Back to "Reality"

Let me first start by apologizing for my inability to count. In my last blog I said “closing in on three years after Katrina,” and I meant to say closing in on two. Thankfully, basic math is not required in order to graduate from law school.

I am home from New Orleans and reading for my classes tomorrow. I have caught myself saying “back to reality” several times only to laugh at myself… I am actually leaving reality and headed back into my 1L law school bubble. This transition is difficult because I had become so invested in my client’s situations. I was not yet ready to leave New Orleans because there was so much more to do on each case. After talking to several peers and Ellen Artopeus of the Pro Bono Project, I have learned that this is an issue with many students. Successions take many months to complete and we only have five days to work on them. Nevertheless, once I have started something, it is more than difficult for me to leave it unfinished. However, I must remember that I did move each case along, if only a little bit. My phone calls and research saved the New Orleans Pro Bono Project a minute here and an hour there. That alone makes a difference.

My time spent in New Orleans was eye opening and valuable for me both as a law student and a citizen of the United States. New Orleans is a resilient, vibrant city that still needs the support of the country. It is easy to forget about Hurricane Katrina because it has been one and a half years since it hit. However, the city still needs all the assistance it can get - including helping hands, contractors, materials, and money.

What I found most striking and troubling is that as a tourist, you can fly into New Orleans, take a cab to the French Quarter, stay a week and take a cab back to the airport without seeing much effect from the hurricane except maybe for a "For Sale" sign here and there. Basically, unless you are really looking for it, you wouldn't notice too much difference in the city. There is jazz music on every corner, drinking on Bourbon Street and tourists EVERYWHERE. But, if you drive out of the French Quarter and into District 6, the 9th Ward or over to the Canal Street breach, it looks as if the hurricane hit last week. Some homes are gutted but many have been left untouched. Some homes are leveled with only cement foundation remaining, but many display "No Bulldozing" signs and "we are coming home" messages. Those signs have been there for one and half years and who knows if and when those people will actually have the means to rebuild and come home.

These areas were the areas hit the hardest, but unfortunately they are easy to avoid, if you want to avoid them. It is clear from talking to any citizen that the city of New Orleans has not forgotten about the Hurricane, no matter where you live and work. However, I worry that our country has now started to forget when the city needs our help the most. New Orleans is attempting to rebuild their homes and communities from the ground up, and they cannot do it alone.

Fortunately, there were a number of other organizations including other law students and undergraduate students who chose to spend their spring break working to help the city of New Orleans. Law students from Iowa, Indiana, St. Louis and Howard were all working for the Pro Bono Project this week. In fact, it was the largest group they had taken on since Katrina. Also, during our drive through the 9th Ward on Wednesday morning, we saw a hefty group of students forming at the Common Ground 9th Ward headquarters. Each was wearing a protective suit and carrying a mask. Each was ready to help clear and gut homes.

Support is there, but I say the more the merrier.

Rebirth Got Fire

New Orleans, and our work this week, has been a study in stark contrasts. Tourists bustle in the French Quarter; parts of the city are still silent. We work in a fancy firm conference room on successions for some of New Orleans’ least well-off residents. Colorful yellow flowers bloom in Jackson Square; a yellow waterline mark still runs through houses and roofs in the lower 9th Ward.

When I traveled to New Orleans last year, I saw how much hope and little help existed in the region. Returning a year later, I’ve discovered that the strength of this community is in its resiliency, but the government is not making anything easier. Community residents seem to have come to the conclusion that the government isn’t going to help them.

We’ve worked all week on successions, helping area residents prove they own land, so they can receive government assistance and insurance payments. I’ve been proud of how dedicated my Tar Heel peers are to helping their clients. 1L Amy Dessel refuses to be slowed down by holes in her cases, and has literally been on the phone all day. Justin Flores, also a first year student, has almost finished a succession in a mere 2 days.

In addition to working on successions, supervising attorney (and recent Carolina Law grad) Diane Standaert has allowed us to help on a research project for the Center for Civil Rights, and a consortium of other public policy entities. Land partitioning has adversely affected many lower-income residents of the rural south, and each day several Carolina Law students help Diane mine through the New Orleans Pro Bono Project’s files, looking for further evidence of the problem. To me, this task initially appeared to be overwhelming. However, after sorting through the files, it has been a striking to realize how many of the clients’ stories are similar. It’s frightening to discover that the structure of many states’ laws, not natural disasters, could prevent low-income residents from living on their land.

My favorite part of traveling with the UNC Pro Bono Program is getting to talk to people and interact with the community. Luckily, Diane afforded myself and 1L Ashley Erickson the chance to get out into the community after work yesterday.

We met up with Professor Oscar Barbarin, of the UNC School of Social Work, who took us on a tour of District 6. Professor Barbarin is part of a UNC consortium made up of the School of Social Work, the Planning School, the Law School, and several other University departments that is adopting District 6. Currently plans call for UNC to set up information resource centers in the district, and work on clustering plans.

Professor Barbarin grew up in District 6, and took us on a tour of the area with his sister, Sylvia. Ms. Sylvia is a current resident of the area, and in addition to providing a candid assessment of how the city is progressing, she provided a rich commentary on the culture of the city. The sense of community was palpable in our trip around District 6. However, people are sick of planning. Hopefully the UNC programs will provide constructive help to the area.

I was tremendously bothered by several housing projects we saw that were boarded up. Ms. Sylvia told us buildings hadn’t suffered any damage from Katrina, rather the landlords used the evacuations as an opportunity to buy out their tenants’ leases. Now the landlords want to tear down the projects and develop the properties. With the majority of New Orleans’ residents displaced or in FEMA trailers, it was shocking to see habitable buildings empty.

