I went to New Orleans recently to do some guerrilla vlogging. I asked people what they wanted to say about New Orleans today and their future. I asked people what they wanted me to know about their city. They wanted me to tell you that they're alive.
They are alive.
It's not the politics. It's not the water. It's not the death and devastation. It's not the humiliation that Katrina brought to all of our homes through the scenes of government failure and abandonment.
They are not pathetic, doomed, corrupt, racist, lawless or any such nonsense.
They are alive and struggling to bring themselves back from the absolute worst thing that any one of us can face in our own lives. They got wiped out.
But they are alive and I've got the tape to prove it. Follow me below the fold to meet John Barquet and Tessa too.
In this installment of the NOLA series we meet John Barquet and Tessa Marquis. John is from New Orleans and has just recently returned to the city after a nomadic existence before settling somewhat in Atlanta where most of his family still lives. John talked to me for a few minutes on and off camera. He was working but Tessa and I where tourists in NOLA so we had more time and freedom to talk about our impressions of the city and the struggle that people are facing day to day for their existence. Each diary in this series has it's own focus depending on the principle interviews. Although John's wife is a teacher with 22 years in the business, I'm not going to discuss that subject here in this vlog. John and I talk briefly about the Recovery School District and the school situation in his neighborhood of Gentilly. I'll tackle that subject separately at a later date.
Previous vlogs in this series can be viewed here:
- NOLA Speaks - The Teaser
- NOLA Speaks - Meet Ed and Hillery Moise (like lou-ise)
and the door is a metaphor, obviously
John works in the French Quarter at the Hotel St. Marie where I stayed on my brief excursions to the city to shoot some tape and interview some locals. I made an exception in Tessa's case, as far as being a local, because she's been there for three separate conferences since the storm. She has a unique perspective on the situation and she's been in touch with many of the people she has met over the years continuously since Katrina.
Video: John Barquet (6:07)
My name is John Barquet and I'm from the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
And we are at the Hotel St. Marie where you work and I'm staying and you've been helping me with my project
Yes we are and yes I have.
Were you here during the storm?
I left the Sunday right before the storm. I left about 2:30 and it took me 10 hours to get to Tuscaloosa, AL when it normally takes only about four hours.
Yeah it was quite the scene of bumper to bumper traffic.
Yes it was.
So you were in Tuscaloosa and you saw everything unfold on TV?
Yes I did.
That must have been tough.
It was; it was real tough.
How long were you gone?
I've been gone for a year and a half.
Where were you living then?
I started off in Tuscaloosa, then I went up to: Columbia, MD; New York; New Jersey; Philly; Virginia; Washington, DC and now I'm in Atlanta.
Now you are the head of household for a crew of ten people, right?
Yes I am.
Are they all in Atlanta?
Yes they are. I'm working here now and my sister is back home. We're all staying with my sister at this present time.
So John was gone for a year and a half and has just now come back this spring to New Orleans. Like I said in the interview, John is the head of household for a family of 10 or so. He is currently staying with his sister in New Orleans since she got the least amount of damage to their house. They're the first Barquets to establish a "beachhead" back home and it's just as if they're functioning as the Marines of the Barquet clan. That's a story that is being repeated throughout the city since so many are just left to work it out amongst themselves in this recovery and rebuild. Shameful.
What is the biggest change that you've noticed since you've been back?
The biggest change is the transportation system, the school system and the police system. My neighborhood is coming back slowly but surely. I'm in the Gentilly area. It took a year for the first signs of life to come back to the Gentilly area.
Are you planning on going back to rebuild?
Yes I am.
How are you with FEMA?
Right now it's just a joke with the government, so ... I'd rather not talk about the government because I may just get in trouble.
What's next?
Well, I've been back home now for about a month and a week and now that's what I'm trying to start doing. I'm trying to renovate the house. I'm getting an electrician in and we're going to take it step by step until we finish.
And you had significant damage?
Yes it's uninhabitable at this point.
What do you want readers to know about people like yourself?
We want to go back to normal living. The problem is we need to find housing. Find affordable housing for senior citizens and get the older people back in the city first. And then we can work along that line because if the older people are here then we can get more respect for the city and the city can come back to where it used to be.
