Friends of New Atlantis

by Susan Estrich
Posted on Nov 28, 2006
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20061128_susan_estrich_new_orleans_on_my_mind/

I went to New Orleans last week to debate Newt Gingrich. That was the easy part. The debate also included libertarian Doug Casey, and the funny part is that however much a conservative like Newt and a liberal like me may disagree, at least we agree that for fundamental tasks like dealing with dangerous drugs, for instance, you need a government, which landed us on the same side more often than one might expect and kept the audience in positive spirits.

Which is the goal in New Orleans these days.

Everything you’ve always loved about New Orleans is still here, my driver told me on the way in from the airport, affecting the positive tone I would hear from people for the next two days, before he told me his own harrowing story of survival. About how he lived on a street where there were only two livable houses, and his house, with a still-leaking roof, was one of them. About how he lived without electricity for the first few months he was back, which was “not so bad.”

You don’t have to veer very far off the highway to see total devastation of the sort you’ve seen on the television news, but it’s stunning to see 10 minutes after you’ve passed through baggage claim at a major American airport. How did I get to a war zone in the Third World so quickly? It’s just stunning. It doesn’t look or feel like America. And there it is. Devastation. All you want. How much can you take?

You can take “recovery tours,” or someone can drive you around. You can walk around, drive around, look out your window. Water lines are everywhere. Even where everything is supposed to be all fine, there are signs that it isn’t: buildings still boarded up, notices of when something is reopening, or whether it isn’t.

Half the city hasn’t come back, so there aren’t many people around. Inside every store I go into, someone wants to help me. I walk around the French Quarter and it is early, but the bars are empty, the souvenir stores are empty, every place is empty. Everyone tells me about how the real estate agents were just there and how great that was. Good for the real estate agents.

Everyone has a story. It’s as if every person you talk to is ready for his newsmagazine interview, with one story more harrowing than the next: the woman who stayed with her invalid mother, riding out the storm for three days because there was no one to carry her mother out as the roof was blown off over their heads; the man who cajoled his aging parents, who had never left before; the people collecting animals; the children collecting toys and special mementos from houses they would never see again. Just typical stuff.

And what can you do to help?

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

You tell others to come. It’s not perfect, but they’re trying. The restaurants are back. The people are amazing. They need us to go. And spend.

I live in Los Angeles. I am shopping in New Orleans.

I go to Rubinstein’s, the department store in downtown New Orleans. There are dancers in costume at the front door, offering wine to shoppers as they come in. That’s me. I am the shopper. As I come in, I am the only person in the store. I look around. Wine at 2:30 while shopping? Sure.

We have a new shoe department for ladies upstairs, they tell me.

Upstairs, two women offer to help me. Another offers me a champagne cocktail. I have nine hours of travel ahead of me—once I start.

High-heeled black suede boots.

Perfect for travel.

How much?

More than I’ve ever spent on a pair of shoes or boots in my life.

I try them on. I walk around. One more customer comes in. The sales staff tells me how much they like them. They tell me their heroic tales.

I buy the boots.

Remember New Orleans.

From the massive post-Katrina "Where are they now?" file: Sandra Wheeler Hester showed up in town last week.

The political activist and cable access TV host, who earned the nickname "18-Wheeler" for her relentless assault against the status quo, came to town for the first time since evacuating last year. She took a look around, spent a few nights with her husband in Gentilly and, by the time this story appears in the paper, she says she will be long gone again.

Her vociferous presence at School Board meetings over the years guaranteed three things: 1) The meeting would not be boring; 2) At least once, she would call board member Jimmy Fahrenholtz "Jimmy Farenhonky"; and 3) She would probably end up getting kicked out of the building or arrested.

I caught up with Hester last week after her appearance in the "Politics With a Punch" political revue at Le Chat Noir.

You spent last night in a FEMA trailer?

Yes I did.

How was it?

Did you know you can sit on the toilet, have your feet soak in the tub, brush your teeth and watch the TV in the other room -- all at the same time? Very cozy. We were up there in our cardboard FEMA bed with our FEMA blanket; it was like being a young married couple. My daughter said, "Mom, if you and daddy get in a fight, you can't put him on the sofa because it's right there." I said, "Well, if that happens, I'll just put him out of my government-issue trailer. I'll evict him."

Where do you live now?

I live in a rural town on the Missouri River called Glasgow.

Why?

Good question. When I evacuated for what I thought would be two or three days, a friend there told me I was welcome there. Fourteen months later, I'm still there.

