where Dumaine crosses North Roman, central Treme after the flood, sometime late last week
The title of Jordan Flaherty's latest letter is "Shelter and Safety", but the context is racism, a racism exacerbated by the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, a racism which continues even today in "rescue" and "shelter" operations and which is built into the plans for tomorrow's New Orleans.
The sections I've excerpted below describe just a little of the desperate struggle of a poor, almost-powerless, displaced community to remain a community. [The entire text includes much more detail on the specific horrors of "Shelter and Safety" today in Louisiana, and I expect it will soon appear on leftturn].
Just north of the French Quarter . . . is the historic Treme neighborhood. Settled in the early 1800s, its known as the oldest free African-American community in the US. Residents fear for the post-reconstruction stability of communities like Treme. Theres nothing some developers would like more than a ring of white neighborhoods around the French Quarter, said one Treme resident recently. The widespread fear among organizers is that the exclusionary, tourists only atmosphere of the French Quarter will be multiplied and expanded across the city, and that many residents simply wont be able to return home.. . . .
Diane "Momma D" Frenchcoat never evacuated out of her Treme home on North Dorgenois Street, and has been helping feed and support 50 families, coordinating a relief and rebuilding effort consisting of, at its peak, 30 volunteers known as the Soul Patrol.
. . . .
Asked about her plan, Momma D had these words, "Rescue. Return. Restore. Can you hear what I'm saying, baby? Listen to those words again. Rescue, return, restore. We want the young, able-bodied men who are still here to stay to help those in need. And the ones that have been evacuated, we want them to come home and help clean up and rebuild this city. How can the city demand that we evacuate our homes but then have thousands of people from across this country volunteering to do the things that we can do ourselves?"
Community organizers like Momma D in Treme and Malik Rahim, who has a similar network in the Algiers neighborhood, are the forces for relief and rebuilding that need our help. The biggest disaster was not a hurricane, but the dispersal of communities, and that's the disaster that needs to be addressed first.
Yesterday a friend told me through tears, I just want to go back as if this never happened. I want to go back to my friends and my neighbors and my community. Its our community that has brought us security. People I know in New Orleans dont feel safer when they see Blackwater mercenaries on their block, but they do feel security from knowing their neighbors are watching out for them. And that's why the police and national guard and security companies on our streets havent brought us the security weve been looking for, and why discussions of razing neighborhoods makes us feel cold.
When we say we want our city back, we dont mean the structures and the institutions, and we dont mean law and order, we mean our community, the people we love. And that's the city we want to fight for.
[image by Ted Jackson from the Times Picayune]