NEW ORLEANS, LA. tonight, the photographer sat at the fold out table telling me of losing his home. he was in arizona at the time, but a friend grabbed some of the files and negatives in the photographer’s house before the flood waters rose. he lost everything else, but mostly he lost his home. the place means more than the material things. i felt that he didn’t want to be back here, in a place where all things–tangible and intangible–had been washed away. he sat in silence for a few moments looking off into nowhere, tears welling.

this morning, i drove to slidell to find a plumbing supply store. a clerk at ace hardware in st. benards told me slidell didn’t get hit by the flood so everything is open for business. thirty miles across the lake, i found slidell hardware, a small independent store with it’s double doors wide open. inside, a lanky old man with a bushy white beard was sitting comfortably on a bench. he popped his thumb out and told me to go to the back. the store smelled musty. a man, probably in his late fifties, was in the back using a wet/dry vacuum to suck up standing water on the floor. i told him how the clerk at ace hardware had told me slidell didn’t get hit. “ha! five feet of water stood inside this store.” there were a few new-looking items like batteries and flashlights, but everything else looked flooded. i bought some gaskets for my plumbing job at st. mary’s and conversed with the business owner, asking how long he’s been open since the storm. “i haven’t been open, i just come to clean up the mess and people come by. it’s over; i’m retiring. there’s nothing more for me here. there’s nothing else left for me to do but retire.” i could sense he had once been overwhelmed by sadness thinking about closing the hardware store. now, though, he had been through these thoughts so many times and you could only see his sadness deep in his eyes. he held himself up proudly. “forty years i’ve been opening up this store. forty years.” he grabbed a broom and swept the floor a bit. “i can’t do anything about it anymore… no flood insurance means no insurance. the forty years is over.” i told him it must have been a good forty years at least. he nodded his head, and turned to return to work.

VIOLET, LA. (written by elise) it took me a while. today, while moving boxes of food and impromptu shelving around the distribution tent (free store), another volunteer asked, “when you sent all those emails today, talking about this, what did you say?” it’s not just me, it’s hard to write here. not only is there so much to work on, so much to do, and so many people to be around, that the will to sit at a computer is almost incomprehensible, it’s also the subject matter.

it’s heavy here. my first week i was in shock. each car ride weighed on me more, nothing but lines and lines of toppled, piled, muddied, drown. like the lines in the sand telling the whispers of the wind, these lines are stronger, stronger, shouts from the nightmares of what went on. two hurricanes. mismanagement. police brutality to an extreme. the list continues.

it got to the point where i broke down. crying on a street near where we’re staying, in the county of St. Bernard’s Parish, the town of Violet, outside New Orleans by 10 miles, listening to people’s stories, in this semi-rural town, just as the sun starts to fall. i broke the seal, but i didnt let it all out.

it wasn’t until later, on a phone call in a dark car, that i cried full force. crying, “it’s so thick, thick, the air, it’s so thick, it’s so thick, it’s everywhere, thick, thick.” one phrase per few minutes. the gravity of what was was all around. i am sensitive, and i thought i wouldn’t be able to see beyond it. even when people were smiling and laughing, you see it on the corners of their eyes. and when you’re wearing respirators, that’s really all that’s available. eyes are so soulful, and all eyes here are pointing down.

still, after that cry, i lightened up. i managed to focus on the positive humyn interactions. the coming together. i slowly saw the birds return, and i saw the plants growing tall. i photographed them. that was when i got my motivation back. stopped feeling bad. began to write it down.

so what did i write about today? i told my friend, in the tent, as dusk fell, ” well. (pause). i wrote about what we do here. the services. i wrote about the changes in population. the reactions. i wrote about working at mamma dee’s, in the seventh ward. the funerals. this area. the oil refinery, i touched upon, ” i told him, ” i didn’t get too depressing. i told a little bit about it all. and i gave a call out. i asked for people to email me about groups that might come down, i told them i will write them. i wrote about the group we just had, how good it was. how much people are needed down here, to do basic work. i wrote about my fears. that the centers here will not dissolve when the community wants them too. that power will affect us all and create another situation. i’m worried. i’m worried about the children.” he nodded and said, ” i just cant write about it yet. little bits, to a few people. but rarely.” he is one of the people who is eager for my letter writing party on thursday. we are writing to groups, especially of youth, back home and all around. asking them to come down.

