In New Orleans, Kindness Trumped Chaos

[babylonsister]

In New Orleans, Kindness Trumped Chaos
Lessons of dedication, solidarity, love, and recovery, five years after Katrina.

by Rebecca Solnit


The taxi driver called me "girlfriend" and "sweetheart" with the familiar sweetness of New Orleanians, so I figured I could ask a few personal questions. He was from the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the neighborhoods inundated by Katrina--a mostly poor, mostly black edge of the city isolated and imperiled by two manmade canals--and it had taken him three and a half years to return to New Orleans. He still wasn't in his neighborhood, but he was back in the city, and his family was back, and they were determined to come back all the way.

What happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is more remarkable than almost anyone has told. More than a million volunteers came to New Orleans to gut houses, rebuild, and stand in solidarity with the people who endured not just a hurricane but a deluge of Bush Administration incompetence and institutionalized racism at all levels of government, which temporarily turned the drowned city into a prison. Supplies were not allowed in by a panicky government; people were not allowed out, and a wholly unnatural crisis ensued.

Even so, an astounding wave of solidarity and empathy arose. At Hurricanehousing.org more than 200,000 people volunteered to shelter evacuees, often in their own homes. And then there were those legions of volunteers, many of them white, working in a city that had been two-thirds black.

I have again and again met passionate young activists who intended to come for a week or a month and never left. In the Lower Ninth, my taxi driver's neighborhood, things looked better than even six months before. Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation now has dozens of solar-powered homes, built on stilts for the next inundation, scattered across the lowlands of the neighborhood. New businesses have opened on St. Claude Avenue, the main thoroughfare, and children play in the once-abandoned streets.

It's hard to say that there is a recipe for solidarity across race and class lines. During crises, the official reaction from government and media is often widespread fear--based on a belief that in the absence of institutional authority people revert to Hobbesian selfishness and violence, or just feckless conduct. Scholars Lee Clarke and Karon Chess call this fear of the public, particularly the poor and nonwhite public, "elite panic." Because these "elites" shape reaction as well as opinion, their beliefs can be deadly.

But the truth is that most people are altruistic, resourceful, and constructive during crisis. A disaster is actually threatening to elites, not because the response is selfish but because it often unfolds like a revolution, in which the status quo has evaporated.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/29-1

[hlthe2b]

1. Nice to read a very positive story such as this... K&R

[nolabear]

2. Thank you for posting this. If we recognize the hope and goodness maybe others will emulate it.

Really, people can be wonderful, and I wish it was celebrated more.

[babylonsister]

4. You inspired me when I read this because of this outstanding

thread: thank you again, nolabear. And don't give up the ship. :pals:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9040560

On the 5th Anniversary, I Visit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Thanks.

Yes, people are generally decent. I've been in a few situations where people absolutely had to depend on each other, and they came through for each other. This is very worth remembering.

[Cresent City Kid]

5. We also helped each other

I'm certainly grateful for all those who took up the cause, and to you for posting this.

I was in an apartment building that become a tightly knit community in the absence of all other traces of civiliation. I didn't hear the reports, based on rumor, of widespread chaos until I made it to San Antonio. I was a litte surprised, my experience was very different. I saw people who barely had enough water for themselves give sips to strangers who looked distressed.

Of course there was some chaos and violent behavior, but the fears mentioned of a total breakdown were unfounded. Even when I ventured toward downtown to find my brother, I didn't see anything to this effect. We didn't need the authorities to be kind to each other, we just need them to get supplies in days earlier, by air drop if necessary.

[NOLALady]

6. Our neighborhood

community immediately went into survival mode helping each other. Those who stayed kept an eye on the homes and fed the pets of those who left. We took turns checking on the elderly and assisting those without transportation. We cleared our streets long before the National Guard came through. Of course the good ole boys formed a "neighborhood watch".

But many New Orleanians told me stories of violence coming from the law enforcement. While the citizens were doing their best to survive and help each other, law enforcement seemed to be having a meltdown.

[rocktivity]

7. As Randi Rhodes once put it so beautifully

if human beings were instinctively bad, they would have themselves out centuries ago.

If there was any silver linings in 9/11 and Katrina, it was the way we "lesser people" stood up and rose to the challenge. It's what keeps me going.

:patriot:
rocktivity

[shrike]

8. In the movie 'Starman," with Jeff Bridges, the alien hero makes a remark

I always thought was wonderful. He said that one of the things he likes best about humans is that "you're at your best when things are at their worst."