Staging Recovery

 Voice 1:

"Somewhere off in the distance it sounded like an explosion, then  rushing water. It was dark for a very long time before we saw just pinpricks of light, out there in the darkness the people who had come home."

I am listening to the voice of the 55 year old man who spends his day sitting beside the dead bayou because he lost everything his parents had left him in the Lower 9^th Ward.

"If things are going to be bad," he says," if it’s going to be an economic crisis, I want to be home…but where do you go if there’s no home to go? When I saw there was nothing to do, no way I could save my house, I just cried like a baby.  We waited for our district representative to show up at the neighborhood meeting and she never came.  We found out she was off shopping, couldn't even give an hour to  come to listen to us."

Voice 2:

A lone gull cry.  The long mournful sound of a horn playing the blues.

Voice 3:

I am listening, standing in middle of Royal and Toulouse Street at dusk, as two heart balloons float off in the sky . A woman sings What a Wonderful World as if she is performing to a crowd of thousands, with her transcendent powerful voice and a hat out in front of her.

Voice 4:

 President Roosevelt, during the Depression said, “This is a time when we realize we are all interconnected.”

Voice 5:

Mack at the Lower North Ward Village is talking about the nonprofit community center he started last year. He says, "I never thought that this would be the most fulfilling year of my life. We have to start caring about each other. Start asking how is our neighborhood doing. Look around and ask, where is my neighbor, why didn't he come home? Unless we do --people go missing."

Voice 6:

David, the young man who has joined the efforts to bring others back home, is standing in front of MLK Middle School where the sign reads “Welcome to the first day of class, August 18^th, 2005,” frozen just as it was that day of the evacuation.  Third story windows are propped open. David is talking about how they won’t let anyone come back into the building, even though there is very little evidence of damage.  He tells us there are no schools left here anymore.

I am wondering what happened to the records of all the students' work. I am wondering how can families come back to live here without schools.

Voice 7:

The voice of the governor of California on the news again, telling us there is still no budget settlement, and  he  will cut 20,000 state worker jobs  if he has to, to get a balanced budget. He will  have to close the schools, we will have to stop state services. 

Imagine:

On the stage there are all these young people in sleeping bags, all of them get up and sit at one big table to eat, and then go off to work with paintbrushes and hammers.There is a room of computers, ready to be set up by  computer engineers and used by the young and old in this community.  There are experienced teachers arriving with   boxes of books, eager to share their knowledge with kids who are starving to learn in a school that serves real food.  

Voice 8:

Sylvester Frances, founder of the Backstreet Cultural Center, tell us about how it was, here in this sanctuary of beaded Indian costumes and feathers, 5o people all sleeping here on the floor because it was the only place with electricity. How those months after Katrina were some the best times of his life because everyone came together in gratitude after the tragedy.

 Image:

The parades start and everyone is dancing in the streets. Young and old, black and white. When the music starts playing, it is hard to think about anything else.

How do we rebuild our community, our schools, our houses, how to we work,  when the biggest tragedy of our time strikes, when everything we care about gets washed away ?

We start listening.

Brenda Veland writes:Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we are listened to it creates and makes us unfold and expand.

 Image:

This is the world, a creative explosion, right here on these living streets of New Orleans,  in these living voices  of people who have nothing else to do but start over  in the wake of a man made disaster.

 Everywhere I am listening and learning.