Maybe all we humans, as a collective species, have ever really wanted is someone to hear our stories - to be validated and have our feelings, our prayers, and our dreams conveyed to someone/something and kept alive outside our own bodies. Every aspect of our lives involves recounting our experiences in one form or another, whether it's tweeting, using our personal experiences to formulate our opinions and tint our actions, or by calling up your best friend on the phone and telling her about your day. This week marks the holiday of Passover, during which the Jewish people retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. This Pesach, in addition to this 3,000 year old story, I also choose to tell a new one which I will share with you here. Two weeks ago, I (re)packed my bags and headed off to New Orleans for an Alternative Spring Break. As a full disclosure, I intend for this blog post to only be the beginning of my retelling, as there is no way that I could possibly say everything here, and I hope that you come away from this post with more questions than answers. All these stories are grossly over-simplified, but I hope you will forgive me and instead of brushing them off as inaccurate, you'll e-mail and ask me to clarify and specify further.
Characters:
-Ten Stanford Students and one Hillel at Stanford Staff
-Two amazing Progressive Jewish Alliance/Jewish Funds for Justice Staff Members
-One PhD student studying Anthropology (specifically Jewish Social Action groups in New Orleans)
-Matthew, homeowner in Back Pearl
-Tanya, community activist and Ninth Ward resident
-Slyvester, curator of the Backstreet Cultural Museum
-Charlotte, Natalia, and Shaena, advocates and staff at Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana
-Elderly woman, homeowner in Gentilly
-Matt, Jessica, Chad, and Felicia, Americorps staff at Rebuilding Together: New Orleans
-Letoya, bus driver extraordinaire
Excerpts:
...We all got off the bus and walked towards the Industrial Canal. To our left, we saw a wall that was probably about eight feet high. "That's the levee," Tanya told us, "it broke just down there," she says pointing a few hundred meters downstream. Tanya told us how her neighborhood was flooded by over eight feet of water and most of the homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward remained without their homes for many months, if not years. The levees that were rebuilt by the Army Corps of Engineers are now meant to withhold storms up to a Category 2. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5. As we rode through her neighborhood, Tanya pointed out a set of shiny, perfectly white homes behind a fence across the street from her house. These were the military barracks, she explained. The army had spent millions of dollars building housing literally across the street from Tanya's home, but she was repeatedly caught up in bureaucratic red tape and told that insurance funds for her home rebuild were depleated.
...One day after working sorting lumber and other salvaged home parts, we heard a presentation from Charlotte, Shaena, and Natalia from JJPL. They shared with us their challenges, frustrations, and disappointments in terms of the Juvenile Justice System in Louisiana. From issues such as a very stable school-to-prison pipeline due to poor infrastructure and discriminatory legislation, to the lack of funds (and/or desire) to properly treat post-traumatic stress disorder in youth, to lack of community centers, to militarily-trained security guards being placed in elementary schools, the state of Louisiana seems to be in dire need of reform. A phrase of Shaena's has stuck with me since that day, "It is easier to go to jail as a young person from New Orleans than it is to go to school."
...As part of our work with Rebuilding Together, my friend Rebecca and I went out into the neighborhood to talk to people about the organization and see if they were eligible for rebuilding services. Although in a middle-class neighborhood, every fourth house or so was completely dilapidated. At one house, an elderly woman approached us on her porch. Becca and I talked to her for about 15 minutes, during which time we learned that she was either 87 or 89 years old and was born in New Orleans herself. Her daughter had just died of brain cancer and she was going to move into her grandson's home across Paris Avenue. This woman had bought her own home and told us many, many times that children were our greatest asset and she highlighted the importance of keeping our money away from our husbands - just in case. I remember thinking that whole day of how she is only a few years older than my grandmother and how incredible it is that their stories are so different. I am so sorry that we didn't catch this woman's name, because her advice to us was so interesting. While it might not be exactly relevant to my life today (for example, she mentioned that women couldn't have bank accounts without a husband), it was so touching that she shared part of herself with me and I'm so grateful that she did.
...Letoya's story came to us on the last day of the trip. During the storm, Letoya, then five-months pregnant, was with several of her family members in her grandmother's house. As the flood waters began to rise, Letoya tried to walk to high ground, but she and her family ended up surrounded by water, holding on to whatever they could to stay afloat. They made it to a neighbor's house where they waited for three days without food or water before being rescued. She and her family were then placed on a bus headed for Texas, and after more than six months, she could return to New Orleans with her healthy new son.
...Along with stories of unbelievable strength and survival, and constant challenges, and many sessions spent about addressing societal and sysematic issues not only in New Orleans, but all over the country, there were some stories of joy. The Shabbat I shared with my fellow Stanford Students and our staff was the most memorable I've had in recent memory. Our Shabbat Shira (song session) began on the bus going to services and ended long after Havdalah on Saturday night. It included a rain-soaked, impromptu hora, a sweet potato pie in the face, and beautiful thought-provoking discussions and study. Perhaps it was the physical work of the week that made the rest of Shabbat that much more sweet and whole, or it could have been that I was with an exceptional group of people going on an exceptional journey. Regardless, that Shabbat will stay in my mind for a while, and serve as a reminder of all the collective stories I heard and memories I created in New Orleans, and most importantly, my promise to continue to act against injustice in my community and to share all I've seen and heard with you.
B'shalom (in peace),
Doria
