New Orleans

Springfield is at the top of the list for foreclosures in Massachusetts and sitting with the redoubtable Congressman Barney Frank, banking expert and one-man accountability squad, but people are still demanding a moratorium during the crises for foreclosures and have yet to win it, despite the Springfield City Council joining the call and FHA saying they are ready.  A federal disaster has been declared.  Occupancy for housing units was frightfully low (about 6%) before the tornado, yet no action.  Why after Katrina is this not automatic?  Why do families and their organizations have to start from scratch here?

Housing can’t be found.  There is still no moratorium stopping evictions for families still living in houses that have been foreclosed during this crisis.  What the frick?!?

This morning I have been listening to a video of interviews with survivors.  I did not need to watch.  I’ve heard all the stories before from different faces.  We are almost 30 days out from the disaster and people have their famous FEMA letters, but no money yet.  It seems that the emergency payments that helped us survive post-Katrina have not been issued.  The Red Cross has announced that it is closing shelters today and some of the survivors who were interviewed talked about the crushing indignity of having their cots and gear moved out yesterday as they got the notice.  Why do we still let the Red Cross muddle through the mess?  They are good at giving out water and food, waving their flag and raising money, but they don’t know how to handle housing or survivors once the first punch has been taken and the long sloughing fight to rebuild sets in.  Why are we still not being better?  This is a congressionally authorized corporation with virtually no accountability in Washington that preys on disorganized and panic victims thankful for any help.  Listening to one woman talk about how she felt Puerto Ricans and African-Americans faced discrimination at the hands of the Red Cross was just flat over the line for me!

Hotel rooms are going begging for guests in Springfield now, and there is word that survivors unable to locate housing may be relocated to some, but in a typical disaster catch-22, FEMA says it will reimburse the survivors for their lodging which means these poor, working families would have to come up with the money now on the front end and get reimbursed who knows when?

And, working, forget about that even though protecting livelihoods is lifeblood for families and for the community.  One woman talked about having lost her car and having no way to replace the transportation so knowing that her job was going to be the next thing she would lose and then she would have to “start all over.”

In New Orleans we had to learn how to organize to win on all of these fronts after Katrina and we’re still paying the price.  Now almost six years after Katrina where are new communities and new victims and survivors of disaster still facing the same maze of obstacles and obstinacy in the face of tragedy when our national and local policy should be an open and helping hand?

New Orleans

I loved David Simon’s The Wire, set in Baltimore.  I was never confused that it was “real” or some kind of docudrama about Baltimore.  It was good drama in an urban setting that was filled with straight talk, bent angles, and people from unions, politics, crime, and throughout the city that were multi-dimensional, complex, and felt real.  ACORN organizers and some other commentators in Baltimore felt slighted by the show because it didn’t depict the part of the world that included community organizing.  I got that, but I was a fan.

I’m having a harder time with Treme. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the show is on the air, and I’m delighted to see it set in New Orleans.  When they film in front of my house at Fredrick Douglass High School or elsewhere in the Bywater neighborhood where I live, I’m happy to move my truck out of the way.  I’m friendly to the caterers, truck drivers, security and duty cops.   I shake hands and give the thumbs up at local bars and restaurants featured as background for the action.  On that score it’s all good and thanks, Mr. Simon.

With The Wire I knew it was all just made up stuff, but I liked the gritty slices of the Baltimore we knew being part of the action.   Simon doesn’t know New Orleans, but in Treme he tries to compensate with more “historical” and “contemporary” references to substitute for the real New Orleans, the city he seems to like, but can’t quite grip, except from a tourist perspective, which just grates on me.  Even as great as New Orleans music is and as much as I like the exposure given to some of the local players as a stalwart citizen of the hometown, I often have trouble with the one-dimensional minstrel show aspects of all of this, which sometimes are just painful to watch.

One of the things that worked in The Wire was the nuanced and complex way that Simon, a former police and beat reporter up there, handled the bad guys.  They were real people.  He drew you in.  You rooted for some of the guys and against other guys.  There is no day in the streets of any city where I wouldn’t want to make sure that Omar had my back and was a block or two behind me.

New Orleans is a violent city, even more so that Baltimore, but after a year a half it is amateurish how Treme deals with this intrinsic part of the patter n of the city.  One of the main characters is the Indian chief whose struggle and cultural rectitude is supposed to attract some of our sympathy despite the fact that he is invariably a cranky son-of-a-bitch.  In the first season we watched him lay in wait and then beat up a young fellow within an inch of his life, and possibly to his death, who had stolen his tools.  Nothing more on that…it was all just left hanging and random.  In Treme the cops are plastic, tinny, and nothing more than crooks with a badge, save for one hero, who seems largely our hero because he gets along with the sniveling, heart on her sleeve lawyer, who is so committed to the truth that she can’t tell her teenage daughter about her father’s suicide.

