Some Last Thoughts · 1711 days ago by chris hayward
I’m writing this last missive from home. It’s Friday, December 16, and I got back on Wednesday night. We took a slow route back, stopping along the gulf coast of Alabama, in Dauphin Island to hang out on the beach for an hour or so and take a chilly swim in the Gulf. Two things struck me there: one was the sight of 12 or 15 natural gas rigs that you could see from the beach, reminding me of the situation in the Bayou. The other was the completely demolished homes along the Mississippi gulf coast. And I do mean demolished.
Along the coast, we saw entire neighbourhoods in small towns that had obviously been condemned and knocked down. That day in the local paper, there was a retrospective look at the front page from the immediate aftermath of the hurricane with a picture of George Bush and his quote: “We will clean up this mess.” The rest of the article talked about the state of local home owners. With insurance payments not coming through, and grace periods on mortgage payments ending this month, the paper suggested that there could be a mass exodus, as people are forced to sell or abandon their homes.
The locals are calling for financing, low-interest loans for instance, to help them through the immediate period of rebuilding. Seems sensible. I’m not sure how likely it is to happen though.
This situation in Mississippi, like the scene in New Orleans, reveals some important things about what’s going on in the United States. That’s more or less what I wanna talk about here; what this disaster and its aftermath suggest to me about the future.
US Society.
I know this is hard for some Canadians to take, but I mostly like Americans. Americans are good people. As good as any people anywhere in the world. In particular, I like that they generally say what they mean, that they’re generous, that they have a lot of guts, that they’ll help each other out, and that they’ll fight for what they think is right.
Alongside of the qualities I admire, though, are some that are really nasty. Just as much as people support each other, they screw each other over. There is a long and celebrated tradition of getting whatever you can at whatever the cost, regardless of who gets hurt along the way. The rise of the great monopolistic industrial empires, like the modern oil companies, is a good example. So is the couple hundred years in which the economy was built by people stolen from Africa. Likewise the story I heard from that lawyer, Chris, about a contractor getting his workers deported so that he wouldn’t have to pay them. That’s slavery, there’s just no other way to put it.
That tradition is strong in the US. One of the toughest parts of spending time down there, I find, is the more intense feeling that you have to watch your back. You have to protect what you got, cause somebody’s gonna take it from you. People are separated from each other, more segregated by class and race and mutual distrust.
I’m not suggesting that Canada is altogether different, just a slight difference in degree. As far as I can tell, that’s how it is wherever humans are organized in such a way as to give some people more access to society’s wealth than others. People who don’t have stuff resent it, and people who do have stuff feel guilty and scared. And that is probably one of my biggest personal motivations for believing in a more egalitarian society; I don’t like having to watch my back, and I don’t like how I’m supposed to constantly try to protect myself by acquiring more stuff. It’s bad for me. I don’t really like having too much when other people don’t have enough. It’s no fun. And it’s not really working out too well for the long term.
A Serious Decline?
I’m waxing political here to draw some attention to what is happening in New Orleans as just a really obvious instance of what’s happening in this society, as far as I can tell. I think that the US – and Canada’s never too far behind – is starting to decline steeply.
There are certain assumptions that underlie my opinion. First off: I’m assuming that the worst year on record for Hurricanes is a part of a broader trend of acute environmental crises that’ll effect more and more people close to us. Second, that those crises will spur social crises. Third, that what is happening on the US Gulf coast is a good preview of how we can expect those crises to be responded to.
Maybe you believe in climate change, maybe you don’t. I’m convinced. The Association of Small Island States is convinced. And at least a few Hurricane-scientists I’ve seen referred to suggest that extreme weather events are a part of the package.
So I think we can look forward to more hurricanes and floods and tsunamis in the coming years, and I think that they’ll affect me closer to where I live. More people I know will lose homes and jobs and friends and family members in these things. And the immediate destruction might be really bad, but it’s still not the worst that can happen. It’s about how we respond to the destruction.
The response to a disaster like this one is what influences the degree to which a natural disaster is also a social disaster. As far as I can tell, in the USA right now, the official response will increase the level of social disaster. Here’s what the New Orleans example looks like in general: with some exceptions, you will have to fend for yourself. Needed public infrastructure is neglected in poorer areas; evacuation orders will be made with no provision for public transit; poor people will have to steal to survive; the reaction to this will be racist and lethal; the army will finally do what the city bus system didn’t, evacuating poor people at gunpoint; and the disaster site will be an urban militarized zone.
When the dust settles, after the generous donations from everywhere come pouring in, the wealthier neighbourhoods will get cleaned up first; insurance money will be generous with some people but stingy others; public housing will be closed even if it’s intact; money will flood in to rebuild the downtown, and temporary workers from other places with it; the private sector will work for those who have more entitlements and a tiny voluntary sector for those who don’t; ruined neighbourhoods may languish for years, or they’ll be rebuilt with poor people swept away.
And people who can’t come back to those neighbourhoods, who were sheltered temporarily in hotels or boats or other cities, will start again with nothing somewhere else. I don’t think it’s crazy to assume that many people will be left homeless after the short-term relief dries up.
And some people will make huge dough: Well-connected contractors, and public officials, and the American Red Cross, and greedy motherfuckers of all stripes who are willing to gouge people, or steal from them, or get them to work and then deport them. The resources might exist to rebuild a ruined city, but they’ll get siphoned off into economic activity that is either selfish or ridiculous. (like New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announcing that downtown will be redeveloped as a wireless internet hotspot while 25% of his city doesn’t have electricity)
I guess that’s what I was getting at when I talked about having to watch your back in the USA. The culture says that you have the right to take what you can get and you probably deserve whatever it is that you have. And that ethic is pretty prominent in New Orleans right now. If you don’t have much of a conscience, you can get rich. If you have some of the entitlements of being middle-class, the system might work to protect you. If you are poor, you’re on your own. Or worse, you’re a threat that needs to be targeted.
