We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for
“It is people joining forces in a time of great need. It is hope, it is sharing the burden. It is people caring for their own and finding love, and surviving, and believing in the future even when we are hurting more than we have ever hurt before. “It is AIDS.” Chris Brownlie—1951-1989
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, I was in Atlanta at an HIV/AIDS consultation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Upon hearing the news, I rushed to my room and, in a desperate panic, turned to CNN in search of information. Like most Americans I was shocked at the images flooding my hotel room—desperate people standing on rooftops begging for help, dead bodies floating down the streets of a major city in the United States.
But perhaps unlike most Americans, Hurricane Katrina was deeply personal for me. This was happening to my city. This was happening to my family. My oldest niece was a rising sophomore at Xavier University in New Orleans. My family is from Louisiana and Mississippi. My childhood was punctuated with frequent trips to New Orleans for family reunions, weddings and, of course, funerals. I’ve walked along the 17th Street levee
with my parents. I remember wandering along the streets of the Lower Ninth at sunset with my cousin Edward, eating crawfish out of a brown paper bag (stolen out of my Aunt Vera’s shrimp boil, while the adults weren’t looking) and throwing the shells over our shoulders as we went along without a care in the world.
As I watched CNN, I knew my Aunt Vera’s old house was gone, as was my Aunt Late’s, and my Uncle Jed’s. When Katrina hit New Orleans, my family counted over 100 members living in the city. All of them were displaced. As of today, fewer than 10 have returned.
As this report is being released, the world is marking the two-year anniversary of Katrina, pausing to remember the devastating damage the Gulf Coast absorbed and pondering the lack of progress made in the rebuilding efforts. I was recently in New Orleans, and evidence of Katrina is still everywhere you turn. In some parts of the Lower Ninth Ward, it was as if the hurricane had just happened.