Any Minute Now
Sep. 6th, 2005 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisabetI just read in the "Times-Picayune" that they might be relighting the Crescent City Connection soon and then I realized that I was on the verge of crying, again.
And all weekend long I felt like I was explaining why New Orleans is important and why we have to rebuild it. The people who ask were well-meaning, if misinformed, but it just boggles my mind. Yeah - as it stands it is unsafe. As it stood it was unsafe. I knew it. Everyone who lived there knew it. All the elected officials knew it and any goddamned federal level official who wants to say, yet again, that they did not expect a levee breach in a category 4 or higher is worse than a liar.
None of this means that they did not know how to improve the conditions of the city. Realize, right now, that I am angry. I am so angry that I doubt my ability to engage in any form of reasoned debate. However; this anger does not cloud my eyes to what I saw waaaaay back in the late 90's when I lived there nor does it fog my memory. In fact, my anger is fueled by this - this absolute abandonment of citizens, this utter neglect of Americans, this ability we have as a society to selectively see and pick and chose where attention is focused.
And, yeah - I have big issues with how we deal with class and geography in this country. Well before this ever even happened, I admit, I have a chip on my shoulder a mile wide and three tons heavy. There is a reason for this, though. The South is overwhelmingly poor and I am talking poor like you cannot even imagine. And so, since it defies imagination and is not politically viable and no one really wants to see it even though the amount of people and families living at or under the poverty level is increasing, it becomes invisible or the punchline of a joke. Before last week, unless you lived there or really paid attention or were extremely politically active, your first association of New Orleans was probably Bourbon Street or music or Mardi Gras or food. Which - that is fine. That is actually what the city wants you to see and associate and think of when you think New Orleans. The city wants you to think of it and immediately think "Good Time" and not really focus on the fact that it is built and functions on the backs of a labor force barely getting by in the best of times.
Kinda like - well - Dawn recently went to Jamaica, as did our uncle. Dawn went to a resort on vacation and our uncle went on a mission trip to build a church and they both visited different places. Same location, Jamaica isn't all that large, but still, different places.
Anyway, last weekend I became increasingly attached to my television and The Weather Channel - watching Katrina just get larger and nastier out in the gulf until I couldn't look away. And then I spent almost all of Monday in a sort of free-form panic, not ever relaxing even when the papers started reporting that New Orleans was spared the brunt because it wasn't over - there was flooding and untold loss even then, Gulfport was gone and Biloxi was devastated. There was no relaxation available even as the company I work for started gearing up to enter Mississippi as soon as possible. Then, on Tuesday, I just remember this feeling of absolute horror over what was happening in New Orleans. It was panic and disbelief and dispair and I haven't felt like that since September 11, 2001. Truthfully, I didn't ever think I would feel that way ever again and here it was - back and bigger than ever.
And so, when I clicked on LJ, in between runs to the conference room to monitor CNN and refreshing nytimes.com, and I saw maybe three posts about Katrina, and one of the posts apologizing for Katrina SPAM I got really really angry. I realize now that most people just didn't know yet what was going on -- or they didn't realize exactly what this would mean. But I got angry and it just got worse from there.
And I really don't know what to do with this anger. I am mad about what happened at the convention center and I am mad that the levees were not reinforced and I am mad that the wetlands were not protected and I am mad about the Superdome and I want it razed and gone and I am mad because I loved the Superdome and it makes no sense that I am this pissed off about a building, as if the building somehow betrayed me, or them, or us.
I am mad that desperate people were classified as looters, that the only person pointing out that you have a significant drug-addicted population going through detox at the same time and this might have something to do with the attacks on the hospitals, was Mayor Nagin. I am mad that people died - children died, old women died, old men died, because Michael Brown did not want to encourage livable conditions in the city because then no one will leave.
I am angry now, reading reports of old men and women and mentally unstable people who are refusing to leave flooded neighborhoods in Treme and Bywater, and I can feel the rising outsider's questions of "What is wrong with these people?" and "Haven't they got any sense" and "See, Brown was right" and I am shaking as I type this. Because you can't understand why an old man would chose to live in toxic sludge until you understand that this is ALL he has and will ever have. Until you understand that he knows that if he leaves this, he will have nothing. His life will amount to nothing. He didn't even see the scenes and footage from the convention center to really see, in vivid color, how his life really and truly amounts to nothing, at least to the people in power, but he still gets it and is moved to protect it.
And there is a measure of shock working here as well. The city floods. The power goes out. These are things that have happened a multitude of times before. Any minute the pumps will come back on. Any minute Entergy will have their trucks out. Any minute life will start back up and none of this will be happening. Any minute now. Any minute.
And all weekend long I felt like I was explaining why New Orleans is important and why we have to rebuild it. The people who ask were well-meaning, if misinformed, but it just boggles my mind. Yeah - as it stands it is unsafe. As it stood it was unsafe. I knew it. Everyone who lived there knew it. All the elected officials knew it and any goddamned federal level official who wants to say, yet again, that they did not expect a levee breach in a category 4 or higher is worse than a liar.
