to go to a church.
For the racially curious, everyone filling the church at the meeting is black, except for some of us from Berkeley, and the lingering white reporter outside, who waits from afar until a camera films her, and she disappears. We wondered what she could have possibly said. I assume, because I did not see her interacting with the residents that she did not report on them. Could we have pulled her with us to cover what was needed to be covered? But, Chris and Althea were wondering if even if we tried if the news makers would follow.
I make eye contact with a beautiful woman dressed in a bright red tank top. She is part of a group of several women chitchatting outside. She lets me in. Virginia, upon hearing my inquiry, starts teasing another woman in the group. She says, oh, if you could talk to her, she’s got some things to say about the government. The woman addressed is laughing hard, and I feel as I’ve joined in some joke that I don’t understand. Virginia explains that this woman works under a government office, implying that she can’t criticize her employers on record.
Virginia begins to talk about the “politics” being the problem, about the levee scandal, and the raising issue. (Later, I had to ask Antoinette about this issue of raising houses when she spoke of the incredible expense people faced to raise their homes, literally lifting houses higher off the ground. I think I read in the papers that this was one of the delays for rebuilding – people waiting, waiting, to know what the new requirements were. Antoinette suggests that the requirements ended up seeming rather arbitrarily enforced. I just checked and saw an article that said 5,000 public housing units to be “razed.” Was Virginia referring to demolishing housing?).
She laughs after making her comments, telling me to shut off that thing, so I turn to the others in the group. The woman, who works under the government, asked if what she said could be anonymous. Oh, yes, I said, ready to accommodate. I might have thought we were still joking, for I think I was smiling foolishly, but whatever stupid thoughts I had were wiped away when she began to speak.
Suddenly, her face was not facing me, she lowered her eyes, and she seemed focused on a world of just her and the recorder. Or rather, she was speaking on behalf of the people of New Orleans to a world beyond the individual me and I was frozen by her eloquence. “We the people of New Orleans,” she began, and continued saying that what they needed now was the truth and that they could no longer be redirected week by week, could no longer be told one thing this week and one thing the next. (I must transcribe here later; it was not long, but I’m not doing her justice). She ended with a formal “thank you” and I did not know what to do. The message was for the nation and I felt futile to be the only listener at that moment. How can you hear it?
The last woman in the group was Linda. I wish I could hear from you again. In the beginning, I don’t think she trusted me. She was a bit terse, asking me what I was trying to ask her. But, she began by saying how she considers herself a victim of Katrina, how her family has lost all their material possessions, how her family, her family, have been dislocated, dispersed. She lives in Houston, Texas, and she says she tries to come back every weekend, but “it’s getting expensive.” She says she tried to come to this community meeting to help the community come back. (On reflection, I think of how far she had come to a meeting, and judging from that meeting that did not meet the people’s needs, for what?). I think when she says that ubiquitous maxim: “well, there’s no place like home” she has a bit of a sarcastic smirk, but her eyes, I think they had tears in them.
I feel her skepticism for confiding in me and, hell, I wouldn’t have trusted me either because I couldn’t register her emotion; I could only register facts: okay, family is dispersed, they lost everything; she has a horrible commute just to be here. Later, a fellow student and I were discussing how improper it might be to approach a stranger like this and I agreed. I became self-conscious only after my robotic behavior.
I handed her the consent forms. But then she called me back as I turned away, “You’re studying African American Studies?” Her whole tone had changed, as if I were now an insider, albeit a non-black foreigner to the region. I wish I could lie and say yes! Never mind though, as Linda became all warmth and laughter. She pointed out some men who attended her church. She told me about how the community seems as if at a standstill and she’s worried about the lack of community between the communities. She told me she worked for a place that helped provide low-income housing and trained first time home buyers before the disaster. And after the disaster, well, they just provided free house gutting. I wish I could hear from you again. She was laughing when she made us, the Berkeley group, pose for a picture. I wonder if she believes in us.
A woman stopped and waited for me as I was helping someone sign a consent form. Wow, I thought, she wants to talk to me. “We need money now…I appreciate this survey you’re doing, but we need….” and the list was long for basic public services and I need to transcribe it here too. I tried to contact her later that week, but she was extremely sorry about canceling because someone was picking her up to meet with a contractor and she didn’t want to make me wait for her. I just remember that she ended her sentences to me with “baby” or some phrase of Southern endearment.*
A much older woman was waiting at the steps by me. I think I stand out like a sore thumb among the black people. After I explained myself, she asked me if I knew of anyone who knew about weeding her garden. Privately, I thought “what the,” but later, when Thais was trying to explain the condition of her overgrown lawn, looking so wild, but normal because all the lawns on her block were so, and how she couldn’t get a lawnmower, I changed my mind about her question. I called her back for “politeness” sake, clueless as to how to find this woman a lawnmower, and she asked me if I knew of anyone who could knock down her ceiling for her. But, at Common Ground, a volunteer organization, there were 400 houses on the waiting list, so the wait might be a couple months. She then said never mind. (ACORN has 1,000 houses on the waiting list as of 7/6/06).
I fear that this blog post seems like a laundry list of brief cursory encounters with people that I did not follow up on, but I hope that a “random” sampling of people after a community meeting can at least paint the scene of a community of survivors. (Lisa, Chris, Brandy, Paul, and Althea, all met a couple at the meeting that took them to their “home.” I only saw in the debriefing session afterwards that some of them were crying).
* Article in NY Times 7/17/06 by Leslie Eaton titled “Hurricane Aid Flowing Directly To Homeowners,” says that federal aid will start flowing into homeowner’s hands in late August. I guess that’s the answer to “when” the money will come. But the article is a little scary despite the promising title. I foresee a lot more headache/heartache for the people of New Orleans: “The money will be put into “disbursement accounts” administered by mortgage lenders, and will be doled out to homeowners only as repairs are made or as houses are rebuilt or bought, he said. The company will provide counseling to explain the complex arrangements to homeowners. Under the Louisiana plan, the amount of money homeowners can receive will depend on the value of their houses before the storm and the amount of damage that is not covered by insurance. Loans and extra grants for raising houses off the ground and other preventive measures may also be available, subject to the $150,000 cap. Those who should have had insurance and chose not to do so will have their grants reduced by 30 percent. An even larger chunk, 40 percent, will be taken out of the grants to people who want to sell their homes to the state and leave Louisiana. (Those who relocate within the state are not penalized.)” The article says that 123,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
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