This is a key point that I learned about New Orleans through my conversations down there and with John in particular. He was the only one to tell me that bringing back the seniors first would do the most good for the city and help the rebuild the most, but it seems to fit with the mind set that I found down there. New Orleans is a very close-knit family oriented kind of town. The people down there are not party 'til you drop bead throwers. They are conservative, churchgoers and they rely on one another in a broad sense and in a way that I envy being a Yankee from Massachusetts. We don't have those kind of neighborhoods up here. People move in and out of our neighborhoods; they're more transient. People down there have owned their homes or their lands for many generations and the families stay together in the neighborhoods if at all possible. And believe me where there is a will to stay together then there is a community living together as an extended family.
What about the school district [in your neighborhood]?
I have grandchildren in the family, my kids are grown but I have grand kids and the school system is not the best right now. What they need to do is get a better school system. They need to find someone who is really serious about children and go in that direction then start building from there. The majority of the public schools have been taken over by charters, but they're not doing the job they need to. The schools need to be rebuilt. They need to have better services. They need better electricity and A/C units for the kids.
Teaching staff is not getting the support they need to get. All the people who are pushing papers are putting too much pressure on the teachers instead of backing the teachers.
I heard that when the reform district went into effect all the teachers had to re-apply.
Yes they did.
And that they were all on a level playing field and didn't get the seniority that maybe they had earned.
Exactly.
So that's pretty tough.
It's very tough.
What's the school situation like in Gentilly?
Gentilly has two schools that are open as of now a public and a private.
What else would you like readers to know about your struggle?
The struggle is that the city keeps making people believe that we're up and running and we're 90% running when it's more like 15-20% up and running.
The French Quarter is back
The French Quarter is back and the Metarie area is back. But the rest of the city, it's not coming back the way it should be because we don't have the support of the politicians.
That's what I saw too. I never went to Metarie, but I'll take John's word for it. The areas that were never flooded like the French Quarter and the Marigny (mar-ah-knee) are back, but once you go outside of that you can see that some areas are completely in a state of ruin like the Ninth Ward and Lakeside. In Lakeside there used to be an 80 foot tall lighthouse, the picture here is what it looks like today. It's still today just sitting there on it's side like that. The Ninth ward is still a scene of devastation. The tape I shot in that are is coming up in another diary. We took a tour with Eddie Mims that was arranged by John and we spent a couple of hours driving around. Many houses that were destroyed by the high water that came through when the levees broke have been removed, but there are still plenty of wood structures that are just lying in ruin. We drove through Bywater on the way from the Quarter to the Ninth Ward and we could see a lot of houses in that neighborhood have been renovated. Bywater, like most of the city, got a lot of damage after the storm when the levees broke although it wasn't considered what's called a "high water area."
You could see some houses were just picture perfect with new coat of paint and maybe a FEMA trailer in the lot. These houses were being lived in yet they sat right next to others that still had the cross on them from the search performed by the rescue workers. Houses that no one had even tried to gut or renovate because the owners are just not in a position to come back. They also aren't in a position to renovate and rent it out. The cost is too high because FEMA and the insurance companies are abdicating their responsibility to aid and enable the rebuild. People that I talked to told me they were in no position to even call their insurance companies for help anymore, but that FEMA too is nickel and diming them. John said that the city isn't coming back they way it should because there is no support from the politicians. I think that is largely a responsibility at the Federal level because the rebuild money has to come from DC, there is no other option. Louisiana is not a rich state, they can not do it on their own. If they continue to be left to "their own devices" like they are today then it'll be an entire generation before the lifeblood of the city, it's people, can return to reclaim what is left of their former lives.
I listened to some anecdotal information about how the cost of building materials and construction crews are being jacked up like everything else, yet the FEMA estimates are based on the old prices. Do the math. People like John are going out of pocket to pay for their rebuilding costs. He was a homeowner, he paid his taxes his whole life. His wife is a public school teacher with 22 years in the service, but when it comes time for our government to pony up the dough for the Barquet clan to return and work in the city they love and cherish, when it's time for us to do our civic duty and enable this family to bring the precious and needed life back into this Grand Old City ...
