Down in the 9th Ward, it's good to see that some folks are doing something. I've got only the details from nola.com and their own promotional
website, but it looks like a group of
neocrunchers is setting up shop in the lower 9 and Algiers - with a free health clinic and various other types of aid, such as tool rentals, mold abatement, and, it seems,
polemics.
Of course, the actual physical presence of these people in the city can only be a good thing, and their intention to stay for the long haul is also a good thing. But how long will their trust funds last?
Is that a cheap shot? Maybe. Maybe not, though. I believe we ought to be acknowledging the problems present now, before the storm, and historically in the city of New Orleans - problems that existed mostly for poor, black (
emphatically so, it has been said) citizens of the parts of the city that few not residing in ever saw, unless, of course, they were going to
Spellcaster (I'm, in fact, surprised Common Ground didn't just set up their base camp there). As I said
before, poverty was a pervasive and isolating phenomenon.
Even tho I'm certain these people have had a lot of experience with racial tension and poverty at
Oberlin - or that they've at least taken a hip-hop dance class, and, probably, dressed up as
Ali G this halloween - I'm still somehow not confident that this Alternative Spring Break: New Orleans is anything more than an immersion class writ large.
The best thing I can say about their
Katrina manifesto is that it wasn't a
Katrina Mynifesto and had no humyn rights declarations. But the talk about solidarity and "multi-directional communications networks" is exactly what I just finished reading articles on for lit theory. Not that lit theory is bad, just that it won't help you butt heads with Orleans Parish School Board on when you should reopen a gutted middle school. And that's where the real long-term community solidarity is going to come from.
[PS & BTW, how, exactly, are they a community group?]
Common Ground is doing good work, from the pictures I've seen and the accounts I've read. If I were back in the city, I'd probably seriously consider pitching in (this is the point at which I get labelled part of the problem). But I'm not back in New Orleans yet. However, I will be two months from now, and I will be two years from now.
So I repeat my earlier question: will their trust funds last that long? I hope so.
Rue de la Course could use their patronage.