What do you do all day?

Watch corn grow.

Why aren't you back?

I worked very hard in this city trying to change the educational system and was ostracized and vilified and arrested and called everything but a child of God and quite frankly, I was just tired of it.

But don't you feel that now is that opportunity? That now could be your time?

My time is past. My role here was to shine a light on the problem. My time was to awaken people. I think they are awake now. Whether they do anything about it is up to them.

But there has never been a better time in New Orleans for hell-raisers, rabble-rousers and demagogues.

I don't think the kind of work I did fits a label of that sort. The problems here are so massive that no one individual like myself is going to be able to effect the changes that we need. We need everybody to take a stand. As long as people sit around and think somebody else has it covered -- somebody like me -- then they won't do a thing themselves.

So you're not coming back?

I don't see ever living in Louisiana again.

It's hard to imagine New Orleans without you. You're being all serious on me.

You want me to tell a joke? Part of how I was able to do the work that I was doing and survive was through humor and levity, because the situation was such a crying shame that I was laughing to keep from crying. This place was breaking my heart. Every day I prayed to God to get me out of here.

Does it bother you that a lot of people think you're crazy?

That's one of the reasons I wanted to remove myself from the situation. People started looking at me as the gadfly, as the problem. But I'm not the problem. I was part of the solution. I just had a different style and strategy. It took something radical to get people's attention.

Don't you think you were a bit of, let's say, a disruption at the School Board meetings and made a mockery of the process?

How can you make a mockery of something that's already a mockery?

Are you politically engaged in Glasgow?

No.

Do they know who you are yet?

Not yet. The editor of the little weekly newspaper there Googled me one day and kind of got a clue, but the rest of the people are totally clueless. All they know is I'm a loud, wild, woolly, fat black woman from Louisiana but they have no real idea what they have on their hands.

When will they find out?

They may never.

Why not?

Do they need to?

I just don't see you whiling away your sunset years in anonymity. I think your soul would shrivel up.

Now is a period for me to recuperate, regenerate, refocus, re- strategize and figure out a way to work smarter and not harder. I'm loving it. I sit there with cows and pigs and hogs and raccoons and possums and skunks . . .

Sounds like the old School Board meetings.

The skunk part, yeah. And the pigs.

But we need you.

You don't need me.

I'm a reporter. I need you.

See, you are wrong for that. The media was and still is one of the biggest parts of the problem. Whatever so-called journalists they have here are just about sensationalizing the problem and minimalizing the real issues. You're just about controversy, controversy, controversy.

We've seen the light.

No you haven't.

A few things have happened since you left town. Let's review some. First, your thoughts on "Chocolate City"?

That is one of the most asinine things I have ever heard. That's not a coalition-building kind of comment.

You're a specialist in education. Would you care to give the mayor a grade for his second term?

You know, when a leopard keeps changing its spots, when a chameleon keeps changing its colors, it's hard to gauge where they are going. I think his endorsing William Jefferson speaks volumes to his character.

Vince Marinello?

Oh, God! Loose on the street, an animal, because he knows the sheriff of Jefferson Parish, because he's a white male, because he's a celebrity. This man belongs in a loony bin. He is a menace and a danger to society as we speak. Do you think I would be on the street if I shot someone in the face in broad daylight in Old Metairie?

Not unless Charles Elloie was your judge.

I don't even think then.

Do you worry that by coming to New Orleans for a few days you just might get a hankering to stay?

That is unlikely. I was on a cable access TV show today, "The Ballot or the Bullet," and when the callers started calling in, I could tell my blood pressure was rising, my heart rate rising, my head started hurting . . . I didn't realize the physical effect all this has on me. It's devastating.

People around here have gotten pretty rough on those who don't stay here and fight, those who, to borrow a phrase, "cut and run."

Look, everybody has to make the best decision for their own lives. My husband has to be here because the economic reality is that he has to work. My family is broken up. My children miss him terribly. For those who have the intestinal fortitude, stay and fight, I say good for you and rise up! For those who feel it's too much for them, well -- I don't judge anybody for the decision they make and I trust no one will judge me for the choice I've made because Lord knows I gave a lot of myself to this city. I dare the first person to come up to me, after all those years I was fighting by myself, and tell me otherwise. Where were they then? I dare somebody.

. . . . . . .

Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504) 352-2535 or (504) 826-3309. Read past columns at www.nola.com/rose.