The violence this season was a grisly rape and general beatdown of one of the main characters, a woman bartender, as she moved to close up.  Where was Simon on this story?  None of this was real.  Watching the “tourist” Treme, we’re supposed to believe that there is a bar in the hood in our fair city that doesn’t have a shotgun or some kind of firearm behind the counter.  We’re supposed to believe that our woman bartender wasn’t packing heat, mace and more.  We’re supposed to believe that there’s a woman or man barkeep in the City of New Orleans that blithely packs the day’s money in their purse or pocket and stands in the dark to lock the door.  Maybe all of that happens in Disneyland, some college town or Toronto or perhaps even Baltimore, but that’s not New Orleans, friend!

I don’t want to seem unkind about Treme, but the tourism tinge of everything also pulls everything about race out of kilter from the real city.  In a service industry where more than 50,000 people were employed in the hospitality industry before the storm and restaurants were unable to open for years because public housing was closed and affordable housing was out of reach for the largely African-American service workers trying to return to their jobs.  Despite the fact that this is the New Orleans industry, it is a afterthought seen through a story of white woman chef whose  black sous-chef has a French accent?   I don’t even want to touch the character that is a white former DJ, trying to be a rapper in our city which is famous for our hip hop and rappers.  One of the truest notes in the show slipped out this season when he admitted he had gone to Newman, an exclusive, uptown prep school, which to hometown folks just about said everything about this dude!  It also says yet more about Treme’s losing struggle to come to grips with the reality of race in the real city which can only be ignored in the tourist’s ghetto of New Orleans, where Simon and his team seem lost.

Using Wendell Pierce, a New Orleans native from Press Park, the first African-American suburban development in the city, as perhaps the key character doesn’t give Treme the cover it needs in Treme. He’s a trombone playing, good times, skirt chasing scamp, and he plays it to the hilt, but that’s simply a caricature.  For some reason Simon chose a cartoon figure rather than a someone who felt like a real working musician from the city.  You want to be a serious musician in tourist-Treme, then you need to be based in New York, speak Dutch, play the violin, or something.  Phyllis Montana, the real daughter of a former Indian chief, is one of the few touches of reality anywhere near all of this, and her line about Pierce getting a “job job” rather than all of these gigs was a lightening shot of reality in the show.  I can still remember having organized carriage drivers in the French Quarter and their endless arguments about whether there work was a “job” or a “hustle,” and all that went with that including unionization, benefits, respect and dignity.  This is real!

Speaking of caricatures, all New Orleans politicians are corrupt and incompetent.  Yawn.  This is the rap, not the reality.  It’s the uptown club view and the outsider’s assumption.  The Simon of The Wire knew better.  It’s time for that Simon to come back to work on Treme.

The references to Katrina are too painful in a tourist-Treme. I know someone who couldn’t watch a show the first season without crying.  The show does pull some heartstrings for locals, although in my view Katrina is just a docudrama reference and little more.  The real life drama in every family of return, rebuilding, rejection, or recovery just doesn’t make it into Treme. In real life the resilience of the city and its population to come back and remake the city is one of the great and lasting dramas of heroism of low and moderate income working people of all races and backgrounds.  It hurts me and is painful for me to have to watch every show and think about how much is missed.

Working with ACORN in New Orleans, we had a front row, frontline seat in that struggle, but like everything that has to do with real people in the city, working and lower income people that have been and will be the majority of the city, those fights and victories that prevented the hijacking of New Orleans, its neighborhoods, and people will simply stay another story for the real citizens rather than tourist-Treme.

I was driving to the gym yesterday in my truck.  I still have a “Call ACORN – Hurricane Recovery” sign on the back.  I will always ride for the brand.  A car came up Rampart as I drove up the Treme neighborhood boundary line and started honking.  The passenger window was down, so that when he caught up to me, I looked over.  A guy was grinning with his thumb up, and I could see him mouthing the words, “Yeah, ACORN!” as he signaled and turned right on Esplanade.

Treme is better than nothing about New Orleans, but there’s a great show about the real city and its people that is still waiting to be made.   Sadly, Treme is not that show.  At least not yet.

New Orleans

It is interesting to see what is learned in different countries from this impending catastrophe.

Germany moves to shut down all of their nuclear plants to make sure they are ready and able to deal with the kinds of problems being seen in Japan. I’ve never heard of an earthquake in Germany, and they are on ready alert.

In the United States where we haven’t licensed a new nuclear plant since 1978, so all of our stuff is 30 years old and counting, but we just merrily dance along even with plants built on seismic fault lines like Diablo Canyon in California, content to read a press release from the Atomic Energy Commission that “they’re on it!” and a statement from President Obama in the White House that essentially says, “What me worry?” And, yet, from the press spin we are all over the Japanese situation, chiding them for their efforts, and in an exercise of unmitigated gall without even the hint of irony, our nuke experts and media mavens are pissing all over the Japanese for not being transparent.

Wow! Why have we not shutdown any plants with similar design structures as the endangered plants in Japan?

