So, on Thursday, I went out with some medical students to interview homeless people at Tent City. We took some photos, and I created a flickr account for all of us to upload our pictures. Pictures on that account were taken by myself, and a fellow student, Dustin Abadco.
On another website, Larry Huan posted some of his pictures. Yay for the fish-eye lens. :)
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Several tents pitched by New Orleans' homeless under the Canal-Claibourne overpass
Tulane students dedicated to aiding the homeless of New Orleans.
I-10 Bridge
Several tents pitched by New Orleans' homeless under the Canal-Claibourne overpass
3 comments:
During my visit with Dorothy to Tent City and the surrounding areas where homeless people stay, I met some fascinating people with interesting things to say about themselves and their status. Two separate men had the same idea that if they won the lottery, they would buy the abandoned hotel (visible to the right of the school building as you walk from HEAL parking garage to the building), have all the homeless renovate it themselves, and live in it.
I also met people living on the street with health conditions we wouldn't want to live with in our comfortable beds. Chris, a man with a splendidly majestic beard, showed me his ostomy pouch, which he has due to diverticulitis. As with any percutaneous appliance, there is always risk of infection for him. I would know, as my father had a similar bag for bile drainage due to his cancer. I met Earl, who had not gotten up all day from his hard concrete bed. He showed me his hand, which had been hit by a car and treated a week later, and the thenar muscles of that hand had totally atrophied, making me less confident of the prospects of the job applications he told me he put in. He also had what looked like a healed severe skull injury. Alex, kind as she is, gave Earl some pizza to munch on before we left for the day.
I urge anyone else who has not seen what's going on right outside the school to talk to Dorothy or anyone else who has gone out to talk to the homeless and see them yoursef. They will appreciate it and you will appreciate the experience.
The homeless we met were an incredible, diverse, interesting set of people stuck in an awful, unacceptable situation. They were amazingly open and way nicer to us than we deserved. The first man I met introduced himself as Benny. He moved around for a while from parking lot to parking lot living in an RV, but kepting getting kicked out by police officers until finally just loading up all his stuff in a grocery cart and making his way over to City Hall. He stated their biggest need as sanitary facilities - namely, port-a-potties. Another man aptly described the situation the lack of toilets left them in as a "catch 22". They are being allowed to live in front of City Hall, but by openly urinating or defecating they will get kicked out. It is also just plain abominable that the free citizens of a developed country do not have access to something as simple as toilet facilities.
We also saw in Tent City many people who have fallen through the holes of our healthcare system. People who cannot work because of health conditions that timely treatment could have prevented from becoming permanent, people who cannot work because of health conditions that are still reversable but are not being treated due to lack of access, people with mental health conditions not being addressed that do not allow them to find employment or acceptance in society, and people who are simply suffering needlessly in a country full of resources and wealth.
Words cannot express the emotions that I felt during the past week as I learned about the homeless problem that includes more than 16,000 people all over New Orleans. I have witnessed first-hand the problems that New Orleans has faced after Hurricane Katrina, but I am finding more and more each day that any realistic solutions are harder and harder to come by. After working in the Ninth Ward, I came to recognize the lack of concern displayed by politicians and the upper-class population to the general situation in New Orleans as long as it did not interfere with their daily lives. Now, for the first time, the homeless of New Orleans are challenging this apathy that existed long before Katrina by camping out in front of City Hall. How much longer can these problems be ignored?
They want affordable housing. They want opportunities to live in safe neighborhoods. They want access to healthcare. They want a better quality of life that has eluded most of them even before Hurricane Katrina. It is hard to comprehend why these needs cannot be met in New Orleans, considering the amount of federal and private aid that has been given to the city and the state following Katrina. And considering the number of people who have managed to recover their lives already.
It seems hard to convince most upper-class citizens that the homeless and poor are worth it. They seem to be left in the corners of the city, forgotten. The media has also ignored the problems of New Orleans following the initial coverage after Katrina. Those who were trapped in the aftermath of the storm, who were survivors of one of the worst disasters, are now suffering because of an inadequate system that will not give them a chance to let their voices be heard. And no one wants to change it.
I met a lot of people at "Tent City" outside City Hall who know that they will not be taken seriously. Their word doesn't count for anything in a society that rejects them. I met drug addicts, former felons, people who grew up in the wrong neighborhoods, who went to the wrong schools. I met a man with schizophrenia who cannot get medicine. I met a couple who was in jail during Katrina and lived in deplorable conditions after they were left in an abandoned city ravaged by flooding. I met a school administrator who returned to New Orleans to discover that the schools he once worked in were no longer functional. Their stories are similar to thousands who were told to come home to New Orleans, only to find that their livelihoods from before the storm were destroyed. And over the last two years the city has failed them yet again but not providing any support to help them reclaim their lives.
In the words of one former homeless man who learned more about humanity than some of us will ever know from his five years on the streets as a crack addict, "some of us just take a little more time." Just because someone did not have the same opportunities to succeed, it doesn't mean that they do not deserve to be treat as human beings. The homeless of New Orleans need attention now. This problem is growing. They cannot be dehumanized any longer. We as a nation must take notice and act.
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