my fears. the children. normally, i go for a walk. to clear my head. but here, that last week, before my cry let it all out, before my cry loosened the air and entered the moisture all around me, i almost crumbled when walking on the streets behind HOPE (Helping Other People in Everyway). i saw children. playing in the dirt and in their broken house. on one of these february skies, where all day it seems like dusk is all around.

there are no schools. the ground is toxic, not only from the arsenic and other substances that broke through with the water, not only with black mold (to name but one), but also from the Murphy Oil Refinery, which could have chosen to suffer a little cost, combine their oils, to prevent spillage. instead, the area got doused in oil. inside, outside, even the streams. it’s especially bad for children (see: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/hurricanes/katrina/murphyoil/). in an impovershed town, with no schools, and now arsenic, oil, and black mold hurting their neurological development, what are we going to do about it? talk about unequal.

we are gutting houses. we are cutting trees, clearing land. we are throwing neighborhood potlucks. i am going to plant sunflowers. sunflowers. sunflowers. the plant that sucks the toxins up into their leaves and stalks. the plant you throw away when it’s done. Violet is going to be the land of sunflowers for a season, and it will help the ground. and, despite it all, there’s hope. and it all comes full circle; ask anyone, new orleans has always been magical.

taking the dogs for a walk today with another volunteer, i talk about the soil testing results for a community garden in the seventh ward. “their worst bed had 58 parts out of 2 million, or so, toxicity. the fda says it’s safe to plant up to 228 parts toxic.” the other worker’s face lit up, “i’m glad to hear that, i was the one who took those tests and sent them in, and i’m leaving tomorrow.” full circle.

no one really wants to leave here. unless they burn out completely or go mad, which happens. a lot. it almost took me in, i got to the point of constant shaking, until i broke down. and, as has been said many times down here, “well, a break down can even be good once in a while.” it seems everything here is about rebuilding something new. we are all examples of it, and you see it all around.

i will write more later.
love you all
elise

VIOLET, LA. it’s sunday, usually a day of lighter work for most volunteers. at h.o.p.e., the volunteer center where i live and sleep, we moved the distribution tent and all of the clothing and food contained within it to the other side of the parking lot. fema workers have been bulldozing the empty dirt lot behind the church, maybe two acres of land, and making way for trailers to be installed. there are temporary trailer parks all over the place. from violet, louisiana (st. bernards parish), where the h.o.p.e. community center is located, to the western side of new orleans, i’ve seen forty foot white trailer homes. some are parked with fifty others in an abandoned supermarket parking lot; some are parked on the tiny patch of yard in front of a city house in between the street and the sidewalk. they are all perched up on cinderblocks and have white pvc drainpipes running out for waste water. some have electricity, some don’t. i’ve heard stories of trailers sitting out in the midwest, someone in government preventing them from getting here because of some bureaucratic dispute. but we all saw the two-mile long train sitting in the train yard full of gleaming white trailers just a few days ago. it’s gone now, and i’m guessing those residents on the waiting list are getting their trailers. some will remain empty until the homeowners return, some will get filled right away as the residents have been waiting months to get back into their neighborhoods.

communities are becoming lively again, slowly but surely. i’ve heard the white neighborhoods are doing pretty well, and you see white visitors driving around the ninth ward flashing photos of dead houses, probably looking for a spray painted number under the X other than zero. (when search crews looked for bodies back in september, they painted on each house the number of dead found under an X, along with other codes like “TFW” which means Toxic Flood Water.) the black community is struggling and coping with the constant stream of new reports of bodies unveiled by the morgue. i’ve heard an unconfirmed rumor that there are 1500 young black men with bullet holes in their heads. no one is answering questions, but there are still many african americans missing. funerals are a constant reminder of the unequal burden this disaster took on the black community. i’ve heard first-hand stories of black residents that were stranded on their roofs, calling for help to a white official (feds, police) in a boat, but getting responded to with a gun pointed in their faces or told to fuck off. the most preposterous story i heard of government aid efforts was a wooden barrel dropped down by helicopter to residents in the 7th ward. when the residents acquired the barrel and opened it, naturally expecting food or water, there was nothing inside but expired (by two years) hard candy. that’s government aid? well, it was enough for the media who flashed photographs of the barrel dropping and published images of the government “helping” those in need.

