the largest projects in new orleans

these are the 7th ward projects. according to pastor davenport (see below for some info on him and his work in the projects), 60-70,000 people normally live here. now it's about 100 who are illegally squatting there. each night the pastor brings them food; each night they switch rooms, hiding from the predatory police. the place, particularly empty, has the feel of a concentration camp, architecturally speaking of course.

signifiers

there are signs like these on every house that was affected by the flooding. you can't see it very well in this image, but on most houses there is a large spray painted 'X' containing info about the damage...the number in the top portion of the 'X' is the date the house was searched; the number to the left is the army, national guard or fire department division that searched it; the bottom number signifies the number of dead bodies found in the building; the letters on the right hand sign usually say something like 'NE' or 'TFW'---what we think means 'No entry' and 'toxic flood waters'---though all of these places were innundated with the latter, so i'm not sure why making this distinction matters. i saw a guy in a coffee shop who had gotten the 'X' with the info from his local collective space, the iron rail, tatooed on his arm. what a place. it's eerie to drive through the city and see places where people died. the city estimates that there are thousands more bodies throughout the city. 3,700 people are unaccounted for. many people i know think most of these bodies will be found (or not) amid the atomic-bomb scale rubble that is the lower ninth ward.

we are coming home.

amid vast destruction, there is evidence of life. and of the intent to return to a semblance of normality here.

homes once...and once more?

this is what most of the streets in the 9th ward look like. unbelievable amounts of trash...the accumulations of an average american family completely wasted, now reduced to piles of rotting, moldy toxins what once contained generations of stories and memories. it's nuts...totally hard to comprehend on a human level until one actually speaks to the humans who don't walk these streets or occupy these homes anymore.

some images

this is the common ground garden in the upper ninth ward. it's in the honor of the portland, maine-based activist meg who was killed here in a bus accident about a month ago. one of common ground's many projects with an eye toward sustainability and long-term alternative planning for the low income communities of new orleans.

Amen

The past few days have been much more interesting than had been the previous week. Before a few days ago I felt completely lost and out of place here. What am I doing in a place I don't understand at all, walking through someone else's empty streets at night and spending my days cleaning the homes of faceless ghosts who I have not and will never meet? Well, I finally had the experience that made all of this work real to me. With a bunch of faces, brains and hearts forever burned into my own heart and head, having heard the story from the horse's mouth, I began to understand and be deeply affected by the gravity of the situation for lots of people here in the Delta. A particularly crazy case is, as some of you may know and as I have suggested, the lower 9th ward.

Two days ago I attended a meeting of people from the lower 9th ward. These are all folks who had returned to the desolate area specifically for this meeting; their homes are wrecked, and they have no place to stay here. Most of them drove distances to come; some are staying in places as far as Mississippi and Texas. All are trying to get their lives, and their community, back together. And they recognize who and what they are up against (I'll get to that). But for these people, it seems, struggle is a given, a part of life like any other. After witnessing an albeit imperfect meeting of these community members and organizers, I have hope that they will indeed overcome. Again.

Hurricanes have always affected the lower 9th intensely because of its close proximity to lots of water. According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, "The Lower Ninth Ward was among the very last of the city's neighborhoods to be developed. Bordered by the Industrial Canal to the west, the Southern Railway railroad and Florida Avenue Canal to the north, the parish line to the east and St. Claude Avenue to the south, isolation from the rest of the city and lack of adequate drainage systems contributed to its slow growth." But as one of Common Ground's primary organizers said last night, the all black neighborhood has for the past fifty years has boasted having the highest density of black homeowners in the entire country. While over 40% of New Orleans was 'poor' before the hurricane, the lower 9th proves that poverty and the oft associated ills of 'laziness' or 'shiftlessness' do not apply here. People have worked hard for what they have, and they have built a community and culture that will not allow neo colonialism to strip them of it all.

Many of the people from the lower 9th who lost homes during Katrina and Rita are the decendents of slaves. New Orleans was the most profitable slave port in the US for a long time. Again, from the community data center: "Originally a cypress swamp, the [lower 9th] was the lower portion of plantations that stretched from the river to the lake. Poor African Americans and immigrant laborers from Ireland, Germany and Italy desperate for homes but unable to afford housing in other areas of the city risked flooding and disease to move here. In the 1870s, several African American benevolent associations and mutual-aid societies organized to assist scores of struggling freedmen (formerly-enslaved Africans) in the area."

