Public Employee Press

New Orleans volunteer tells
Tales of hardship and courage

“Bush dropped the ball. Volunteers are making the difference.”

By JANE LaTOUR

New Orleans is famous for its warm hospitality to visitors. Since Hurricane Katrina hit last Aug. 29, the Crescent City has extended its gracious welcome to the thousands of volunteers who are helping to provide food and clothes, strengthen emergency and social services, dig the city out from debris and rebuild its shattered structures.
Two powerful forces have helped New Orleans fight back against the widespread devastation and flooding that the storm winds brought. One is the determination of the residents who remain and are returning to rebuild their great city. The other is the steady stream of volunteers who continue to come to their aid in that effort.

On Feb. 5, Staff Attorney Jocelyn Smith of DC 37’s Municipal Employees Legal Service joined the list of volunteers from DC 37 and its national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. She traveled to New Orleans to lend her hands and spirit as one of nine volunteers sent by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Immediately after Katrina hit, the young attorney offered to help out. But as a native New Yorker, she lacked one of the essentials, a driver’s license. Finally, five months after the hurricane came in from the sea, she was able to join a team going south.

She brought back stories of immense courage and enormous hardship. On the first day, she got a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood that has been almost totally wiped out. “The devastation stretches for block after block,” she said. “The houses were knocked off their foundations. Some were lifted up and came back down on top of cars or onto other homes.”

Right after the tragic events of 9/11 in New York City, Smith enlisted as a volunteer. “What shocked me was the contrast between New York City and New Orleans. Here, there was so much assistance for victims and businesses,” she said. “But in New Orleans, it seems that they are left to do it all on their own.” She told of helping individuals and families faced with the harrowing tasks of ripping down walls, clearing up huge piles of debris, and throwing out all of what used to be their worldly possessions.

As a New Yorker, she feels a tremendous sense of kinship with New Orleans. “Both cities were tremendously victimized by President Bush’s neglect. Both times, after 9/11 and after Katrina, he dropped the ball.” Now she feels that New Yorkers have a special obligation to help in the recovery of New Orleans. “As a city that’s suffered because of Bush, we have to stand up for a city that’s been largely destroyed and faces such a long road back.”

Throughout her eight-day stay in New Orleans, Smith worked with churches to help prepare them to receive more volunteers. The situations she encountered filled her with a sense of outrage. “One handicapped woman got a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency five-and-a-half months after the hurricane. The next day, they took it away from her,” she said.
There are 40,000 families still waiting for FEMA trailers for temporary housing, while 10,000 of the mobile homes sit unused in muddy Arkansas fields.

Angry at federal incompetence
Other acts of omission and commission by the federal agency that continues to prove its ineptitude are part of the fuel that keeps Smith fired up to spread her New Orleans stories. Rebuilding contracts have gone to large contractors from outside the Gulf Coast region that have political connections to the Bush administration. An estimated $1 billion in funding for Katrina recovery efforts has been wasted.

Almost one year after Katrina struck, the scale of the work that remains to be done is still immense, as the recent photos on these pages show. The Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ daily newspaper, received two Pulitzer prizes for its coverage of the hurricane and the continuing debacle that confronts the inhabitants. The paper continues to provide a lifeline for local residents and the displaced as a source of information and sanity.

Stories that Smith read provided up-to-date descriptions of looming problems. “Floodwall shifting disputed by corps [Army Corps of Engineers]” and “Pump operators want to see storm plan,” were the headline of two articles published May 9.

Back at home, Smith worked with her church group, the First Unitarian Congregational Society, to organize members of religious groups, schools, unions and community groups to come together to voice their concerns and to actively address the needs of New Orleans.

“New York Speaks Out with New Orleans,” a call for rebuilding and social justice, took place in Brooklyn on June 1, the first day of hurricane season. “It’s just shocking to me that so little has been done,” she said. “We can’t forget that the lives of thousands and thousands of people have been totally disrupted. They need help to put their lives and their city back together again.”