RandomStance

My brother, partially in an effort to avoid the craziness of being home during his college breaks, took up volunteering in New Orleans and stumbled across one of the most strikingly complex yet simple dilemmas of humanity. When do you give up? Having grown wary of my overextravagent ideas of what winter breaks and new years should be like, I decided to join him and try to start the year off right. We traveled together to New Orleans 15 months after Hurricaine Katrina. How could I describe to you what I saw...I wouldn't know where to begin. Broken toilets on the street strewn admist trash, pieces of roofs, piping, old newspapers, rotting cloths, burnt skeletons of shops, a foundation of a house, steps leading to nothing...pleas in graffiti saying "help us, please donate," one wall, blown out signs, traffic lights that don't work anymore, no street signs, graffiti on abandoned homes stating the number of human and animal bodies found in that residence, abandoned schools, abandoned churches, abandonment. High crime, empty wastelands, stretches of trailer homes, Wall-Mart, the nicest McDonald's I have seen. Believe it or not, this is the story of an American city in the 21st century 15 months after a natural disaster. America is known as the capitol of the free world. America has the capacity to build and destroy nations at will. America sends people to outer space and contributes to the advancement of science, health and economic development. Most importantly, America advances the idea of democracy, free of speech and the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. People all over the globe dream of stepping foot in this great nation so that they can have a chance to realize their dreams. Yet on the ground, 600,000 people remain internally displaced. That is almost as many internally displaced persons (IDPs) as there are in Uganda right now...a country witness to great atrocities and unspeakable devastation, seemingly incomprable to America in any way. But like Uganda, we seem unable to take care of our own people. The difference is that our failure stems from a lack of will while Uganda's stems from a lack of capability. In America, the people can act. There are so many avenues to effectuate positive change. You can contribute any resource you like - money, time, ideas, skills - to advancing what you believe in. You can act as an individual or you can act in accordance with an organization. You can choose between governmental or non-governmental organizations. You can even choose anarchy. There is no where else on earth where you can do all of this. With this great luxury, however, comes even greater responsibility. Every day we live our lives and ignore this reality, we abandon our people and contribute to the degradation of our people. As I walked around the lower 9th ward and wondered how I could be a part of this abandonment. How could anyone? My brother and I had gone down there to help a legal clinic with its daily issues which ranged from helping people obtain benefits for which they were entitled, to protecting the rights of people getting evicted, to negotiating between contractors and devastated home owners, to supporting class action suits by interviewing former tenants of public housing and conducting research. The more little projects we did in that short week, the more overwhelmed I became at the magnitude of the problem. I felt like a hamster in a wheel spinning and spinning with no end in site. No matter how hard I spun I would never move forward. My first instrinct was to stop. Returning to DC, it was easier to have a more removed view of the situation. Perhaps impact litigation was the way to go, that way, you would build more structural justice and protect the abdanoned. But how would enforce these rights, make sure the people that needed help got it? The problem with rebuilding New Orleans is not the lack of money and benefits available to the people, rather, it is the paralyzing bureaucracy and lack of effective implementation that causes the people to suffer. Why is this happening? The families of the vicitims of 9/11 got an average of $200 million in relief funds from the US government. I believe the average relief pay out for victims of Hurricaine Katrina was $200. Food for thought. What do we do? Can you believe how much time has passed? No matter what is in the works, the present physical situation of NewOrleans and the spirit of the people who have suffered are testament to the fact that the government has failed its people. It makes me wonder, how does positive societal change occur? What I did see that was positive were the grass roots efforts underway. There is tremendous will and energy among certain people to relieve short term needs and work towards bettering longer term systemic problems. It's fascinating to observe and assess the impact of this grass roots culture. Who are the volunteers? They are students, foreigners, professionals, but interestingly enough mostly from outside of NewOrleans and mostly affiliated with the left rather than the right. I don't know what to make of it.