Anne Rice asks, “Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?”
My dad has a CD of “Louisiana Party Music” that I have always loved listening too. It’s so sassy, offbeat, and loaded with attitude.
And the food... yum... jambalaya, gumbo, onion blossoms, mmmm... even the names are delicious. There used to be a great Cajun restaurant in Rotorua, they made the best garlic bread I’ve ever tasted.
Just a few weeks ago, watching a movie set in Louisiana I thought again that I’d love to go there one day. Maybe I will go there, some day, but New Orleans will never be the same again.
No, I don’t know what it means to lose this amazing city... but I feel as though, from a distance, I had a faint sense of what Anne Rice writes about:
The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy. Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.
Meanwhile, Jordan Flaherty writes:
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going... I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge...
...One cameraman told me "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don't want to be here at night."
While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.
Katrina Fundraiser: The movie "I Went to the Dance", Thursday 8 Sept, 7pm, Film Archive, $8/$6 filmarchive.co.nz Fantastic music. May see you there?
Posted by: Pamela at September 7, 2005 11:20 PMSorry, this is unrelated and you don't even know me, but you commented on Carla's blog that you went to the JAAM 23 launch. I was supposed to go to that, but couldn't make it; how was it?
Posted by: Pearce at September 8, 2005 02:31 PMI completely agree over the "looting" label. And frankly, even if you *do* take a water-damaged computer when you have no electricity or a place to even put it, I think it should be chalked up to shock and reaction, not "rational" criminality.
No person taking food, water, clothing or survival equipment in a complete disaster can possibly be villified as a law-breaker. These people were deserted and left to their fate, and if they can fill even some of their immense needs from local stores, good on them. No one should be criticised for taking care of family and community.