In New Orleans the Lights Go Out

In New Orleans the lights go out, and six months later a child falls to the floor. Her knees trace a damp outline in the carpet as she surveys the shadows. Tucks her body under an overturned couch, and she searches for God with a flashlight.

Two years later her wrinkled fingers trace that same couch, now settled into its sideways position on the floor. New Orleans still sleeps, and her people still cry. The storm is long gone, but the pain remains. The government of our country has failed a city, but we as a people have failed ourselves. Our attention span in America is disgraceful and Katrina found her way out of the headlines all too fast. We assumed the city would be rebuilt and its people restored; 147,000 have still not returned. We took for granted people would once again have homes; over 47,000 still live in FEMA trailers. And we assumed that the problems would fix themselves over time, a misconception that led us here to begin with. Katrina was not merely a storm that illuminated the un-preparedness of our government, it was the flashlight that exposed the hatred between our people.

Like water it creeps through the cracks of the floorboards, an inherited disease in Louisiana. Like a brushfire it has spread through the generations; standing tall in front of a Little Rock High school, staunchly swaying in the Confederate flag of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, baking in the morning sun as it floats by a home in New Orleans's Ninth Ward. For in a time that desperately called for us to stand together, we discovered we are miles apart. Yet in the eyes of our America this has simmered to a mere afterthought, packed its bag and hitchhiked off the shores of this country long ago. So long that the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. are aged to a mere dream, and the wars of Rosa Parks, taken a back seat to what we now perceive as our true reality, a war against terrorism. America's fight against an evil that lies awake deep in the gallows of Afghanistan's mountains and hides under a cloud of dirt in Iraq.

So Lady Liberty stretches her eyes across the Hudson, towards the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. She stands on the toes of her slippers, sore from peering over the waters to the east, where for 121 years she has kept watch on our great country. Stared into the victorious eyes of our enemy, lowered her head into her chest and showed Vietnam the points of her crown as her tears mixed with the waters below. Yet as she stared into the eyes of the rest of the world, watched its wars begin as others came to their end, at home behind her back a war still raged on. And she wonders why she has begun to slant over. A slight tilt for Dred Scott, another quarter inch for Kennedy, yet another for the Klan.

The civil war has not ended. The bombs that burst behind her frame are not the joyous gale of freedom's fireworks; they are the foul taste of destruction. The war that failed to divide our nation, still divides it today.

Instead of uniting in the battle against devastation the city of New Orleans fought against herself. People turned towards each other to point black and white fingers across borders of racially defined neighborhoods. A century old embarrassment perpetuated by New Orleans own Mayor Ray Nagin's stated desire for residents to rebuild a "chocolate New Orleans. You can't have New Orleans no other way." And we as a nation followed suite. We spent so much time blaming FEMA, Bush, the Republicans, the Democrats, the levees, that we lost our aim as a people. If we truly respected and cared about each other the streets would not be empty reminders of a storm that tore apart city. Instead they would be lively portraits and hopeful symbol's of the good we can accomplish as people.

So before you can lift the rubble and rebuild, there must be a foundation of peace and of decency. Before the walls of a home can be restructured, the walls between people must be destroyed and a camaraderie as a single people must be forged. The shingles and dry wall can not be held merely by nails and screws, they must be plastered by our common faith, our shared dream to one day see this city and it's people stand again. When we tame this bridge no wind, no water, no tsunami, no drought, not even a hurricane will knock New Orleans to her knees. She will sing again. We will make her sing again.
 
By: Corey Ciorciari