From the Mud, the Lotus that is New Orleans

Ask any solid mother or parent, who eats more, they or their children? Ask them what they want for their children. Simply to have better than they had, not more, just better. Better what? A better experience than they had, better circumstances, better conditions, certainly better outcomes.

Yet leadership eats first, and well. They have the best conditions, and they look at everyone else and deem this is enough, that floods and storms that cause loss and destruction continuously are enough. Meanwhile, our tax dollars are paid to keep the floodwaters from their doors.

I mention floods exclusively because, right now, we're talking about New Orleans, where the floods are persistent in their variation. But the water and mud have been the first issue of New Orleans, and surely not the last, as nature is always the beginning and the end.

New Orleans is the mother, the beginning, the portal through which enslavement and displacement became freedom and form, where creation birthed music, where resistance and humanity unite with nature as one.

Leadership today is having the same conversation they had in 1819. How do we keep the town from flooding? The original architect and engineer on the project, Benjamin Latrobe, was quoted saying, "Mud, mud, mud." And we aren't far from that, nor from his original plan, although we may want our engineers to run projections on Latrobe's original sites and see if that isn't one of the issues. Regardless, these are root issues, sustained for over 200 years for the sake of controlling and promoting commerce.

So, New Orleans, and all of southern Louisiana, has been combating the natural swamp terrain that holds water and mud so dearly, while eliminating what was once the natural protection of the coast. Coastlines became concerns of securing the landscape and physical scape while promoting industry and housing. The systems in place will simply not ease up on monetary production. Yet we must somehow begin to balance the concrete beneath our feet, or else it will be our defeat.

The mess rolls downhill. We inherit the sins of our fathers, and so on. Generations past had a vision for what was to be birthed, but what came from that vision wasn't what was ultimately experienced or remembered. No one would know what goods passed through or where they went. What they do enjoy is the music, the food, the ambiance, the culture.

This is where African, Haitian, Cuban, and countless other influences merged. It is where freedom could be bought, where freed people lived as an example of potential beside the enslaved. It was the firsthand image of hope, of a future. Where skin color did not entirely eliminate status if you had the money. It's where foods from global landscapes merged into one pot and one flavor, while people of various regions set their souls free on Sundays, dancing in Congo Square. If you listen closely, you can still hear the ancestors there.

As much as the buildings of New Orleans are far removed from what they were originally, I think we must believe balance can still be created. When I look at the growth, I see what it is costing the people and their landscape. We see humans continuously displaced, especially since the flood of Katrina in 2005, when no one was sure the city would recover, except the residents, with nothing but belief in each breath. The ones who died in their homes. The ones who were told they didn't own anything at all.

When you know the history of this place, you know it operated under distant leadership in a faraway land. They were self-operated because they had to be, much like every worker today who overrides yellow tape to move the bar. Leadership has a historical record of being out of touch with the nature, the people, and the processes of this place, and it cripples us, and worse.

When I first moved to New Orleans in 2021, there was a mayoral election going on. It was easy, as an outsider, to see the problems. I got involved with what I viewed to be the best candidate at the time, independent and local. But the city's residents simply didn't show up to vote, and when they did, they voted for an outsider who tricked them, robbed them, and smiled in their hungry and helpless faces while she did it.

And the current leadership, I believe, is fighting the good fight, but they're up against old and new odds in a transitional space. The problem is that I don't see enough top-down getting to business, but I do see a lot of performances. And as Morena shows us how to pour some shots on Bourbon, I would rather see her solve an issue so we can finally put something to bed. As, well her residents should have the time and ability to have their own evening wellness walks, but they are tired of being over worked in extreme heat against impossible odds, losing shoes and tires to the ground beneath them daily.

As she and the governor or mom and dad rather continue to go head-to-head, the residents aka their children are dealing with persistent floods, heat, mosquitoes, power grid failures, sanitation problems, and water disruptions, constantly, nonstop, waiting on solutions for themselves and the abundant population of strays.

To be continued.......