Oracle Online

Conversations between Oracle staffers who visited the Big Easy on Spring Break, and other students who have done relief work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have found that while many people have commended their decisions to help clean-up and re-building efforts, just as many, if not more, have wondered why they even bothered.

This is not OK.

Current estimates for re-building time at the present rate range from three to as much as eight years.

The people of New Orleans have been devastated by engineers who built and installed levees and flood walls which they knew to be faulty, by inadequate transportation systems which couldn’t get everyone evacuated, by insurance companies who refused to compensate home and business owners, by hostile locals in towns that the devastated survivors evacuated to, and by contractors who defrauded those who came back to try to piece together the remains of their lives.

The lack of government response to these injustices (often, if not usually, motivated by race and class distinctions) means that the task falls to the rest of America to show solidarity. As the government and media progressively lose interest, we should be standing up to take up the slack. It should be a duty, and not a charity to show the people at the other end of the Mississippi our support and compassion.

And yet we also lose interest.

There are approximately 10,000 homes in New Orleans that still need to be gutted. There are 300 million people in the United States. You do the math; it shouldn’t take eight years.

While we commend those who went to Louisiana, to Mississippi, to Alabama and Georgia, we ask the rest of you, what’s keeping you from getting involved?

In part, it is a flaw of our culture. Individuality, that prized American trait, tells us to stay safe and warm in our homes and worry about ourselves. It tells us that the people on the Gulf Coast should be able to pick themselves up if they work hard enough. Culture is a powerful mechanism and difficult to overcome. But it’s not impossible.

At the Oracle, we say, ignore what society tells you. We are all connected and all affected. If the entire Midway were under 20 feet of toxic, sewage-filled, oil-slicked, marine predator infested water, wouldn’t you want the folks at Tulane, Xavier and the University of New Orleans to come to our aid?

It’s not necessary to go and build houses, or gut them, or tutor kids (although all these things are needed), you can simply become aware of the reality, inform yourself, and others in turn. Go down for a visit and support those businesses that came back. Find out peoples’ stories and tell them to everyone you know. Put pressure on the government, or on big businesses, or anyone else you can think of. But you have to see it to fully comprehend it. Make that journey.