in new orleans, most of the volunteers within relief organizations are white. i am one of them. many of the lead organizers in common ground collective are white males, although there are many females in leading roles. i am not offering up criticism, and my observations are very limited due to my short time here so far. it is interesting though to think about the capabilities of white volunteers heading down here to work. many of the volunteers are basically living here full time, staying indefinitely and giving up their time and energy to do relief work. it’s is obviously a white privilege to be able to come down here and give your life to this cause. except for a few, the only black volunteers i’ve met are people who lived here before the storm. i, like so many similar folks, have been sucked in my the beautiful harmony of radical collective living. we work together, we eat together, we sleep together. our needs are met and we feel good about the work we do. new volunteers are given a workshop on racism in new orleans. there are skill shares and workshops and dinner parties. there is music and there are hugs from old friends and smiles from strangers. but within this radical utopia, i feel the temporary nature of it all. the burger kings and taco bells are marked “CES DEMO,” but the strip malls will rise again and the usual false demand will be created to fuel the economy. i worry that organizations like common ground collective and h.o.p.e. will not have a lasting effect, but will simply be just a memory in the residents’ minds. we still live within white supremacy and a faux democracy. am i helping or just moving within the stream?

the work i do makes me feel purposeful. i even get the thought of moving here permanently, if my indefinite stay moves in that direction. but probably not. the ability to travel and meet new experiences is too tempting. this is another one of them. and i know i am becoming a better person because of this, i just want to help create a place where everyone has that chance, not just the radical white folks.

NEW ORLEANS, LA. i’ve been busy doing compost runs to the garden (garden wish list coming soon!), building shelves at st. mary’s, spending time at h.o.p.e. with new friends, and interviewing volunteers with elise. we interviewed three people from massachusetts last night, two young high schoolers and a chaperone. i hope we can gather more interviews before we leave, but both elise and i feel pretty confident that we’ll be here for a while, working on building with the community and interviewing for a story project to bring back to chicago.

please check out the donation page and see if you can contribute anything from the wishlist. almost anything can help, and most importantly, come here if you have the time and resources. there is much that words and pictures cannot describe.

NEW ORLEANS, LA. from a bird’s view, some areas of new orleans probably look like a checkerboard of street lights, some neighborhoods with electricity, some without. at pauline and clairborne, the common ground community center, there is electricity and hot water. but walk just eight blocks to st. mary’s elementary school, another location where volunteers are housed and working, and the streets are pitch black at night. generators roar in the background when there’s a need for electricity, and the cold water is on and off depending on the work being done in the building. i don’t even want to begin telling the story of st. mary’s elementary school… the only three story building in the surrounding area in the upper ninth ward… the only place to get away from flood waters that rose up to roof tops and forced neglected residents into a schoolhouse island. it’s too depressing. i feel my gut twisting when i remember the classrooms on the second floor i walked through this morning. small children’s desks disheveled, papers and books scattered everywhere, closets broken into. or when i think of the chalkboards with messages scrawled out by some of the two hundred residents stranded on this island, first floor filling up to the ceiling with the toxic storm waters. “we need food and water,” one chalkboard reads. “RIP Jay AKA Slim thug.” open peanut butter and grape jelly containers sit agelessly on a cart in a classroom down the hall. when i was removing hinges from a door frame on a janitor’s closet, i pushed a round, orange gatorade cooler back with my foot to get more standing room; i glanced into the cooler and saw white paper and feces. i haven’t even been up to the third floor yet, or even to the roof where the residents of this elementary school island were airlifted after five days of being trapped. now, in feburary, the volunteers live only on the first floor which has been gutted and mostly cleaned, the final work currently being finished.

i drove around the upper ninth ward with spaz looking for a door that wasn’t rotted or broken. i met spaz yesterday when i asked him if he had a digital camera card reader. he eventually discovered i had plumbing and renovation skills and a truck, and now here i am working to get the building running before the spring break rush of volunteers comes in march. all the doors we found in debris piles were the wrong size or completely unusable. we found a couple rusty bicycles on the street that looked salvageable, at least for parts. one was chopped and converted to fit a banana seat, an impressive contraption to spaz and me. we wrenched off brakes and seat posts, racks and pedals. the frames were orange with rust, but the parts were good. spaz thinks he’s going crazy, each day grating more and more on his humanity. there’s no way to avoid getting desensitized to this setting, we discussed in the truck. on our right there’s a roof on someone’s property, but no house; on our left there’s a silver sedan sitting quietly on top of a red sports car. this has been his home neighborhood for over a month. he quit school and has been doing major organizing work and helping coordinate volunteers. he does security shifts at night in st. mary’s, sleeping lightly behind the front doors. he sometimes deals with local residents coming into the community center: one woman who lost her house needs clothes and a place to sleep, another man who lost his mother can’t go into his home because of toxic water and mold. i don’t see any children here, but occasionally some adolescents. mostly all i see on the street are contractors, FEMA workers with big trucks, and a few adult residents emptying their houses. i would speculate 1 out of 10 residents have returned to work on their houses, some living in trailers parked on concrete blocks in their driveways. these neighborhoods are desolate places, without electricity, character, or energy. spaz thinks many of the people won’t return and i wonder what these people think about when they think about home.

