Students Volunteer over Spring Break in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Written by Harrison Peck

NEW ORLEANS, LA. On the night of March 15th, a group of college students sat in an organizing center in New Orleans, nervously receiving a primer in civil disobedience in preparation for an illegal cleanup of an elementary school.

"If they try to arrest you,” the instructor advised, “go limp. That way, it makes their job more difficult, and you aren't resisting arrest."

The students were among roughly six hundred volunteers who had come to spend their spring breaks cleaning up New Orleans with a Common Ground, an all-volunteer organization.

Based in the post-apocalyptic nightmare that is 9th Ward of New Orleans, the students engaged in a variety of activities, some more confrontational than others.

For the most part, volunteers gutted houses that were severely damaged by the storm, removing furniture, doors, carpets, drywall, and insulation in order to rid the buildings of contaminated mold. To protect from the mold, which rises as high as fifteen feet in some homes, as well as asbestos and lead-based paints, they wore full-body Tyvek suits, respirator masks, goggles, work gloves, and rubber boots.

Some of the student’s’ activities were more aggressive. One group of volunteers decided to speed up the vital process of reopening the ward’s public schools by taking matters into their own hands. Nearly 85 activists illegally entered the Martin Luther King Elementary School and began gutting the building and draining the remaining floodwater. Outside, 300 protesters carrying hand-painted signs gathered to support their efforts, and criticize the bureaucratic ineptitude that made such actions necessary. While the volunteers received prior training in how to handle police intervention, law enforcement officials did not interfere.

Helping to rebuild New Orleans, of course, was not the only motive that brought so many students to New Orleans in the month of March. Some expressed a certain voyeuristic desire to see post-Katrina New Orleans in person. Dustin Schur, a junior from Westport, Connecticut, said, "New Orleans is like a train wreck; you can't not look at it."

Other students confessed that the notorious party reputation of New Orleans' French Quarter was a significant attraction. While many other areas along the Gulf Coast were also severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, students seized the opportunity to visit New Orleans, rather than the decidedly less-hip Biloxi, Mississippi, or Mobile, Alabama. Thomas Phillips, a senior from Washington, D.C. said, "The nightlife was a major factor in my decision to go down.” Thus, after a long day of grueling manual labor, Bourbon Street's renowned bars and music clubs were typically teeming with Common Ground volunteers.

But these reasons alone would not persuade students to spend their spring breaks sleeping on school cafeteria floors or outdoors in tents and waking up at 6:00 each morning to put on sweaty Tyvek suits to hack away at toxic drywall for a week.

Common Ground markets itself to volunteers as a 1960s-style social movement, rooted in the belief that the government responded to Katrina with apathy and racism. Rallying behind the motto “Solidarity, not Charity,” Common Ground tells residents that they intend to pick up where the government left off.

While Red Cross trucks enter the community, drop off food, then leave, Common Ground sees its commitment as long-term and works closely with area residents in order to handle the house gutting process in accordance with the homeowners’ needs and wishes.

Additionally, Common Ground does not accept any government funding, and as such is not hampered by the restrictions that groups that have accepted FEMA money need to abide by.

Although destruction in New Orleans is still widespread and devastating today, progress has undoubtedly been made since the hurricane. Many Upper 9th Ward residents have returned to their homes and are trying to start their lives again. Every day homes are being gutted to prepare for renovation, and rebuilding projects are underway.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.