| Family folklore has it that young men from old Xavier University campus, passing by my great-grandparents' house on their way home, would be invited in for a glass of lemonade. My great-grandmother, careful to make sure the kitchen screen door was open at the right time, had a pitcher of lemonade centered on the table and some six or seven daughters, including my grandmother, sitting nearby. I can still see the pitcher on the table, the young men, my great-aunts, and grandmother drinking lemonade at the kitchen table. Perhaps a warm breeze comes through the screen door -- and maybe a whiff of magnolia, too, settles among the young and hopeful. Perhaps my great-grandfather breathes in that magnolia passing through screen door when the White man stopped by to ask if "someone" could clean his windows. "Well," my great-grandfather said, "I am looking for someone to clean my windows, too." Behind my great-grandfather, the table is set with dishes, each with two slices of sugared bread. In Chicago, many years later, the adults were making arrangements for me to accompany my grandmother to the funeral of my great-grandmother. I am fifteen. This would be my first trip outside of Chicago, Illinois; my first train ride to New Orleans. There will be no lemonade on the kitchen table, but I will see the beloved city of my great-grandparents, the city where my grandfather (originally from Shreveport) met and married my grandmother. I am witness to my grandparent's memories as well as my own memories of New Orleans. The 300,000 mostly poor and Black displaced are eyewitnesses to a tragic sacrifice, for they represent a desired absence of memory. The hurricane is a natural disaster, but forgetfulness is an offense to humanity. "People who did not have the means or organization to get out of harms way" and who were subject to "neglect" on the part of local, state, and federal agencies tended to be the poor and Black, said James Rucker, Executive Director of Color For Change.org., a San Francisco-based on-line grassroots organization. I spoke with Rucker by phone and asked what motivated him to advocate on behalf of the displaced. "I wanted to hold public officials accountable," Rucker said, for those displaced and voiceless. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, there was no "mechanism or organizational movement by Blacks" since most spent days screaming for attention atop roofs or inside the Superdome and Convention Center. Many were dead. Many more focused on surviving human fallibility. Armed with the eyewitness accounts of evacuees who "formed survival groups," Rucker and Van Jones vowed that "this should not happen on our watch again." Rucker and Jones returned to San Francisco and organized an email campaign in support of Rep. Jalilia Jefferson-Bullock's Louisiana State Legislation HB 641 that would suspend the current law mandating individuals appear in person at their polling places to vote and allow the displaced from Louisiana to vote by satellite. According to Rucker, Bullock did not believe the bill would get out of the House and Government committee, but the efforts of ColorOfChange.Org. helped move the bill from the committee to the House. Rucker and Jones rallied citizens from across the U.S. to call "three of the members who we thought would stand in the way" of the bill, said Rucker. "We suggested they not be on the wrong side of history. Five hundred calls and 4,500 emails were sent to Governor Kathleen Blanco's office." Blanco did not respond. "She is running for reelection," Rucker explained. Her voice in this matter "would be political suicide" because it would be interpreted as "standing up against White voters." The massive evacuation of "poor folks and Black folks" from New Orleans East, Ninth Ward, and Gentilly prompts politicians and the business community to create folklore in which they imagine, Rucker confirms, "things are better" in New Orleans "with the desired absence of the poor and the Black. The evacuation represents "an opportunity," Rucker explained, to distance the city from the social and economic failures associated with the undesirable. "You've got Black and White politicians who believe that when it's all said and done, most of these folks will not come back." They hope. Nonetheless, HB 641 awaits a vote by the full House. "It could come up at any minute -- or be stalled and stalled. The only failure to contemplate is "man-made" failure, Rucker said, to confront racism and group interests. I have tried to imagine the lives, afar the magnolia trees too damaged to bloom. Remember our connection to these lives. Recall fellow citizens waving hands to us! Then if Blanco cannot see these lives and know her responsibility to humanity, she needs to hear from us, so our fellow citizens will find their way home. Maybe, too, magnolias will bloom again. |
| Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels Will magnolias bloom again in New Orleans? |
 |
 |