Arise New Orleans!: A merging of the old and the new

For now, I post some images of New Orleans. I have more as well as lots to say about our trip there and the people we spoke with so I will post a longer narrative later. I arrived in Houston Saturday afternoon. I'm happy to be here and will put up a separate posting on my time here later.

On New Orleans In the lower 9th ward we walked two 3 block stretches. On one, we counted 27 empty, abandoned, or otherwise shut down residential dwellings--many of them duplexes. Two years after Katrina the devastation to people and communities is still palpable. FEMA trailers were everywhere, sometimes in clustrs, sometimes next to single family dwellings where it was difficult to tell which was the primary dwelling, though in some cases it appeared that people were living in the trailers as they fixed up their flood ravaged home. The streets were full of piles of debris, often neatly piled but where are the trucks to haul this unhealthy and unsightly trash away? I think we were both surprised of the economic and racial mix of the neighborhood. Brick homes stood next to narrow wooden shotgun homes but the ability of the owners to repair seemed to hit across economic sectors.

A red x marks houses slated for non-voluntary destruction. Fema trailers abounded throughout the neighborhood.

Messages on abandoned houses in the lower 9th ward.

Lisa along the river and our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Latino painters working on a house in the French Quarter

Monumnent to the Immigrant along the Mississippi Riverwalk

Unfortunately, my contacts with habitat for Humanity didn't work out. I probably waited too long to call the supervisor to get us scheduled for a volunteer assignment for one day's worth of work. I'd hoped to meet with a Chicano from Califas who is out there working with Habitat as well, and we made plans, but somehow they fell through. It happens. I did have occasion to ahve some good conversations with some workers. Lisa and I struck up a a conversation with Juan, a Honduran immigrant who has lived in New Orleans for 25 years. he told me he is retired and receives a pension, but he continues to work 2 jobs, one full-time and one part-time, as a parking valet. He said he had a decent job in Honduras at the time but he didn't foresee a good future for his four children so he came to the US on a guest visa and decided to stay. His kids are all grown now and he no longer visits his home country because his life is here. he is here on a resident visa now, but has not filed for citizenship. On Wednesday morning I went to the Robert E. Lee circle where we heard day alborers gathered. By the time I arrived at 7:30 it was pretty empty though I did see one small group of men hanging around and one lone Latino standing off to the side. I approached him and struck up a a conversation. He seemd a bit wary of talking with me and asked that I not take his picture. I learned from him that he had only just arrived from Gutierrez, MX (near DF) the week before. He had never left his hometown before coming to the US and had only done so because there was no work for him to feed his family there. He went to N.O. because he knew of other men from his hometown who had come recently and they offered to let him stay with them while he found work. He spoke no English and he seemed both earnest and anxious as he told me he had to try this. He sad thus far no one had messed with him and he hoped to start getting work regularly. I left him and went over to MLK near the Super Dome where I leanred a health agency coinducted outreac and was planning to build a clinic. Here was where the real action was as this intersection was croweded with day laborers--mostly African American and Latinos. It was an intersection comprised of several burned out anmd otherwise vacated buidlings with men mostly on one side of the street gathering under trees, on the stoop of a charred house talking and eating food from the two vendors in the area. One was two women working out of their car selling tamlaes and cool drinks. The other was a more typical taco truck, though they, too, only sold tamales ($2.00 each)and cold drinks. As the men gathered around I heard some of the African Americans ordering their food and Spanish and complimented one of them on his really good accent. He told me "Yeah, my homeboys here have been teaching me to speak it right." Around 10:00am the traffic around the taco truck started dying out and I had a chance to speak with the young owner. He told me he'd been in N.O. about a year and came because he had family who had been in the area for about 10 years. He said he been an accountant in Mexico but that work was unsteady so he in his wife decided to make the move. Like the other vendors, he'd started off in a car selling food to day laborers ta different sites around the city (Lowe's, Home Depot, etc.) but in March he'd earned enough money to buy a truck and that they could stay in this one spot and do well on a daily basis. He said they made the food really early and were finished shortly after 10:00 a.m. everyday. I asked him if he had any regrets about the move and he said "no, not at all." (These are my paraphrases as we were speaking in Spanish.) he said that life in Mexico was anyhwere from 10 to 70 on a scale of 100 and that here life was 100 for him because he and his wife could work hard and get ahead (i.e. buying the truck, saving money, having a reliable source of income). I asked him if he was ever harrassed by anyone and he said "No, but that his truck was 'una lugar de historia'", that is that he heard everyone's stories there. To that end he said that some of the guys told stories of being robbed, especially when they were by themseleves at night. I asked if there were tnesions with los africanos, and he said no, but that most of the problems were with los morenos. I was a bit confused by this. Perhaps my question to him was muddled by the way I phrased it, though in my experience African Americans are often referred to as "negros." So I'm not sure if he meant morenos in reference to darker skinned Latinos or if he was referring to the local African American population. I akse dif he had trouble with the police or racism in the city and he said the police left them alone. He pointed to the signs from the day laborer association in the area that listed rules for workers in the area and said that they were really good about coming around and letting them know their rights--and their obligations for everyone getting along in the area. The association provided trash cans and bags and asked that everyone not litter, clean up after themselves and respect each other. He said it worked. As I spoke with him he was sweeping the area around his truck. He told me that his younger cousin was picked on in school for speaking Spanish and that they didn't feel like the school had a very good policy for Spanish speakers. I told him about my project and he asked for a card and my phone number so he could call me some time.