It’s like the story of the bridge over to Gretna during the flooding. The Crescent City Connector is a bridge that crosses the Mississippi river, connecting the main part of New Orleans with the southern part of Orleans Parish, a small section on the other side of the river. The bridge lands briefly in Gretna, a town in neighbouring Jefferson Parish, which is suburban and generally more affluent. During the flooding, several hundred people tried to cross the bridge on foot – most of them poor and black – to take refuge on the dry side of the river. The local police met them with guns drawn, fired over their heads, and made them turn around.
From what I can gather, there were three kinds of people during the crisis: you’re either the kind of people that the army and FEMA and your insurance company and the city government will protect, or you’re the kind of people that they will ignore, or you’re the kind of people they might kill.
I gotta tell you, I don’t really like the way those teams have been drawn up.
Over the long-haul, I’m guessing the net effect of enough of these crises will be to swell the ranks of the second and third groups of people and shrink the ranks of the first. As life gets harder for everybody, the scramble for scarce resources will likely get more vicious. The greediest among us will continue to consume vast amounts of those resources, and be forced to do more vicious things to keep it that way. In fact, anybody who has kind of privilege at all in that situation, will be forced – at the very least – to ignore more and more misery around us. More people will be homeless, broke, desperate, and despairing or pissed off.
I’m thinking that as the crises come closer, people with my skin and class background will face the clearer choice of taking refuge in a system that offers some safety at the price of keeping other people down, or trying something else.
Something Else?
And there is a something else. People can, and do, come together to help each other survive. There will be huge openings for expressions of solidarity with each other. There will be excellent excuses for getting over whatever hesitations keep us from acting on the clear idea that we’re in this thing together, that you can’t start to find any peace or safety when not everybody’s eating or sleeping inside. There will be lots of people who are unwilling to fuck somebody else over to survive.
The people in New Orleans and the Bayou taught me that everyday. People like my friend Syd, whose place was flooded and had to evacuate to Chicago, and in so doing had to confront the fact that she might lose “everything”. She had some nice stuff, a moderately comfortable life with middle-class supports, but over the first few days in Chicago she figured out just how much of that was really dear to her, and how much was just stuff. It turns out most of her stuff was okay, but she’s not the same; now she goes out most days with a crowbar to help people gut their houses.
Or people like the folks across the street on Ursulines Ave, who are part of a ministry, and who probably didn’t think too hard about looking after each other, but just did it and keep doing it. Some of them drove back in to the city while it was still flooded to get out the rest of their folk. That’s just what people do.
Or Ronnie and Cheryl in the Bayou, with their living room full of diapers and canned food, trying to get it out to people. Just cause that’s what you do; you look after your people.
Or the hundreds of volunteers who came down to the coast, cause it didn’t make sense to them to not come help in a disaster. Or cause it gave us a chance to express some things that we don’t always get the opportunity – or we’re not quite brave enough to make the opportunity – to express in our everyday lives.
Sometimes, people are just like that.
The Big One?
So, I hope I haven’t lost you by this point. Maybe this apocalyptic talk just confirmed for you that I’m a complete wingnut. Or maybe not. Maybe you also suspect that 2005 wasn’t just a freak year for bad weather. Maybe there’s much worse to come.
I get the feeling that more people are thinking about this. A friend from New York recently told me that she has an ongoing conversation with the people she’s close to about “the Big One”, the next time the power goes out, or something blows up or blows in, and what they’ll do about it.
So if you’re still with me this far, I guess you get the picture that I believe that we face a choice of futures that will get sharper and sharper in the coming years. We could end up with a pretty desperate and divided one, where your survival continues to depend on how much scarce privilege you can keep, or we can take a shot at one that involves mutual support and solidarity, where our survival depends on each other.
I suspect that for at least a little while longer, I’ll get to choose which of those worlds I take refuge in. I probably still have enough value in the cutthroat world to make it. But I hope to have the integrity to choose harder in the direction of the world I actually want. And I hope I have the courage to make the little decisions – better decisions that I usually manage – that bring it closer. So that when the Big One comes, there’s really only one option left.
And in the meantime – or if I’m way off about the Big One – I would just so much rather watch my back a little less, worry about my stuff a little less, to not have to hoard, or toe the line, or play it safe or be scared of other people so much. Shit. Imagine the freedom of living like that.
Imagine there’s only one kind of people in the world.
Thanks.
I’m honoured that you’d read this far. Good luck with your life’s own choices, however they look to you at the moment.
I’m grateful for the support of all the folks who helped me get down and back again. And, as ever, I’m eager for your comments.
Warmly,
Chris.
A little more Bad News · 1725 days ago by chris hayward
Over my last week in Lousiana, i got to hear a few more stories about the events in the immediate aftermath of the storms. These were folks who didn’t leave New Orleans, or who came here really soon after the storms.
It’s pretty nasty.
“Open Season on Black Males”
Rahim Malik described the first four days after the Hurricane that way. Apparently, there were “cracker squads” – bands of armed white racists – who actually got into or stayed in the city to kill black people. The cops apparently did very little to stop them, and most observers would suggest thay they might have helped.
Mama D would agree. She told a story about how the New Orleans 1st Precinct hung a banner that said “Fort Apache” in front of their building and lots of them shaved their heads. (I didn’t see the movie “Fort Apache, the Bronx (?) that i think this refers to, but i think i get the idea.)
