It has been a month since twenty-five of us traveled to New Orleans during spring break to volunteer with Historic Green, a nonprofit sustainable development program whose aim is to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward – an area damaged more from government neglect than Katrina itself – while implementing green building ideas. While the group organized projects in the Lower Ninth Ward, our Goddard NOLA group was assigned to lots throughout the Holy Cross area, a neighborhood south of the Lower Ninth.
Our group split up and worked on projects ranging from installing radiant barriers – stapling foil-like material onto attic rafters to prevent thermal heat absorption – to rebuilding playgrounds and lots. Though I was assigned to a few different tasks, most of the week was spent installing radiant barriers. With Kelly C. and Kiran B., I learned the process of weatherizing homes – inspecting and sealing parts of the home to keep out precipitation and heat – from the Louisiana Green Corps, an organization that provides Louisiana youths our age an opportunity to not only engage in sustainable projects in their communities but also learn useful job skills.
We managed to visit other parts of the city as well. We visited the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood and section of the levees that were meant to protect the Lower Ninth. Tuesday was St. Patrick’s Day, and if New Orleans is known for anything, it is the French Quarter and its party atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, the French Quarter was the liveliest and, with the exception of the bottle-littered curbs, one of the cleaner and busier parts of the city. If we had visited only the French Quarter, we would have hardly noticed any post-Katrina damage in the city. The Garden District, home to historic mansions and Tulane University’s scenic campus, looked like the polar opposite of the Lower Ninth. Compare St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church to the First Thessalonians Missionary Baptist Church, a seemingly abandoned church in the middle of the Holy Cross Neighborhood.
Like many others in the group, I had never visited the Deep South, let alone New Orleans. A “modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah” was the description our hosts at the India House, the hostel in which we stayed, gave us. With the exception of the Southern manners and old money neighborhoods, the description was not too far from the truth, unfortunately. One clerk at the India House told a story of his friend whose property thirty different individuals claimed after Katrina. It was not surprising, then, that a majority of the residents in the less-developed areas like Holy Cross did not return after the hurricane. Historic Green recognized the challenges in returning to these ruined neighborhoods. It is much easier to raise money for a specific cause than it is to implement a lasting change in people’s behavior, since most individuals are hesitant about changing their lifestyles. Historic Green tried to achieve just that: rather than mostly focusing on fundraising and monetary donations, the organization was driven by volunteers’ and sponsors’ dedication to helping the residents to live sustainably, while allowing residents to retain their own identity.
We were reminded of home when Majora Carter came to speak to the volunteers of Historic Green. Raised in the South Bronx, Carter witnessed the sort of government neglect NOLA residents experienced during Katrina. She came to New Orleans to speak of her neighborhood, whose proximity to factories and landfills impacted the health and development of the Lower Bronx. Because of exposure to chemical waste and polluted air, Carter claimed, Bronx children were more likely to develop asthma and other health complications. She founded Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit organization responsible for a number of green rebuilding projects in the community. Sustainable development, she claimed, was the only way to involve both residents and the government to responsibly maintain South Bronx.
Carter’s story reminded us of the similarities New Orleans and New York City share: both are port cities with a large minority population, are popular tourist destinations, and were targets of the worst disasters in the US for decades. Yet the differences are more apparent: New York is our nation’s largest city, while less than 500,00 live in New Orleans. New York’s economy is diversified, while New Orleans relies on mostly petroleum and port commerce. New York is known as a global city: Manhattan in particular has such a large stake in international finance, government and media that its security is of greatest concern to the New York City government. New Orleans, while gradually attracting more businesses since Katrina hit, remains relatively unimportant to national security. Because of these differences, the federal government’s response differed greatly. Likewise, national perception of the two tragedies differed. As Americans, it might have been easier to stomach the idea that foreigners with a radical agenda carried out the unpredicted 9/11 attacks rather than see our local, state and federal governments in chaos, struggling to deliver sufficient aid to its own people in the face of anticipated disaster.
Despite our more efficient administration, New York is anything but perfect; our city claims one of the largest income disparities in the nation. About 10 miles away from the Financial District is the Bronx, whose quality of life is visually different from that of a typical Wall Street financier. Like our participation in World AIDS Day at Riverside Church, Sustainable South Bronx showed how community outreach is sometimes the only effective means of addressing problems; governments, like individuals, tend to be reactive rather than proactive on issues not immediately important to their interests. If the residents were to revive the Lower Ninth, they needed to start taking an active role in rebuilding their own community, rather than completely rely on authority. Perhaps that was what I appreciated most about the entire experience: while residents openly shared their experiences with Katrina, our stay was not so much a focus on discussing who was at fault as it was an onward effort to rebuild. By stressing the ability of the Lower Ninth to sustainably redevelop itself, residents proved to the government their refusal of giving up their one and only home but also their willingness to improve their lifestyles not just for themselves, but for the environment. In the very least, we as NYU students need to consider our own presence in New York, and how our conduct and expansion might impact residential areas beyond Greenwich Village – areas like the South Bronx.
We invested ourselves – emotionally and physically – in a neighborhood over a thousand miles away, leaving with an appreciation for New Orleans and its resilience, but also a sobering look at how residents in any city are treated in a bureaucracy. We were grateful to the residents of the Lower Ninth for inviting us to help rebuild their one and only home, while reminding us of our own challenges back in New York.
Many thanks go to the hospitable folks at the India House, Historic Green/LA Green Corps, and New Orleans for making our stay memorable, and for everybody who donated for making this experience possible.
-Jimmy T.
Links:
http://www.historicgreen.org/
Saturday, May 2, 2009
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