And the mutual aid societies have not disappered. Indeed, among the chaos and the government criminality of New Orleans society today the people there have redoubled their efforts to rebuild their lives. What are they facing? In a word, displacement. As Kone, a Common Ground founder, said last night: "They want to clear the area of black people. It's that simple. They want to build so-called 'green spaces' there. But don't be fooled, yall. 'Green spaces' does not mean community gardens or wetlands. It means golf courses and casinos." And this isn't the first time that the lower 9th has played the role of sacrificial lamb for the rest of the city. In the 1920s, a hurricane threatened to engulf the downtown/french quarter area, across the canal from the lower 9th. What did the government do? They blew a hole in the levee where it protects the latter community, and the financial, white sections of the city were saved at the expense of the lower income black area. It happened again in 1965 during hurricane Betsy, when "that storm took a total of eighty-one lives. Eighty percent of the Lower Ninth Ward district was under water. At that time, the levee was eight feet high, but Betsy's storm surge was ten. Following the storm, people walked through water that for some was above their waists, holding children in their arms, to escape the water. Others had to be rescued from their rooftops." Deja vu? Lots of people I met a few days ago, who don't have much evidence beyond circumstance and historical knowledge, think that the levees were bombed again.

Some more history: "Although legislation was passed in 1899 for drainage and pumping systems, it was not until between 1910 and 1920 that the city installed adequate drainage systems, including the Jourdan, Tupelo and Florida Avenue Canals, in preparation for construction of the Industrial Canal. The Industrial Canal, built to connect the Mississippi River to Lake Ponchartrain, was completed in 1923, and further isolated the neighborhood from the city proper." The area was and is still in some sense prime real estate because of its proximity to so many trading passages---the canal, railroad tracks and highways. All of these byways also made the area segregated from the downtown area and from basically anywhere else. As James Kelley has observed, though, segregation is often followed by congregation.

"The lack of sewerage, continual drainage and water distribution problems did not deter desperate immigrant and African American workers from moving to the Lower Ninth Ward in search of a place to live and employment in nearby industries. The area continued to maintain a rural feel and the Lower Ninth Ward's reputation for neighborliness actually attracted some New Orleanians from other crowded city neighborhoods" (emphasis mine).

The kind of activism I witnessed at the recent lower 9th community meeting is not new. It is part of a long tradition of taking one's life into one's own hands. The neglect or outright oppression of the local and state government has been felt heavily in the lower 9th, and people there do not wait for charity or help from those they do not trust or have reason to rely on. It is a community of do it yourself pro's. Where the government failed or acted with intent to harm, the people there picked up the pieces and worked hard to fight for their rights, their homes, their families and their community.

It's obvious that the government and the wealthy contractors and corporations want the black community out of the lower 9th. If the two bombed levee experiments are not enough to convince you, consider that people there are constantly being offered funds by the government to sell their property (in what one resident called a 'pennies for dollars' scheme). Five years ago community organizers were put to the test when the government claimed imminent domain on two full streets of homes. They wanted to widen the canal by two streets, and people resisted through court action and battles of civil disobedience in the streets. They won then, and have all the reason in the world to believe that against all odds, they will win again. The bulldozers are coming, but with the legal and financial help of groups like Common Ground, these folks have reason to hope.

It will be another win in a long string of fights-back against the white capitalist rule, which seeks to dismantle their society and move it away. Some more history: "As a result of the activism of residents (particularly from the Lower Ninth Ward) that emerged with the fight for civil rights, and the expertise of the NAACP legal team, the school desegregation movement marked New Orleans as the first deep-South school district to open its all-white doors to black children."

Plenty of people at the meeting think that there are more sinister forces working behind the scenes to prevent people from returning to their homes. FEMA is actually paying people to stay away. That is to say, they get money if they stay in Texas or Mississippi, but are cut off if they return to the lower 9th. And even if they wanted to, where would they live? The trailers made available to the lucky are being parked in Baton Rouge, not here in people's front yards where they want them. The Red Cross has told its employees that they will be fired if they drive into the neighborhood to provide assistance. But the bulldozers are encouraged. One resident at the meeting spoke of their dire situation: "If we return to this toxic place, we have a long road ahead of reconstruction while we live in terrible conditions with our families. But if we stay away, they will see that we aren't committed and then we'll have nothing to come back to."