Slavery.
A lawyer from Chicago named Chris who i recently met has been contacted by the families of many Mexican workers who were hired in Chicago by construction companies working in New Orleans. The workers were trucked down here and put to work on hotels. Before they were paid, someone called Immigration and had them all deported.
Fuck.
a tin roof at the edge of the world · 1727 days ago by chris hayward
This last week we spent in the bayou communities of Chauvin, Dulac, and Isle de Jean Charles. Colin and I were working with an organization called Four Directions, a relief project working in solidarity with Native People down here, in particular the Biloxi-Chittimacha. I got the chance to see a little closer the impact of natural disasters and the ongoing human made disasters on the land and the people here.
Isle de Jean-Charles is a finger of land surrounded by marsh and open water, connected to the rest of the bayou by a thin spit of road. Almost everybody who lives here is a Native person. Within the lifetimes of some of the older folks, trapping and fishing were the main occupations here.
I got to spend a day replacing sheets of corrugated metal on the roof over Rooster and Rita’s place. In return, they stuffed us with some really good chili and some great stories.
The island is sinking into the marsh. Like I mentioned in my last article, the water is rising and the land is sinking. It’s happening pretty fast. Rooster actually stood on his porch and pointed out the expanses of open water that used to be marsh with vegetation on it.
Rooster and Rita’s place is raised up about 10 feet off the ground, which is a good thing, cos when it flooded this year, it flooded up to about 8 feet off the road. That can realy kick the shit outta the houses that are on the ground. Rooster has been fishing all his life – he still work on oyster boats when he can – and when he found out that Colin and I were keen to know about the land here, he dug out a bunch of old maps. He pointed out islands that don’t exist anymore, places he used to fish oysters that you can’t anymore.
This is an oil storage site you can see from Rooster and Rita’s porch. It’s hard to see in this light, but it’s mosly open water around it, water that wasn’t there when Rooster was growing up.
I also heard more about the factors that are leading to the loss of land. I mentioned them in my last post: rising water levels generally, the “channelizing” of the Mississippi river that means that the silt it used to bring down with it is no longer spread across the bayou but sent out to the gulf, and the salt-water intrusion that comes from oil-company channels and destroys the vegetation that holds the land together.
This is Mary’s place. Notice the dead trees. Now, a really high tide can flood Mary’s yard, let alone a Hurricane.
Some folks here are still recovering and cleaning up from last year’s hurricane season, so when Katrina and then Rita blew in, they really made a mess. You can see it at Mary’s place; the worse the storms get, the harder it is to get the time and resources to clean up and rebuild, the more hopeless it gets to try to stay here. And so people are forced to leave.
That’s probably just fine with some people around here. There are lawsuits and land disputes going on, and having this little community be dispersed and then to have the land disappear is surely an easier solution for the oil companies and the government than doing the right thing would be. The official policy seems to be to ignore the folks down here until they go away. The is little sign of FEMA or other government assistance. All of the relief work seems to be the result of volunteer efforts; the local heroes in conjunction out-of-towners soliciting donations from everywhere. And people’s insurance companies appear to be screwing them, paying way too little for the damage, or making people jump through huge hoops to get at it. As a good example, I wrote up four construction estimates while I was here, for people who were trying to make claims. Adjusters came after the storms, but for some reason that I don’t entirely get, the insurance companies are asking lots of people to get contractor’s quotes as well. A contractor willing to do an estimate is a pretty scarce thing down here. I have no idea how scarce, but it’s been more than three months, and they only just managed to find me. One of the people I did a quote for, Pat Naquin, found me when I stopped to ask her directions to get to her neighbour’s house. I have no idea how long some people are gonna have to wait.
So that’s the story. I’m hanging out in a place where the effects of the oil industry and the economy in general, accelerating environmental disasters, and a general disregard for people’s places and their cultures are all plain to see here. This island is falling into the sea.
I dunno, but the way i figure things, if oil exploration tears up your land and then oil consumption raises the earth’s temperature and drops it into the ocean, i think people owe you something. An i think that if i small number of people made enormous amounts of money doing that, they really owe you something.
Somebody’s home on Isle de Jean Charles.
Inside Shawn Naquin’s place. His house was condemned.
By Satellite from the Bayou · 1733 days ago by chris hayward
I’m writing this update from Miss Cheryl and Mister Raymond’s backyard on Bayou Chauvin, a finger of land that sticks out into the swamps and lakes that ease the transition from the land to the Gulf of Mexico. I am sitting in a truck that’s been outfitted with a satellite-internet hookup that provides wireless internet for about 100 feet around.
Mosquitoes and moths cover my screen, which is okay, ‘cos they’re not covering me. The glow of the screen refracted through their wings makes a wild strobing effect in the dark.
The whole thing is delightfully weird.
This truck is being run by Gordon, a maverick navy-veteran and peace activist, and Will, a maverick tech-guy from Montreal. Lemme tell you a bit about that.
Gordon is one of those guys that some of you may have heard about right after the storms hit; he rushed into the fray, bringing supplies into New Orleans when things were still desparate and nuts. He was camped out at George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, with a bunch of Veterans for Peace when the hurricane came. A bunch of them packed up their mobile homes and buses and headed over here to help.