< sound of crickets chirping >
I will have something extraordinarily positive to say about one FEMA official in the city based on a story that I got first hand from Katie Adams, but for now ...
< sound of crickets chirping >
Now we turn to Tessa Marquis, the impetus for my trip. Tessa had a lot to say about the Katrina situation and as another "diaretic" blogger like myself she and I talk at the bar in Hotel St. Marie about her connections to the city and what Katrina means to everyone in this country. It's a story and a struggle that people like Ed and Hillery Moise along with John Barquet up there are bearing the full weight of, but we all lost something to that storm and the water. It's a vastly different proposition when your business, home, school, church or neighborhood gets wiped out and you are scattered to the winds - but we all lost something to the storm and the water that came later and submerged 85% of the city of New Orleans, LA. And everyday that passes another little piece is taken away whether you live there or not because we are all responsible in some way for the forgotten struggle that is happening in NOLA today.
Tessa has been intensely following the stories about the people she knows in the city since the storm because of her deep connections there. She had a unique perspective since her father and grandfather were WWII refugees from Europe. She's from San Francisco originally, but those experiences in her family have given her a deep appreciation for people struggling to define themselves amidst chaos and inhumanity. The fact that her family was from Europe also created an interest in the world that many of us might not have as Americans. She has traveled abroad extensively and it shows. Tessa also works for Planned Parenthood in CT. After the experience of the Dean and Lamont campaigns, she and her husband Mike Brown decided that they wanted to stay involved in a cause locally in their communities. That's for another vlog, but suffice to stay that they have decided to act for a cause outside of their own self-interest and the threshold of their comfortable home. Nothing like a cause. It really is the cure for cynicism and apathy.
No time? Try the highlight reel of my conversation with Tessa:
Here's the full interview:
- Video: Tessa Marquis - Part 1 (5:44)
- Video: Tessa Marquis - Part 2 (5:43)
- Video: Tessa Marquis - Part 3 (8:14)
- Video: Tessa Marquis - Part 4 (6:21)
- Video: Tessa Marquis - Part 5 (4:47)
I love the city. I love the people and the food and I love being in an foreign city in the United States. It's Caribbean, it's Mexican, [Spanish, French, white, black] it's a lot like Oaxaca. It's a lot like Paris. We try to avoid all the bead throwing nonsense. That comes from out-of-towners. The real people that live here are very hearty, down to earth, beautiful, beautiful people with open hearts who may have more exposure to drunks than the rest of us do in our daily lives, but they themselves are not drunks or misfits or anything like that. There's a little something special here [lagniappe / lan-yap], there's an appreciation for culture and history and beauty. That's what makes it Parisian.
Tessa has known John for many years. Here's what she had to say about him:
John is the center of a large family that includes his parents, children and grandchildren as well as being the center of a large community support system. And I know that wherever he was, he was trying to move this huge crowd of people and hold them together. It's not the event, but it's the holocaust that follows after the event. It's the Diaspora. It's not being able to find people.
Tessa continues with a story about a NOLA friend that went to Milford, CT:
The woman lost her job. She got her pink slip while she was in Milford, CT. The business was gone. The house was gone. Her collections of memorabilia were gone. Everything was gone so everyday was like a fresh slap in the face - that this was happening here.
Yeah, it really wasn't just that the storm came and then the flood came and then the power didn't come back, it was everything that happened afterwards. These people were just thrown into the air...
It's awful. It's pretty bad. I don't think that people really realize how many people are affected by this. This is like after WWII where everyone is just thrown to the winds. They can't find their families and even when they do it doesn't matter because now their family is 2,000 miles away so what are you supposed to do about that?
People have to accept that they can't be together the way they had been before.
Or people like John become nomads going all around. As Katie said, it's the size of Great Britain, when you turn this many people into homeless penniless wanderers how can they be professional again? How can they work? Where can they work? How can they show they have the credentials to work? How can they prove themselves? And when you're over a certain age do you want to? And the kids are confused and uprooted, stability is very important for young people and old people.
It's like PTSD.
They are coming out of it, but not through any help from anyone else. It's just through pure perseverance. Everything here is really a personal effort. People are not getting help from the government. The houses that are getting rebuilt are getting rebuilt by the hand of the people that lived in them. With their own money.
