Books by Jerry W. Ward  Jr.

Trouble the Water (1997) / Black Southern Voices (1992)

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Katrina Reports:  New Orleans 2007

By Jerry Ward, James Borders, Jarvis DeBerry, Chris Rose, et al

This has been “let us remember the human capacity for violence” week in New Orleans. Thursday night, as Kalamu ya Salaam and I were having our weekly dinner, a news flash informed us that 6 people had been killed in 18 hours. Another murder this weekend brought the number to seven. The crime rate in the city forces us to think about varieties of violence and violation. If you rewire your gutted house and don’t have armed guards to protect the property, it is not unlikely that thieves will strip all the wiring in order to sell the copper. Nothing is sacred. John Scott’s art studio in New Orleans East was robbed just before New Year’s; the thieves took metal sculptures. I do hope John, who is perhaps the most brilliant visual artist this city has produced, has not been told. He is in Texas, recovering from a -second lung transplant. I understand that some citizens will meet today to plan a march for Thursday to protest the rise in violence. Although I recognize the rightness of speaking out against crime, I am skeptical about the march producing results other than more news coverage.

To say we live in hard times in New Orleans is a vulgar understatement. We live in cloacal times. I initially thought the city would be in low cotton for 10 to 20 years because of the slow recovery process, the bureaucratic ineptness, and the extensive work to outfit New Orleans with new levees and housing that work-class people can afford and jobs to sustain their lives and to replace the pathetic public school system, storm-damaged residences and ancient infrastructures. A new possibility emerges: people killing other people will kill the city. Yes, our tremendous drug economy is one of the causes of much violence, and I think many of our law enforcement officers have dirty hands. Dig deeper, however, to detect blame. Our criminal justice (injustice?) system is constipated. It is equally true that when large numbers of people in an urban area suffer from untreated trauma, some of them become pathological. It would be ignorant to blame our plight on post-Katrina trauma alone. Rather we must look at the global context of now. What is happening to us is one aspect of the human being’s return to the primal and the primitive on an international scale. In short, New Orleans has begun 2007 in a metaphorical pile of shit. In that sense, we are normal in a world that has become the scene for highly visible and invisible lack of respect for human life, the defecation of the civilized.

There is rancid irony in my giving loving attention to Richard Wright’s violence-drenched work as we approach his centennial. Men and women of all colors only half-listened to Wright and other writers who focused on peoplekind’s destructive potential, preferring to dance in the twilight zone of arts, self-congratulation regarding the achievements of technology and science, entertainments, romantic illusions. We have not changed much. We are still dancing in 2007. The irony consists of my not feeling exceptionally good about playing the role of a reverse John the Baptist. As Wright remarked in 1944 about the genesis of Black Boy, “to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth, harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution. Indeed I discovered that writing like that is a kind of war and revolution.” [NY Post, Nov. 30, 1944, p. B6] Six decades later, Wright’s words inspire fear and trembling in New Orleans.

Jerry Ward

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dread in big easy

once again the new orleans press club wussies and their often unwitting camp followers are pandering to the most primal fears of ignorant readers without offering them any real analysis of the economic injustice that permeates new orleans. worse, it's mostly a bunch of men whining like ginny women, soliciting pity merely to hustle up a couple of extra pay days. i suppose we can take some comfort in the fact that these whiners are not real new orleanians. they're just typical transplants who've come to the city to pocket some coins and indulge in a little deviance, i imagine. now they're finding out about the psychological terror the natives have always had to cope with. soon they'll discover why the city's survivors have either humbuggish or totally nonchalant personalities. and if we're lucky, most of them will go move on or back to their own homes before they lose their minds in ours.

James Borders

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City is in a dark and scary place now

I've lived through earlier violent streaks. But the previous ones took place in a city that was mostly well-lit and populated, and it was easy to believe that I'd be fine so long as I stay with the pack and in the light.

Now the question is: What pack, and what light? New Orleans is still in a state of storm-induced desolation and darkness. Those two characteristics alone are enough to give one the heebie-jeebies. But throw in the idea of murderers running amok and a Police Department that has yet to announce a plan of action, and what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill stop for gas is dreaded. . . .

I couldn't help but think, though, that if we have become a city where even a request for directions frightens us, that it isn't the strangers who are lost. We are.

Jarvis DeBerry, New Orleans, Louisiana

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Fear and firepower

Everyone I know hears the shots. They get muffled by the sound of fireworks this time of year, but soon the fireworks will stop. The gunshots will not.

My neighborhood is the quietest of them all. Safe, in a relative sense. Very relative.

