Lower Ninth Ward

So for reference, when we talked about it in the Memorial Medical episode, we mentioned that from what we understood, that a lot of it wasn't the hurricane.

It was the stuff that happened after the that was like the most devastating and so after katrina hits so i'll tell you more but after it hits there's news reports where they're like everything's fine and they're standing in the french quarter and the business districts that everybody knows that new orleans looks like so in those places the news is there and they're like everything's okay like we got through this like it was rough but like we're fine and as they're doing that the lower ninth ward is starting to flood because the levees are breaking so let me tell you how we get how we get there um So New Orleans is, as we also said before, basically below sea level.

So if you're like on the beach, you're at sea level and then like it goes out, you go up and down.

But they are below sea level based on how the city was built.

this has nothing to do with your story and if you can actually answer this i'll be very very impressed why did humans decide to live there it seems like it's a lot of stuff to have to do to not die every day it

does it's just access to water and like a port city growing outwards and people needing space basically it had been like flooded and stuff before and people had suggested moving and not not rebuilding it again people were like no we really like it here so they just kept rebuilding it again okay Yeah.

The neighborhood that you hear of that was fully destroyed is the Lower Ninth Ward.

A ward is like a precinct, so just like an area inside of the city.

I think they can be kind of a range of size that is negotiable, doesn't necessarily have to be teeny tiny.

We were part of a project where we helped produce the trees for a Milwaukee forest in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

And that was basically like a city lot.

It could be anywhere from like a city lot to a city block.

They impact the landscape by, say, a tree will leave its leaf litter, and the type of leaf litter that it leaves, whether it's broadleaf or pine, will impact the type of soil fungi that are there and thus create the conditions for them to succeed.

So it's like the historical scars that are on the landscape from processes like colonialism and genocide, capitalism, development, and so on, have like an ecological weight to them.

Like the landscape that we're currently seeing here in Mississippi is heavily dominated by hardwoods which really shouldn't be here but they are there because of the removal of indigenous people and genocide of indigenous people in this in this landscape restoring it obviously we're we're looking at something that is like historically informed that is also forward thinking in terms of well the landscape is changing because of anthropogenic climate change that um miyawaki forest i mentioned that we worked on in the lower ninth ward This was a conversation we were having with other people working on it.

I mean, New Orleans, where we did it, it was in the Lower Ninth Ward.

But you mentioned Leonard Fournette, and I just, I, I do think it's a great opportunity because Leonard Fournette went to, um, high school with St. Aug, um, s- uh, right, like about a mile from where I'm at.

We bought this house from the president of St. Aug. Um, and, um, my good friend, Brother Sharif, was an All-State linebacker, lost the state championship in like '73 at St. Aug. Um, and I don't know if people know this, but when h- when Katrina, 'cause I'm bringing this up 'cause we just had the 21st anniversary of Katrina, and we go out to where the levee broke in the Ninth, Lower Ninth Ward.

Um, um, lucky that my, uh, my son Noah, my stepson is, um, he's A part of a Mardi Gras Indian youth group, and we get, and the children being there is kind of...

He got to release a, a dove as a, a gesture towards, like, our future, and, um, you know, just I don't think people understand.

Residents of the lower 9th Ward and nearby communities reported hearing loud explosions around the time the levees failed.

Because here's what some of us are allegating, that during the time of Katrina, the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, who, by the way, happened to be very poor people, They claimed they heard a loud explosion because the levees failed at that point, and they heard an explosion.

Some residents alleged that the industrial canal levee had been deliberately blown to divert water away from more valuable parts of New Orleans.

So there were allegations pretty early on as far as some dynamite

The old one closed down, finally due to being bought out by a huge corporation.

And she was living now in the Lower Ninth Ward, a place where even the police won't go.

It's so dangerous that it was the only option for her.

She needed to get money for lots of things, for survival, for Christmas, and for her own self-respect.

She saw another elderly man on the bus near her and met his gaze.

She nodded in acknowledgement and met him with a smile, but she kindly returned.

A few more blocks later, the bus crossed over the North Claiborne Bridge and entered the Lower Ninth Ward.

The bus stopped once more as the doors opened to Tennessee Street.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall five days ago.

The Lower Ninth Ward looks like the bottom of a lake, and somewhere in the wreckage.

Literally in the wreckage.

In a building that had itself taken on water, FEMA has a problem that has nothing to do with rescue helicopters or ice shortages or the catastrophic management failures that are already starting to dominate the news cycle.

Because, come on, we all know if this was a white town anywhere in the United States, the needs of these residents would have been attended to a whole lot quicker.

Now, look, it's not to say that there aren't White people in white towns who have suffered adversity You know, of course there are of course there are but we have seen this movie a million times before Whenever it becomes a black community or a black neighborhood or a black city or a predominantly black town You have some natural disaster come along ie Hurricane Katrina back in 1995 in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and And the infrastructure response is shitty, to put it mildly.

And we have that same thing happening now.

Lo and behold, the same thing.