Your Thoughts Exactly

The city of New Orleans, an outpost of the excesses humanity craves, has been leveled, the twin forces of nature, its power to physically destroy, and its power to emotionally destroy a place, a people, a society in the face of adversity. For its in adversity that humans are exposed to their true nature. Protection and Faux-civilization ripped away by a flood of water, oil, feces and death. The city’s rotten soul has emerged: the oppressed and destitute left without the means of survival and perhaps more importantly, without any authority to keep them in their place. They have turned what’s left of this waste land into an outpost of lawlessness and anarchy. And who blames them. No one will save them now, the local police and city authorities distracted by their own hustle, too distrusted after years of abuse of power, to have any hope of exerting control over the situation. When you abuse power and morality as a force of habit, you can’t expect tit to save you when you need it most.

“Why weren’t they prepared for this?” The question crosses the lips of many a talked head on The Networks. Where were the engineers, the safety officials, the billion dollar Department of Homeland Security? Was there an emergency meeting on whether to change the color from yellow to peach, that our officials can’t tell us about? Where were the people who we pay and rely on to keep us safe? Where were the local authorities called to serve and protect?

Like everyone else in New Orleans, they were too busy enjoying the party, or more accurately, cashing in on it.

The party is a damned good one, as I discovered in March of 2003 as I made my way down for Mardi Gras weekend with a posse of drunken co-eds. Armed with a few ounces of schwag, and enough alcohol to kill us several times over, a crew of our future’s brightest made our way down the mighty Mississippi in a 93 Dodge Caravan, in search of some debauchery. Our first night in New Orleans lived up to our expectations. Dressed for the occasion in a purple fedora, with a peacock feather, adorned with variously elaborate beads destined for girls willing to perform variously elaborate sexual acts, I made my way with me mates down to the French Quarter. There, people flooded the streets in a stew of revelry; you could drink what you wanted to drink, ogle women’s breasts at every corner, with plenty of piss drunk members of the opposite (or in some cases same,) sex to make out with and forget past heartbreaks. The cities cobblestone streets, seedy bars, dirty jazz holes, and fried food stands gave off a vibe of controlled chaos, of orderly disorder, and of safety within the madness. “Come here,” they whispered. “Relax, let loose, it’s all in good fun. We know you’ve been dying to go a little crazy, and we promise not to tell.”

But a good binge mandates that the next night’s recklessness outstrips the previous session. With this attitude, and the sense of protection from the voices of the night, I dove into my second night of Mardi Gras determined to outdo the previous nights drunken, debaucherous exploits. In doing so, I ignored another voice I’d heard while walking around the street in the daytime that second day. The nagging voice of responsibility, which was picking up on another vibe that exudes from a deeper part of New Orleans A warning signal, that hedonism and lawlessness has a price, and beware lest you be called to pay it.

No one, least of all a 21 year old sexually frustrated male, wants to listen to this voice when the other one sounds so enticing, and everyone else appears to be having such a good time. After several drinks, well into the night, I found myself betrayed by another inner voice: that of my bladder. Overcoming the voices of the street rang the loud cry “Pee now or I quit.”

At Mardi Gras, there are no public toilets on Bourbon Street, and bars and restaurants charge five dollars for you to use their bathrooms. Those with cranky bladders like my own have to pay up or make the one lonely stand of port-o-potties twenty minutes walk from the epicenter of the madness.

In the middle of my journey, I strolled across the street in front of an oncoming motorcycle. Was I jaywalking? Perhaps. The man on the bike chose to kindly ask me to get the fuck out his way, asshole. Whether it was the sense of invulnerability, my upbringing as a Boston pedestrian, or a solid amount of Canadian Club that sparked my response is a quandary I will leave to the philosophers.

I stopped, pivoted, turned, and extended my middle fingers.

He continued, crashing into me. Deciding it was best not to pursue a confrontation with a burly biker any longer, I attempted to escape through the maze of people.

My attempts were not successful. I was slammed against the wall, as my nemesis shouted, “Sucks for you. I’m a cop!” The next thing I knew I was handcuffed, surrounded by dozens of police officers who seemingly emerged from the sewers.

Thus began my deeper experience with New Orleans, where questions that don’t cross the mind of those who come for the show, or the drugs, or the sex, get answered. Questions such as how does the city pay for Mardi Gras cleanup, why does the city allow so many “extralegal activities” on its soil, where are the locals, and how does striking a bargain of the nature of New Orleans’ affect the inhabitants of a city, both those in control of it and those controlled by it. From this experience I learned lessons that explain the depth of anarchy following Katrina, the most important being that a city whose police, courts, and legal system are based on corruption and oppression of its own will have no authority once leveled by forces they cannot control. The shattering of the illusion of civility and the setting in of desperation force the hand of the oppressed, who expect no help from those who are supposed to serve and protect, having never received any.