Gordon’s adventures took him over two hours to tell the first night I met him. So i can only summarize: When FEMA and the Red Cross seemed like they weren’t doing much, Gordon and his crew – and other like-minded but skilled freelancers – gathered supplies of food, water and clothing, got through police and army checkpoints and started to find places to give the stuff out. Gordon blogged the whole deal and got a lot of press, including an endorsement from Michael Moore, set up a paypal account, and raised about $500,000 in a very short time. They’ve been doing relief work, giving out grants (including about $100,000 to Common Ground), and as the necessity for basic relief supplies diminished, figuring out ways to set up internet acces for grassroots organizations and poor neighbourhoods, so that folks can get their words out.
Will responded to a call for tech people in September, before realizing that basic needs were at that moment a much bigger priority, and getting involved in that end of the work. He returned to Montreal in October, and then came back down here to keep working on this tech project.
From what i can gather, the work that these guys, and other techs from all over, have been doing has been pretty crucial in connecting grassroots groups and communities with people, funding and supplies via the internet.
The work here
a flattened house on the bayou, taken as we drove by.
I’m an example of one of the people who got connected. Colin and I are down here to work with a group called Four Directions Relief Project. It’s an effort in solidarity with the Native People down in the bayou, many of whom have been particularly devastated by the storms.
http://www.intuitivepath.org/relief.html
I can’t tell you much about the work, we’ll be hooking up with our crew for the first time tomorrow. I’m guessing we’re gonna be doing more of the same; fixing up people’s houses that were badly hit by the storms.
Environmental Damage
I spent most of the last couple of days listening to people’s stories down here. One of the things that comes through vividly is the massive changes to the environment that have been wrought over the last 50 years, and the consequences of those changes that becomke really visible during a hurricane. The land flooded beyond anybody’s expectations, smashing boats and soaking houses.
Hurricanes are nothing new down here. But this land didn’t always flood so badly. As I’ve been told, The land is sinking due to four main factors: the digging of channels through the bayou by the oil industry, which brings in saltwater and destroys the vegetation that holds the earth together; rising sea levels; fiecer storms that cause more erosion; and a fourth that i forget at this moment.
So hurricanes, which have been an expected part of the ecology of this region, have become more and more devastating. Someone i spoke to yesterday suggested that it’s now inevitable that some of these communities will have to move. It’s a question of when, and how fairly and intelligently the whole thing will happen.
This place is a pretty potent warning of the impact of the oil industry and climate change (itself an impact of the oil industry) on delicate areas of the planet. did i mention the oil industry?
What’s Hopeful Here
Shit. The amazing resilience and resourcefulness of regular people, as usual. I’m glad to know Gordon and the the Veterans for Peace crew, who have a fleet of mobile homes and buses and a wealth of practical knowledge and connections to all the people you need to know in a disaster: truckers and veterans and medics and technophiles. These are folks who will throw down and help people out in a tight spot, at considerable personal risk sometimes, just cos it’s the right thing to do. I’m also amazed by people like Naomi, who co-ordinates the Four Directions relief work here, who have worked hard to get donations of food, water, toys, and furniture, as well as building the relationships to distribute that stuff. Those relationships can now move from just being about relief to being about building resources in this community into the future. And i’m pretty honoured to have met Cheryl and Raymond, who are members of their Tribal Council, who are working hard to get their people what they need, and who are gonna weather this storm and the next one and the one after that, and who will just keep on the slow road of trying to build something better down here despite the odds.
with love,
chris.
Falling Apart · 1738 days ago by chris hayward
Things fall apart in disasters. And things falling apart opens up the opportunity for some of the best and worst that people are capable of. I’m hearing stories of heroism and mutual support as well as opportunism and corruption. These are some of my thoughts and observations based on the picture that I can cobble together of just exactly how, and how badly, things fell apart here.
These stories are either personal ones that I’ve heard or they’re stories that other people have referred to. So some of them are hearsay, I suppose. Other aspects of these stories are documented in the media in some way or other. But let it give you an idea at least of what people are talking about.
Being Prepared:
The discussion of the city’s preparedness for the disaster was all over the mainstream media in the wake of the storm. It’s widely known for instance that after the city declared an evacuation, they failed to make city buses available for the large number of people who don’t have cars. In New Orleans, people without access to private transportation make up a crowd of about 120,000 people, according to the Times-Picayune, from a total pre-hurricane population of about 450,000. Those buses were later flooded and ruined or badly damaged. This lack of preparedness contributes to how things fell apart: how people ended up congregated at the Superdome or the Municipal Auditorium without sanitation, food, water or clear means of getting such.
The Superdome and Auditorium: how bad was it?
According to Angel McDow, who with her family took refuge in the Auditorium, it was bad. She confirms that people did some terrible things inside; that folks were aussaulted, robbed, and raped. People died for lack a medical attention, and no one knew what to do with the bodies.
She also talks about the fact that the Auditorium had supplies of food that they refused to give out, except for ice cream, which was most of what many people ate for four days.
In this context, people began to go out and get what they needed from wherever they could find it. But this, in the early days, was running a huge risk. The New Orleans Police were likely to shoot you if they found you doing it. In fact, the Police became one of the single biggest hazards for survivors of the storm to contend with. There are many reports of the Police basically going nuts, shooting people, looting for personal gain, and other stuff, some of which I’ve been able to hear about and I’ll talk about throughout this letter.
Looting or commandeering:
It’s impossible to get a picture of just how chaotic it was, of exactly what happened everywhere. But I got a hint of it from my neighbours on the night we arrived. I went across the street to ask ‘em where I might be able to find a store (I think it was about 7:30 pm) to get some smokes. (yes, I’m smoking again. You can gimme shit about it later). They reacted with friendly and protective derision: “What the hell are you thinking? You can’t go out there, it’s too dangerous.”
