Support Your Local Papers! Gordon Sisters in the Times-Picayuner

Here's something genuinely weird: I don't have internet in my apartment, and I just signed up for a month-long subscription to NOLA's local paper (the Times-Picayune). I'll probably get another when that one runs out. Why? Well, the easiest reason is that I like having something disposable to read every morning. A better answer would be that, with my church membership, apartment, and employment(ish) here, I feel committed enough to through down some more shallow roots.

And the best answer? Have some foreshadowing, and check this space again in a week.

Edit 10/5: After my totally unsubtle buildup, the Times-Picayune story on the Gordon Sisters Window. It does a better job of the history than I do (easy access to newspaper records helps with that), and on the whole, I think it's well done. My only qualms are, funny enough, nitpicking with my ministers language - while it's important to emphasize the good that the sisters did, I think there is little gained in excusing them as "products of their time", instead of focusing on them as "flawed people acting on contemporary notions of justice." To me, what is fascinating about them is not the views they held in common with their peers, but instead how they managed to hold those views and do lots of good works despite them. That said, I think the story does justice to the Gordon sisters, and First Unitarian Universalist of New Orleans decision to honor them as flawed humans. The newspaper article gets the nuance down, and for that I am grateful.

Again, my previous post discussing their complicated historical legacy is here.

The Gordon Sisters, their Window, and Quiet Little Faults

Today in my church we dedicated a pair of stained-glass windows. The new set is a beautiful post-Katrina triptych, donated and made by volunteers who made many a trip to the city to rebuild. It's not a subtle piece, but it is very pretty, and hyper-relevant to the building in which it is now housed. It's history, though already pretty elaborate, is nothing compared to the main focus of this morning's service.

At the center of the morning, and at the center of the wall facing the congregation in our sanctuary, is the Gordon Sisters window. It's a piece of stained glass with more history than most towns, and it commemorates two little-known but tremendous figures for social justice, who just so happened to be members of the First Unitarian Church of New Orleans.

The sisters were fascinating people. Childless and never married, they brought sanitary water and sewage to New Orleans, worked to build a "model home-school for the care and vocational education of the mentally handicapped", spent ten years working for children's rights (which resulted in the Child Labor Act of 1906), one of them directed the Louisiana State Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and they "pushed for the state constitution to allow women to vote," where "partial victory was granted and women taxpayers were given the vote, in person or by proxy, on matters relating to taxation." It's about the perfect distillation of late 19th century progressive causes. Reading that, it's a wonder that we don't lionize Kate and Jean Gordon with Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton.

But there are reasons for this. For all the progressiveness of the Gordon Sisters, there are some quietly omitted flaws. Kate fought for women's' suffrage, but she fought for it through state rights. There's a reason Louisiana only gave the right to vote to women taxpayers - that's a category that is almost exclusively white women, and this was the Jim Crow south. Pursuing suffrage on the state level meant that you could still exclude some as you expanded the franchise. This was intentional. This is a stark contrast to the standard progressive discourse about late 19th century liberation movements. We remember Susie B as an abolitionist and a suffragette - they go together perfectly in the progressive canon. We forget, in praising our forebears, all the murky grey area and disagreeable positions that came before.

Jean, too, falls into the grey area of history. The second hit on her name is a book discussing eugenics in the deep south. At the above-mentioned model home school, Jean Gordon admitted only whites, and then sterilized them so that feebleness could be weeded out of the white race. We, as a church community, honor the fight against hardship and feebleness, but it is hard to look back with fondness on forebears who embraced so overtly racist a policy as eugenics. These are sins of omission, perhaps, but it makes a platonic ideal of what should be an examination of caring but deeply flawed people.

This will emerge into a new light soon, and it was already simmering at the service today. Racist predecessors are hard people to acknowledge. More challenging even than that is reconciling the tangible good they produced (sewage and drainage, child labor laws, and even the murkily reasoned good of expanded suffrage) with ulterior motives we would today find appalling. History is not the kindest of materials to work with, and Unitarian Universalism is not free from it's ill effects.

