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.