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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript #14-06 Katrina Uncovers: Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans
April 5, 2006

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2006/1406.html

Rubio: This week on Making Contact:

Eugene: This neighborhood will never be the same. There was a lot of us down here, and now maybe two or three might come back to this area.

Mintz: If you’ve come here to help, then I don’t want your help. But if you’ve come because you realize that your fate is bound up with mine, then let’s cooperate and work together.

Rubio: More than six months after Hurricane Katrina, much of the Gulf Coast still lay in ruin. But beyond the physical destruction, the disaster brought to light a number of deeper issues: poverty, environmental pollution, and government negligence.

Beck: On this edition, we go to New Orleans, where we hear from local people working to rebuild their communities. We visit the devastated Ninth ward, where grassroots groups are leading the cleanup effort, and we look at whether the city is safe enough for those choosing to return. I’m Justin Beck.

Rubio: And I’m Tena Rubio. We’re your hosts this week on Making Contact, a program connecting people, vital ideas, and important information.

Beck: On a cloudy Friday morning inside a house on Louisa Street, in the upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans, local residents and out-of-towners are hard at work together. Although it’s been six months since this neighborhood was turned inside out by floodwaters, rebuilding is not on the agenda today, at least for these volunteers. Right now, it’s all about gutting.

Mintz: Let’s take all – let’s take everything down here first.

Beck: After suiting up head-to-toe in protective clothing, eye goggles and respirators, workers tear apart the home of 69-year-old Floyd Brooks. A retired, lifelong New Orleans resident, Floyd evacuated the city the day before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Floyd thought he'd be able to come back in a day or so. He finally returned the day after Christmas, nearly four months later.

Brooks: I thought this would never happen, really.

Beck: What exactly happened to the house? How much water and so forth?

Brooks: We had roof damage – one of the vents is off – I haven’t gone up there but one of the vents is off. We had water up to here, I guess.

Beck: And how high is that?

Brooks: About – in the house I’d say three feet, but outside I’d say five feet, yeah. I think the house can be saved but everything else is gone, yeah.

Beck: Floyd's uncertainty over the fate of his house seems to reflect the general mood about the city of New Orleans: I think it can be saved. Local grassroots organizations also think New Orleans can be saved, and they're working to make sure those most affected by the disaster play a central role. One of the groups is the Common Ground Collective, formed by a handful of local activists less than a week after Katrina struck. Common Ground currently has a small army of volunteers – 17 hundred of them according to the organization. Their work is cut out for them: Katrina left behind roughly 200 thousand destroyed homes, and that's just in the greater New Orleans area. Inside Floyd’s house, a half dozen Common Ground volunteers are knocking out moldy sheetrock, pulling rusty nails from wall studs, ripping up ruined carpets, and hauling all of it to a growing pile in the street out front. All of this needs to come out before Floyd can start rebuilding. Gabriel Cohen is a 19-year-old politics and studio art major at Oberlin College in Ohio. He got inspired about working with Common Ground after hearing stories from other students returning from New Orleans.

Cohen: It’s been a pretty surreal experience. It’s been really amazing being here. There’s a tremendous amount to be done, and it’s really good, important work. But at the same time, to be living in this space where you’re surrounded by the containers of people’s destroyed lives and crushed houses and disrupted existences is really scary.

Beck: Six months later, and it feels like the disaster could have happened yesterday. But as bad as things look now, the problems in New Orleans – before and after the hurricanes – go beyond the physical. So besides gutting houses, Common Ground volunteers are finding ways to bridge the gap between immediate need and long-term social change. Common Ground's co-founder, Malik Rahim, is a longtime New Orleans resident, activist and Katrina survivor. When Katrina struck, he wasted no time in taking action. Malik quickly realized that if he and other New Orleans residents had any hope of saving their communities, they would have to organize on their own, without any help from local, state or federal authorities.

Rahim: When we noticed that the government had dropped the ball – no, I can’t say they dropped it, they didn’t even pick it up. So when we realized that the government had no intention on providing the basics that is needed in a time of disaster, then we took it upon ourselves to come forward and start meeting these needs.

Beck: Much of Common Ground's work is focused in low-income communities of color, who disproportionately felt the impact of the disaster. It’s in these places that Rahim is hoping to promote civic responsibility.