VIOLET, LA. i am sitting in the H.O.P.E. center in st. benard’s parish in new orleans. the building is a converted church building, now a community center with cots, a kitchen, a food distribution tent, a decontamination tent, bathrooms and showers. this is where we will stay, one of many community centers housing volunteers. common ground community center lives. we see mostly young volunteers of common ground and local residents in their houses pounding hammers. we arrived here after dark which only added to the eerie introduction. while riding in the car, i told eliese that i felt like i am not going to want to leave. there’s something i am drawn to here. something about wreckage and abandoned streets, the feeling of a community in need, and stories in my head of common ground collective and the potential for something radical to happen here… i see the common ground slogan plastered on banners and on their website: “solidarity, not charity.” this is history, this will be remembered.

from the common ground website: “Future plans of the 9th Ward/Downtown project include a free school, a childcare co-op, an established community evacuation plan, bio-remediation, shelter and family stay programs to find places for people to stay while they repair their homes, and an increase in community organizing in order to establish an effective resistance to the city’s attempts to gentrify and bull-doze large swaths of New Orleans’ historically Black neighborhoods.”
but i am not ignorant of the nightmare that still lives in this city haunting those who left and those who survived. we picked up a hitchhiker outside jackson, mississippi and he rode with us to new orleans. his name is robert. at first i thought he was a traveller looking for work–forty something, worn carhart jacket, short, stocky build. but robert was a katrina survivor, a resident who returned to the city the day after the storm and witnessed first hand the city under water. he’s been homeless and working ever since, getting fed and put up by contractors or sleeping in the tent cities throughout new orleans. his house floated away before his return and his family had left him long ago. he was so close to breaking down in front of us many times: when he admitted he is an alcoholic, when he told us of his father’s death three weeks ago, when he got screwed over by a contractor for almost a week’s worth of work, when he looked in his small bag and told his he had nothing. but we laughed together, joked a bit and we even had him filming some surrounding scenery on the last stretch of interstate 55 before turning onto 10. he told us he was an musician. robert smiled and showed some joy when we talked about his skills and how he could help others. he just needed people to listen and talk to. people to confirm he existed. that he is real.

i don’t know exactly what to say about this place, new orleans, or what to say about how i feel or where i fit in here. it is chaotic in many ways, and that excites me and scares me. everything feels unknown, and i am really no one here, yet.

CHICAGO, IL. a quick update: eliese and i are driving to new orleans to deliver medical supplies to the common ground health clinic in algiers. we will be in the area for ten days, possibly heading into biloxi, mississippi and mobile, alabama. we will be spending time with common ground collective, plan b bicycle collective, and other relief organizations and will produce a short video documenting our experience to present to groups in chicago. i will also be spending time with plan b to gather footage and interviews for the documentary on bicycle collectives. our return date is febuary 26th.

to make a donation to help us pay for fuel, supplies, and food, go to the donation page. thanks!

CHICAGO, IL. it’s been about two weeks since i arrived back home, sick and exhausted and wearing multiple layers of clothes. i have approximately fifteen hours of footage, mostly interviews, which i will be transcribing with the help of friends here in chicago. and i’ll be heading down to new orleans with a friend next week to deliver medical and bicycle supplies and to meet with the Plan B bike collective. the bicycle supplies will be coming from Working Bikes and going to Plan B, and the medical supplies to Common Ground.

it’s been busy here in chicago, though, looking for a job and settling back into the house of raw sugar. i’m throwing a valentine’s day show at my house for a friend i met in denver, screening a the living room documentary outside here in april for courtney and liz, and going to BikeBike! in may to show a trailer for my documentary. right now, the streets are crusty with ice and salt, and i usually wear three or four layers from when i crawl out of bed in the morning until i get back into bed at night. chicago, i missed you.