The new New Orleanian

(Click on Photo to enlarge)
Ashe Cultural Arts Center
September 30, 2007
New Orleans, La

Dear Family and Friends,

I cringed when she said it. "I want to change the world."

I met her the other night. Her socially conscious mantra got her here, I'm sure. New Orleans is experiencing a surge of America's well-educated and upwardly mobile 20 and 3o somethings.

Some call us vanguards. Others YURPs (young urban rebuilding professionals). We reflect America's portrait of higher education. We--Americans--all seem to be represented, but the new New Orleanians are dominantly white.

The program I'm in reflects the transplant trend. There are 17 people under 3o in my AmeriCorps program. Fifteen are from outside New Orleans. Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Texas, Nebraska, Ohio, Arkansas and Maryland are represented.

Twelve of us are white.

The upwardly mobile transplants must remember that New Orleans is different from New York, Seattle, San Francisco or Chicago.

It was her first night in town.

She had the attitude that a good New Orleans first night will give to anyone--the I love it here attitude. She didn't say "I want to change the world" in a very serious manner. It was more of a "why'd you choose here questions and a because I wanted to change the world" answers.

If you think about this place post-storm, any new person somehow has that idea inside them somewhere. I do believe we're all optimists. The Cubs are going to win the series and I'm going to save New Orleans kind of deep down thoughts.

It's poetic.

But, I cringe, not because of the thoughts. I have them too, sometimes. But, because in a City that was 70 percent black before the storm, that romance and heritage and whatever adjective you want to put in that made it worth saving in many ways was built by African-Americans.

In comparison to the birth of New Orleans, renaissance-driven YURPS or Vanguards will be important but not world beaters--role players, not stars.

So, yes, I cringe when I hear "I'm going to change the world in New Orleans."

Whatever we do, vanguards must remember that money for deposits and travel, dishware and furniture is a luxury few have. Over 100,000 New Orleanians are still displaced. Many homeowners are still paying mortgages on destroyed houses or played roulette with minimal insurance on homes they owned outright. A couple hundred bucks a month means more to some than others.

Many say the new New Orleanian is what this City needs to survive. I say, the City--its displaced and returned--have done more for us than we've done for them. That fragile balance, between new and old, must be thought and spoken about as New Orleans recovers.


Best,

Robert

St. Bernard Parish: New Orleans' Overlooked Neighbor

St. Bernard Parish (County)
New Orleans’ Overlooked Neighbor
Chalmette, La.
June 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

People are drawn to the places they’ve lived. I couldn't imagine returning home to devastation. Still today, sunglasses block eyes, but not tears. For the residents of St. Bernard, many approaching year two in FEMA trailers and frequenting restaurants not quite like they remembered, every day is a struggle for attention.

New Orleans became the crown jewel of KATRINA’s seedy remains and attention. The Big Easy is the high school quarterback in the post-KATRINA competition for love and affection.

It’s made St. Bernard Parish feel like the last kid picked for dodge ball.

Murphy Oil, based in Chalmette, La., failed to properly hurricane-proof one of its massive storage tanks. Twenty-five thousand barrels spilled on the parks, streets and homes of St. Bernard parish. St. Bernard's road to recovery has and will continue to be an uphill battle given its proximity to Orleans Parish.

A friend of mine and fellow AmeriCorpsian, John Haley, is stationed in St. Bernard Parish. He lives in a FEMA trailer. The digs are nice but small. They remind me of a studio in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

John took me on a tour of St. Bernard. Born out of white-flight during segregation, most Chalmettians are white working middle-class citizens. Pre-K population of St. Bernard was 67,000 according to the 200o Census. Locals estimate about 27,000 are there today.

The homes are suburban renditions of the Lower Ninth Ward. Two and 300,000 dollar pre-storm properties sit gutted and vacant block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

One high school is open. So is one major grocery store. And one entrepreneurial Domino’s franchise owner operates out of a trailer adjacent to his flooded business. The delivery guys take pizza through a makeshift drive-thru window.

Massive FEMA camps are the new neighborhoods for many Chalmettians.

When a visitor, developer wants to volunteer or help in the gulf-coast they think, “New Orleans, here I come. “

It’s only natural.

Overlooking St. Bernard could be fatal for the parish, New Orleans’ neighbor to the east.

Many St. Bernard residents, according to John, are optimistic about their Parish’s future. And in America, the last kid picked for the game usually grows up to be the Doctor of the group.

Best,

Robert

New Orleans' Inconvenient Truth

For The Children Literacy Program
May 3, 2007
New Orleans, La.

Family and Friends--

The people in room 213 have what you want in lawmakers.

Passion. Clarity of thought. Action.

It’s too bad they’re in the fifth grade.