So of course I had to ask: “What makes it dangerous?” To which the reply came “There are nasty people out there, but more likely the cops’ll shoot you!” So they gave me some smokes and made me promise not to go anywhere, which I did. A few minutes later we saw a cop car, at the sight of which my new neighbour and protector, Ernestine, bolted up her front stairs. I think that gave me a clear picture of the level of trust that folks have for the police in the wake of the chaos here.
A couple of nights ago, I had the opportunity to sit and listen to the now famous Mama D, a New Orleans resident who stayed throughout the storm and the ensuing flooding, refusing to leave and refusing to back down in the face of police intimidation. She’s a bit of a powerhouse.
When it became clear that the flooding was not going to ease and that lots of people were in desperate need of food and water, Mama D organized to make it happen. She and her family and neighbours took or already had boats, which they used to transport people and supplies. I haven’t seen the clip, but according to Mama D, she went down to the Walgreen’s with a TV crew from BET, declared her name and where she lived, and got them to film her breaking in and getting what she and neighbours needed.
The Police action during this time involved taking boats away from people or shooting the boats full of holes. I’m assuming that the reason was that the police assumed that the boats were being used for looting, which was undoubtedly the case. In many cases, they were being used for looting bread and water, insulin and first aid supplies, and the other stuff that people needed to get by. When you listen to Mama D’s stories, you can understand why she thinks that the police, army, and everybody else that‘s trying to “help” should pretty much just get lost and let people take care of themselves.
“Fuck all of y’all” was her last word on the subject.
Official corruption:
Here are some tidbits of hearsay that I can’t confirm, but maybe someone reading this can:
• When the National Guard showed up, Angel McDow reports from the Auditorium, the New Orleans Police actually started shooting at them! I guess that’s a measure of the degree of chaos, or police gangsterism that was present.
• State police forces from around the USA were called in to bolster the local forces. According to Gambit weekly, The New Mexico State Police left Baton Rouge in protest, citing the unethical behaviour that they were witnessing among the Police was something they couldn’t stomach.
• Some six hundred prisoners were locked up in the Orleans Parish Prison during the rising flood. They were left there locked-up when the prison was abandoned by police. It’s not clear how many people drowned.
Crime and Opportunism from regular folks:
Regular folks are not immune from corruption and opportunism, as I’m hearing.
Now that a court decision has made it so that landlords can’t evict absent tenant just by getting a constable to post an eviction notice on their door for three to five days – a tough process for people who’ve been evacuated to other cities to participate in – illegal evictions are on the rise. There’s been such a drop in the available housing supply, that if you can actually rent yours out, you can make a killing.
There are of course people availing themselves of the opportunity that an empty city presents to steal stuff that’s unprotected. There’s been a lot of that. There were reports of people being arrested who had come in from out of town with empty vans intending to fill them with other people’s stuff. Many people I talk to have had things stolen from them.
A few nights ago, a neighbour of mine named Priest ran out of his house at night in a panic screaming “someone’s in my house!” So Ernestine from across the street called the police, I grabbed Priest some pants and a jacket, and he told us how he had been sleeping when he heard two people coming in his window. “How am I gonna sleep in there? It ain’t never gonna be the same. Never.” Sure enough, he moved out the day before yesterday. I think he went back to Georgia.
People helping each other out:
There are also lots of stories of people helping each other to survive the disaster. At the Superdome and Municipal Auditorium, when folks, mostly young men, started to go out and loot/commandeer/forage for the stuff they needed, they came back and distributed it to the other folks around. That’s how people ate and drank.
Ad hoc first aid and medical centres were set up. One notable example is the centre set up by Malik Rahim, which has gone on to become the several “Common Ground” centres that I mentioned in my last update. They provided people with basic medical care and medications during the four or five days of the flooding before people could be evacuated en masse. The Common Ground medical centre in Algiers is now a crucial part of the basic health infrastructure of the city. They provide primary health care, counseling, herbal medicine, and several forms of manual therapy. Eric, their volunteer co-ordinator, explained to me that he feels that they might have the best herbal medicine department in the country. He also laid out, ominously, that there are a grand total of three mental health hospital beds in the public health system in New Orleans at the moment. That’s what I mean by “a crucial part” of the basic health care infrastructure. (I’ll write a little more on this in a future update about Health and Well-being.
Mama D’s block is another example of mutual aid. People got together to help each other survive. Since that time, Mama D and her crew have gone on to gut the houses on her block that were flood damaged and do emergency repairs so that her neighbours can start coming back into town.
There’s one well-publicized story of a young man who commandeered a bus and evacuated 40 people from the superdome to Houston. I get the impression that lots of acts of that nature happened during the crisis. I can only imagine that there are thousands of such stories to tell.
I think that’s another way that things tend to fall apart: regular folks commit regular acts of bravery and generosity and endurance, that without which things would be much worse.
The Work I’m doing:
Here’s an update on the construction and other work that I’m keeping busy with. As I explained in my last update, much of my work here has been on the house that holds the office of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and half a dozen volunteers.
We’ve fixed up several parts of the many roofs that make up the house, and torn off and replaced one section entirely. We’ve also replaced big chunks of wood siding that were either damaged in the hurricane or were already in rough shape.
Unfortunately, last night brought in a big rain storm and revealed to us that there’s still more to do. We’d actually moved on to the inside of a couple of rooms, replacing the ceiling drywall where water damage had brought it down. But one section of roof that we hoped was more or less okay started leaking onto our new drywall job. The roof really needs to be torn off and replaced. At this point though, both money and time might prevent us from doing any more than just patching and hoping. The cost of the materials would likely be about $500. And Colin and I don’t have much longer here. I’m hoping to be able to find some folks willing to do the work before I go.