The window itself is still beautiful, it's figures all full of dignity. They're all white (and a dog), but that doesn't have to diminish from the dignity of the piece. It just requires that we are conscious of the exclusion, and mindful that when we focus on achieving justice, our definition of justice is limited to our experience. One day, history may well judge us for our biases, and it is good that it is done.

I'd worry if progressive meant the same thing after a century later.

Katrina-after-4

Here's what I've written about New Orleans before on this blog.

I mention that because one never takes a city in all at once, but instead develops a relationship with the place, which is transformed and changed by time. I've spent the better part of two years here, and my feelings are very different than where I started out.

Initially, I came to Tulane because I found the premise of a college committed to rebuilding a city after a natural disaster to be both exciting and refreshing. I have long been eager to be thrown into good works. That hasn't happened as much as I would have liked yet; it is easy to forget the the key component of good works is works. But I've done some, and I've joined a church here. I've also moved into my first apartment, near the campus and still paid for by folk not me, but an actual residence with implied duration. It's small steps, signs of more permanent action.

I've evacuated this city once. Last year, Gustav looked ominous and deadly. It wasn't; the storm got weaker, and they city, having already had it's difficult evacuation, came back together much more smoothly. It was an odd moment, to be a refugee within the US and leaving a city I was only slowly growing into. For me, it was novel. For my co-congregants, it was very close to traumatic. They'd fled Katrina. They had seen the worst that could happen to a city, lived through it, returned, and spent a week anxious that the very worst would happen again. I've no idea how one gets used to that, but apparently it is possible.

There's a lot to say about Katrina, four years later. I've gone from viewing it as a natural disaster to a human one. Sobering, but it means that it was preventable, and the next one is preventable too. There's more to say than that, but I'll leave it to the (hopeful) next First Couple of New Orleans, Melissa Harris-Lacewell and James Perry:

While these grassroots efforts are extraordinary, they have proved insufficient for the herculean task of restoring New Orleans. Despite the spirit and commitment of its people, the city's levee protection is inadequate, its violent crime is soaring, its school system is failing, its local economy is overly dependent on tourism, and its neighborhoods are ravaged by blight. For example, millions of volunteer hours over four years have put more than 2,000 units of housing back into commerce. While noteworthy, the success pales when one considers that more than 80,000 units of housing were damaged.

New Orleans teaches us that individuals and families bear an important responsibility in restoring the city and our nation. New Orleans shows the innovative capacity of civil society and local entrepreneurship. But New Orleans also reveals that recovery is limited without effective, transparent, responsible government action.

There's a lot more here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include their excellent conclusion:

The lesson from New Orleans is clear: racial injustice and racialized politics too often stand in the way of doing what is best for the whole community. We need both local and national leadership that will stand for fairness for all people while also refusing to misuse historical racial antagonisms for their own purposes.

The survival of New Orleans is no longer just about restoring America's most distinctive city. We are all living in Katrina Nation now. Learning the lessons of New Orleans may just have the power to save all of us.

Four years ago, negligence nearly killed this city. I'd like very much for it's suffering to have not been a death, and for the lessons here to be well learned.

Gustav

Tulane just sent out the notice that the school will evacuate this weekend. There is no need to worry for my personal well-being; the school is really good at providing for it's students. Should you feel like worrying, you can follow my twitter stream here. Though this is my personal blog, this isn't a personal blog post per se. I'm not here to talk about how sucky it is to leave a campus less than a week after arriving.

What I am here to talk about is the fact that another hurricane threatens New Orleans, and that the city is nowhere near rebuilt enough to handle it. This is a tragedy, a failing of this government, and it is nothing shy of that. I joked earlier to a friend that this hurricane can't be as bad as Katrina, because the city hasn't been rebuilt enough for that level of damage to be possible. Read this list. Turns out, I'm not really joking - this is a true statement, and a terrifying one.