Down in the 7th, the 8th and the 9th, it's part of the aural fabric of the darkness, rat-tat-tat, the deadly game played on street corners by the Children of the Night.

They play a game called Somebody Dies Tonight. Question is, will it be someone you know—a doctor, an artist, a musician—so you'll get all up in arms about it and march on City Hall? Or will it be another nameless, faceless child of the streets, a killer at 17, dead himself at 18?

Should we mourn them any less?

I did not tell my wife about the shots I sometimes hear on my walks until this weekend because I don't want to move away from New Orleans. This is neither the time nor the place to dwell on the many reasons I don't want to go. For the sake of argument, it's just a given.

But how close to my house do I allow the shots to come before I claim no mas? How many more friends and acquaintances will die stupidly in their cars and yards and doorways before I realize that I have become more afraid of and for my city than ever before and am bordering on a siege mentality?

Chris Rose, "Will violent youths destroy what wind and water and fire could not?" New Orleans, Louisiana

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website for documentary on
public education in new orleans—http://neworleansleftbehind.com/

Left Behind is a 90-minute documentary that tells the story of three African-American high school seniors as they navigate through their final year of high school. Their final year in one of the poorest cities in the state; in a state ranked as the poorest in America; in one of the most violent cities, states and countries in the industrialized world.

The film, shot before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, shows how an uneducated impoverished population reacts under the stress. Our never-before-seen Katrina footage highlights our two-year-long documentary. We show reasons for the looting, rape, murder and mayhem -- the effects our man-made environment has on human behavior. We examine the core of our American values, the framework by which we live, and we show how our most vaunted beliefs and government policies have played a role in our nation's shame.

Interviews with Noam Chomsky, Jessie Jackson, Ice T, Congressmen William Jefferson and Maxine Waters, author Michael Eric Dyson, Jim Derleth (US AID Specialist in development and conflict resolution assigned to East and West Africa) and others accent our narrative.

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Poor Gonna Have to Stay Gone

Mr. [Stanley] Taylor, who is black, snapped that maybe it would be better if some of them didn't come back. "The poor people that's gone," he said, "they're gonna have to stay gone. That's where all the crime was coming from, see? Folks here want people to come back, but they want people with money to come back. The criminals? Shame on 'em. Sorry for 'em." . . .

New Orleans is a mess. It was brought to its knees by Katrina, and is being kept there by a toxic combination of federal neglect and colossal, mind-numbing ineptitude at the local level. . . .

Class, at the moment, is trumping race, which is how Mr. Reiss and Mr. Taylor, the cabdriver, came unwittingly to similar stereotyped conclusions. Unless the foundations of a livable city can be put in place - and they are not being put in place now - those with the ability to leave will do so. The poor, neglected as always, will be left behind.

"The same thing is moving African-Americans as is moving whites," Mr. Landrieu said. "Everyone is asking: 'Is it safe? What's the school situation? Can my kids play outside? What does the future hold for them?' "

Without a creative new plan and energetic new leadership, New Orleans will be unable to save itself. Right now it's a city sinking to ever more tragic depths.

Bob Herbert, “Descending to New Depths.”  NYTimes. January 15, 2007.

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Community Responses

After nearly fifteen months of shuttered storefronts, a block of Black-owned businesses in New Orleans celebrated a rebirth this week. The street, on Bayou Road in the seventh ward neighborhood of New Orleans, is a hopeful sign in a city where 60 percent of the population remains displaced and many businesses are shutting down or moving. As recently as August, most of the area remained shuttered and empty. Now, almost every shop is open. The Community Book Center, a vital neighborhood gathering spot in the middle of the block, reopened this week, despite still having no front windows and a floor in major need of work. "Step carefully," Vera Warren-Williams, the owner, warned guests as they entered the store during the reopening celebration.

Jordan Flaherty, "The Second Looting of New Orleans."  AlterNet . 21 January 2007

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The State of Black New Orleans . . .  The 3rd RECONSTRUCTION

Yet despite its great cultural assets, [New Orleans] is also a city with deep racial and class divisions rooted in the history of slavery, racial segregation and socioeconomic disparities and inequalities. The faces of Katrina gave living expression to the numbing statistics on the quality of life for a significant number of African Americans (that most social observers already knew). In our city;

we die from every type of illness earlier than others, our homicide and imprisonment rates are disproportionately high, and the overall quality of life is among the worst in the US.

Mtangulizi Sanyika, Spokesperson

African American Leadership Project www.AALP.org

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posted 11 January 2007  / updated 9 April 2008