I also end up cooking a lot around here for the whole crew. We’re eating a lot of US Department of Agriculture beans with rice. The results are varied. And it makes for a long day; working til sundown, cooking, eating and going to bed. Rinse in cold water and repeat.
The PHRF volunteers are working like mad building up to a mass survivor’s meeting in Jackson, Mississippi on December 8th and 9th, as well as a demonstration in New Orleans on the 10th. The meetings will try to organize a broad group that can articulate the goals of many of the survivors of the storm and flood.
The demonstration is geared toward demanding public support for all residents who can and want to return and rebuild their lives. The basic framework of the demand is this: that given that public underfunding of infrastructure was an important cause of the destruction of the city, and given that the public disaster relief for many people involved being dispersed against their will to parts of the country they did not choose (people have talked about being put on planes and only finding out where they were going after they were in the air), and given that there is currently no government effort to re-unite their families or facilitate their return to New Orleans, and given that there are LOTS of jobs in New Orleans to take at the moment, and given that huge money is currently being spent on no-bid contracts to the politically connected, or being spent to the tune of $60,000 per person for six months emergency accommodation on a cruise ship, why the heck can we not rebuild the city, including people’s wrecked neighbourhoods, with great public works projects that employ returning New Orleanians to rebuild the city they want to live in.
It makes sense to me. I think that the people who are the city, especially those who work its low-paying service-industry jobs and its working-class jobs, or whose families have lived here for generations deserve to rebuild it.
This is some of the vital medium and long-term work that will ensure that New Orleans is rebuilt with regular people as part of the process. And for all the swinging of hammers and distributing of food that shiny volunteers like myself can contribute, the long term future of New Orleans depends on this political work.
Other Volunteer Work happening in town:
Here are some of the other volunteer projects I’ve been hearing about recently.
One big and exciting instance of people digging in to help each other happened this week with the Common Ground-organized national call for volunteers to help clean-up the 9th Ward. Hundreds of people came from all over the place, joined by locals from the neighbourhood and other parts of the city to do a huge clean-up. Families signed up to get help, generally with partially gutting their houses – tearing out flooded and contaminated surfaces like drywall or insulation – in order that they could move back into them safely and continue piecing their homes back together.
An organization called NOHEAT is trying to stop illegal evictions, where people are coming home to find their locks changed and their stuff on the street. They’ve got a hotline and a phone tree designed to get a few dozen people out to the sites of illegal evictions when they’re happening, to convince the landlords not to do that.
How you can help:
So this manifesto hasn’t really been leading up to some big pitch for help. Frankly, I’m thrilled that you read this far, and I’m happy just to be passing on this information. But a few people have asked how they may be able to help, so here are some of my ideas for it.
If you’re medically inclined, contemplate taking a little vacation in New Orleans and working with the Common Ground medical center in Algiers.
Common Ground Collective
331 Atlantic Ave
New Orleans, LA 70114
If you wanna take a holiday swinging a crowbar or nailing down tarps, Common Ground can probably help you book a tour. Gutting people’s houses is actually really important; if people can’t get their houses back to a minimum living standard, they can’t bring their families back to town.
If you’re want to lend some particular expertise or or passion to the reconstruction, say as an engineer or tradesperson or lawyer or publicist or organizer, the People’ Hurricane Relief Fund might be able to use your talents. They have a structure of work groups that include Education, Health Care, Media, Legal, Fundraising and Finance, Environmental Health, Reconstruction, and Arts and Culture. Many of the people on those work groups are actually dispersed around the country, so don’t let your geography hold you back.
PHRF: 1-888-310-PHRF
(or use the link at the top of the page, on the left)
If you wanna send some money, any of the grassroots initiatives I’ve mentioned would likely be delighted to receive it. In particular, Community Labor United, the local group who provides the infrastructure for the PHRF, would be a great group to support.
Community Labor United
1000 Bourbon St #389
New Orleans, LA
70116
If you’re inspired by any of this, I’d be happy to try to help you figure out how to make it happen. Just lemme know.
What’s hopeful:
I feel like a lot of the stuff I’m getting to experience or hear about is pretty hopeful; the volunteer work that’s happening, people’s resilience in the face of disaster, the ingenious ways that folks help each other when times are tough. I suppose that’s the big one. I guess disasters move a great many people to extend themselves to do things they would not ordinarily have the courage or the stamina or the permission to do for other people. I’m not just thinking about the great things that people did for each other down here during the flood, but also the fact that thousands of people across the country opened their doors and took in gulf coast refugees.
Sometimes it’s not so hard to do things like that. Well, actually, It probably is hard to do it; inconvenient, distracting, expensive, awkward, and lots of other stuff. But sometimes it’s not hard to figure out what to do. A big storm came and a bunch of people are homeless; it’s not so tough to figure out how to help. Maybe we’re actually a lot better at helping each other out than we usually get to practice, and figuring out how is the only hard part.
I’m hopeful that we can figure out how to be there more for each other without the intervention of natural disasters, as there are plenty of other disasters for us to practice on.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
If you have any comments at all, even if critical or hostile, I’d like to hear ‘em. But I can’t guarantee a timely reply.
Regards,
Chris.
my first update · 1745 days ago by chris hayward
The last 50 km or so of Interstate-10, as you come
into New Orleans, is a raised causeway that floats
about 25 feet above the bayou, a snaking network of
water and densely forested spits of land that winds
off into the horizon. We drove in watching a killer
sunset on the water.
