Letter from New Orleans No. 1

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Once you make it through a storm, you can’t relive it like it’s still happening, my sister says. She and my mother sit in their narrow FEMA trailer on Mexico Street in Pontchartrain Park, near a vacant lot, where our 50-year old family home once stood.

The first planned community for middle-class blacks, Pontchartrain Park is a faint echo of its once glorious self. A Grayline Tour of Katrina disaster areas provides evidence of a city still struggling to make its way out of a storm.

This is my first trip back. My neighborhood elementary school is a mass of trailers. The golf course, where my grandmother’s monkey once escaped after a scolding from my mother, is a virtual jungle. The stadium where I played center field on the softball team is locked; the sound of children playing isn’t heard. The house of my first Girls Scout leader is empty; I wonder if she found her way out.

My mother and sister fought their way out to Washington, D.C., but endured a two-year Odysseus-like ordeal to return to the place seven generations of my family call home. There are lifelong friends gained first from their stay in the nation’s capital and then in Nashville, Tenn.

“God put the best people in our way,” my mother says.

But there are battle scars, inflicted by insurance companies and their government — federal, state and local.

“[The government] cut my disability check while I was in the hospital. I was told I didn’t need the money because I was in the hospital,” my sister says. She fought back; the funds were partially restored.

I am awed by their resilience; hope laces their conversation, despite tales of loss, longing, and rage.

After seemingly insurmountable red tape, they expect to begin construction soon on a new home. It will mean the family can continue to grow, love and laugh on Mexico Street. There are other equally determined families, attempting to push aside destruction to reclaim their place.

My mother’s and sister’s optimism may be an unconscious coping mechanism, I conclude after sharing gumbo and analyses with author Kalamu ya Salaam. He speaks about corrupted water and sewer systems, a nearly nonexistent health care network, and an uninspired recovery program.

Truth told, New Orleans looks and feels like Ward 8 circa 1985: few quality retail outlets, high crime, high unemployment, poor schools, and no real economic development. It took 20 years for the District’s revival. That was after a congressionally created control board seized authority of the government; after the creation of a public charter school system; after the creation of a publicly financed affordable housing trust fund; after the redesign of the entire social service; and after folks demanded a more responsive government.

There are lessons for New Orleans in the District. I’ll talk about those in future letters.

Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst for WAMU radio’s D.C. “Politics Hour with Kojo and Jonetta.”

Advertisement