People are demanding two things of the government: 1. money directly to families to rebuild their homes; 2. levees capable of withstanding another Katrina so that this never happens again. Perhaps one of Common Ground's most important struggles is the solidarity, financial, legal, organizational and otherwise, that they are providing to the lower 9th as these folks attempt to regain control over their community and their lives. And hurricane season is only five months off. And the levees have yet to be rebuilt. One woman at the meeting mused about the ridiculousness of government officials claiming that the levees can't be built to withstand a category 5 storm. "I have been to Europe," she said, "and I've seen that tunnel they have connecting France to England under the ocean. If that is possible, and if it was possible to build this community on a swamp a hundred years ago when we had bad technology, we can do this."

There's so much more to say. Apologies for the disorganization of my ideas...it's a lot to absorb in a few days.

Check out these interesting wiki posts for more info on the lower 9th:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Ward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ING_4727

Lower 9th---'This too shall pass'

Yesterday I attended the church services of Pastor Bruce Davenport. Though only about ten of his congregation members were around for it, about twenty Common Grounders came out to take a day off from house gutting and to hear some lord praising. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before. I filmed the entire service at the request of the Pastor. He seems to love the idea of people outside of New Orleans seeing every last bit of the city through the lens of my camera. 'Spread that movie wide,' he says to me, grinning widely. Insh'allah, I think. God willing, I will.

During the service his wife played the most interesting and inspiring role. She got up a few times to dance and sing, led the chorus of 'Amen' and 'Praise Jesus' calls, and spoke like the lord Jesus had occupied her soul. She talked quickly, her eyes closed, her body swaying to a rhythm she gradually made the rest of us feel. I nodded my head.

'We don't need a FEMA, 'cause we have the spirit of the Lord. We don't need a President when we have the spirit of the Lord. We don't need a government when we have our faith to guide us and give us strength.'

Well, people around here would do well to have some help from FEMA, the President and the government. But what she was saying, and what Common Ground was founded for and the assumption it operates by, is, I think, that the government has never and probably will never come out to the 9th or the 7th wards (predominately low income communities of color) to do anything but arrest and beat people. And she was also saying that they're help isn't necessary because the people there have built their lives, founded their very existences on mutual aid and community support networks. Hard work and, according to the Davenports, faith with a capital 'F' have led these people to the places they are today. The president and the corrupt, money hungry government has had little to do with it. No one outside of these communities helped these people before the storm, and Sister Davenport seems to think that most people didn't expect them to come through during or after it, either.

That doesn't mean that the government should not be held responsible for their crimes in the Delta. It just means that people don't have too much optimism about that actually happening. Take a crazy example: the 17th street bridge.

Pastor Davenport, after the sermon and after treating us to lunch, took us on a tour of some of the lesser known and crazier regions of the city. The 17th street bridge separates a bourgeosie, mostly white neighborhood from a much wealthier, largely commercial and business district. The upper-middle class community, Lakeview, has never in the history of its existence experienced troubles beyond wind and rain damage in hurricanes. They have levees and a pumping system to protect them. So they must have been awfully surprised when water began flooding their parrish, eventually reaching 8 feet in some places. The homes we drove past were completely destroyed, just like the homes in the upper 9th near the community center: a nasty, yellow ring on the outside of homes demarcates where the water finally rested and stood sometimes for days, rotting and poisoning everything within its reach.

What happened? The richer people on the other side of the bridge decided that, as the water began to reach their doorsteps, something had to be done. So they started pumping water from their side of the bridge into Lakeview, on the other side. Mysteriously, as this happened, the pumps on the Lakeview side were overcome and the crew there deserted. So then instead of pumping some of the rising water out, the people in Lakeview were receiving water from the other side of the bridge and unable to pump any themselves. I asked Pastor Davenport if he thought that someone responsible for this decision was liable to be charged with a crime. He laughed. 'Money runs this city, dear,' he said, 'and these people, even though they are murderers, they will get away scot free like always.'

Apparently there were quite a few deaths in Lakeview because of the decision. On top of all of this, someone from the business district, presumably the parrish councilman, called in the National Guard to prevent Lakeview residents from crossing the bridge. So as the water was pumped into their community, destroying their homes and endangering their lives, people from Lakeview, attempting to get to dry land literally hundreds of meters away, were told that they would be shot on the spot if they walked further. Dry land, water and food was a five minute walk away, and these people were kept from accessing it by men in uniforms and bearing guns they had helped to purchase with their tax dollars.