Rahim: And how we promote it by the work that we are doing. By our motto, and that’s “solidarity, not charity.”

Beck: Common Ground tells new volunteers they'll most likely be gutting houses. Those who aren't able to can work on a number of other projects – distribution centers, free medical clinics, a women's center, free legal defense and environmental cleanup to name a few. There's no paid staff in the collective – volunteers do it all. But Malik hopes that Common Ground can do a lot more than addressing immediate needs.

Rahim: I look at it as beyond just bringing relief. It’s a movement for peace and justice. We are trying to make blacks understand that every black person ain’t your friend, and every white person ain’t your enemy. And we are letting whites know that yes, you have been given a type of privilege that no blacks could ever obtain under the present environment that exists in America.

Beck: An Urban Institute study based on Census data, shows about nine percent of whites in the U.S. are poor. That's less than one in 10. But nearly one out of every four black people lives in poverty. In New Orleans, pre-Katrina, things were far worse. Although African Americans made up 67 percent of the population in the city, 35 percent of them were poor, more than three times the poverty rate among whites. And a staggering 91 percent of all poor families in New Orleans were black. As the co-founder of an anti-racist organization, Malik is hoping to change that. And not just by talking about it.

Rahim: Because anybody could say anything. It’s by our action. By seeing non-traditional people in certain communities. By them seeing whites in traditionally black communities, by them seeing blacks in traditionally white communities. Seeing that we could bridge the gap on helping each other. That racism have no place in America, and if it is, then we need to explore that, and find other solutions.

Beck: An American Red Cross disaster relief van rolls down Louisa Street in the Upper Ninth ward. Floyd Brooks and his 49-year-old daughter Valentina Brooks-Mitchell take a break from working on the house…and walk out to the street. Carol van Rhine, a volunteer from California hands them bags full of free food and water.

Van Rhine: And you need some meals, darling?

Brooks: Yes, and some water.

Van Rhine: And water. How many meals do you need?

Brooks-Mitchell: Two.

Van Rhine: And how many meals do you need, darling?

Brooks: I just need water. She’s got my meal.

Van Rhine: God bless you, honey.

Brooks: God bless you.

Van Rhine: We’ll be back tomorrow.

Beck: More than six months on, and groups like the Red Cross and Common Ground are still feeding people in New Orleans. Given the sheer scale of the devastation, no one really knows how long it will take just to clean up the city, let alone rebuild. For the mostly young, white and educated volunteers with Common Ground, the hard labor they're doing today in historically neglected communities like the Ninth ward is just the beginning of a long-term struggle against injustice. Rebecca Mintz is a 22-year-old college graduate from Bethesda, Maryland. I ask her what Common Ground's slogan – solidarity, not charity – means to her.

Mintz: I was listening to a woman speak the other night about anti-racism work. One quote she had was along the lines of, “If you’ve come to help, then I don’t want your help – or I don’t need your help – but if you’ve come because you realize that your fate is bound up with mine, then let’s cooperate and work together. I think to realize that starts making anti-racism struggles everybody’s struggle, and not just the struggle of people of color.

Beck: Hurricane Katrina didn't exactly expose the deeper problems in New Orleans – like poverty, institutionalized racism, and the government’s failure to protect its citizens – it only brought them to the forefront. Solving these problems isn’t likely to happen overnight. But, neither is the cleanup. And so for the foreseeable future, Common Ground will be hard at work putting some muscle behind its message. Meanwhile, his house nearly gutted, Floyd Brooks hopes the FEMA trailer he's been waiting on for months will someday be delivered. And he dismisses any talk of giving up and leaving New Orleans.

Brooks: No, no. Uh-uh.

Beck: Why not?

Brooks: New Orleans is my home. I’m going to die here, that’s for sure. I was born and raised here with all my family.

Beck: What do you think is going to happen to this city?

Brooks: I think this city’s going to come back. It’s going to be a better city than it was before. It might not be as big, but it’s gonna be better, I think.

Beck: Six months sounds like a long time, yet still, so much needs to be done. Common Ground co-founder, Malik Rahim:

Rahim: We need generators, we need transportation, we need those that stand for peace and justice that is developers to come in and invest in us, in the rebuilding of New Orleans. We need ideas. We need doctors. We need engineers, who can monitor this levee system. We need those that can help us gut out homes, we need building material. The need is enormous, but most of all we need individuals.

