# PostKatrina New Orleans- Common Ground part 2



## finn (Apr 28, 2010)

Part 2

I got back to the medic cave to find a frustrated medic mopping the floor who seemed to be on the verge of tearing out his hair. He had his hands full that morning, first with a fungal-footed Johnny, who it seemed wanted to socialize in his inept and maladjusted ways. Then a scare with a woman who had fluid leaking out of her ear- something that looked like cerebro-spinal fluid. Liquid that the brain floats in, really shouldn't be dripping out of your ear, that's a sign that something is very very wrong, like meningitis. Then back to the original problem with fungal-footed Johnny trying to chat her up while spreading his toe jam germs all over the floor, and him pretty much protecting her from him while coordinating a ride for her to go to the army clinic.

I would have just decked him, I explained, sometimes you have to put the street in the medic. He seemed unconvinced, but I relieved him and finished up mopping the floor with bleach to give him a well deserved break. I left to let the medic cave air out and met up with the folks who had given me the ride in the rented van. They were going out to gut a house, so I tagged along, since it's always nice to have a medic in your crew in case something goes wrong.

The neighborhood we went in was in the suburbs, where it seemed that more damage was done by winds than by water. A few houses had their roof blown out. It turned out that the house we were working on was quite luxurious, other than the flood damage, and was owned by a local church leader. It was the largest of the block with nice cars in the driveway with floodlines up to the middle of the windshields. Someone had written in offers to buy those cars, and every car on the block, with a finger in the thin coat of mud on the glass. "Will bye. call this number."

The residents could obviously afford to hire their own help, and all of us were upset about helping out the rich. This was some kind of politicking or favor mongering. Still, there was something satisfying about smashing up the insides of a house far nicer than any I've ever lived in, even if it was just the drywall. Three stories of modern affluence! Somewhere, though, it ate my cheap digital watch.

We returned back to the convergence space as the sun started to go down, since traffic lights and street lamps were generally not working, plus it made a fantastic and convenient excuse to stop working. When we got back, we learned that fungal-footed Johnny had gotten banned from the convergence space for a series of infractions. He left without resistance, as if- someone had said- he was used to it. I remember another person who had been kicked out previously, a girl who didn't seem very disruptive at all, but I didn't know her story. That aside, we were all acting sillier than usual and blamed it on psychedelic mold spores. Part of it may have been because it's easier to be goofy when there aren't any obvious sketchballs around. 

There was an acting troupe that came to visit, along with an acupuncture crew to help morale. The acting troupe felt a little too artsy for most people to connect with it, trying to slowly move their bodies to an abstract dance to convey the emotions people felt. It was like watching a bad parody of modern dance. Acupuncture was a little better, I actually decided to give it a try since they specialized in ear acupuncture, and they wanted to help out the medics first, although I wasn't feeling all that stressed.

Ow. I could feel the needles, and it quickly became pretty clear to the woman who was piercing me that I was not anywhere close to normal. This has never happened before, she told me, apologizing and wiping the blood from my ears. I've never had anyone bleed as much as you. I'm a mutant, I explained, it's okay- but she continued to eye me strangely. Still, the experience was not quite as painful as watching the troupe perform, though. We went out to the bars that night and blew off some steam, drinking, listening to music, and wandering in the French Quarter.

Before I knew it, it was already Thanksgiving. I was going to go on a decorating crew to change up my routine, since I worked on doing something different each day, but the rental van gang was missing a person for house gutting. There was someone I wanted to flirt with, and she actually ended up coming to talk to me as we both were scheduled to be on decorating crew- but I explained my situation, and I guess the flirting was not meant to be. True, it had no future- she was a west coast college student on a one-week vacation and I was a east coast squatter, but she was cute and my heart sank a bit at the realization that it was my only chance to know anything about her.

The housegutting was pretty tough work, since the drywall was some pretty old and thick stuff, which probably had asbestos in it. Furthermore, instead of just being nailed to the framework, there were thin horizontal boards which made the walls tougher. It was also the warmest day yet, making us sweat heavily in our tyvek suits. We worked for a few hours before heading back for the thanksgiving celebration being held at the 9th Ward Distro.

Part of the celebration was to bring about awareness of the intentional deprivation of electricity from the 9th ward, hence the importance of the decoration crew. Apparently, the power was diverted away from the neighborhood and to a more affluent one. After showering and changing at a drop-in, I relieved the medic staffing the wellness center there, and found that both massage and acupuncture going on simultaneously inside. Just so you know the wellness center was a pretty small space, the size of a trailer, and it was starting to fill up with people. Soon I wouldn't have any room to treat anyone.

