THE 9TH WARD, A CITY LEFT FORGOTTEN
So today I had a profoundly life changing day. Not since my daughter was born at 1lb/15 oz (26 weeks) and spent three months in an incubator did I feel my emotions and physical being take on such a feeling of disbelief and heavy concern.
We toured part of New Orleans today that would stun even the most hardened human being. I walked the 9th Ward. Complete devastation and at times I wondered if I was in a war zone somewhere else far away. Block after block you saw cars turned over, houses fully collapsed, numbers painted on what was left of a house signifying how many people were found dead there. Water lines, garbage and debris everywhere and in some cases flattened foundations was all you saw left. Houses which literally floated and flew to new locations sat in the middle of roads and still not a sound of life. We met an 83 year old man living with no electricity, no water and amongst ruins literally. He wouldn't leave the house he raised 9 children in and swore he would die there. He painstakingly is trying to restore his life on his own. It was street after street and block after block of what you could tell from walking around. We looked through broken windows to see furniture, family photos, personal belongings full of mold, water debris and turned over as if a giant came in and literally played with the pieces like they were match sticks. Every once in a while you would turn a corner and see one lonely person sweeping a step or picking thru debris. Still.....8 months later they are still waiting for someone to come help them. Stories of still finding the dead are true. It looks like nothing has changed except the water isn't there anymore. I asked myself all day how these people could be let down like they have been.
We met two ladies in the street who lost everything. They are volunteers who come down to the 9th Ward just to check on things and help where they can. But there isn't anyone there except a few who won't give up. We heard stories of the displaced and forgotten poor and how the land in which all the debris now sits is valuable to developers who hope that if they leave the 9th Ward empty for long enough and do nothing to clean it up it can become public property rich for development of casinos and other attractions.
For miles we saw a broken city, a broken community and what I can only describe as a national disappointment. We met Reverend Leonard who has been preaching out of a makeshift tent everyday since the disaster in the middle of the 9th Ward to anyone who will listen in hopes that people will come back. The stories we heard from two lovely women named Willie May and Tiarra would break anyone's heart and send most screaming. Yes these women had not lost their spirit.
I am forever changed. I didn't think it could get worse than what you saw on television but I am here to say it truly is and disheartening to think that 8 months later familes are still displaced, not a piece of debris has been moved and a struggling society has been left to just dwindle away.
I had to share this with you....
Caroline Galloway/Gibson Guitar
We toured part of New Orleans today that would stun even the most hardened human being. I walked the 9th Ward. Complete devastation and at times I wondered if I was in a war zone somewhere else far away. Block after block you saw cars turned over, houses fully collapsed, numbers painted on what was left of a house signifying how many people were found dead there. Water lines, garbage and debris everywhere and in some cases flattened foundations was all you saw left. Houses which literally floated and flew to new locations sat in the middle of roads and still not a sound of life. We met an 83 year old man living with no electricity, no water and amongst ruins literally. He wouldn't leave the house he raised 9 children in and swore he would die there. He painstakingly is trying to restore his life on his own. It was street after street and block after block of what you could tell from walking around. We looked through broken windows to see furniture, family photos, personal belongings full of mold, water debris and turned over as if a giant came in and literally played with the pieces like they were match sticks. Every once in a while you would turn a corner and see one lonely person sweeping a step or picking thru debris. Still.....8 months later they are still waiting for someone to come help them. Stories of still finding the dead are true. It looks like nothing has changed except the water isn't there anymore. I asked myself all day how these people could be let down like they have been.
We met two ladies in the street who lost everything. They are volunteers who come down to the 9th Ward just to check on things and help where they can. But there isn't anyone there except a few who won't give up. We heard stories of the displaced and forgotten poor and how the land in which all the debris now sits is valuable to developers who hope that if they leave the 9th Ward empty for long enough and do nothing to clean it up it can become public property rich for development of casinos and other attractions.
For miles we saw a broken city, a broken community and what I can only describe as a national disappointment. We met Reverend Leonard who has been preaching out of a makeshift tent everyday since the disaster in the middle of the 9th Ward to anyone who will listen in hopes that people will come back. The stories we heard from two lovely women named Willie May and Tiarra would break anyone's heart and send most screaming. Yes these women had not lost their spirit.
I am forever changed. I didn't think it could get worse than what you saw on television but I am here to say it truly is and disheartening to think that 8 months later familes are still displaced, not a piece of debris has been moved and a struggling society has been left to just dwindle away.
I had to share this with you....
Caroline Galloway/Gibson Guitar
posted by Musicrising at 9:11 AM
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