Beck: To find out how you can become part of the Common Ground Collective and volunteer with the people of New Orleans in rebuilding their cit, go online at commongroundrelief.org, or call 504-218-6613. That’s 504-218-6613. For a list of other ways to get involved, visit our website at radioproject.org.

Rubio: We'll hear more stories from New Orleans in a few moments.
You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you’d like more information or for CD copies of this program, please call 800-529-5736. You can also download programs or get our podcast at radioproject.org.

Beck: We’d seen the pictures, we’d read the stories, but we had to get a first-hand look at the devastation in the Lower Ninth ward. Nestled alongside the breached Industrial Canal levee, this was one of the hardest hit areas by the flooding. We’d heard the phrase ‘rebuilding effort’ so often in the national media, so we were curious whether that matched the reality on the ground.

Rubio: We meet up with Diamonds Eugene, a local resident who grew up in the Lower Ninth. After evacuating to Dallas, Texas, he recently returned to New Orleans and found work as a truck driver, and today he agrees to be our tour guide.

Eugene: Down here, they made the city a junk yard. This is crazy. When you get down here, once you get over this bridge, it looks like they had a war, like the United States bombed us.

Rubio: Heading east…we make our way over the Industrial Canal.

Eugene: See, all that was houses, just like that. But the levee broke and scattered the houses. So if somebody was in there, they dead. So, you can’t even find your house, you can’t find a board for your house. The water came and pushed everything this way, just pushed. That’s a street, but it’s not a street no more ‘cause they got two or three houses in front there. See that? Car on top of a car. Knocked telephone poles down.

Beck: What does this look like to you Diamonds?

Eugene: This look like a bomb hit. I ain’t never seen nothing like this. You can’t even see the paint on the little wood. It look like King Kong came down here and just star kicking stuff around. This place was full of trees. You could barely see the houses, but now trees is down and dying. This supposed to look like a city, this supposed to have homes and everything, a residential area. People supposed to be going to school here and it just look like a trash landfill. Everything just leveled. Look at that, a house on top of a car. First when I came down here I wanted to take pictures, but then I was like, they’re not gonna fix this no time soon. You can come down here anytime. The storm’s been what, six, seven months and look how it looks. Look at that, the steps to somebody porch. So if you live there, you’d be like, “Where’s my house?” It’s like somebody, like an alien spaceship just took your house.

Beck: This area is just covered with debris, and people’s belongings are just strewn everywhere. I’m standing on what must have been somebody’s house, and there are videotapes, old vinyl records, just pieces of houses, trophies, kitchen appliances, bicycles, toys, and this refrigerator that’s just hanging by a wire.

Eugene: A refrigerator from nowhere, around houses that still standing, but it’s hanging from a wire from a telephone pole to the house, it’s just hanging on a wire. And I don’t know how that got up there, that looks like that was planted up there. But it couldn’t. You’d have to get a dozen guys to put a refrigerator up there.

Beck: We slowly wind our way through Diamonds’ old neighborhood, searching for his great grandmother Cecile’s house where he spent a good part of his childhood. Where it once stood, six months later, there’s nothing but an empty lot. There’s no sign of the house anywhere. Or people, for that matter.

Eugene: This neighborhood will never be the same, there was a lot of us down here, and now maybe two or three might come back in this area. And all our friends and everybody we knew, we not seeing them no more. We be calling them and everything, everybody scattered through the south. They got a handful in Atlanta, Memphis, Oklahoma, Dallas, Houston. Some of them people talk about they’re not coming back, they’re not going back down there.

Rubio: Diamonds is back in New Orleans for now, but he’s not sure whether or not he’ll end up staying. Right now he lives in a FEMA trailer along with his girlfriend and their two-year-old son. He says he’s making good money driving his own 18-wheeler truck. He says his decision on whether or not to settle down in New Orleans all depends on the city becoming a better place to live – on many levels.

Eugene: If they could get this system fixed, I’ll stay. Fix the system, fix the school system, fix the government, and get a better hurricane plan than this, and yeah, I stick around. But if they can’t fix it, I might as well go to Dallas, where it was good before. You all getting stories from people who living now, but there’s a lot of people that’s dead, and I found, and they need their stories out. Hopefully in some kind of way, it’ll come out and they’ll respect them people like they did, like the people in the World Trade Center. We respected them people, so hopefully people don’t say, “Ah, the city had a lot of crime, forget them.” No, don’t forget us. A lot of people died.