Rebuilding this city is a time-sensitive issue. It needs to be done quickly, done effectively, and done in such a way that the city can withstand multiple hurricanes in a given year. It will be tremendously expensive up front, but the alternative is a New Orleans that fades away, ceases to exist, and becomes a symbol of American failure to take care of it's own people. The stakes a high. Should Gustav miss New Orleans, the need will not go away. Should Gustav hit New Orleans, the city will need everything it possibly can to stand a second chance. Katrina hit New Orleans hard because people were ignorant. If Gustav hits hard, it will be because people knew the threat, and just didn't care.

Edit 8/29/2008: An acquaintance of mine summed up the feeling towards Gustav felt by many Katrina survivors:

For those of you who have no idea what this is like:

Imagine being in a horrifying car accident.

Now imagine that you think you're about to be in another one.

Now imagine the moment just before the potential impact.

Now imagine that moment lasting four or five days.

Edit 9/2/2008: Updating from a library in Arkansas. We survived, New Orleans survived, and and school starts again on Monday. I'll have more to say later from a better internet connection, but I'm fine and initial impressions of the aftermath are decent.

Guilt (again)

Last Saturday I went to the lower ninth ward to do some social action/justice work with several of Tulane's political science professors and their classes. It was optional, so turnout was rather low, but we still had around twenty or so people and a good half a day of work to put in. This, in and off itself, is a problem with social justice, and the trade-off that must be made in all social justice work: do you want it to be easy to do and so short it is trivial, or do you want it to be meaningful and staggering in cost in both time and effort. We were squarely within the bounds of that first pattern, and our work consisted of grounds keeping. Some of us planted sunflowers, ostensibly to remove toxins from the soil. The rest of us, with lawnmowers, weed whackers, and machetes, cleared foliage, trying to level the growth of the swamp reclaiming a neighborhood. We were chopping through growth in the foundations of houses. The 9th ward is surreal. That's almost a side note - the major point is that we didn't accomplish much good. The cynical professor pointed out that our work would be done in a day by a developer, and with much less labor. I responded, saying that while this is true, the work we were doing wasn't the point.

We were there to be made aware of the scope of work that needs to be done. Minor social action work is constituency building. Those people who go through projects like this, who visit the 9th ward and who take part in Common Grounds meetings, are made aware of the plight, and they leave not so much with the place changed, but with a commitment to the place, and to making it better. This social action takes volunteered hours gives people a vested commitment. It isn't the best way to do things, and the organization doesn't really have it all together with making the volunteers feel their work is valuable, but this is a newer technique, and it has a better feel than most of the social action I have done.

The work contrasted interestingly with the lecture. As we ate our meal of red beans and crawfish (at least, the non-vegetarians had crawfish), I sat in a circle with many people visiting Common Grounds from elsewhere. They told interesting tales of involvement with social justice, of moral callings, and of fears about the failure of government in their personal communities. This bit was great. Following that, the coordinator of our group, who had led the discussion, gave a long, angry spiel, filled with accusations and vitriol and conspiracy theories. It was among the most uncomfortable things I have ever listened to. It was filled with a righteous anger, and that anger was powerful. The guilt thrown at everyone at every thing was less justified, and it had an "us or them" feel to it. If you did work, you were an us, and if you weren't in this circle, the unjust world is against you. (The place has a sign that says "Shame on you Tourist. You pay to see our shame. Stay and lend a hand". While we were in the field with machetes, a tour van drove by, and I couldn't help feel that part of our role was to just make them uncomfortable by being confronted with white people doing hard labor while they would later go on to spend a night of debauchery on Bourbon Street.) The man giving the speech powered his exhortations on guilt, and he tried to shock and shame people into giving a shit.

I've a huge disagreement with this as a tactic, and I think the emphasis on guilt is the biggest failing of social justice activism. Guilt, and more specifically white guilt, force a negative on a person that can be alleviated in two ways: stop falling short of the expectations of the guilting person, or stop knowing and adhering to the same ideals of the guilting person. Guilting carries a risk, and it relies on the strength of personal relationships in combination with shared moral world view. This works with close friends and/or with universal standards. It doesn't work with groups, with casual acquaintances, and with people intended to be new converts. Plus, it's negativistic. The reward is to not feel guilty any more. That is a crappy reward.