Then we went to the 9th ward. 'I am about to show yall something you won't believe even when you see it,' the Pastor said. And true to his word, it was like nothing I'd ever seen in my life. And there were crimes committed here, too. It was entirely a man-made catastrophe in the lower 9th. First I will give a brief history of the neighborhood, describe the scene as it looks today and then briefly how it happened---and how it could have been avoided.

Driving through the lower 9th, I asked the Pastor about the community's history. Apparently it's one of the oldest independent black neighborhoods in New Orleans. Most of the homes there are owned by residents, who are all people of color. According to the Pastor, the lower 9th is the place that people in the projects aspire to live. 'When you make it out of the projects,' he said, 'you come here.' So people are very proud of their community. There are (or were) tons of black owned businesses, lots of homeowners who worked years to afford their own property, and the community is tightly knit and has a culture all its own. When we got out of the van to survey the damage from ground level, the Pastor advised us to 'listen to the silence'. Once a loud community bursting with life and the sounds of children and young people in the streets, the only noises I could hear were the occasional chirping of a distant cricket. Otherwise, total silence. Where about thirty thousand people had once laid their heads and lived their lives there was now only total destruction.

The largest levee bust is about a two hundred yard distance from where the first row of houses was. The levee was built to protect the city from overflow of the manmade canal waters. The canal runs between a large lake and the Mississippi river; it was perhaps the stupidest idea engineers have ever had. But I think it probably had less to do with engineering stupidity and more with that of the money hungry capitalists who thought it a great way to create a shortcut for trading ships. In any event, the levee and the canal run right up against the lower 9th ward community, though you couldn't tell today because the first five or six rows of houses are completely gone. Gone or moved off of their foundations, hundreds of meters away from where they once stood, stopped only by a brick house or a deeply rooted, hundred year old tree. The first few rows of houses are unrecognizable: the debris looks like it was produced by a ten ton bomb. The sheer power of the water that flooded the area after the levees burst probably carried with it a similar force.

The whole neighborhood is fucked. I think I saw two of about one thousand homes that could, in theory, be gutted and rebuilt. The rest of them are completely gone, lost causes. But people are returning to look at the damage and they all say they will rebuild. I saw a sign the other day, handpainted and hanging in front of someone's house, that read: 'We have survived the French, the Spanish, the Germans and the English. We have survived slavery, institutional racism and criminal neglect. We will survive this.' That seems to be the general feeling here. There are signs everywhere reading: "NO BULLDOZERS!" The city is going around trying to demolish and confiscate people's property. A local lawyer has put together a coalition that is trying to fight this. After seeing the damage, I know it will be a difficult battle to win.

So how did the levees bust? According to the Pastor, it had much to do with a stupid decision, made by someone in charge of such things but whose name will surely never reach the public. Along the canal there are a series of dams, or 'locks' as they are called here. These locks are opened and shut to allow for ships to cross the canal and in the interest of controlling the amount of water going in or out.

In this case the wrong (or right?) decision was made. The dams were locked when they should have been kept open. Had they been left open, the water that eventually burst the levees would have flooded into the Mississippi. But they were locked and so all of that water pushed and pushed until the inadequate levee could not take the force, bursting and unleashing a pandora's box of hell onto the defenseless lower 9th beneath it. Quite a few people think that the lower 9th was the sacrificial lamb of fearful ignorance; no one knew what would have happened had the Mississippi been flooded with that extra water, and so they took the chance and deposited its uncertainty on the lower 9th. Luckily, most people who live there had the sense to get out well before the levee burst. There were few confirmed deaths there considering the damage, but pretty much everyone is convinced that lots of the 3,700 thus far unaccounted for people are rotting under the debris.

Still, after all of this, the words that stuck with me last night as I went to sleep were Pastor Davenport's opening comments during his sermon. 'This, too,' he said, 'shall pass.'

Understanding, slowly

Now I get it. Before I came here I was really frustrated by the lack of media getting out of Common Ground. 'What in the world is wrong?' I thought. People doing this great work, bearing witness to what we on the outside cannot even begin to imagine, and they aren't telling us shit!? Now I understand. Not only is internet access rare and rather slow; additionally, the long days of gutting houses, bleaching mold stained wooden beams, and hauling supplies from trucks to distribution centers---a few among the many tasks a Common Grounder could apply themselves to on any given day---make it so that a filling meal and a good night's rest are pretty much all one cares about.

