Yesterday we got into New Orleans and this morning we went to talk with a woman who works for ACORN, a non-profit organization that has recently done a lot of work for the New Orleans community. She told us about the changes and problems involving Hurricane Katrina; she believes that ever since the disaster, the social elite in the area have been trying to restore the city and make it was it used to be. In other words, a select number of people are blatantly refusing to help minorities and low-income individuals. There are many ways that this is occurring. First, the police force is very rough around here and apparently the New Mexico state police refused to work with them. It sounds like they are enforcing the law in an inappropriate manner and possibly with a biased mindset. Third, select neighborhoods are completely banned and the residents cannot return to their homes, yet they are still paying a mortgage on the residence. Supposedly these neighborhoods are dangerous but there are even more hazardous areas that are not being banned. The only consistency in this phenomenon is that the banned neighborhoods house mostly African-Americans. As a result, over 100,000 people cannot return to New Orleans, and ACORN is trying to help these people return to their home. Voting rights are also being revoked, and the organization is trying to help individuals get this right back. We were also informed of why this city turned into a disaster area. The hurricane was only level 3 when it hit New Orleans, but the storm made all the water move into the ocean, and then a huge surge of water returned towards the land. When so much water returned, the levies in the city broke and the city flooded. We were told to imagine watching your house fill with water, and what we would do if we knew the water level would rise to 6 feet within 15 minutes. This comment was startling to ponder. I was also shocked to hear about the problems with the low-income areas.

Afterwards, we drove around the 9th Ward, one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orelans. The difference between this neighborhood and those in Bay St. Louis was unbelievable. First, most houses were still standing. Each had a large X with information on all sides, including the organization that searched the home and the number of humans and dogs found deceased in the residence. Actually looking at these numbers and the spray paint on the facades made the reality of the hurricane so real. I can’t believe that these houses are still standing, still dangerous to enter, two years after the hurricane. Paradoxically, the neighborhoods in Bay St. Louis were already gutted and destroyed. Clearly Louisiana’s response to the hurricane was very different than Mississippi’s. This might have had to do with the specific neighborhoods that were compared, however, as those in Bay St. Louis were upscale and the New Orleans neighborhood was very poor. The entire situation in New Orleans points to race and class differences that have escalated since the disaster. According to the woman we talked to, there have always been problems with inequality in LA, but comparing before the hurricane to after, before was much, much better. I had never been to the city before this trip, but I can tell that there are huge class differences from just walking around.

We got to New Orleans yesterday afternoon after our drive from Bay St. Louis. I’ve never been to New Orleans so I didn’t know what to expect, especially after seeing the destruction of the hurricane in Bay St. Louis. I may be completely ignorant, but I didn’t know that most of the damage in New Orleans came from the levies breaking as opposed the hurricane itself. Anyway today was sort of a weird day for me. We explored some of the city last night and by that I mean we went to Bourbon St. We had a great time. Certainly a different experience from the incredible bar scene of Winston-Salem, NC. Today I started to feel really guilty though. There are many aspects of this trip that are disparate in nature and I’m not sure how to react to it. I mean here we are hanging out having a blast on Bourbon St. and then today we go to the Lower 9^th ward which was obliterated by the massive rush of water from the levies breaking. I don’t know how to take that in. My mom made the point that in order to rebuild the economy of New Orleans people need to visit here and go out, because that will bring money to the city. I just don’t know how much of that money is going places it NEEDS to go. I don’t know what to think. I really don’t.

This morning we learned about the many problems New Orleans has experienced because of the broken levies that resulted from Hurricane Katrina. We started out the day by going to ACORN, and listening to somebody speak about what they are doing to help out after Katrina. ACORN is an organization located in cities across the country, whose work in New Orleans in centered on housing. The woman who spoke to us told us all about the problems with the levies, and how they broke in multiple places, leaving 80% of the city flooded in varying degrees. She also discussed many of the political, economic, and social problems in the city that have been augmented by the hurricane. This was very educational because it seems to be one of the most directly related to sociology so far. It is easy to see that there are certain social forces working against certain people in New Orleans. This visit to ACORN was also interesting because we were given enough information to contrast New Orleans experience with that of Hancock county, Mississippi. New Orleans was not directly hit by the storm, so it did not have the massive wind and water damage we saw in Mississippi. It did, however, experience massive flooding that descended on the city very quickly when the levies broke. The flooding happened so quickly that many of the people in the lower 9^th ward were not able to get out in time.

I was given a sense of the panic they must have felt when the woman gave an idea of the flooding by saying something along the lines of “what would you do if you opened up your door and saw water, and only had 15 minutes until it would be up to six feet? Would you go out into the water? Would you go into the attic?” This really helped me understand how chaotic and unexpected everything must have been because in that situation, I absolutely do not know what I would do. Both situations seem to be lose-lose, and I can’t even come up with a better solution after thinking about it for a while. It’s just so difficult to react to something like a flood in only 15 minutes, especially because I typically think of flooding as occurring gradually.

