In Lower Ninth Ward, Feds Still Turn a Blind Eye

Cynthia White of San Francisco recently spent a week in New Orleans as part of a UUSC JustWorks Katrina Relief camp. She wrote the following account.

Our van stops in the Lower Ninth Ward. We exit in awe as we take in our surroundings. This is the first destination of our New Orleans tour. I can assure you we are not in the French Quarter.

Hundreds of shiny plastic signs are nailed to dilapidated homes and stressed electric poles. They read: “We Buy Homes,” “Prudential Real Estate,” “We Demolish,” “Concrete Slab Removal,” “Mold Inspection.” Official spray-painted graffiti marks water-stained facades where the Feds came and went, leaving notice of their search for stranded people, bodies, and animals. Yards are littered with debris. Broken windows reveal cluttered rooms with heaps of furniture, strollers, and clothes. I feel like an intruder and I wonder if I am really in North America.

Perhaps one in every 10 to 15 houses is undergoing reconstruction. Each home is a small beacon of hope for the thousands of people who were displaced after Hurricane Katrina. We are invited into Miss Mary’s (Mary Fontenot, director of UUSC partner ACT) house, who is also leading our tour. This is one of the promising ones on the vacant block. She is living in a FEMA trailer park several miles from here. Her friends and family came together to help rebuild her house that sat for weeks under 10 feet of water. Aside from the frame, nothing was salvageable. But that was the past and Miss Mary only exudes hope and energy for a new future.

Mary, like many other community organizers, is devoted to bringing back the neighborhoods of New Orleans. She speaks openly and passionately about the challenges they are up against and the endless battles they have fought to regain the homes that they own. The stories she relays are tragic and truly unbelievable. She reiterates again and again how they have “fought tooth and nail” for the little progress that has been made. She tells us that the first health clinic since Katrina is about to reopen down the block. The delays have come from insignificant details concerning governmental building codes. The small building sat for months unoccupied because the handicap ramp was an inch off.

It is difficult to even begin to understand the hurdles these communities face. There are no churches, no hospitals, no schools, and no businesses left to offer the basic communal necessities. Even if families come home and manage to fork out the necessary money to gut and rebuild their homes, where do they find work? Where do their children go to school? Many of these communities still don’t have potable water or electricity.

The government continues to turn a blind eye to its people as plans for industrial expansion and an airport are in the works for the Upper Ninth Ward where most homes were totally obliterated or demolished. In this case, developers, contractors, and surveyors were allowed into the ward even before the original homeowners.

Mary’s voice is taxed as it is probably the most important tool she has. She apologizes for her hoarse throat, smiles, and hugs her friend with whom she shares a “temporary” trailer. Despite their odds they are reaching out and moving forward. They are organizing community meetings, disseminating information, listening to the needs of their neighbors, taking action, and most importantly keeping their faith knowing that the situation can only get better.

We turn to get back on the bus. We have two more hours of driving through New Orleans. Twenty more miles of another half dozen neighborhoods that are in better or worse shape than the Lower 9th. A mockingbird calls as a bulldozer speeds through the empty streets. We turn the corner and Mary points out the freshly painted health clinic. I, too, feel a sense of hope and an overwhelming admiration for the people of these communities.