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Philly Still Loves Me

Philadelphia is some kind of place. The kind of place that always makes me feel so dam welcome and comfy I start to forget what year it is and where I live.

SOmetimes you go to philly to visit with two of your most important people in the world and they know just where to take you and what funny jokes to tell and just the right shade of pink bike for you to ride.

Thats how it worked for me this weekend, and come to think of it, that is how it works every year when I come to Philly for a night or two.

Then there’s that part where they try to convince me to live there. Between their fascinating community, beautiful lady friends, and obese yet charming housecats, it is a struggle to keep saying no. Mostly Id like to just hang out in philly a bit longer before heading back to amsterdam, city that I love and is always on my mind.

But the city itself is worthy of anyone’s time and interest. Some declared it dead in the past few decades, others may have noticed a renaissance, while still others would probably say – hey.. its the same as it ever was…. same as it ever was…

Whatever the case for me it is THAT PLACE. That place where I would hang my hat and ride my bike cautiously down through the streets… that is.. if I HAD to live in the US.

Which I don’t.

Tomorrow its back to New Orleans issues and more of my (non Karl) roving reports.

Stealing Houses In NOLA

It was probably my second day in New Orleans and I decided to go visit the common ground legal clinic. I had heard they were providing free legal advice and a mini computer lab for local residents who want to get informed about their rights and perhaps how to manage property issues that have emerged after Katrina. After some nice emailing with one of the spokespeople… I figured going there would be an interesting experience.

As usual I drove around in circles, distracted every five minutes by another neighborhood of abandoned or destroyed houses. Eventually I found the legal clinic on a very lovely and typical new orleans street with the nice trees growing in the middle island that people seem to refer to as neutral territory. A large house with a dry cleaners on the ground floor, as I pulled up I could already see lots of people hanging out using their computers… I knew I had come to the right place.

Fast forward an hour or so, I’m sitting on the front porch sharing a little plastic table with a pretty young lady on her laptop, both of us typing away franticly.

At some point I strike up a conversation. She’s a law student from Seattle… as are many of the volunteers at the legal clinic. They come down in waves whenever they can, and right now it was spring break. When I asked her what tasks she was working on, she held up a stack of photocopied newspaper pages.

“You see these… they look like classified ads don’t they? These are printed in the big local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, everyday. Thing is, they’re not classified ads, they notices of properties that are considered abandoned, warning people that they will be evicted from their property if they don’t do something about it.”

I looked at the tiny print and the neverending list of properties, each one representing a life, or probably a family. Looking up at the young law student, I asked if this was legal?

“It’s the way the city is taking people’s properties. Legally they only have to publish the bulletins in an official document three times, and this newspaper counts as an official document.”

I sat there discussing this issue with her and I started thinking about how this will work: tons of families… lets say thousands upon thousands, have not returned to new orleans. Many probably can’t afford to, as their ticket was a one way ticket to some far off state, including such places as ALASKA, several people told me. In other cases they haven’t come back for a whole host of other reasons, or maybe they’re still working on getting back, or they just haven’t figured out how to handle their damaged house versus their current situation in a new state.

At the same time, it’s not likely they read the newspaper everyday. Maybe online if they’re committed enough, but even there Im not sure they’re publishing these lists of warnings. Meanwhile they might think their house, though damaged, is still there.. waiting for them, while the city publishes the warning for the third time.. poof.. goodbye house.. lean on the property.. a little more time and the city will have reclaimed countless land and they can do with it whatever they please… including selling it to the highest bidder.

Voila, a strategy to get rid of abandoned houses, poor people, and change the demographic of the city while generating some big money.

Ok I’m done speculating. Eventually she and I stopped talking and went back to typing. She reached into her bag and pulled another stack of copies. More listings.. these were from last week, I sat there wondering how many people had no idea of what was happening to their neighborhood back home.

Hopefully we will find out more about this topic in a few upcoming podcasts.

bmtv43 St Mary’s of the 9 Ward

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This is a vlog entry about my visit to the upper ninth ward in New Orleans. I also walk around St. Mary’s school which is now a base of operations for the common ground relief effort.

Fall Out Mississippi

I arrived in Long Beach, Mississippi a little earlier than I expected. John and Jo, my hosts and local experts, were not home yet. Which allowed me to follow my nose and explore the barren landscape on my own.

Some 35,000 people lost their homes along this coast line, and up ahead I can see the beach.. or what is left of it. Mostly all I see is the extremely bright white sand that looks like it was just dropped off there to pretend to be a beach, and the ocean which is right there looking like any minute it will swallow everything in its path, yet again.

