Amid all the devastation that is still New Orleans, the real stories of Katrina are the stories of the people of New Orleans. Those that survived and those that did not. Those that are still scattered like fallen leaves across the United States, separated from family, friends and all that is familiar, without the resources to return home or a home to return to. The stories of those that tried to ride out the storm and those that fled with just the shirts on their backs. And there are the stories of those who tried to rebuild only to find roadblocks every step of the way, whether they be government regulations, loss of required documentation, not knowing about available services until too late or those that fell victim to unscrupulous contractors and government officials.
And there are also the stories of those residents who found a calling in the aftermath of Katrina and have not only vowed to rebuild, but in the process of trying to understand what it means to return home have learned that to build community one must participate in community. I have met and continue to meet many of these people, who have come back, but in the process of returning have become part of something larger than themselves.
One such person that I had the pleasure of meeting was Mack McClendon. A man who grew up in the housing projects of the Lower 9th Ward. After returning to find his home uninhabitable he purchased a vacant and damaged warehouse to begin a business of restoring antique cars. Having obtained the building and preparing to embark on his dream Mack began to understand that what his community needed was a place and a way to recreate community. If people were going to be encouraged to return home, they would need something to return to, and this was more important than attaining his own personal dream. The Lower 9th lacked infrastructure and community services. In a community where there were multiple pubic schools, there was only one charter school. The government, through the federal Road Home program, was purchasing and demolishing homes, creating vast tracts of vacant land. Mack came to the realization that to help recreate this sense of community, the Lower 9th needed a community center more than it needed antique car restoration.
Today, Mack has dedicated himself and his meager financial resources to developing the Lower 9th Ward Village Community Center. All of his energies are devoted to building community and giving people something to return home to. As he described his own personal metamorphosis “we all have a light within us, but that light is not turned on. Then something happens and turns that light on. Once it is on it cannot be turned off. However some people never turn that light on and die without knowing what it is like.” This community center is his light, it is shining bright and it has become his passion. As he says it best, “ I have the least financial resources that I have ever had, but I am now the richest that I have ever been.
According to a March 2009 report by CNN, the Lower 9th was home to 19,000 people before Katrina, but less than 19% of these residents have returned, with a total population now of a mere 3,600 people. The others are scattered throughout the country, plopped down in unfamiliar surroundings by their government, with no means of returning home. Prior to Katrina, the Lower 9th had the one of the highest proportions of black home ownership in the country. Yet, the media has portrayed this once vibrant community as a low income, crime-ridden community that was blighted.
Mack’s story is just one of the many untold stories of people working hard to do what the government should be doing to rebuild these devastated communities.
Another person that I had the pleasure of meeting is Clifford Washington, the Coordinator of Volunteers at the Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NENA), a “resident-based approach to comprehensive rebuilding.” Clifford is a member of a large family with deep roots in the Lower 9th Ward. After Katrina, he and his wife and children were relocated first to Texas and then to North Carolina. They both left jobs in North Carolina to return to New Orleans to be with family. When a student that was with me asked Clifford if he was concerned about returning to a place where a hurricane can do so much damage, he responded by saying that the hurricanes are a part of life here just as the fires or earthquakes are a part of life in California and other natural disasters are part of living in other areas. Then, demonstrating the resilience that I have come to see in so many of the people who have returned, he stated that at least with a hurricane there can be several days warning, which is not possible for people living in earthquake or forest fire areas.
Ending my meetings with each of these extraordinary men, I thanked them for their time, and each said how grateful they were that people, like the Wheelock students, were coming to help and how much it means to the residents and those still hoping to return knowing that people out there care and are still aware of their continuing struggles.
In this installment, I would like to highlight one more person that I had the pleasure of meeting - Steve a volunteer at Camp Hope. Although not really a camp, this former parochial school building is home to up to 300 volunteers from around the country coming to help rebuild. The building that Camp Hope is located in is surrounded by blocks and blocks of vacant land and scattered homes that have been rehabilitated or are waiting to be renovated. These vacant lots are littered with the artifacts of community, setting the stage for one to only imagine the community and the people that inhabited it. The building has been leased from the Archdiocese by the St. Bernard Parish government for a six-year period. Without the homes and the families that once inhabited this community there is no longer a need for a school. Camp Hope is where the twenty-five student volunteers from Wheelock College that I have traveled here with are staying, along with other groups from churches, colleges and families that have come to help.
Steve lost everything to Katrina, his house, his car, his pet and several months after the storm his wife passed away. Although Steve’s home is just a slab of concrete today and he has hopes of rebuilding in the future, he now spends his time helping to make Camp Hope home for hundreds of volunteers who are helping to rebuild the homes of others. In addition to his volunteer work at the camp he is trying to help bring as many people home as possible. The pain that Steve experiences is palpable when he talks about how the government sent people all over the country, sometimes breaking up families, without telling them where they were going and without providing them the means to return home.
These are just thee of the extraordinary people that I have met during my week in New Orleans. The others include the twenty-five Wheelock students who sacrificed a large part of their semester break, paying their own way to come to New Orleans to help people they have never met, doing things like hanging drywall, demolding a house, painting, hanging doors and window sills. These young women did not shy away from the dirty, difficult and challenging tasks they were given, and in doing so learned about issues of race, class, community, civic engagement and how our government could fail so miserably in helping its own citizens. The question that kept coming up for the students and the people working to revitalize the communities so profoundly affected by Katrina was “ if this is America, and these are American citizens and communities, how could this devastation still exist four years later, with so little progress made?
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