Rubio: While thousands of New Orleans residents wait for the green light to come back home, it’s important to ask: Is it safe? Well it seems that depends who you talk to.

When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit, the floodwaters swirled up a mixture of soil, debris, and mud from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, dumping the environmental mess into the greater New Orleans area. For miles, streets, yards, homes and playgrounds were caked in layer of muck. Muck that many experts say is contaminated and still remains in many areas today. Environmental consultant and chemist, Wilma Subra began testing the sediment and water for toxins right after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Subra: I went out in the field within 48 hours and did damage assessment, needs assessment on behalf of the community, and saw this huge sediment sludge layer just coating everything. The sludge layer was actually transported on shore with the tidal surge and it originated in the water bottoms of the lakes, the streams, the estuaries and actually with the contaminated water bottom sediment that was now laying on the surface all along the area where the tidal surge came upon the land.

Rubio: Wilma is a longtime environmental crusader, founder and president of Subra Company, an environmental consulting group in New Iberia, Louisiana. Up and down the Mississippi River, Wilma has helped hundreds of communities, many of them poor, to fend off polluters. But this time, instead of fending off polluters, she’s taking on the government agency that’s supposed to help regulate pollution – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Since hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, the EPA has collected thousands of sediment samples throughout the greater New Orleans region. Wilma says the EPA’s samples and her own samples show high concentrations of toxic contaminants.

Subra: The chemical we found the most all the way across the Gulf Coast, in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana was arsenic. It was there in the most, most prevalent, highest concentration above acceptable levels, that if you had a Superfund site, you would have to go in and address the situation. And then we’re finding high levels of diesel fuel which originates in all the wastes that are in people’s houses and businesses. And it’s just totally mixed with this sediment sludge which also in the water bottom has high levels of these organic contaminants.

Rubio: But the EPA, which is working alongside the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, has assured local residents that contamination levels in the city pose no unacceptable health risks. Cynthia Fanning is an information officer with the agency.

Fanning: We found some elevated levels of arsenic and lead. Early on, there were elevated levels of benzoapyrene. But those levels have dissipated. We already know that there are no acute health risks. And this is where the EPA and Wilma Subra part ways.

Subra: The difference is in the interpretation. They are saying that there is no short term risk as a result of coming in contact with this sediment sludge or returning to the community. However, when you look on their facts sheets that their giving out to people as they return, they’re telling them, we advise you not to come into contact with this sediment sludge. And if you have to come into contact with this sediment sludge, we advise you to wear protective gear, protective clothing, Tyvek suits, respirators, gloves, booties and then do good hygiene. So in once case they’re saying no short term health impacts but on the other case they’re saying, don’t come in contact with it and if you do wear protective equipment.

Rubio: Wilma and organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade say long-term exposure to the worst contaminants left behind can cause significant health problems. Arsenic exposure can cause bladder, liver and lung cancer. Long-term contact with lead interferes with normal brain development in infants and children. Inhaling diesel-contaminated dust and vapors can increase blood pressure and cause kidney damage. Exposure to benzoapyrene, a petroleum byproduct, can cause chromosome damage and cancer. And the short-term health effects? Wilma explains.

Subra: Well, one of the interesting things is when we take the chemicals and we look at the short term effects that are associated with those chemicals, they actually match the short term impacts that the responders are having – the ones that went in right away and started rescuing people out of the water – and then those same health impacts are being experienced by the people returning to their homes for a look-see, wading through the sediment sludge. And then, it’s happening in people who go back and inhabit the area. And they consist of skin rashes and sections of the skin that don’t respond to normal anti-body treatment, respiratory impacts and asthma attacks.

Rubio: By late February, the EPA had just completed re-testing certain heavily contaminated areas, known as hot spots, that they say showed higher levels of toxic contaminants. But then what? Cynthia Fanning explains.

Fanning: After that, we review the data, analyze it, let our toxicologists take a look at it, and advise us either on what they need to do further analysis, or whether we can come up with a determination on whether there are next steps that need to take place.

