The Automatik

From NOLA Against Crime.com—

Death Rattle © Allison Harvard

June 3, 2007: “The New Orleans Police Department was investigating two murders Sunday.”

June 4, 2007: “Police said a man was shot to death by his wife Monday evening in the Central City neighborhood, the fourth slaying in New Orleans in three days and the second Monday, police said.”

June 5, 2007: “A man was shot to death Tuesday night in the Central City neighborhood, New Orleans police said.”

June 9, 2007: “New Orleans police were investigating two shooting deaths Saturday night, one in the 7th Ward and one in the 8th Ward.”

June 11, 2007: “A local man and neighbor, Robin Malta, was found dead in his home Monday afternoon. NOPD are presently treating this as a homicide while they continue their investigation. New Orleans police were looking into the shooting death of a 19-year-old male Monday.”

June 17, 2007: “Two people were fatally shot Sunday evening in separate incidents, one just blocks from the scene of a quintuple killing a year before, and one on Esplanade Avenue in the 7th Ward, New Orleans police said. Another was found dead with gunshot wound to head in lower 9th Ward Sunday morning at 4am.”

June 22, 2007: “A 22-year-old man was fatally shot early this morning in eastern New Orleans, police said.”

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I feel like I should say something about the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but what can I say that hasn’t already been said, thought, or felt by everyone who has suffered or been damaged by it in some way?
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Before my trip to New Orleans earlier this month, I was nervous and anxious. I was scared to see the real-life version of the destruction that I had only previously viewed in photographic and video form. The closest analogy to what it felt like to finally witness the devastation of the city from the failed levee floodwalls is the feeling I got the first time I boarded a plane and I exclaimed, “It looks just like it does in the movies!” Read more

Yesterday, I returned to Canada from New Orleans. I had gone to New Orleans for my grandmother’s (aka Maw Maw) funeral. I had not been back to the area since June of 2005, two months before Hurricane Katrina struck. I knew that as difficult as it was going to be to bury my Maw Maw that I had to also visit my old neighbourhood of Lakeview to see what had changed in the eight months since the hurricane.

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Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi seven months ago. Although the story of the storm and the aftermath is no longer on the daily national news radar, the people who lived in Louisiana and Mississippi are still struggling with the realities of its effects every single day. Although some areas have recovered, for a vast majority of the residents, very little has changed.
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I haven’t written much about Hurricane Katrina since last year. I suppose I felt like all my essays were falling on tired eyes, which is not to say that people don’t care, but more that many people are in the same boat as I am: the problems are so complex, so vast, and so overwhelming that it just feels like a tear in a bucket. I know the history of New Orleans and so I have a grasp of how messed up things were before – and maybe that’s a helpful or maybe it’s a hindrance, something negative to focus on so that the worst self-fulfilling prophecies seem to be coming true. I have faith in the people of New Orleans. The politicians? Not so much.
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I understand that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin sounded a bit wacko with his now-infamous “Chocolate City” speech last week. It was inappropriate for him to allude to conversations with God. Like several people have pointed out, when Pat Robertson does that, people start foaming at the mouth.
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No I can’t hide the memory of you away
Today or any other day
It’s a time for remembrance
A time to cry
And, I’ll cry

The Cowsills, “A Time for Remembrance”

When I heard the news about Barry Cowsill’s death last night I felt completely gutted.
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I know that many of you are probably experiencing this phenomenon the wonderful media have dubbed “Katrina Fatigue.” Let me tell you something: since August 29th, I’ve been pretty fatigued myself.
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New Orleans and its surrounding cities and neighborhoods are no longer as I knew them. The coast of Mississippi has been changed forever. Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christian are nothing but felled trees and splintered wood. My father and stepmother’s house has been crushed by a 20-foot storm surge that wreaked destruction five miles inland, lifting up their van and spinning it around and floating three strange sofas into their shattered and now-exposed living room. Their neighbors’ roof is now in their backyard, but there is no sign of the rest of that house. Even if they didn’t lose their houses outright, many members of my family, not to mention nearly everyone else I know that still lives there, have been rendered homeless and jobless for the foreseeable future.
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