ONE CITY – MINUS Take one thriving city.
Call it New Orleans, La.
Then, pretend that you have the ability, by some magical method you are sure will work, to set about eliminating all those persons whom you can, logically, set apart, at least in your mind, as being the “poor people” of the city.
You may wish to show what proportion of the total population of the city makes up the “poor” element and where they are among situated among the masses of people. One can determine many points if one has the proper statistics concerning the units under study, but they are temporary at best because they are dependent upon the limitations of our knowledge at any given moment and conclusions drawn from our observations by men and women of the next generations. Things we learned September 9, 1965, when Hurricane Betsy torn through the city. That was the last time the city was really flooded and we came to feel it would be a long time before such a thing happened again. At the behest of Huey Long, Franklin D. Roosevelt flew in just a day later with federal officials and they saw the damage done to Pontchartrain Park, to Bywater and to the impoverished Ninth Ward When it was all over eighty-one dead were counted; a quarter of a million people had been evacuated and water level was set at nine feet. The Ninth Ward had suffered the most. That had been true of the Yellow-fever epidemic which raged through the city in 1905; and it was the poor of the same area which had borne the brunt of the Cholera epidemic in 1849.
This “poor finder” machine we have devised might be an example of the degree we so often seem to overdo analysis of the situation. You and I both know that the poor in the Crescent City have been scattered throughout a social structure which sees to be split between ours and the last century. Counselors at various “refugee” points who have talked with former residents find they do not plan to return – ever. If so, New Orleans as a city, enters a complete new era. She will try to be vibrant and alive without the under base of workers - the poorest of the poor level - those people who did much of actual work dealt out to a strata of our society few people admit exists – are, this time, saying they will not return.
New Orleans will survive, but it will have a longer, more rugged road to find its way back to anything like normalcy. I once made it a point to seek out a and talk to the downtrodden in New Orleans - example of that portion of humanity which is left on the fringe after all else is taken. I, at times, find it difficult to believe what some of them told me of their way of staying alive. Mine was only a small sampling, admittedly - two men and one teen-aged girl. Perhaps my fears for the City are misguided. Only history will work it all out.
A.L.M . October 31, 2005 [c527-wds]
