Down the River

I went back to New Orleans in April, this time with a group of fellow UU's. Funny, we had not met on 16th Street but many of us became fast friends while working and playing together for a week.

Many of the neighborhoods are in the same bad shape they were in September 06 when I was there last. The tourists are back and the Qua'ta and the Marigny are back, full of brass bands, cool jazz, Abita and rum punch. The Lower Ninth has been left to rot in the sun and the mold, in the shadow of the levees that are still too shallow to withstand another storm. Before and After the storm are still how they count time. Many people are more than willing to let their anger out recounting stories of those days high with water and death and anger.

I don't believe that I have ever felt more ashamed than I did listening to an African American women telling us the story of her journey in those days after the storm withdrew, hearing about the cops with a gun to her uncle's head, the same one who told her "We don't want n@##$%s in this part of town", her search for a place to sleep. Ashamed for the actions of other whites toward blacks, those in power worrying more about property than people and about white, wealthy folks' property above all others, the shame of knowing that even one more week does not do justice to the vast work there is to do to make that city whole again.

Go visit. Hammer a nail, drink a Fee Na Nay, eat some red beans and rice, listen to someone bitch about the Road Home program, bitch about what we've done wrong, be the change, witness.

Photo: Front steps where a house used to be, across the street from the levee that collapsed in the Lower Ninth Ward.