On Saturday I went to the 7th Ward for a community meeting, followed by another meeting about starting a Neighborhood Watch program. The turnout for both meetings left something to be desired--3 community members for the first and 5 for the second. But I've been told that turnout is usually better when there is something specific to do, whereas these meetings were more informative than action-oriented. They did talk about an upcoming action, though--an ongoing campaign to get the Circle Food Store back into the neighborhood. Mondo Bizarro, who did the I-Witness Central City project, hopes to interview people about their memories of the store, to play in the background at an event in the former store's parking lot where people will meet and sign petitions (I highly recommend looking at that link, it's a pretty awesome collection--the woman pictured at the top is Stephanie, one of the 7th Ward Organizers).
In between the 2 meetings, I got to talking to a Miss Dorris from the community. She is 76 and has lived in the 7th Ward all her life, and nothing could make her leave or break her dignified, well-spoken calm--not even a hurricane that sent water up to her second step. She was content with all her stores of canned food and dry goods, candles, and her radio. She was not afraid to sit in her closet as the wind sent her awning tumbling down the street because the radio announcer himself took a break when he, too, was moved to a closet. After the terrible winds had stopped, she got a phonecall from someone asking if she had any water on her block. What water? Just as she looked out the window to see the water beginning to rise on the street, her phone went dead.
But she was just fine in her little house! Her only regret is that her nephew. David, living a few blocks away also stayed behind because he did not want to leave her (she felt very guilty about this, so that for Hurricane Gustav, she did evacuate with the rest of her family--as she said this, David's eyes widened and he shook his head, probably thinking his aunt was crazy!). With the contents of the broken levee stagnant in the streets, her nephew came by boat to get her, having to walk the last block or so to her house through knee-deep water because while the water was certainly too deep to belong on the street, it was too shallow for the boat. She was extremely lucky--no water got into her house, while areas nearby were over five feet under. They and some others spent several days on an overpass with little by way of food or water or facilities--she said they passed one porta-potty on their way, but it was full. Just the one!
Miss Dorris also had a lot to share about the history of the neighborhood and how times have changed. She used to work for an insurance company on Canal Street, and she described the higher standards they had back then for how people dressed. At a wedding reception she went to recently, she was horrified to see someone wearing shorts. For church and for weddings, they used to wear stockings and hats and white dress gloves. Even to go shopping on Canal Street, which used to be much nicer, they would put on hats and white gloves!
She and David also talked about the deterioration of the 7th Ward. People don't watch over the neighborhood as much, minding other people's kids in the street if parents aren't looking. Parents are not present the way they used to be. And people don't look out for eachother anymore--there isn't the neighborhood carpenter there to fix your porch for free when you can't afford to pay someone. Miss Dorris remembers helping her father paint the house--she said she used to do all kinds of manual labor, in a way implying that people nowadays don't seem to work as hard.
They also gave a lot of credit to the demolition of the projects, putting people together who just couldn't mix. Gang violence increased among groups from different project developments--even though these newcomers had the shared experience of being from the projects, they were divided by which specific project they had come from, which didn't make much sense in their opinions (While I question the mindset that different people are incapable of mixing, the violence between people formerly from different projects doesn't make too much sense to me, either). Miss Dorris also couldn't understand why they demolished the projects in the first place--they were well constructed and had hot and cold running water, making residents better off than many others in the neighborhood who did work and pay for their own housing. They were so well-constructed, she said, that they were extremely difficult to demolish--why didn't they just let them be?
There was also the city's decision to build an overpass over what used to be a beautiful neutral ground--a tree-lined boulevard with dozens of businesses. Miss Dorris remembered how the shoe repairman used to work all night on the weekend to get kids' shoes ready for school on Monday, something you never see anymore. People didn't used to drive so much either, but now the automobile has kind of taken over. Despite understanding the need for bigger roads for all the cars, she thinks the city probably regrets building the overpass because of what it did to the vitality of the neighborhood.
I was sad to have to end this conversation when the second meeting started. I still have this beautiful image of Miss Dorris with her perfect posture and curled white hair walking down Canal Street in stockings, hat and gloves, shopping for a new dress or ribbons for her hat.
The cop who came to talk about Neighborhood Watch program was, to be polite, a bit clueless about what he was doing. He tried to make up for his very heavy accent (Vietnamese?) by talking extremely loudly, but he was still pretty difficult to understand sometimes. And there was no disguising the fact that he was talking down to everyone present, putting most of the blame for unsolved crime on the fact that it often goes unreported (aka it's the neighborhood's fault for not calling the cops). But people don't call the cops because they are afraid of retaliation--this he did address by explaining how to make a confidential report. But people don't call the cops because the cops are corrupt and people do not trust them--this he did not address at all. He also held up the Neighborhood Watch sign that they can hang in the neighborhood and proclaimed, "This is the gansta sign! We cops are gangstas too!" while everyone present looked either horrified or disgusted. Fail. Still, he did provide good information, so hopefully the program really does get off the ground and running.
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