The New Orleans Pro Bono Project was kind enough to set up a meeting with Judge Zainey of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and Louisiana Civil Court Judge Giarrusso. Yesterday we attended one of the first Katrina insurance trials in state civil court, over which Judge Giarrusso presided.

The trial was something out of a movie; the plaintiff was a 91 year old holocaust survivor from Poland, who ended his testimony by yelling, “America is the greatest country ever, God Bless America.” Yes, the insurance company did look evil.

I was also perplexed how the insurance company was going to get a fair trial. To find 12 people that don’t feel like they have been screwed by an insurance company in this city has to be impossible. A bench trial probably wouldn’t help the insurance company either; all but 2 district civil court judges lost their homes.

Driving back from the 17th Street Canal yesterday, 2L Matt Liles and I discussed how you can see solid improvements in the city. In the 9th ward, you can see a house or two in each block where people have moved back in. It’s not a lot of progress, but it’s something. I don’t know whether to say New Orleans is back or will be back; I guess time will tell.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4307972.stm

District 6

I will blog more on my overall experience later – the following is my time with Professor Barbarin and District 6:

Tuesday evening, I had the opportunity to tour District 6 with Professor Oscar Barbarin from the UNC School of Social Work, his sister Sylvia who is a life long resident of District 6, Boz Zellinger a 3L, and our supervising attorney Diane Standaert, from the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Professor Barbarin and Sylvia were both raised in District 6 and Sylvia is currently working on renovating her home with plans to move back into her neighborhood as soon as she can. Due to his close ties to the district, Professor Barbarin has chosen to focus his and the UNC School of Social Work’s relief efforts on District 6.

Professor Barbarin first drove us through the district. The Pontchartrain Park area was one of the worst hit in District 6: a middle class African American community built around a golf course which is now completely devastated from the storm. We saw a sprinkle of FEMA trailers and vehicles; however, on the whole, the neighborhood is vacant. In fact, this is true for a lot of District 6 neighborhoods. This becomes most apparent when the sun goes down. Driving down streets lit only by street lamps… no people, no cars, and no lights in windows. Empty.

We also attended two community meetings. At those meetings Professor Barbarin introduced his two pronged “proposal” to help move District 6 forward and ultimately set an example for the rest of the city. The first part of the proposal is “clustering.” “Clustering” is an attempt to get citizens to move back into their neighborhoods by grouping them in houses close to each other in each neighborhood. Essentially, those who move back to their neighborhoods literally cluster around each other regardless of whether they are in their original homes. Everyone really seems to like the idea of clustering; however, everyone wants the clustering to occur around their home.

The second part of the proposal is information centers that would be placed throughout the district and would serve as a data base for citizens to get their lives back in order. For example, at the second meeting we attended, a man from Global Green introduced environmentally friendly energy conserving construction measures in order to “re-build right.” These measures would be beneficial to all citizens of the city and exactly the type of information that would be placed in these information centers. While some data would be helpful to the entire city, other information would be better suited only in certain areas. Therefore, the goal is to tailor each center so that it fully accommodates each district or area.

My feeling from both meetings was that the citizens are extremely thankful for any and all help they can get. Both groups seemed responsive to Professor Barbarin’s proposal. However, it is clear that the community is tired of planning. They have been planning since August of 2005, and now, in March of 2007, they are ready to do. Sadly, what they are most in need of in order to do, is money.

Touring District 6 and listening in on the meetings gave me a very real look at where the city is today, closing in on three years after Katrina. It opened my eyes to the fact that each effort, no matter how small, does not go unnoticed. In fact, as we were leaving the second meeting, a man tapped me and said that he had been reading our blog, and thought is was great. That brought a smile to my face and should give each person who has given their time to the victims of the hurricane a great sense of fulfillment. Seeing the community band together to literally rebuild their neighborhoods is inspiring and telling of this city’s character as a whole. The people here are resilient and the least we can do is help them stay that way.

Destruction and Rebirth

Greetings from New Orleans! First off, I wanted to thank everyone for supporting our trip. We've had some great experiences so far and are looking forward to finishing the week out strong.

Almost from the start of the trip we've been amazed and saddened by all the destruction around New Orleans. On our ride in to the city, almost every single house along Highway 10 seemed to be damaged in one way or the other. The landscape was littered with piles of trash and debris.

But as bad as this was, the damage we saw on the way in to New Orleans really paled in comparison to the damage we saw on our tour of the 9th ward. Whole sections of the ward were gone, the sole remnants of many houses just the concrete porch steps leading up to nowhere. Other houses were just piles of debris, waiting to be demolished. Perhaps most sobering of all were the spray paint markings left on houses by the National Guard and other authorities looking for survivors. Most markings we saw indicated that the house was found empty, but occasionally we did see a circle with a slash through it, indicating that a person inside had died.

But not all in New Orleans is bleak. We've enjoyed getting to know the French Quarter, from the bars and restaurants on Bourbon St. to the Cafe Du Monde for breakfast (I'll leave these adventures to our other bloggers). My most enjoyable experience by far, however, has been seeing the "Rebirth" brass band perform. The band was fantastic and it was definitely one of the best concerts I've ever seen. I felt like I was taken back to a previous era, and i could only imagine our grandparents swing dancing to this New Orleans sensation "jazz". The Rebirth brass band was slightly different from New Orleans jazz of old, as it combined elements of hiphop, funk, rap, you name it. But the band was amazing, and the crowd was loving it. Large parts of New Orleans might have been lost to Katrina, but New Orleans culture is alive and well.

We're in the Herald Sun!

http://www.heraldsun.com/
orange/10-828652.cfm

It's in their Chapel Hill section today!