New Orleans

Nineteen months after Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levees, I visited New Orleans with a group from All Souls Church, DC to provide service, to reflect and learn more about the situation in the Gulf Coast. Being in a disaster zone is quite an experience. Entire neighborhoods are deserted, blocks of houses are boarded up and neighbors are scattered across the country with a patchwork returning to their ruined property.

Part of our work with Hands On New Orleans was to gut houses. This involved removing all of the personal property still in the house: photos, clothing, food, toys, dentures; taking out all of the appliances and bathroom fixtures and tearing down all of the walls leaving only a skeleton of the house and the memories of the people who built it and the families that lived there.

The Louisiana heat coupled with a full body Tyvek work suit makes gutting physically and emotionally difficult. The teamwork and community that was built during these projects bears witness to the fact that community can survive or be created in the face of adversity, be that natural or human-made. Even though it was difficult to communicate with each other through our respirators and dimly lit rooms we developed a rhythm that enabled us to work together to do the job effectively and efficiently, some tearing down sheet rock, others hauling it outside and dumping it into a debris pile stretching the length of the property and taller than me.

Additionally, we learned about the policy that affects the displaced survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Adam's blog explains this well, "Congress and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been slow about providing the necessary relief, supplies and funding for the people of the Gulf Coast. Federal Emergency Response Assistance is distributed based on a 1988 law that requires that municipalities requesting federal assistance contribute 10% of costs towards rebuilding and the Federal Government will cover 90%. New Orleans has already accumulated a debt to the federal government of $324 million in just their "10%".

Congress wants to waive that debt to enable further rebuilding, but President Bush does not. That "10%" was waived for New York City after 9/11 and for Florida after Hurricane Andrew. In the Emergency Supplemental passed by both houses of Congress that debt is waived. President Bush plans on vetoing the supplemental bill because it also sets a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq (and he doesn't want to waive the debt in the first place because of the corruption in the state of Louisiana).

Also, funding from the government can not be used to improve infrastructure, only to return it to pre-disaster levels. They are balking at funding repairs to the sewer system as they claim it was poorly maintained before hand. Also rebuilding in such a way to reflect changes in population (such as combining schools) is not an option - it has to be the same as before. In the NY Times an article used this analogy, if you had a 1981 Toyota Camry with a leaky radiator that was lost in the flood the Federal Government will buy you a 1981 Toyota Camry and punch a hole in the radiator."

At the end of the day we would gather as a group to reflect on our experiences, share our emotions and frustrations and center ourselves with worship and song. These simple acts and space helped prevent burnout and fostered a sense of self and purpose. Many activists suffer from the overwhelming amount of work that needs to be done and the physical and emotional toll that can take. Creating time and space for theological reflection can rekindle the flame by grounding us in our shared faith and providing the necessary support to heal and continue our work.

I strongly encourage everyone to check out www.handsonneworleans.org and donate your money or your time and presence.

a church sanctuary in the lower 9th ward

A school that collapsed in the lower 9th ward. you can still see school books and toys scattered in the rubble.

the 3 Legislative Assistants in our Tyvek suits. Note the large pile of debris in the background.

A quote from Rev. Rebecca Parker in her essay After the Apocolypse. "I have done my share of calling for the end of eveil empires and announcing that the promised land is just around the corner, but I have come to believe that we need to let go of this religious myth. We need to face more honestly the conditions of devastation that we are in the midst of, here and now. As we enter the new millennuum, we need to see ourselves as people living in the aftermath of cataclysmic violence rather than as people awaiting the overthrow of the present world order and the birth of the new. We must relinquish our innocence and see the world as it is, focusing our attention on the marks of past violence in our personal and collective experience. We must notice the breakdown, sorrow, and legacies of injustice that characterize our current world order. From this place of honesty, we must discover how we can live among the ruins."