Edit: No part 2 coming. Thoughts on duty have led me elsewhere.

Labor Day Weekend

Wandered around 'my' neighborhood in New Orleans last night, which is oddly surreal on a few levels, all of which are by definition are below the surface of reality. Firstly, it's the fact that two years ago this was all under water, at least a few feet deep. It's an odd notion, that of having once been able to swim where one now walks. Another is that this part of the city is, in places, supremely beautiful. The houses are old, with a splendour only befitting of a city that isn't quite imperial, but is a rather wealthy spot in the midst of an empire. It speaks of attainable grandeur, of business success, and not so much of glory as of a life well lived. Walking past these ivy-covered houses, one will occasionally see a church, magnificent as a miniature cathedral and spires that can only ask one to believe something incredible must be there driving force. One gets to this area only a few blocks after walking past overgrown sidewalks and more plebian shotgun house duplexes. The contrast is good, and it has all the feel of a city that is lived in, that is to be lived in, and that has been lived in for a goodly time.

The last point of note was the Jewish Cemetery we stumbled across. It was an old one, full of the above-ground graves that are so startling at first. The fence was open but we were the only people there. At least, the only people who still drew breath. We sang, in a way that sounds trite but managed to encompass hymns and spirituals and then carols, but also had plenty of room for modern pop songs and dancing without spectators. It was again surreal, being in this place of the dead in the city trying to be reborn while being so full of life. It was ripe with transition, the play of early teen-hood opening up room for a transition into another, more quietly respectful, frame of mind.

Upon leaving, we passed by the row of child graves. Many had only pet names, some were unnamed, and one at least died in 1876. It's odd, seeing the tiny bit of land, and knowing that this child would have been too old to be a great grandparent.

8-29

Today is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. When it first hit, I was a junior in high school in Albuquerque. Today, two years to the day after the worst natural (and engineering, some would say) disaster, I am in the very city that was worst hit, and it's a little weird.

But, classes begin. No time at the moment for retrospectives, certainly nothing I could say would defeat the intense media spectacle I am currently avoiding. The media will come, the media will sensationalize and then leave without motivating real work, and then New Orleans will remain, as is. Only - slightly getting better. New crime, new horrors, but the city is coming back. It's an inevitability, and with luck, it'll revive in a way that removes blemishes and other signs of adolescence. Really, the city doesn't need a rebirth so much as it needs a second coming of age.

New Orleans: Prologue

I'm excited about New Orleans. It's a fascinating city, it's a vital city, and, well, it's a city that is bound to end up a good deal different in the coming decade than it was in the past ten years.

The Crescent City is sinking, and also stands to stop existing if another Katrina-sized hurricane hits. It's a weird place, too vital to abandon, not rich enough to adequately protect. It's big - enough so that further expansion is impossible, really, and situated such that some of the best minds out there are advocating for shrinking the city, condensing it down. It needs more wetlands and less channels, certainly, but that'll come at the price of some business lost and, more importantly, a good deal of homes lost. The city that incubated and gave birth to Jazz may well suffer an increasing number of migrations, while the wealthy take advantage of the rich history without a care about the forced, unpleasant, touristy-ness. It only makes sense that becoming more like Santa Fe is among the worst case scenarios.

I'm more optimistic. People are quite good at figuring out how to live where they shouldn't. It'll happen, the city will exist, and it will do so even if it turns into a North American Venice.

Smaller scale, I'm really interested in the fate of public schools. Besides that atrocity against the Jena Six, New Orleans has a rich history of terrible schools. Katrina allowed for a rebirth, a re-imagining, and public school is getting an overhaul that is impossible to imagine anywhere else. Elsewhere, the risk is to high, and the gains are too uncertain. In the Big Easy, it's worth it. And so, it's a fascinating experiment, and one I'll only be too happy to watch before I go down my long winding career path and eventually end up as a teacher.