Rubio: But as of March, no new information had been released on the EPA’s website. Meanwhile, it seems residents will have to wait to find out the results. Waiting while their kids play in the schoolyard, pets roam their backyards and families struggle daily to put their lives back together on an uncertain and possibly hazardous landscape. And then there’s the issue of pollutants already existing in areas pre-Katrina. Such is the case of Ken Ford, a long-time resident of Saint Bernard Parish, a low-income community in Chalmette, Louisiana, about 10 miles southeast of New Orleans. It’s home to two main oil refineries: Exxon Mobile and Murphy Oil.

Ford: We get this black stuff, this carbon deposit, all over our property. Well, I used to keep it in on a trailer in my yard, and I used to actually get about a quarter inch of black soot in the captain of the box at the time – well, an eighth of an inch. Plentiful. And it’d smear all over, you touch it, you bring it in your house, you would dirty your carpets. And along with that, you would get bad odor problems. People used to come to the parish, five miles up, and they’d say, well, you can smell it when you’re in Chalmette. A blind man could tell when he’s in Chalmette.

Rubio: I met Ken in his FEMA trailer parked outside his ruined home in the Parish. Ken has lived in Chalmette for the past 40-years. He raised his two daughters in the area and knows all of his neighbors – neighbors that over the years, he’s watched die of cancer.

Ford: There was so many people dying of cancer, died of cancer. Like across the street from me, Tom Gonzales died maybe three years ago, two years ago. Lou just died about six months ago. The lady next door died a couple years ago, never smoked a day in her life, had cancer all over. Tommy DeRose down the block worked all his life, retired, he developed cancer and dies, this man never smoked either. Johnny Abraham retired, and he died of cancer, and his next-door neighbor, Hoyman Navo, he died of cancer, and it’s just sad. We’d bring this to the leaders to try to get some help, and they would said, well, everybody’s dying of cancer, you gotta die of something.

Rubio: Ken also has cancer. Bladder cancer. And he lost one of his lungs to cancer. And it got him thinking. Something’s not right. So he started Saint Bernard Citizens for Environmental Quality. And in 2004, this environmental watchdog, along with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic sued Exxon Mobil. Last year, they won a pre-trial motion that found Exxon Mobil in 34 violations of the Clean Air Act. But relief is still a long way away. When hurricane Katrina hit, a 20-foot storm surge caused a massive oil spill by Murphy Oil. Lawsuits are pending on behalf of the residents. Although Murphy Oil says it’s spent millions in clean-up costs and in settlements. But Ken Ford’s fears have not been put to rest. He says, whether pollutants were in the Parish before or after Katrina shouldn’t matter. The fact is, the area needs help, but no one seems to want to take responsibility.

Ford: Soil samples were taken right here. And the results came back and we had a meeting in Baton Rouge about it. They said, “That soil sample taken was full of a lot of heavy metals and a lot of pollutants. But they weren’t caused by Katrina. It’s not Katrina. Mr. Ford, it’s toxic, but it has nothing to do with Katrina.” I said, “What the hell’s the difference? You’re the EPA. What’s the difference, man?” They were all, “Aw, we’re not gonna get involved in all that.”

Rubio: So with much of the New Orleans metropolitan area caked with toxic sludge, and as the debate continues if it was caused by the hurricanes fury or is just part of the ongoing environmental degradation that marks many areas of the Gulf region, is it safe to return to the Big Easy?

It seems no one can, or will, provide a definitive answer. But Wilma Subra says one thing is certain.

Subra: We want people to be aware and take precautions and then make decisions based on as much information as they can acquire as they come into their communities so they’ll be safeguarded.

Beck: That's it for this edition of Making Contact. Special thanks to Bill Creighton, Diane Solomon, Dan Turner, Ronald Rucker, Katherine Nelson, Yasuyo Nagata, and Akilah Bridgeford. Making Contact is an independent production, funded primarily by generous gifts from people in the community. For a C-D copy of program number 14-06 call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736 or go to radioproject.org.

Rubio: Lisa Rudman is our Executive Director, Tena Rubio, Senior Producer, Justin Beck, producer; Dorian Taylor, Communications Manager; Esther Manilla, Outreach Coordinator; Tom Evans, Development Associate; and Alina Potts, Production Intern. I'm Tena Rubio.

Beck: And I’m Justin Beck. Thanks for listening to Making Contact.