Why have we not shutdown any plants with spent rod storage systems like those in Japan?

Given what we have learned from Katrina alone, much less Japan, why are we not making backup power systems redundant and more secure?

And, I don’t know squat about it!

The New York Times ran an article today about the reset of the anti-nuclear movement and of all did so with a picture of politicians and interviews with musicians like Jackson Browne. God love all of them, but those are the come-late folks and the hangers on after the organizers and activists do the real work of movement building (with hearty thanks to all). Let’s hear some love and support for the people who need to fire up the movements, organize, and win us some real protection!

New Orleans

All of which makes the scenes from the one-two punch caused by the 8.9 level earthquake and tsunami in the prefectures of northern Japan, even more disturbing to me. In Kobe the Japanese government had responded with billions for relief within a month of the earthquake and the priorities were first the poor and elderly and their return, all of which was opposite the USA response to Katrina, always too late, and usually too little, and never the poor first, regardless of the images embedded forever in our minds from scores of camera angles. Even with such rapid response, Kobe officials were frank with us that once the elderly and poor were relocated, even though population had returned in absolute terms to the city, a huge percentage of those populations had not been able to come back.

As always, we fool ourselves it seems. The early CNN reports mentioned the rapid response, the preparation, and the improved building standards post-Kobe, which would keep the death toll and damage estimates down. Now only days later the speculation on deaths dwarfs Kobe and is estimated between 10,000 and 20,000, which we can only pray is an exaggeration. And, though building standards may have been improved, there is no way to read about the nuclear plant generations being set at ground level on the assumption that the seawalls were adequate protection, and not feel that our hubris continually tempts fate and returns disaster.

The government in Japan still seems to be doing the right thing time after time, but the Cassandra warning here once again is that we have to have vital and robust governments willing and citizens willing to pay the prices to support adequate infrastructure protection if any of us can ever really feel safe for our families and future.

New Orleans

There was a time in New Orleans where at the end of your service as a juror you received a certificate signed by a judge that was your “get out of jury duty” pass forever.  Then we were told that it was “one and done.”  When called again some years ago, I marched down with my certificate to be told the obvious:  there were less people in the city and more crime, so expect to be called whenever and wherever.

Everyone becomes an expert in how it should all be changed, but it’s something you soldier through.   The best way to go in my book is with a spirit of doing your time and getting to know your fellow citizens better.   My view of justice and a system that can mete it out and the approach my fellow citizens take to the same question, often scares and scars me for years.  I’ll try to spare you, but it won’t be easy.

Did you know that the lawyers like to ask jury panels what radio station they listen to in order to given them insight?  Bizarre.  One woman said a number and then later asked the judge to make sure a note was affixed by the lawyers that the station was “gospel.”  She clearly didn’t want her other jurors to know she was listening to devil music or something.  My seat mates were a UAW worker on the Saturn booster rockets at Michoud where we could both complain about bargaining with Jacobs Technology now, an adult bakery owner from the Quarter (the stenographer had to ask for two repeats on that one), a Honduran woman who now translates for courts on the West Bank who gave me advice on opening an office there, and a doctor I have known for decades.

The case we were impaneled to hear was a 4 year plus piece of mayhem from the day after Katrina.  I had to admit that I have trouble believing almost anything from the “fog of war” chaos and anarchy where the police would be the ONLY witnesses to multiple charges of attempted murder supposedly involving looting.  Oh, Lord!  I warned the lawyers for both sides and the judge, so rest assured I wasn’t picked, and neither were my other buddies except for the translator.  I told them I could be fair, but I think in all truth this was not the case for me.

I pulled the story from the Times-Picayune. It was on a PDF page from those days since there was no print edition the day after the storm and only an internet offering of sorts.  The lead  article on the page was about looting by residents AND police in stores all over the city.  At the bottom was this piece giving a thumbnail of the case.

Looter shoots N.O. officer in the head

by Matt Brown, New Orleans Times-Picayune West Bank Bureau  8/31/05

A New Orleans police officer was shot in the head Tuesday after confronting looters on the West Bank, officials said.

Details were scarce, but officials said the officer and another officer confronted several looters stealing merchandise from the Chevron station at the corner of Shirley and Gen. DeGaulle drives. One of the officers went inside the store, while

the other remained outside and confronted a man he saw looting the store. When he did, another looter came from behind and shot the officer in the head, a police officer told a reporter for The Times-Picayune.

The officer who was shot was rushed to West Jefferson Medical Center, where he underwent surgery.  Other officers told a reporter that reports from the hospital said the wounded officer was expected to survive. Jefferson Parish deputies arrested four people on the scene, and police said one of those arrested was wounded in the arm after exchanging gunfire with another officer.

I almost wrote more, but despite the fact that of 60 people interviewed, and only one or two had any knowledge of this incident from that time, I would hate to speculate and somehow imbalance the delicate scales of citizen justice.

It’s going to be a long month for this citizen!