Ida and Katrina.
August 29th was already tattooed on many a New Orleanian’s brain, and then came Ida.
I’m wondering how many classism-cultured academics and appropriating capitalist grief-thieves will find this as an opportunity to exploit natives, such as myself, my family and my TRUE friends, for their own purposes…all the while telling us that our anecdotal stories are meaningless and unverifiable without their consent, academic-based approval, marketing methods and my tax money…ahem, excuse me…I meant government grants to study us.
You could have just given the New Orleanian the hundred grand, professor. It would have gone further with them than it ever would with you. JS
I have lots of friends with doctorate degrees. I have some wealthy friends. I don’t begrudge anyone their methods to purpose or greatness.
Do you, boo.
But I can see now, probably in a way that I have never seen before, how exploitation is such an insult to humanity.
It’s not that I haven’t known this (I mean, it’s obvious I have not a PHD and I still have to show up to work a few more years before I can comfortably retire…). It’s just, I can clearly see the harmful side of someone else being paid to tell my story.
Why does that happen?
Mainly because our conditioning dictates it.
They (the royal ‘they’) are the only ones who “can” because they ‘schooled’ the world into thinking that they are the only ones who can.
Even the ones like me, who SHOULD be telling our own stories don’t because this conditioning tramples on your confidence each time you try and invalidates your words with grammar rules you didn’t follow each time you do.
Sigh.
(Maybe I shouldn’t type the word ‘sigh’. Oh no…too late I just did. Sigh.)
Self-publishing is freedom.
Entrepreneurial creation is freedom.
Speaking your mind despite what the world puts it’s stamp of approval on is freedom.
And just like Harriet putting a gun to another slave’s head on their way to Canada, telling them ‘we’ll be free or die’,
(We actually don’t know if this is true, because a professor wasn’t there to confirm Harriet ACTUALLY said these exact words. She wasn’t allowed to quote herself, you know.)
…we need to force our way through the conditioned doubts and tell our own stories about what it means to live in New Orleans.
Ida had us evacuating the city due to two main reasons: climate change and monopolistic utility dependence.
Katrina had us evacuating the city due to climate change and government dependence, among so many other deeper reasons…so many of us waited and waited and expected and expected…
In both situations, infrastructure was lacking. We still expect more, but building a new one around the old lacking one takes time. Living in New Orleans means accepting how uncomfortable and inconvenient that is.
Money is a need. People here have to have evacuation savings or governmental resources to evacuate when necessary until, and/or unless, the city is rebuilt in such a way that we could stay here no matter the weather.
How realistic is that expectation, you say?
Exactly.
Maybe we will always have this as an issue. I expect to have this as an issue for the last half of my hundred years on the planet - but I have low expectations of my black queer life, so never mind me.
My younger friends and new transient friend-folk complain FOR US about what we should expect with our infrastructure.
(Potholes are from sediment…yes, we knew this already, Cooper.)
They openly and rightfully blame our local government and they tend to expect more to happen to better our infrastructure and for it to all happen tomorrow.
Because it should.
That is a story I refuse to tell myself. I can’t believe in it or feel it’s truth.
I know that I will always have a home in my hometown. I know that it will be different than my grandma’s was and that I will have to pay more for it to survive the changing climate if I want it to exist safely. That’s just housing costs plus environmental demands multiplied by time…divided by adulting super hard.
I now know that the only folks who should receive any profits from what that looks and feels like should be the people who truly know.
We should tell those stories ourselves.
I truly hope we do. We need the money.
~T