Upon my arrest, I was transported to Orleans Parish Prison, now immersed in flood and hopefully destroyed. I wore the same uniform as those prisoners who now get face time on CNN as helicopters fly over them on the interstate. I don’t understand the appeal of these images to those watching at home, (look, real prisoners!) stripped of their uniforms they are still humans, worrying about their loved ones, worrying about where they will go and what is to be done with them. They, like so many others in New Orleans, have no one looking out for them.

At OPP, I was exposed to the flip side of the feeling of lawlessness of New Orleans: a total lack of protection from the tyranny of authorities, once they decide to exert their power on me. In my confrontation with the biker/officer right or wrong went out the window, I was the offender because the man had a badge and a gun and I did not, not because of any law or moral code. The charges brought against me were public drunkenness, (a crime I felt I was probably not the only person guilty of that night,) disturbing the peace (I’ll admit, it only takes one person getting overexcited to ruin the calm, quaint atmosphere of Mardi Gras,) and battery, for not assaulting the oncoming vehicle that crashed into me. The rationality of these charges mattered not, what mattered is I had crossed the wrong person.

At the prison, chaos reigned; evidently, I wasn’t the only person deemed a threat to society that night. A madhouse, with girls on acid throwing themselves against padded cell windows people being moved from one massive holding cell to the next with no rhyme or reason, people still drunk on the feeling of invincibility lighting joints next to me and no time for due process or any of those quaint little ideals on which our nation is supposedly founded. Herded into jail, I got no phone call, no lawyer, no information about what was going to happen to me. Just a bunk, with a toilet and two roomies, and the bars slamming shut.

Eventually, I was able to get over the shock of finding myself in straight prison, sober up a little, and realize that lying in bed wishing this had never happened was not going to be the method in which I could spring myself from my current predicament. Finally, I got my phone call, got in touch with my grandparents, who began the process of wiring the 1600 dollars worth of bail money.

While waiting for my release to be processed, I got into conversations with some of my fellow inmates. About half the people in our cell were kids like myself, picked up that night. The other half were New Orleans residents, all African American, with stays of thirty days or less. Some had been picked up in an annual, unpublicized, pre Mardi Gras sweep of the city, whereby police pick up potential trouble makers before the tourists come in. A few men I talked to said they hadn’t been charged with any crime, simply told they were being held until Wednesday. The city was more then willing to imprison its own to ensure outsiders could come in and party. Other inmates told me they were in for being minor drug dealers and that, when released, they would go right back to plying their trade. “It’s what I’ve got to do to eat,” said the cell’s leader, a loud, boisterous bald headed black man, who shouted every word with neither a trace of remorse or expected sympathy, but with an acceptance of his reality.

Now, in the stinking hot summer of New Orleans, men, women, and children are doing what they have to do to eat. For all I know, the men I shared cell space with are some of those looting stores. Hopefully they got out of the city before the levee broke, but I doubt they all did. They weren’t evil people, I don’t think, although you can’t judge a man based on one conversation. I shared with them a sense of equality, for at that point we were equals in our powerlessness, in our submission to those with the guns, those with badges, whether we thought we deserved it or not.

Except we weren’t equals. Luckily for me, my parents had 1600 dollars lying around to post for bail, so by five that afternoon, after a few Western Union transfers, I was a free man. Just like New Orleans residents were unequal in the face of a hurricane, in terms of capability to heed the warning and escape the Gulf Coast.

The next few days were a lesson in New Orleans justice, which I can explain to those uninitiated in very simple terms: justice can be bought. While New Orleans does ignore some of the Bill of Rights, they did ensure a speedy trial: I was released Lundi Gras Monday with a hearing on Ash Wednesday. Of course, with so many arrests of so many out-of-towners, I had the same trial time and date as about 200 other people. But walking into my trial, I held several advantages over others. First, I was dressed up in shirt and tie, looking like a nice 21 year old innocent collegiate good boy. Which I was. Second, I had a lawyer, something that no one else seemed to have, mostly because they didn’t have the money (or parents with the money) to pay for such luxuries.

With a slick lawyer at my side, and me doing my best puppy dog eyes to the prosecution and the judge, I was able to get the charges dismissed and my record expunged. In order to do so, I had to forfeit 500 dollars of my 1600 dollar bond to secure such an arrangement. This made little sense to me; after all I was being declared innocent, shouldn’t I get my money back? Why should I be punished monetarily for my innocence? I didn’t particularly feel like bringing this up though. I was more than happy to pay my way to clear my name.

For that’s what I was doing, paying the Parish, paying my lawyer, for my cleared name. The city of New Orleans has to make money off of Mardi Gras somehow; it can’t be just the hotels or bars that charge for using the bathroom that profit. I’m sure my five hundred dollars went straight to the city department to pay for throwing next year’s event. As for my compatriots that didn’t have the means to buy their freedom? Evidently, they got the pleasure of cleaning up the puke, piss, and putrescence from the French Quarter on Thursday.

