Four Years
By ticktock6 on August 28, 2009
1 Dead in Attic
“Without your sweet kiss
My soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again?
My city’s in ruins..”
You might have noticed our banner looks different. That’s because today is August 28, 2009, and tomorrow marks the four year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The graffiti is meant to match the markings the various police and military units spray painted on the houses to show that they had been searched. Usually it took the form of a large X. At the top of the X was the date the house was searched. On one side was the name of the unit that searched that particular house. And at the bottom was the number of dead. Ours says 1,577 because that is the official death toll in New Orleans, although many more people are still counted among the missing.
I urge you to please read the lengthy memorial post I wrote last year. Why didn’t I do a similar one this year? Well, I have to be honest. Writing that one took a lot out of me. Just thinking about this takes a lot out of me. So please read it, or if you already read it last year, read it again. It has more of my Katrina experience (and an excerpt from my personal blog that I wrote the day I left) than you will see here.
Why weren’t some Americans able to see themselves in the photographs that came out of New Orleans in the nightmarish week after Katrina? Because the people in them were poor? Elderly? Overweight? Black? I don’t know. I saw myself in those pictures. Four years ago today, we sat in traffic through three states, through the beginnings of the rain, to get out of the city. We slept on the ground at a rest stop in Alabama. We finally got to our destination, and I slept all day. I woke up in late afternoon to see on the news that the city was wind-damaged but mostly okay. It wasn’t until the next day that the water started to come in, that there were reports of broken levees and people swimming through the streets and the Superdome and the Convention Center filling up with people. I was glued to the internet grabbing up every scrap of information– which streets were underwater, what was happening, what was gone and what was still there– And the water kept coming.
I was angry for a long time. It was hard to know who to be angry at, with so many people to blame at so many levels of government. The people of this city were betrayed. In the richest country in the world, what reason would you have to not feel safe? But I– and hundreds of thousands of others– will never feel safe again. I know, for me, it wasn’t until I walked behind that curtain last November to cast my vote that I felt absolved of some of the anger. That’s just me, though. I’m sure it’s different for others.
Sometimes people ask me why I’m so militant about the Hornets staying in New Orleans, why it sometimes seems like I’ve made it my personal mission to police the NBA news and blogs for errors or misinformation about the Hornets location (not in Charlotte– I’m looking at you, SI.com), possible relocation (not happening in the foreseeable future), and attendance (it’s fine– the Hornets ranked 8th in the NBA in percentage of capacity). I do take it personally. And I also take personally the national sports media’s obsession with proving LeBron James cannot possibly be happy in Cleveland, or Chris Paul cannot possibly be happy in New Orleans. That these players are being “wasted” in small markets. I feel this way for three reasons: 1) In the world of NBA League Pass and the internet, great players being in small markets no longer means viewers have no way of seeing them. 2) Please enlighten me on what endorsements and sponsorships LeBron James has missed out on by not being in New York or LA. Oh right, none. 3) I resent the implication that large market teams “deserve” these great players more than smaller market teams.
And I see that implication every day. Every time a quote comes out that has even a small possibility of being twisted to make it look like Chris Paul is leaving New Orleans, man, these people pounce on it. And twist it. And repost it. And write misleading headlines. It’s like they hate that he’s here.
I ask you to look at these pictures. I’ll warn you ahead of time that some of them contain graphic imagery. Look at these pictures, some of which happened within blocks of New Orleans Arena, where the Hornets play today, four years later. And tell me we don’t deserve to be cut some slack. Tell me we don’t deserve a basketball team. Tell me we don’t deserve Chris Paul.
I’ll wait.
