Day 6

Day 6: Thursday March 16, 2006: Town Hall, Superdome, and Survival
Today I attend part of a New Orleans City Council meeting. Victims of police brutality testified about some of their experience with the NOPD. Administrators testify about the problems facing the city’s budget – they expect to be bankrupt around May because there are so few people paying taxes to sustain the budget and yet so many needs ranging from trash pick-up, street restoration, building repairs, etc. Much of the tourism is dead. The thousands of volunteers in the city have helped, but they are also needing hospital services in great quantities. I learn that 80% of the patients the local hospital are volunteers who have become sick from the mold, asbestos, air/water pollution, etc.

On my walk back from town hall, I detour a few blocks and walk by the convention center and the Superdome. My heart begins pounding and I flashback to the awful pictures on tv 6 months ago of the thousands of people swarming the sidewalk in front of the Superdome. I recall the horror stories of rape, beatings, and squalor as quality of life disappeared in the nightmare that became the Superdome. Now, the Superdome is clean and displays an enormous sign advertising that the New Orleans Saints will return in September and the Superdome will once again open to football fans. I can’t help but wonder what it will be like for fans to watch a football game in a place that is synonymous with Katrina horror stories.

As I continue walking, I see spray-painted “To EMS” graffiti along street signs with an arrow pointing towards the temporary Red Cross building – which still houses the Red Cross. “To EMS” decorates many of the garbage cans, tourist map signs, utility poles, and walls.


One of the students in our group tells us about the work she is doing with day laborers. She is bilingual and spends time surveying the Latino day laborers. She retells us the story about her conversation with one of the Latino day laborers who said to her, with tears in his eyes – I’m just trying to survive, are you just trying to survive?