After our visit to ACORN, we got on the bus and toured the lower 9^th ward for a bit, to see the area most affected by the flooding. Most of the houses and businesses in this area were completely abandoned and closed off. Just about every single house had an X spray-painted onto it, with initials, a date, and numbers. These indicated that the house had been inspected, the date it had been inspected, the initials of the inspector, and how many dead bodies were found inside. Usually there was a zero indicating the dead bodies, but every once in a while there was a 1, or the word “dog” written, and it was absolutely chilling to see. The most shockingly terrible part of this excursion came when we stopped the bus and walked down one of the streets. We came upon a large house that was in horrible shape, clearly destroyed by the hurricane. I stopped to take a picture of the damaged house, and then continued walking a bit further. As I was able to see the side of the house, I realized that there was more spray paint on it, this time saying “1600 people died 4 u to take this picture.” It really hits you when something like that is thrown in your face and completely unexpected. The way that this message was worded really made me realize how bad things were and almost made me feel guilty for taking the picture, which I obviously did.

We had a lot of free time today to catch up on homework and work on some group assignments, then went out to dinner. I went for a dish called the taste of New Orleans, which featured small portions of gumbo, jambalaya, and shrimp and crawfish dishes. I normally don’t eat all those things, but wanted to get another feel for New Orleans cuisine.

The time we have had to relax/enjoy being tourists has been a blast with the total extreme of horror that we have observed with the state of the city almost two years after Hurricane Katrina. Today we had the chance to talk to an amazing woman from ACORN in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans, which was said to be one of the most devastated areas from the levees breaking after the storm. Her explanation of the groups of people that the agency has served as well as everything that they have been working to do to restore basic rights to the people of this area was astonishing. Our meeting was in a meeting room/office where we were cramped to have enough room for our entire group to be able to hear what she had to say while one of their staff members was sitting at his desk in the same room working on paperwork because there is a deadline for funding for the people of the lower 9th ward to be able to return home. After we left the ACORN office, we took a driving tour of the area that ACORN has really been working to put back together and we met a North Carolina native who has been working here in New Orleans since the storm to help take care of the devastation in the area. His testimony of what all they have had to work through and the devastation of the area was incredibly humbling.

Today has been a very large amount of information and psychological processing to deal with through the information in the session with the ACORN staff and also the first hand experience of the devastation, so our responses to everything that we heard about today, while they may have seemed to be uninterested, I really feel that it was just an overload of what we had expected to be exposed to while in New Orleans.

There was a sign at the ACORN office that I really feel summed up the thoughts and opinions of the people of New Orleans: No Whining. While many of the people of New Orleans have had so much taken from them…their homes, their rights as voters, their rights as people–they do not whine, they’re just working as hard as they can to get back to the way they were before Katrina, and this was a huge inspiration to me.

Our last night in New Orleans was a great adventure into the heart of the French Quarter after a long evening of completing homework and getting mentally prepared for a long day on the road on Sunday.

I was very excited to find a group of Phi Mu sisters to be staying at our hotel from a university in Louisiana, with whom I did a t-shirt exchange with as well as a contact information exchange so that they could let me know if they were interested in coming to visit ASU one weekend for skiing in the winter, which was very exciting.

I feel absolutely amazing about the remainder of our trip together because after yesterday, I really feel that I have clicked with the group. Being a student from another university on this trip was something that I had been struggling with until our time in New Orleans and I’m really grateful for this.

Lauren, Arlyn and myself went to a local diner called “Mother’s” to get a traditional New Orleans PoBoy, which was big enough for lunch and dinner on Saturday, so that was a nice dinner as well as a nice chance for us to see an area of New Orleans outside of the French Quarter.

New Orleans! Arriving in New Orleans was really exciting as most of us have never been before. We had the afternoon to walk around and explore and then went to dinner in the French Quarter and spent the evening on Bourbon Street. Everyone has been looking forward to our weekend here and an anonymous staff member even got a tattoo within ours of our arrival! But has yet to tell his mother…

Going to the ACORN organization and talking with Beth was very insightful because we got a different perspective of the effects of Katrina. While we learned about the damage from the storm actually hitting in Bay St. Louis and all of the problems from wind and flooding, in New Orleans we heard about the damage in Ward 9 from levies breaking after the storm.

After hearing about the hardships and huge obstacles preventing rebuilding and renovation, we went on a bus tour to see Ward 9. Desolate is the perfect word to describe it. To ride through and see so much empty space that used to be homes and X’s spray painted on homes that indicate how many bodies of people or animals were found is shocking to see in person as opposed to on the news. Walking around what used to be a neighborhood and taking pictures, we were all shaken by what we read spray painted on the side of a house most of us had just stopped to take a picture of. It said “1600 people died so you could take this picture.” I felt really guilty and although we were all observing New Orleans compassionately, we did not come to volunteer or do any service. Learning about these dire situations and how much needs to be done but not actually doing any of it is tough. The past few days have been especially emotional because where as the first part of the trip we were dealing with racial issues and inequalities that our group reacted to differently based on our composition, but hearing about people losing everything they own and the face even further problems without hope of ever returning to a normal lifestyle is a situation where our entire group is in the privileged position.