At Banneker Elementary, students are penning letters to Louisiana Congressman Bobby Jindal about the daily erosion of the Louisiana wetlands, which serve as a natural protection from hurricanes and tropical storms for New Orleans.

“I think that we need the wetlands because it slows down the hurricanes that are coming our way,” 11-year-old Alvin says. “We don’t want to have the Gulf of Mexico to be right next to us.”

Ten-year-old Thaddeus wants Coastal Erosion and its threat to be a 2008 Presidential issue.

Dear Senator Barack Obama,

“I don’t want the Gulf of Mexico to be in the Ninth Ward because that is where I’m from,” he wrote.

“I was here for the hurricane and I live in the lower ninth ward and I had to swim in 22-feet of water.

I lost my step-little-sister in the flood. My little sister was only four-years-old.

We lost everything. See, this is why we need to save the wetlands.”

The hour before, the AmeriCorps team had a discussion/yelling contest about Coastal Erosion using New Orleans'
Times -Picayune writers Bob Marshall and Mark Schleifstein’s three part series, “LAST CHANCE: The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast” as a reference.

Marshall and Schleifstein say that wetlands the size of three football fields are lost every day. What was once a 70 mile buffer for New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico is now 30 miles. By 2040, at current rates, New Orleans will be a coastal city according to experts.

They say we have 10 years to fix the current erosion dilemma before it passes the point of no return.

“We’ll just have to put up a huge floodwall,” AmeriCorps member Jeff Swartz said intentionally mimicking the "laissez le bon temps rouler" attitude often used to describe New Orleanians.

“After reading LAST CHANCE,” another said “I was wondering why we are rebuilding in the low-lying areas...in 10 years will this all be for naught?”

Michael Pizzolatto, our AmeriCorps supervisor at Tulane and life-long Louisianan stopped the conversation. He had the “I have something to say and you all better listen” face.

All over the country pundits and critics of New Orleans say not to rebuild. They say it’s too dangerous. But only 50
percent of New Orleans is below sea level, he said.

“What about Miami?" The entire city is only three feet above sea level at it's highest point with no natural hurricane protection, he said.

When they say not to rebuild New Orleans, pundits conveniently forget or do not know that New Orleans ports are the life-force in American exports and imports.

Do they say, “The largest port tonnage-wise is between New Orleans and Baton Rouge?”

Or, “Twenty-eight percent of the US Energy supply comes from SE Louisiana?”

“No,” he said with one of those “I’ve been frustrated by this for a long time” looks.

The AmeriCorps team talked about the Tennessee Valley Authority that was a part of FDR’s New Deal. How in the 1930s without the luxury of 21^st century technology, but with massive man power and post-World War Era dollars solved major ecological problems including flooding and erosion.

“But we’re in a war,” another AmeriCorpsian said.

To stop Coastal Erosion and block the Gulf of Mexico from moving in as New Orleans’ new next door neighbor, a serious federal commitment is needed.

We’re talking “How much do they want?” numbers.

One-hundred billion dollars would be a good start. If not, we can always build that big wall.

It would be a shame to see New Orleans' youth lose their homes in another storm.

"Can you please give us the money to fix the wetlands?" Alvin asked.

Best,

Robert

To view LAST CHANCE: The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast, a Three-Part Series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, click here:

Erosion images by Ted Jackson of the Times-Picayune.

http://www.nola.com/speced/lastchance/t-p/index.ssf?/speced/lastchance/articles/day1.html

Indelible Faces of AmeriCorps

April 20, 2007
Holiday Inn Convention Center
Austin, Tex.

Dear Family and Friends,

I apologize. This column has little about New Orleans, but much about AmeriCorps. President Clinton formed the AmeriCorps in the first-term of his administration.

Meet Bill Pride.

Retired Marine, Bill was one of the first to enter Vietnam in 1965. "They called me 'Hawk' back then," he says. The call-name circulated military bases, enemy and friendly, for two years in Vietnam. Bill was a Marine Force Recon. As a sniper his real identity was known by few.

Today, Bill and Janis, his wife of over 20 years, are AmeriCorps members. And they are only two of the many fascinating faces in the Holiday Inn convention room this week.

In late 1965, Bill’s mother Eugenie, received a letter. “The President of the United States regrets to inform you…”

Eugenie’s son was dead to her for almost a year.

I had dinner with Bill on Tuesday night.

“I had to jump out of a helicopter that was shot down,” he says.

He was behind enemy lines for 27 days before being found. His weight went from 180 to 118.

He and one other Marine jumped. Three others died in the chopper. Wounded and battered, Bill had no idea that his family and friends thought he was dead.

This was October 1965. Flash forward to May 1966. Bill has successfully reintegrated into Recon-detail and because of his sniper security clearance has no contact without the outside world.