I became a receptionist, making lists, taking down names, and calling them out, to prevent the space from becoming packed full of people wanting to be rubbed down or needled or maybe both. I squeezed in food in the middle of receptioning and treating people, sometimes hanging out on the porch, looking out at the yard with all the people below the lights strung about shining at the mingling which extended to the streets. Then, back to working. It was funny how I had to work hard when everyone else was relaxing. When the crowd finally dwindled to about twenty or so, I headed back home.

I didn't get to say all my goodbyes to those who were leaving after their week of vacation. Me and the rental van gang went flyering for an anti-eviction action, interacting with the residents, but it was more depressing than anything else. The residents were well aware of their situation and knew more about what was going on than any of us. They were upset about all the neglect and government abuses. There didn't seem to be very much we could do. After lunch, I went to the 9th ward distro and fixed up a bike and hung out a bit. Then I went back and bid goodbyes to the folks returning to San Francisco.

I met up with a local to check out the rainbows and their free kitchen. We wandered around a bit, and she told me how the 9th ward was so much safer after having been emptied. Before the storm, one of her friends had been shot in the head by some people on bikes who wanted to rob him of his bike. When he mentioned that they had no way of transporting his bike themselves, they pulled the trigger. He recovered, though. The rainbows had a luxurious setup, having been funded by the barefoot doctors, but were otherwise not as fascinating as I'd hoped. Drumcircles all pretty much look and sound alike. I'd heard that fungal johnny was hanging out with the rainbows, but we thankfully didn't bump into him there. 

I had late dinner there and went back home for a 2nd dinner of gumbo. I guess I had to compensate for working so much on thanksgiving. There was some night work after dinner, first cleaning up the a community center that was to replace the convergence space. Then there was even more work done on the roof for no reason in particular. I didn't think that anyone planning to help out a ravaged area should expect super comfortable accommodations. It was a lot like camping, with all the hanging out and sharing stories and occasional barrel fire.

The next day held more goodbyes, and the second line marched through the city, past overturned cars, all the trash, past the jail with unknown numbers of people either surviving or disappeared, past grand opening banners dated to September, more damaged houses, and past Common Ground Relief. As time passed, the air grew worse and the days shorter. As the innards of ruined homes were disgorged after fermenting for months on end, they were left to air out and release all their spores to the atmosphere. Pretty much everyone was getting the Katrina cough.

In December, Meg died when the Frida bus, her bus crashed. I regretted not having the chance to speak to her more before then, because we were all so busy. Other people I knew were injured in that accident, too. I didn't go to her memorial service- which the NOPD harassed- or her funeral up in Maine. She has a website dedicated to her. Somewhere in my head I'd felt like Common Ground Relief was responsible in some way, though they weren't, they were responsible for other things.

Some organizations managed to do much worse than Common Ground. For almost a month the number of animal rights activists began to increase, but their tactics of rescuing animals at any cost, without talking to any of the residents made them pariahs. They started with feeding animals, then marking which houses had animals, and ended with breaking doors and windows to steal pets of those who had returned home, and consequently received death threats. Somehow, none of them got themselves shot, but the number of animal rights activists dropped precipitously afterwards. I should say I was sad to see them go, but they were too antisocial to have made a good impression on me.

Common Ground had a full name: Common Ground Relief Collective, but it was a misnomer. It wasn't a collective. Malik was in charge by holding the purse strings, and he was on top of a shadowy structure whose lower rungs of management was basically a meritocracy based on the length of ones stay. This of course, excepted the medics, since they were meant to simply patch people up and not actually manage. So when a person of such a management position overrules others who have been there for a shorter duration for some arbitrary dumbass reason, it was known as being commongrounded. A lack of foresight was proving costly. This was a system which encouraged corruption, condoned mismanagement, and promoted secrecy. Ten thousand dollars alone was wasted on a solar shower that no one used- a dirty secret that not too many people knew.

Still, it wasn't overtly obvious to the typical bystander that there was a disaster in the making. The people who had come the earliest, by and large, were pretty hardy and self-reliant types. Organization doesn't really affect those people, people like us I suppose, since we had our own structure and were pretty good at taking care of ourselves. We were a bit too focused on the present and making things work now, when we should have stepped back a bit and figured out where everything was headed.


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## blacklines (Apr 28, 2010)

I appreciate this account, it affirms other accounts I had heard, im going to pass it along to some of those folks.


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