None of this means that they did not know how to improve the conditions of the city. Realize, right now, that I am angry. I am so angry that I doubt my ability to engage in any form of reasoned debate. However; this anger does not cloud my eyes to what I saw waaaaay back in the late 90's when I lived there nor does it fog my memory. In fact, my anger is fueled by this - this absolute abandonment of citizens, this utter neglect of Americans, this ability we have as a society to selectively see and pick and chose where attention is focused.
And, yeah - I have big issues with how we deal with class and geography in this country. Well before this ever even happened, I admit, I have a chip on my shoulder a mile wide and three tons heavy. There is a reason for this, though. The South is overwhelmingly poor and I am talking poor like you cannot even imagine. And so, since it defies imagination and is not politically viable and no one really wants to see it even though the amount of people and families living at or under the poverty level is increasing, it becomes invisible or the punchline of a joke. Before last week, unless you lived there or really paid attention or were extremely politically active, your first association of New Orleans was probably Bourbon Street or music or Mardi Gras or food. Which - that is fine. That is actually what the city wants you to see and associate and think of when you think New Orleans. The city wants you to think of it and immediately think "Good Time" and not really focus on the fact that it is built and functions on the backs of a labor force barely getting by in the best of times.
Kinda like - well - Dawn recently went to Jamaica, as did our uncle. Dawn went to a resort on vacation and our uncle went on a mission trip to build a church and they both visited different places. Same location, Jamaica isn't all that large, but still, different places.
Anyway, last weekend I became increasingly attached to my television and The Weather Channel - watching Katrina just get larger and nastier out in the gulf until I couldn't look away. And then I spent almost all of Monday in a sort of free-form panic, not ever relaxing even when the papers started reporting that New Orleans was spared the brunt because it wasn't over - there was flooding and untold loss even then, Gulfport was gone and Biloxi was devastated. There was no relaxation available even as the company I work for started gearing up to enter Mississippi as soon as possible. Then, on Tuesday, I just remember this feeling of absolute horror over what was happening in New Orleans. It was panic and disbelief and dispair and I haven't felt like that since September 11, 2001. Truthfully, I didn't ever think I would feel that way ever again and here it was - back and bigger than ever.
And so, when I clicked on LJ, in between runs to the conference room to monitor CNN and refreshing nytimes.com, and I saw maybe three posts about Katrina, and one of the posts apologizing for Katrina SPAM I got really really angry. I realize now that most people just didn't know yet what was going on -- or they didn't realize exactly what this would mean. But I got angry and it just got worse from there.
And I really don't know what to do with this anger. I am mad about what happened at the convention center and I am mad that the levees were not reinforced and I am mad that the wetlands were not protected and I am mad about the Superdome and I want it razed and gone and I am mad because I loved the Superdome and it makes no sense that I am this pissed off about a building, as if the building somehow betrayed me, or them, or us.
I am mad that desperate people were classified as looters, that the only person pointing out that you have a significant drug-addicted population going through detox at the same time and this might have something to do with the attacks on the hospitals, was Mayor Nagin. I am mad that people died - children died, old women died, old men died, because Michael Brown did not want to encourage livable conditions in the city because then no one will leave.
I am angry now, reading reports of old men and women and mentally unstable people who are refusing to leave flooded neighborhoods in Treme and Bywater, and I can feel the rising outsider's questions of "What is wrong with these people?" and "Haven't they got any sense" and "See, Brown was right" and I am shaking as I type this. Because you can't understand why an old man would chose to live in toxic sludge until you understand that this is ALL he has and will ever have. Until you understand that he knows that if he leaves this, he will have nothing. His life will amount to nothing. He didn't even see the scenes and footage from the convention center to really see, in vivid color, how his life really and truly amounts to nothing, at least to the people in power, but he still gets it and is moved to protect it.
And there is a measure of shock working here as well. The city floods. The power goes out. These are things that have happened a multitude of times before. Any minute the pumps will come back on. Any minute Entergy will have their trucks out. Any minute life will start back up and none of this will be happening. Any minute now. Any minute.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 07:32 pm (UTC)Apparently they are still refusing to evacuate household animals with their people. And some people, RIGHTLY SO, are saying "The hell I'm leaving my dog here to starve, or worse. I'll go when he goes." How hard is it to toss an extra 30-pound dog in the boat? Come on, people! I just wrote a larger check than I have ever written to any charity before, to the LSU vet school for their animal rescue efforts.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 07:48 pm (UTC)A lot of people don't seem to get it though with regards to poverty and mobility...
no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 07:53 pm (UTC)I was reading in the paper yesterday that Johnny White's is still open, even. I mean - I knew they never closed and I have even been there when a bartender has to take off and a regular jumps behind the bar to take over, but I just assumed they would be closed during.... all of this.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-07 01:23 am (UTC)I saw some video of those people who were "refusing" to leave from the still-flooded areas. They looked like they'd been through eight levels of hell and were afraid to be dropped into the ninth by people posing as rescuers.
After listening to Barbara Bush's statement yesterday, they may be right.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-07 01:16 am (UTC)::sigh:: Any minute now.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-07 01:51 am (UTC)I live in SF, man. We're on a fucking fault line. So, yea.
I wish I had been right, back in your LJ, five days ago. I really, really do.
Pheh.
I am so sorry
Date: 2005-09-08 04:20 pm (UTC)