Yesterday, we had three separate and seemingly disjointed projects or sites that we visited. First, we visited Columbia Parc, the neighborhood that replaced the old St. Bernard Housing Project, and toured the mixed-income housing settlement. Then, we spent a while weeding at an urban community garden in the lower 9th ward that supplied food to communities in the neighborhood, and finally went to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club in assisting with after school activities and homework help for the children there. Today, we volunteered at a garden for Capstone, a different organization that provides food to families in the lower 9th ward, and volunteered again at the Boys and Girls Club. At first glance, these don't seem inherently connected, but the ways in which the underlying themes behind all of these sites intersect is so indicative of both the success of the immersion component of this trip overall and of the intricacy of the social issues that we are grasping at as we serve here.
Visiting Columbia Parc and viewing the business end of the mixed-income housing model as opposed to a documentary that focused on the displaced community's story was jarring and conflicting. It raised more questions than it answered: what constitutes economic sustainability in a government subsidized housing project and is there a threshold at which point an equitable revenue source for public housing becomes more gentrifying than it should be? In a sharp decline from 100% to 33% public housing availability and with this model taking off across the nation, where do the displaced people living under the poverty line go? How do they survive? Is the sudden anti-felon waiting period of 5 years in what used to be open public housing causing even more inaccessibility for the typically low-income people of color who are victims to a systematically racialized justice system?This situation is so complicated and nuanced that it makes my head spin, but it connects to the other projects that we've worked on.
In attempting to rebuild New Orleans post-Katrina, there are so many spokes on the wheel, and all of them interrelated. In this instance alone, one of the aspects of Columbia Parc, the education center, related back to our work at the Boys and Girls Club. At CP, one of the main points of emphasis was a cradle to college pipeline with a focus on pre-school education. This became so much more significant when I tutored kids at the B&G club and realized how shockingly disproportionate the grade standards and the actual level of education of kids were. Most 1st graders and kindergarteners couldn't read, and were state-mandated to be doing assignments far beyond the skill set that they had. The majority of these children were of low income and racial minority families, the typical victims of a school system that privileges students that can afford to be educated in a way that meets standardized testing goals. What then? Rebuilding the physical infrastructure of NOLA post-Katrina is one thing, but education is just as significant a part of revitalizing a neighborhood and bringing it out of a cycle of poverty. Therefore it is significant and heartening to see that Columbia Parc, though I have my reservations about it, is focusing on early education as a means of aiding a neighborhood and thinking of the future.
Furthermore, the farms that we worked at brought up yet another connection: the availability of fresh produce in the lower 9th is very low, as it is a food desert. This is yet another part of revitalizing the neighborhoods; when low income families need to survive, they don't have the amenities to be eating organic and healthy foods when synthetic foods are so much cheaper and easier to come by. This causes significant malnutrition deficits in children which affects their performance in schools and their growth (one of the teachers at the Boys & Girls Club told me that the reason one of the juniors in high school was so short was due to the malnutrition caused growth stunting) overall. In the lots of houses that were unclaimed when citizens left and didn't return after the storm, nonprofits such as Acorn and Capstone have built farms that provide much needed free and organic produce for the families around the parish. In assisting at the community garden, we helped complete work that takes far longer with the few people that they have and aided in an effort that addresses yet another part of rebuilding communities in New Orleans.
The list and connections go on, but really, it boils down to this:
a) While I will never completely understand the situation here, I feel that in this one week, I have gotten a more wholesome understanding than I ever had, as I only ever knew bits and pieces of all this information. Between the aforementioned sites, the levees tour, Whitney plantation, and the Katrina museum, I have a more solid understanding of the continuing struggles of this community and of the different perspectives involved.
b) Everything, all that we did, is interrelated, and every bit of this is inherently related to race and class. Multiple axes of oppression are not only simultaneously experienced, but in conjunction, combine and transform each other, and this specifically is a racialized class issue. The low-income people of color, specifically the black citizens of New Orleans have been dealing with incredible injustice not only in the aftermath of Katrina, but in a series of systematically oppressive maneuvers that stretch back to their roots in slavery and manifest today in the ways that the housing authority, food supply, overall government, education system, etc. fail them in various ways, and yet they persist in awe-inspiring resilience. Every one of these projects and sites deserves conversation
about race and class, and I am glad that the overarching narrative that this trip has set up allowed us to do exactly that. The enormity of the situation is difficult to grasp and can only be attempted by not shying around the harsh realities of it. I am very fortunate to have been able to engage in this dialogue with such a good group. I only hope that we continue to remember that we must continue to talk about race and have these discussions, as there is no progress without that fundamental understanding.
Mounica Kota
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