V to the 10th Recap, part 4: The Ninth Ward

The day after the performance, we were preparing to road-trip back to Wisconsin. However, we thought that it was important to witness some of the Katrina devastation so that our experience of New Orleans included more than just the glitzy, rebuilt, touristy areas. So, led by one of our members who had volunteered in New Orleans, we drove through the lower Ninth Ward, the section of town hurt the most badly by the flood waters. These were the neighborhoods in which people were stuck on roofs, unable to be evacuated, and where there are still thousands and thousands of uninhabitable homes.

I was shocked by what I saw–I had seen the news stories, read about the devastation caused by Katrina (and then Rita a year later), but to see homes that had rotted and collapsed because there was no money to repair the structural damage; to see the spray-painted symbols noting how many dead bodies were in the home; and to see that only perhaps 1/4 or 1/5 homes had been rebuilt was a wake-up call. I cannot believe that our government has not been able to make the neighborhood livable again, and that there are literally hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents who are unable to move back to their homes.

My vagina is angry, and so am I.

These pictures don’t do the devastation justice, but here is a taste of what the majority of the homes were like: