Katrina survivors revisit the Ninth Ward

We met at 4 a.m. in a dark parking lot near Houston’s Mosque #45. About a third of our group were Hurricane Katrina evacuees, and we were about to take the bus from Texas to New Orleans for the Dec. 10 march and rally. It was decided that afterward we would make time to drive through New Orleans, particularly the lower Ninth Ward.

The march and rally charged everyone. But the profound impact of the day came when we drove through the French Quarter, through the lesbian/gay/bi/trans com munity and then entered the Ninth Ward.

We passed a giant red steel barge in the middle of a field. Then we saw the house of rock and roll legend Fats Domino. His possessions were piled in the street like garbage. His daughter’s sixth-grade reading book, stacks of 45-rpm and 78-rpm records, books, papers and other items that were surely treasured by the family were now filthy, mildewed garbage.

While many of us walked around, most of those from New Orleans stayed on the bus, too heart-sick to look any closer.

We drove on to the lower Ninth Ward. The evacuees on the bus were quiet. They began whispering to themselves and could barely look up.

The streets were deserted and there was not a light anywhere, just a vast wasteland of houses that had floated onto other houses, cars and trucks. Some houses were twisted and topless. Many, with roofs still intact, had holes in them where people had clawed and chopped their way through to survive the floodwaters.

One of the evacuees recalled being on top of the family house and seeing helicopters fly over. When the people waved to get their attention, those on the helicopter would mock them and wave back, as if saying hello. “We were deliberately left to die,” she said.

Brother Miller X with the New Black Panther Party in Houston said, “When we were here right after Katrina, we saw dead bodies floating down these streets. What you see now has been cleaned. It was horrible.”

Joy had just fixed up her house and had moved in only three weeks before Katrina hit. “I have worked all my life and never asked anyone for anything. Now I have been hit by a disaster and I wonder if anyone will help me. I want to come home so badly. I know this government has money but I wonder if I will ever see any.”

Other evacuees reminisced about the wonderful meals of seafood gumbo and crayfish etouffee in days gone by. They spoke softly of how now their kitchens were ruined, the cast-iron pots rusted and their dining-room tables gone.

Njeri Shakur, with the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, said she felt such empathy with those from New Orleans. “The African people, the poor, working people—their culture, their dignity—that’s what made New Orleans what it was. When my family and my neighbors were evicted from public housing in Houston because our land became too valuable for the poor to live on, I felt violated. But what the government did in New Orleans is beyond comprehension,” she said.

“I am more determined than ever to help our sisters and brothers rebuild their lives and their city.”