I have been itching to get to a computer, and finally I am here, at the Common Ground 'House of Excellence'---known to those in the know as 'the hoe'. It's a space that was cleaned up by Common Ground folks and is now used as a community media center. There is free internet and phone access for the community, and Common Ground volunteers are invited to use the facilities after hours. Today the place is nearly empty, though, so I am breaking the rule and using a computer before five o'clock.

The first few days here were interesting, at once not at all and exactly what I had expected. My first taste of New Orleans southern culture came on the shuttle from the airport to the Pauline street Common Ground center of operations, hereafter referred to (for reasons I will explain later) as the Greener Zone. The shuttle driver, a man named James, welcomed the all white crew of passengers to his beloved city with a few stories of the city's rebirthing process. 'We're coming along,' he sang, 'and we welcome you all with open hearts to have a taste and a look at our beautiful city.' I was the last passenger to depart the shuttle; the others were deposited at fancy hotels, some of them tourists and others presumably contractors or government employees. James seemed to relax a bit, to shed his quasi-minstrel show dance after the obviously moneyed passengers had departed. I asked him about his experience, his family, how they fared during and after Katrina, where they were now.

His story was like many I have heard since. 'My mother had very bad cancer before the storm,' he sighed, 'and so I did not want to take any chances about getting her out if it was a bad one. You know,' he said, 'one of the reasons that so many people drowned or were stuck here is because we in New Orleans have become accustomed to hearing about the next big storm. Lately, in the past few years, we've been warned about leaving the city and so people do, in droves. Then you run out of gas on the interstate and get stuck there for a few days with little food or water, and the baby is screaming and gets sick. You know, if you have sick people, old and young in your family, you can't take that risk if you aren't sure that a big storm is coming. So lots of people just took that chance, and stayed. Me, I had enough money to get me and my family out. I found a cancer clinic in Texas and took my mother there. It's a good thing I did.'

His mother has since passed away. After she died a few months ago he returned to New Orleans, got a job as a shuttle driver and is now in the process of navigating the government's lengthy red-tape process to try to get back into his home. Though he's paid to get it gutted already, he must pay for a series of inspections from electricians and the like. Only if these inspections pass will he be able to contact contractors to get an estimate of how much it will cost, and whether the house is structurally sound enough to rebuild. Then, finally, after obtaining green lights from these people, he must get it cleared with local and state officials. After all of this, a process which could take over a year and cost a pretty penny, he will be able to start the process of rebuilding his home. 'And hurricane season starts in a few months,' he said, smiling the 'no-matter-what' smile I have come to associate with New Orleans and its steadfast people.

There's so much to report and not much time in which to do it. There are a few people waiting to use the computers here at the HOE, and so I will just write a few more things before signing off. Common Ground is doing great work here. The racial politics of the place are, as to be expected, a bit strange. It seems as if some of the people working there don't have any questions or self-consciousness about their role in an entirely black community---a community that has never, ever experienced such attention from outsiders. The work is wonderful, though, and I have yet to speak to any local folks who have anything negative to say about Common Ground volunteers or the organization in general. So far the group has gutted over 300 houses, is in the process of gutting about fifty more each day and has a waiting list of over 300 more to go. The work is done completely for free, and Common Ground is now in the process of organizing with local churches to lend safety and gutting supplies to congregations who want to organize their own work crews. It's inspiring to see so many different kinds of people coming together to do such work.

I'm working on a film and have done quite a few interviews. I hope to interview a woman named Mama D, a local community organizer in the 7th ward. Apparently she has beef with Common Ground; I am excited to talk to her and hear her perspective on things here. I will also interview a Pastor Davenport, a really interesting guy who was recently excommunicated from the Baptist church. His daughter contracted HIV a few years ago and he has since set up an HIV/AIDS awareness center outside the largest projects in New Orleans. The 7th ward projects is, according to the Pastor, the most dangerous place to live in the most dangerous city in the country. He personally has been stabbed and shot more than once. His community center is really amazing; I went inside the office the other day and saw that he has posters of queer men of color on his wall, condoms everywhere, boxes of lube and tons of pamphlets about STDs and safe sex. He's truly an inspiration. In addition to the HIV/AIDS program, he runs a media center and a job training program for kids from the projects.

There's much, much more to say. I will write more later, when I am not hogging the computer from someone else who needs to use it.

Preparations for the Trip