But in May 1966, from a Red Cross phone, Bill called his mom.

“We got a letter saying you were dead,” Eugenie said.

‘“I’m not. I’m talking to you,” he said.

“I don’ t know who this is, but it’s a sick joke,” Eugenie said.

“No, really it’s me.”

Bill returned from Vietnam and entered into a successful business-life as a citizen. In 1995, he and Janis moved to Winnsborough, Tex. population 2, 439. On a trip to the post-office he stuck up a conversation with the post-master, a fellow Vietnam veteran and Marine.

It took a bit to connect.

“What was your call-name?” the post-master said.

“Hawk,” Bill said.

“I’m Bluejay,” the postmaster said.

The small-town postmaster was Bill’s mission commander in Vietnam nearly 30 years prior.

Due to security they had never met.

The Prides will be traveling throughout 14 counties in Northern Texas raising awareness for a non-profit called “Bridging the Gap.”

Meet Torrie Willis.

She’s 19. Her daughter McKinley just turned one. And she’s five months pregnant with a boy. She likes the ring “Courtney” has.

Her sentiments about Poverty—the ailment her mission hopes to eradicate, was better than any sociologist I’ve ever heard. She peeled the layers of public perception.

She told us about many Arkansas-welfare citizens whom she’d consider lazy.

And about the generations of family poverty that basically brainwash those that come after.

And about the citizens who work so hard to get out but can’t.

Then she told us about her.

She’s 19, and living below the poverty line. Born and raised in the community she’ll be serving, Forrest City, Arkansas, Willis is close to an associate’s degree in Biology and even closer to the St. Francis County Community Development Corporation.

She volunteered there last summer. “I really liked helping people.”

I wonder why more people aren’t compelled.

Willis, a Forrest City, Ark. native, will serve 12 months in her community.

Meet Todd M.

At 44, he’s been a practicing attorney since 1991. Todd isn’t hard to miss. He has a big smile and big voice.

And he’s been in a wheelchair for 23 years. After the car accident, he remembers lying in the hospital bed.

Scared.

The way he tells it now, “I realized I had nowhere to go but up.”

The C5-6 spinal cord injury is what happened to him. Todd is considered a quadriplegic but has some use of his extremities.

Equipped with an endearing wit, you wouldn't ever know the depths of Todd's accident.

Todd will be providing legal advice and services to local organizations with aspirations of achieving 501C3 tax-exempt non-profit status.

Meet Thuy Quach and Ba Truong.

These Vietnamese women, one a naturalized citizen and one a permanent resident had a translator. But I don’t think they needed one.

I spoke slowly and often found myself forgetting to conjugate verbs.

Ba, 63, has been in Houston, Tex. for nine years. For the past seven she was a florist in her largely Vietnamese community. “160,000 Vietnamese in Houston,” she said. She is there with a large family with a new addition soon. Her 28-year-old daughter is seven months pregnant.

Thuy, 56, moved to the States two years ago to take care of her 80-year-old mother. She moved from Qui Nhon City and began in Seattle. “Climate is too cold,” she said. Thuy was a middle-school teacher in Vietnam.

The two will serve their year at the Center For Faith and Health in Houston. Both will be coordinating health screening programs for Vietnamese residents.

Bye-Bye Austin.

Over 50 American citizens and Thuy, a legal resident, will begin or continue their year as an AmeriCorps member this week.

Others members of interest.

Christopher Holder, an 18-year-old high school graduate with a deep-Louisiana twang will be a Volunteer Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity in Webster, La.

Cory Holbert, who worked the last five years in a guitar shop, will be promoting water cleanliness for the Audubon Society in Arkansas.

John Haley, master’s educated and professional photographer is going through a career change. He wants to work in non-profits from now on. A big task, he will be helping Orleans Parish neighbor, St. Bernard, rebuild post-KATRINA.

Stephanie Erickson, 23. It was crazy to see her because we went to college together at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She’s always been the type to do this. But I had no idea I would see her at the Holiday Inn in Austin, Tex. Erickson will be working in the Austin Second Harvest Food Bank.

Ares Saldana, 21. A University of Texas-El Paso graduate, Saldana will be working for Border Fair Housing in El Paso. The organization fights for suitable living for Latinos in El Paso.

Lauren Tichenor. An undergrad degree from a prestigious Scottish university and a Masters from a school in Australia, Tichenor finds herself in Claiborne Parish, La. “Somewhere near Shreveport,” she says.

And many more.

The faces are incredible. It's funny how things work in New Orleans and in other struggling parts of the country. I realize now that the AmeriCorps members are a part of a process, one with no viewable end, but a purpose none the less.

Best,

Robert

To view more about a year of service in the AmeriCorps go to www.americorps.gov.