The party on Bourbon Street in New Orleans doesn’t really end with the coming of Lent. It just continues on a smaller scale. And, no doubt, the corrupt mechanisms that allow the party to continue, that keep the visitors alive with their sense of anything goes also continue to exist on a smaller scale. But what happens when the party needs to stop, when a society needs to collectively grow up, when leaders need to show initiative, when people need to cooperate with each other to simply survive, when the weak need the assistance of the strong, in a place that has known no cooperation and the strong have been subduing the weak so as they can comfort the revelers?

We have seen the answer as it unfolds in front of us: total chaos and mass confusion. Even from before the first clouds crept out of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mayor Nagin’s edict that everyone evacuate New Orleans was an appeal to the fantastical, although who can fault him for it? He is one man who seems to understand the reality of the situation, that this storm would be an unparalleled natural disaster and that the city he ran was totally incapable of preventing the anarchy that would follow or managing a disaster of this magnitude. Unfortunately, his savior, the Bush Administration wasn’t up to the challenge either.

People without the means, with nowhere to go, or who didn’t trust their city officials were always going to be left behind. They were going to be overwhelmingly black, and overwhelmingly poor. With a failure in engineering that surprised international experts, and can be drawn back to a lack of funds, appropriated wars for reconstructing Iraq rather than reinforcing levees, the city has been flooded with a soup of decay and death. Imagine the water that comes out of a faucet after it’s been shut off, that brown sludge that makes the stomach turn. Imagine the streets full of that. Then throw in some dead bodies and marinate for 72 hours at 90 degrees. That’s the condition of New Orleans right now, with limited food and water.

20 percent of police have stopped showing up for duty, as I doubt this is the job they imagined signing up for. The federal government has shown, not surprisingly, a total inability to carry out a job when needed. If there is one consistent theme of the Bush Administration, it’s an inability to understand reality in any situation, be it Iraq, Social Security, or budget deficits. In this instance, a disaster has mushroomed into a catastrophe due to such incompetence.

Sitting at home, far away from Katrina, I take a more personal approach to New Orleans. I wonder where the police officer from the motorcycle is, if he is one of those that fled early. I wonder where my cellmates are, have they been released? Did they make it out of the city? Or are they some of the “thugs,” forming armed gangs, grabbing guns and hoarding supplies. There is a tendency to dehumanize people who act in desperation, especially when they fit an archetype; that being the lawless African American gangster. But they share the same characteristics as all humans, they act as they have learned how to, and they react to their situation. When I was in New Orleans, I was guided by the feeling of protection, and the spirit of anything goes that spoke to me, and I reacted as I had taught myself to in such situations, whether it was right or wrong, through acting like a drunken idiot. Now, these people are acting on New Orleans’ voice of survival and desperation that was muted before by the constant partying, but now screams from every inch of the city. They are reacting to the truths they have learned over the years, that pleas for help will not be answered, that police are there not to assist, but to coerce in the name of order, and that strength in numbers and guns is the only way to get what you want or need. The words of my boisterous cellmate ring true…you have to do what you have to do to feed your self.

I have seen other writers’ reactions to New Orleans, ruing the loss of the rues, the destruction of a unique city and atmosphere that was washed away, perhaps never to return. These pieces are often full of nostalgic tales of drunken nights, weird sights, and crazy happenings; my first night’s experience repeated over and over in different words. Because New Orleans sees so many visitors, it holds a special place in so many people’s consciousness as a fond memory of expression of the hedonistic vibe humans have to exert from time to time.

But what people that hold these sentiments don’t realize is the relationship with New Orleans they hold is one that sours the soul of the city for those who live there year round. Visitors use the city for their hedonistic pleasures, then leave before called to clean up the emss Would these same partyers wish their hometown, be it D.C., Boston, Dallas, or Phoenix, to assume the mantle of hedonistic playground for the rest of the country now that New Orleans has been destroyed? Do they want drunken morons like myself roaming the streets all hours of the day, all times of the year? Of course not. New Orleans is the ultimate Not in My Back Yard.

Now, the mess is so great that it will take more than just the local authorities to do the job. The Bush Administration, much more adept at making messes than cleaning them, has compounded the situation through its inability to react quickly or provide solid leadership. This time, however, the images and people affected are too close to home for more people’s liking, a short drive or flight away, rather than off in some far off part of the map most people can’t point to. As the heat and water continue to rot away the city from its core, the reality that a major American city will have to be totally purged and rebuilt will set in, and the cost will be higher than that we pay at the gas pump.

In a way, however, the city of New Orleans gets a fresh start. A historic, vibrant city has been destroyed, but so has its rotten core and, hopefully, some of the corrupt forces in place that poisoned the city in the first place. It is a chance for the people who call the city home to be free of the incoming revelers, who don’t really care about the quality of life of the residents, and whose greed and hedonism perpetuate the corruption. Without the need to keep the party going, New Orleans can focus on the people who live there, and be reconstructed for the people who call it home. It may require the rest of us to lose our hedonistic playground we remember fondly, but it wasn’t our homes that were destroyed, or our friends who perished in the floodwaters. And for those of us who know the parts of New Orleans we never wished to see, it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.