Day Four

Today was another good day. I worked on an old warehouse that is on its way to becoming a community center. The building was huge. I didn't actually get to talk to the guy in charge, Mack, but people said that he had plans to use the building for antique cars, but when he walked in, all he saw was a community center where people could come together and support each other. He says that he made something of his life thanks to the support of his community, and so he wanted the people of the Lower Ninth to have the same opportunity. It's really impressive to me to take such a big step toward rebuiding what used to be there.

So during the morning, we had to take wood out of this one side room. The room was stacked from the floor to the ceiling with wood, and it was a lot of work. A bunch of us from SU did a lot of the work here, but there were also groups from California and West Virginia, I believe. It was mostly 2x6's that were pretty much as long as the entire room, and a bunch of them were nailed together, which made it difficult to maneuver. Anyway, then we had to pull nails out of the boards so they can be reused in the future. That part was harder than I was expecting. The nails were rusty and broke off really easily, and the wood had warped around the nails so they were in there really tightly.

Then we got to work on that smaller room, which is going to be used for sports equipment storage. We broke in the window panes that were broken so they could be replaced with plexiglas panes. And then we had to start really cleaning out the windows to get rid of the pieces of glas and plaster and dirt and whatnot so the panes will fit in flush.

The best part of today was the sense of accomplishment that I felt at the end. A lot of the work that we did felt like nothing in itself, but when you look at the amount of space that we cleared out, it's pretty amazing. It's a big step toward being able to start making the space somewhere that's usable. It's a huge building located right in the middle of what used to be a neighborhood in the Lower Ninth, and it will have the potential to touch a lot of people's lives.

The only question is will they come back? Patrick and Spence have said all along that the people from this area are extremely resilient, and their homes were symbols of their accomplishment in life. But what happens when that big achievement is washed away? How do you start over again? I can't even start to think about what that must be like. There aren't even street signs there yet - the house numbers are spray painted on the ground or posted on plywood signs. A lot of people in New Orleans in general and even more in the Lower Ninth in particular haven't come back yet, and I honestly don't know how many people actually will come back. But I guess the community center is a prime example of a way to make the neighborhood whole again and maybe to encourage people to come back. Brad Pitt's Make It Right initiative is another big step in the right direction, I think.