That's why John says they have to start with the electrician, he probably can't do the wiring and get it inspected himself. Everything else is negotiable and he's going to be working maybe more than one job, commuting maybe back and forth to Atlanta 15 hours away and rebuilding his home, himself with the help of his family. That is what is going on with stand-up guys like John up there. Guys that worked their whole lives and paid their taxes. Now they get a paltry number written on a FEMA check sent in the mail with all their other bills that continue to mount and pressure their finances. Then they get to do it all on their own. And what do we do?
Gerry, who works at the front desk, she was given a trailer in Baton Rouge. She's in her sixties. She was working 14-15 hour days here because they needed someone at front desk [and she wanted the work] and she couldn't commute. She moved in with her grand-daughter here luckily she had gotten an apartment. But I mean - to say you give people trailers is one thing, but to give them a trailer in New Jersey when they work in Albuquerque makes no sense.
So it's just a continuing travesty of government failure and it shows that we are, the lesson is throughout the country we are unprepared for any kind of disaster whether it is human made or natural.
Pictured left is the way you should give someone a trailer.
This city is a major port and the point is that there has got to be affordable housing, schools and hospitals.
It's hard for everyone not to be bitter. It's not just a racist thing against colored folk in the south. It is the destruction of the middle-class. And how do we profit from this? There's people profiting all over the place. And I will tell you on camera that in Milford, CT. there's a harbor and it's supposed to be dredged by the Army Corp of Engineers and paid for by the federal government and our mayor announced last month that it couldn't be done and the citizens would have to pay for it because the Army Corps of Engineers is busy in New Orleans. Now we're in New Orleans there's no Army Corps of Engineers doing anything here. I know a consultant who is training people from the Army Corps of Engineers last week to go to Iraq to build power plants.
It's a question of priorities and basic morality.
Everybody here, in many ways, is a lot better off than they were in September see because after the first responders left the real bottom fell out.
Ed and Hillery said the same thing. There was a great opportunity in the first 6 to 8 months for people in their business.
But there is no one here saying, I'm putting my house together because FEMA gave me the lumber and windows. Everyone is doing it for themselves, they are pitching in and doing it for themselves, but that's not right in America.
And you know something, that's not okay with me as an American and that's why I came down here. It's not okay.
That's what Jerry was saying. He's been paying his taxes [his whole life] where the hell did my money go to?
Yeah. I think that people all over the country need to demand accountability from their public servants at every level because the next Katrina - it's going to be them. But I don't believe the right wing talking point that government can't do these things. I think that government can do these things as long as it is a priority and people at every level are held accountable.
Florence was flooded and rebuilt within 16 months. Completely rebuilt.
I don't want the lesson of Katrina to be that the government just throws their hands up and says, "it's too big of a problem, we're doing the best we can," because we're not doing the best we can.
They build whole cities in Iraq in months. Yet nothing here?
Or even tracts of suburban housing today [in this country]. They can build 150 houses in three to six months, with the infrastructure. Where are the priorities?
It's easy to make an excuse of why you can't put that trailer on that piece of property but it's a useless excuse if you have people that have nowhere to live. And the trailers are not even the point.
Yeah, but you know something there is no excuse.
And there isn't any excuse, John Barquet never said, "excuse me I can't pay my taxes this year." Jerry, Gerry, Ed and Hillery hold up their end of the bargain everyday, but when it came down to it the government entrusted with providing for the public good through levee maintenance, flood protection, disaster relief and recovery for those affected throughout the entire Gulf Region comprising the size of Great Britain has come up with one excuse after another after another.
- Lip service and "have a nice day."
- "Thanks for calling FEMA you're call is important to us, please have the following information ready for us to process your call," then an hour of muzak.
- "We haven't forgotten" about you down there y'all.
- "This is a tough one." "It just takes time."
- "We didn't know about the superdome 'til you told me in this interview, Paula."
- "Your trailer is in Baton Rouge, Gerry."
- "Your check is in the mail, Mr. Barquet. Now stop calling us."
- "Work it out amongst yourselves."
- "We're weighing the merits, but no decision has been made."