While it has been a year and a half, not much has been rebuilt along the shoreline. No one would dare to, I guess. On the other hand many of those families are still waiting to see if they can get some insurance money or funding from one of the designated sources. And beyond that, I hear that many have already picked up and moved inland… a mass exodus away from the ocean that helped to erase the homes they had known and loved.

I head towards the beach drive, which seems like it should be pretty as it follows the coast for as far as the eye can see. Lots and lots of beach.

However beautiful is not the word that came to mind. Baghdad is actually what came to mind, especially when I got to the two street lights that had been destroyed and left only the aluminium polls hanging over the street, looking like the two swords that hover over that main Boulevard in Baghdad.

Interesting comparison.. the gulf coast and iraq. Oddly enough more members of the Mississippi national guard have probably worked in Baghdad than in Long Beach. More money goes to the Iraqi government and the occupation effort than to the rebuilding effort. Fortunately for Iraqi’s, they didn’t have to deal with insurance companies that pretended they were there for the community and then refused to pay for the damages caused by Katrina. Then again, in Long Beach there are no troops going door to door searching houses and there’s no danger of suicide bombers, that I know of.

Eventually I got over the comparisons in my head and just focused on understanding the environment around me. Driveways leading up a hill… to nowhere. No houses, just slabs, or more ghastly.. the pillars.. white pillars which once held up a house, now looking for like the ruins of some destroyed Greek villa. Scraps of clothes, and other assorted person items can still be seen in a few trees and on the ground, the majority I later see in photos, having been cleaned up by the army corps of engineers.

After seeing all this and feeling like some stranger trampling a sacred burial ground, I went back to John and Jo’s. Sure enough, they were home… and that’s when the real learning process began… starting with how things went, day one after the storm.

Photoessay; Long Beach, Mississippi

As I was on the road for 6 hours today and am now secluded in Florida for an evening, I present to you a photo essay from Long Beach. Talk about desctruction.. just nothing left.. slabs of nothing.. overgrown with weeds and debris. Never seen anything like it.

Some Americans’ Priorities

I started off the morning by heading to the ninth ward… err.. nine ward. Having heard soo much about it, I was anxious to be there and see how people were dealing with post Katrina life more than a year and a half later. Lil Robin lives just a stones throw down the road from the ward, so I had little trouble finding it. You know when you’re in the ninth ward… it’s hard not to know.. war zones stick out like that.

When I say war zone, I should say, post-war zone. And I don’t mean a storm versus humans, I mean a war between those determined to get their lives back and those that have been spit out to some far away state and can’t afford the financial, legal or mental burden of coming back.

As I drove down the street I wish I had some kind of tank. Not because I felt unsafe, how scared can you be of entire city blocks with no sign of life. But the huge craters and random debris that some streets seem full of, made me think I might not make it through with a measly compact car.

The closer I came to St. Mary’s school, what I had been told was the headquarters of one of the biggest volunteer relief group in the city… Common Ground, the closer I got the more signs of life and hope I saw. A newly planted row of trees looking healthy and attractive, in the middle of a block full of half destroyed houses and an occasional FEMA trailer. Or sometimes, like a mirage in the desert, an army of students would appear on the horizon; fully equipped with respirators, hard hats, and what look like chemical suits: the brave “gutters” who must first demolish the rotting and moldy parts of houses before they can rebuild. One big group is not working as I pass, instead there is loud music playing and there looking back at me is a group of 40 young people, hammers in hand, dancing to hip hop music. I smiled and waved.

Finally I arrived at St. Mary’s… which looks alot like the Catholic school I attended in Newark. Hell, it even looks like a school day, in front of the building various groups of kids are huddled calling out plans and reviewing maps of who will go where for what duty today? Occasionally someone pulls up in a truck already spilling over with people dressed in construction gear, and they point to someone sitting on the steps and shout “you… come with us to work on so-and-so street”.

Once in the building, there is an organized chaos that would make an Amsterdam squat blush. In every corner there is some sign or some reminder for volunteers, and people cleaning or fixing or preparing something. This school, after all, has not been a school since Katrina. Nevermind that there are no kids left in the neighborhood anyway, having been bussed to all kinds of states as part of the post-Katrina strategy, this school now serves a different long term and vital role… the central hub for people who have come to rebuild.

This was one hour of my morning, which gives you an idea of how it can be in New Orleans… every hour.. if you look.. you’ll see something amazing.. good or bad.