New Orleans: Day One

We are back after a day at work. We arrived today this morning at 2 am, and we slept for 5 hours, and then we got up to go to our placement at New Orleans Legal Assistance. We left there at 5:30, went to dinner on Bourbon Street, where I had a daiquiri (they are very popular here – why? The prevailing theory amongst our group is that they are rum-based, and rum is made in the Gulf, and sugar-based – sugar was imported through N.O.), a beer, jambalaya (disappointing) and seafood gumbo (surprisingly good with white rice on top). Bourbon Street at 6 pm was pretty quiet – almost eerily so, but as we sat and ate and talked about embarrassing moments in our lives (among other things), I looked across the narrow street to a two-story building with intricate gratework on the railings and columns, and a sky blue door hanging picturesquely if injuriously at an angle.

There’s a brokenness here that I’m not sure stems entirely from the hurricane. Driving to the 8 pm orientation that the student hurricane network organized for us tonight, I commented, “This city seems like it could be really haunted.” Evan, one of the other students, agreed, “Yeah, these houses look like they were once grand but now are kind of run down – melancholy.” Exactly. A feeling of grandeur past and faded gentility, starving its way into the present.

The four of us are working on different things – eviction, public housing, divorce, and bankruptcy. I drafted a couple pro forma demand letters and referral letters, talked to a couple people that the office had lost track of a couple months ago. It was good, although I definitely feel that I soaked up more of the attorney’s time than it would have taken for her to simply write the letters herself. I asked her about this later and she didn’t deny it; she merely said, with a luminous smile, “But I love teaching students. I love it.”

As the night wore and I drank more liquor, Bourbon Street perked up. More people began walking through the streets, a couple street performers in costume strolling among them. We walked between two bars having an impromptu battle of the stereo systems, thunderously playing 80s metal band songs while a N.O. police car sat between them.

The N.O. police apparently have a reputation for brutality, which has only gotten worse since the hurricane, according to a legal advocate who came to the 8pm orientation tonight. They’ve been cracking down, giving parking tickets where they didn’t before, arresting for public indecency where they looked away before.

We sat and drank another drink at a quiet bar before proceeding to get lost on the way to the orientation and then walking into the Bridge Lounge 45 minutes late. I got distracted for 5 minutes by the well-fed and happily panting large dogs clustered around the entrance, but found my way eventually to the rest of the group in the back.

Mory and Betsy, two NOLA attorneys, and another lawyer/community organizer, were there, as well as all the Crimson volunteers and the SPIN coordinator. It was 9 pm, and most of us had been through a full day’s work – the HRF people had worked all day and then interviewed laborers for two hours afterwards. But there was nevertheless an enormous sense of energy in the group. I myself, normally a sanguine, low-key, almost diffident character, was freakishly full of energy. One of the lawyers outlined the biggest legal issues: “housing, housing, housing, police brutality, and housing.” Jillian, someone I know from Crimson, asked about race, and the same lawyer replied that it was very much alive and at issue. Mory added that there was a huge dichotomy between the classes, and that the poor are mostly black.

I read an article that Joiner gave me that said that one of the rumors most rampant after the hurricane was that the powers that be had allowed the poor districts of New Orleans to flood while the rich neighborhoods were saved. The lawyer who spoke to the race issue pointed out that in the low-income white neighborhoods, the power lines were being repaired, while in the poor, black 9th district, they were being ripped out. Public housing had been wiped out by Katrina, and there had been open comments about having gotten rid of the problem element in N.O. Public housing residents are “99 percent black – no, maybe 100% black,” said Mory. There are tent cities in the low-income white neighborhoods; not so in the 9th district.

This is an extraordinary test. An extraordinary case study. Of race, of government, of class, of courage. I am aware – almost paralyzingly so – that we are here for only 6 days, and that we can’t truly expect to do anything of any import or meaning. We are here as symbols, as human gestures that yes, some people care. But it is the people who stay here, who came back, who won’t leave, that take the brunt of the effect. I told Betsy that I felt amazingly energized by the conversation and hopefulness and desire to do more in the bar tonight, and in her extraordinarily graceful and giving way, she said something that made me feel like even our gesture might mean something real. “The students bring so much energy,” she said, “they give some of that to us.”