It's a disgrace.
We do not live in Bangladesh, no offense to Bangladeshis across the world and in the sphere, but this is America. We are a great, big, rich country capable of doing vastly complicated and difficult things. I really don't like Bush and the kind of government that he represents, but you know something - it's not just George Bush. I heard Edwards say that last summer at a barbeque in Iowa. It surprised me because he usually is particularly vicious when it comes to BushCo and the anti-middle-class, excuse me pro-growth, policies that Bush continues to foist on the people of this country. But he's right. We allow this to happen on a daily basis in thousands of cities and towns across this country.
As Hillery Moise said in the last vlog:
Well we tend to forget that we are the government. We need to be more proactive. Because in most cases people sit around and talk about things and they do nothing. If you do nothing then you're part of the problem. And that's what we're all trying to do here. We're trying to make people aware that it's a wonderful city. The people here love one another and we do every and any thing to help one another out here.
So where is the money for the rebuild? What is the problem exactly?
As far as I can tell the problem is red tape that the federal government is sticking to. They didn't think they would lose in November, but they did. That means hope for the people of the Gulf Coast because the Democrats in Congress are attaching riders for Katrina funding to everything that moves around the halls of Congress, but here is the nub of the problem.
110 billion has been appropriated for the rebuild and recovery. 53 billion has been spent. A large portion of the remainder that would go into the pockets of people like John Barquet and the city's coffers to open a school, hospital or pay for policing is being held up. The bill as passed after the storm requires that local aid comprise 10% of the federal cash disbursements. For every dollar that people like John get his city has to come up with a dime. But New Orleans can't get that dime together and that is true of the entire region. Cities and towns have had their entire tax base wiped out from the devastation due to the storm, consequently no FEMA money or very little is forthcoming. It's a Catch-22. Without the local proponent to the aid the money sits in DC unspent. Simple as that. The Times-Picayune has done some tremendous reporting on the story and they reported this month after Bush's recent Gulf Coast Victory Tour 2007 that:
Bush urged to cut state a break
March 2, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats blasted President Bush on Thursday for refusing during a Gulf Coast trip to let Louisiana off the hook for paying 10 percent of the mounting hurricane recovery tab.
State officials for months have been asking the administration to grant a waiver to a federal law that requires states to match federal money spent on disaster relief. Such a waiver was granted to New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to Hawaii after Hurricane Iniki, and to Louisiana and Florida after Hurricane Andrew.
But Bush has balked, saying Congress appropriated enough money to the state after the 2005 hurricane season to cover its share of the bill. He was publicly mum on the waiver issue during his Thursday visit to Louisiana and Mississippi, and a White House spokeswoman said, "We're weighing the merits, but no decision has been made."
"Weighing the merits?" If you can't see the merit in John Barquet being safely ensconced in his home with his family, working and paying his taxes with his grand kids in an actual school in Gentilly then throw out the damn scales fool.
But there is hope. As I said the Congress is attaching Katrina spending bills to anything that moves on the Hill right now. They've got the elimination of the local match provision in the Iraq supplemental spending bill right now, but Bush has promised a veto because as passed in the House the spending bill puts a timetable for troop withdrawal into the legislation.
These are the key provisions that need to be attached to a spending bill to get the job done, they are currently in the Iraq supplemental spending bill:
Among the Katrina-related provisions in the House bill are:
- $37 million for the Army Corps of Engineers for hurricane and coastal storm-damage projects in Mississippi
- elimination of the local match for federal funding for local and state governments for some FEMA grants
- $140 million for farmers and ranchers affected by the hurricanes
- $120 million for fishing industries along the Gulf Coast
I don't know what the outcome will be. This bill passed the house last week 218-212. It now goes to the Senate and then to conference before landing on the President's desk. Bush has promised a veto based on the deadline for the troop withdrawal set out in the House bill. That will allow the federal government to continue to withhold the funds necessary for recovery until the local governments can come up with the matching funds.
This is a total disgrace that we have to even do this, as the TP reported the President can change the provision for the local matching funds with the flick of the wrist. This is crying shame because they have all waited far too long already to get back to the "normal living" that John so clearly deserves for himself and his family.
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