From Celsus’s most recent post:
We have let New Orleans go. This is what leaving a city to die looks like. It’s just that the nation has chosen the most painful, anguishing, sadistic way to do it. A death by a thousand cuts method, certain to bankrupt and destroy the lives of as many hardworking Americans as possible, and salt the wounds with a mock debate about whether “New Orleans should be saved” or lies about the amount of help we received. Not enough funding to succeed, but just enough to appear like a thin reed of hope, which is anchored to nothing.
His chosen words made me think of the following lyrics from Widow’s Walk by Suzanne Vegaand how I often apply them to my relationship with New Orleans and the world around.
Though I saw it splinter, I keep looking out to sea.
Like a dog with little sense, I keep returning,
To the very area where I did see the thing go down,
As if there’s something at the site I should be learning.
Earlier today I received an email from a local Flickr-er asking me to post pictures to a pool designed for those who could not attend Jazzfest owing to the $45 ticket prices. This gentleman is convinced somehow that Jazzfest, recovery czar Ed Blakely and Anschutz Entertainment Group (and maybe even Shell Oil) are all in collusion to bring in outside acts, raise Jazzfest prices and send the money out of / sell out New Orleans. As far as I know (and feel free to help me out here), AEG was brought in by the Jazzfest organization to manage the festival and Shell made the second weekend of Jazzfest possible again.
We have had so many battles to fight since before and after the flood that you’d think most of us understand the social, economic, political and cultural complexity that is New Orleans, and try not to thicken the plot through poor logic. By no means do I understand it all and definitely do not assert that our recovery administration has the best interest of New Orleans at heart (I’ve said before that putting the development cart before the education horse is not good policy) or that certain officials are not in it for untempered and short-term personal profits. However, to conflate all entities that do not correspond with one’s sociopolitical views and blame them for destroying the city is not constructive, either. This is suicide, along with the murder, by a thousand self-inflicted cuts. It makes me feel that in the all-out war for New Orleans, we haven’t even worked through our assumptions and interpretations, and may never will. Again, I don’t claim to have the “proper” outlook, but am willing to put personal preferences aside specifically not to reinvent New Orleans in my mental image in the name of The People.
Few problems here can be whittled down to or solved based on Republicans vs. Democrats, fascists vs. socialists, conservatives vs. liberals, developers vs. natives, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, corporations vs. consumers, the rest of the damned 49 vs. Louisiana or even Louisiana vs. Louisiana. There are facts, however: Our wetlands, levees, local government, schools, hospitals, roads and people are broken, they can all be fixed and haven’t yet. Even if that overseas aid which we shamefully turned down had been graciously accepted, I guarantee you that a hefty chunk of it would not have seen the light of day and instead vacuumed into federal, state and local pockets. Knowing that more money, committees, political flavors, administrations upon administrations and personal biases aren’t the answer, what are the paths forward? Why are we still mired in tribal skirmishes and mock debates when the problems continue to fester and remain glaringly unsolved? Sure, some of it is completely justified in the name of democracy and sorting ourselves out, but most of it is … what?
As always, I don’t know the answers, but refuse to couch the question in terms of convenient fallbacks. Yes, Bush and his cabal have to go after wreaking damage in America and the world over, Nagin and Blanco are tools and not leaders and every single government and private entity has its share of inexcusable corruption and skulduggery at the expense of struggling and hardworking people everywhere, but amalgamating it all into The Giant Flaming Asteroid Of SocioPolitical Strife & Doom and blaming it is not going to bring our city back. There is a lot more to it – Us. You and me. Our pre-existing and intricately-woven values and beliefs that govern how much we as citizens tolerate in those we put in charge, in each other and in ourselves. How far we are willing to go in terms of responsibility to self and community, and farther. How much a lot of this is more soul-searching than anything else. The questions now are: At whose expense are we searching our souls and figuring things out? And is education (by this, I mean literacy, access and intellectual stimulation, not #2 pencils, school uniforms, tests and college) the panacea?