It was a nice end to a trip that actually started
almost 2 weeks previous, when my brothers Colin,
Kieran and I tried to cross the border at Detroit to
get down to New Orleans to volunteer in the rebuilding
here. Unfortunately, the US Border Patrol didn’t
really see the difference between volunteering and
working for pay, and I think they’d been told to
discourage people from trying to work in New Orleans.
So a week or so later, Colin and I tried again, this
time in Niagara Falls, and they let us through.
When we arrived in New Oleans itself, we began to see
the damage from the hurricane. it was pretty mild at
first; businesses signs blown off, the odd tree
broken. By the time we got off the interstate – driving through a neighbourhood which I now know
wasn’t too badly beaten up – the debris of wrecked
houses was piled upon the sides of the street and
there was garbage pretty much everywhere you looked.
Ii had some phone numbers of the folks that I was
intending to hook up with, but I’d just been leaving
messages over the last few days before we pulled in.
that’s to say, Ididn’t really know where the heck to
go. My first plan was to stop at a pay phone, or find
an internet connection to find at least some address
in an old email and at least get ourselves somewhere
where we could find someone who knew where we might
find someone who was expecting us. That plan was
quickly thwarted. we pulled into a gas station and
picked up a payphone. it was dead. that when i
realized that things might be trickier than I thought,
and I would have to fall back on plan b, which, as
always, is to count on the kindness of strangers. as
usual, the stranger came through. Troy, who was
filling up his tank at the gas station, not only lent
us his cell phone but actually led us in his car most
of the way to where we were going.
So we’ve landed at a house that belongs to Curtis
Mohammed, one of the leaders of the People’s Hurricane
Relief Fund. At the moment, the house serves as an
office for the organization as well as a place for
seven out-of-town volunteers to crash.
The state of the city:
this is a pretty typical pile of debris, in this case the view across the street from our house. imagine most streets lined with these piles.
The amount of damage that the hurricane did varies
from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. The part of town
that i’m staying in was flooded, with the water having
risen about three feet above the street. That meant it
was below the first floors of many, but not all of the
houses. So the damage varies as you walk down the
street, and you can tell by the debris out front on
the sidewalk. Everywhere there are fridges that have
been thrown out. As near as I can tell, some of them
were flooded and damaged, but many others were just
full of food and without electricity for a couple of
weeks and so their contents got to be pretty nasty.
But it looks like nine out of ten households have
thrown out their fridges. Where homes were badly
flooded, people have also torn out carpets and
drywall, gotten rid of most of their furniture, even
torn up their floors. When I got here, the streets of
this neighbourhood were lined with huge piles of
garbage. Over the past week, some of the piles have
been cleaned up by contractors hired to clear the
streets.
The city is full of contrasts. Some places in town
stayed pretty dry, while others flooded up to their
second floors. The French Quarter is hopping, with
bars lit up, bands playing, and people drinking out in
the street. The ninth ward is deserted, almost
impassable with garbage, from what I hear, and there
are police checkpoints on some streets. In the
neighbourhood I’m staying in, there’s electricity most
of the time, but no gas for hot water or cooking, and
no phone service. Some neighbourhoods have neither
power nor heat. As many people have observed, the
devastation was worst in the poorest parts of town.
Almost all of the people who lived in those parts are
still staying away. If they have kids in public
school, they’re staying away because all of the public
schools are still closed, and only one is scheduled to
open on November 30th, the rest in January. Many
private and catholic schools are already open. If they
lived in the worst-hit neighbourhoods as well, they’re
staying away because their homes are wrecked and
there’s really no coherent plan to rebuild those
neighbourhoods, at least as far as i can glean.
The result of all this is some neighbourhoods where
people are trying to carry on as usual, others that
are dark and sparsely populated, and still others
where you’re not allowed to go at all.
Nobody i’ve talked to is drinking the water out of the
tap. earlier today, i stumbled on a pamphlet that
talked about water quality and other health concerns.
apparently, the water in most, but not all, new
orleans neighbourhoods is as clean as it was before
the hurricane. unfortunately, before the hurricane it
was known to contain high levels of the pesticide
atrazine.
These cars were completely submerged and have probably been abandoned. You can see how high the water was by the deposits on the windows.
Environmentally, I think this is a pretty big
disaster. Not only did a whole lot of toxic chemicals
spew out into the Mississippi and then the Gulf, but
those chemicals have soaked into people’s furniture,
floors, walls and yards. So all of that stuff becomes
garbage. Asbestos-slate shingles and
asbestos-containing siding were pretty common here
too. The hurricane just made a huge mess, and all of
it has to go somewhere. One of the things I’ve noticed
is that for the people who can, going out shopping for
new stuff is a way of recovering and getting back to
normal. I get the feeling that the clean-up is so
daunting to folks that it’s easier to just throw
everything out and start fresh. Add to that the fact
that, over the next months or years, half of the
buildings in the city will be renovated or demolished
and rebuilt. That’s a lot of garbage.
The relief and reconstruction work:
Lemme give you an idea of the rebuilding and relief
work that’s going on, from the official and public to
the voluntary and ad-hoc.
the public resources going toward relief and
infrastructure are massive, but the results are varied
and weird. if you’re broke, you can get some water,
cleaning supplies and a hot meal (rice and meatballs
last time we checked) from one of the Red Cross relief
centres. Early on, you could also get some money, if
you were in the right place at the right time; My new
friend Robert got $360 from them, but his brother, who
was in a much worse state, got nothing. Rumour has it
that the Red Cross is making a lot of money down here
– taking in more money than ever in their history
because of the disaster, but not disbursing it all
down here. (If anyone reading this can corroborate
that, I’d be interested to know).
The Army corps of Engineers will put a blue tarp on
your roof if it’s damaged but not too badly damaged.
FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency – a part
of US Homeland Security) is trying to provide
emergency and transitional housing to people. There
were one-time emergency payouts of $2000, and
thousands of people are being put-up in hotels and on
three cruise ships in the Mississipi. The folks in
hotels were originally gonna be cut-off on December
1st, but it looks like a court injunction has delayed
that. While I’ve been here, yet another wacky FEMA
plan has emerged: they’re trucking in thousands of
trailers that can be hooked up with electricity and
water and tied into the city sewage system. It sounds
like a great idea, but the way they’ve gone about
getting the trailers to the people is nuts: they just
went through the phone book calling people asking them
if they wanted one. that means that you A) have to
have a house in good enough shape that you’re still in
town, and B) you have to have a working phone,
basically ensuring that the trailers that get taken
will be taken by folks who are already in okay shape.
In fact, there’s one parked next door. I watched it
getting hooked up last week in front of a house in
better shape than this one.
That’s an unfortunate trend in the relief resources
that are being provided; the worse off you are, the
harder it is to get access to the support that exists.
There are a few volunteer groups doing a lot of work
in the city. I met a bunch of guys who came down from
Cinicinnati with their church to help rebuild a church
down here, and I expect that there’s lots of that
going on. There’s also a strong presence in a few
neighbourhoods of grassroots resource centres that
serve as medical clinics, distribution centres for
household goods and clean-up stuff, and community
centres where people can get get help gutting their
houses or emergency housing. These were pretty ad-hoc
affairs that sprung up ion the early days of recovery
to attend to people’s basic needs. One of these
centres, called Common Ground, was started by a local
activist and ex-Black Panther in the Algiers area of
the city, and has since been aided by dozens of
volunteers from all over the country. They’ve now
opened a second centre, and as of the next couple of
days they’re starting a massive clean-up of the
devastated 9th ward. This is an area that was the
worst hit, but has seen the least official help. These
volunteer-run centres are doing some really vital work
on the streets of New Orleans.
Reconstruction:
The city is basically populated by pickup trucks.
Robert, who speaks authoritatively about such things,
said that the city had estimated that there were about
as many residents right now as contractors, and other
out-of-town workers.
You’ve gotta drive out to the suburbs to get most
building materials, given that most of the large
businesses in Orleans parish are still closed. The
Home Depots that are open are completely nuts.
So here’s the thing that strikes me as weird: even
though millions are being spent on the relief effort,
there is almost zero public support for
reconstruction. There is no big public reconstruction
campaign that I have witnessed or heard of, though I
have heard that there were some debit cards to Home
Depot and Wal-Mart given out. Basically, when it comes
to fixing up your house or neighbourhood, you’re on
your own.
I guess that’s the strangest thing to see. All of the
rebuilding is either voluntary or paid for privately.
You can make a lot of money here right now.
Construction labourers are being offered $25/hr in
cash. Skilled trades can pretty much charge whatever
they want. Tom, A contractor from Seattle who drove
down in his mobile home and parked it on our street,
was lamenting the fact that the two carpenters he
brought with him picked up a couple of drywall
contracts right away on which they expect to clear
about $80 per hour (which suggests to Tom that he
might have a hard time getting them back).
That – in a broad stroke – the People’s Hurricane
Relief Fund is making noise about: Billions of public
dollars will be spent cleaning up and rebuilding New
Orleans, but it’s not at all clear that that’s gonna
mean that the people who are homeless from Katrina’s
devastation will have homes here again. It’s quite
possible that public housing won’t be rebuilt, or
devastated properties will be sold and redeveloped.
Already, the Now Orleans Housing Authority is locking
up public housing complexes that are not in bad shape
and could easily be made liveable.
So I guess that brings me to the work I’m doing down
here. The day after we arrived, my brother and I were
put to work on the roof here. There’s a main house
with a couple of apartments, and I think the hope is
that the organization’ll be able to house up to 20
volunteers as well as keep their office here. So that
means fixing the torn up roof, tearing down moldy
drywall and putting up new, and fixing up a hundred
other bent and broken things.
Let me tell you a bit more about the organization. The
main goals of the PHRF are political; working to make
sure that poor people in New Orleans are part of the
process of rebuilding their city, and that they have a
place to come back to. The scenario that most people
here assume is coming down the pipe looks like this:
the devastated neighbourhoods, which include private
homes and public housing, will be re-developed with
more expensive housing and the folks who lived there –
either renting or owning now-almost-worthless
properties, will not be able to afford to come back.
Now I’m all for rebuilding run-down neighbourhoods,
but I also think that if people who’ve lived in a
place for years – and who want to come back and
rebuild their lives – get shut out of that
possibility, that’s a big drag. So the PHRF is trying
to organize volunteers to rebuild community
institutions like community centres and community
schools so that there is something to come back to;
they’re providing legal support to folks who are
facing eviction or foreclosure; they’re collecting
people’s stories from the hurricane and its
aftermath; and they’re trying to organize thousands of
folks from the city – many of whom are now living in
other states – to pressure the city and state and
federal governments to rebuild New Orleans for
everybody.
What’s Hopeful here:
People are helping each other. People are pooling
resources and sharing what we have. I’m hoping to
write a bunch more about this in my next letter.
And I think it might be illegal to pass people on the
street and not say “hi!”.
More to come.
welcome to nola.tao.ca · 1753 days ago by textpattern
this site is set up primarily for use by chris and colin while down in new orleans helping with the reconstruction assisting groups primarily focusing on rebuilding the communities and stopping the racist gentrification that is happeing. stay tuned for more.
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