Phil Sitter
New Orleans and I have
history. Until this trip, I did not
really reflect on the fact that I have now been to New Orleans five times in
the past six years: including three times
to do volunteer work (on one occasion living in the area for two months), and
once to visit Tulane, to consider whether I wanted to do law school there. I never thought much about the frequency of
my visits, because each time I left to go back to whatever place I called home
at the time, I felt my next visit could not come soon enough.
I have grown in and alongside the city itself. More than watching New Orleans’ post-Katrina
recovery process, I have actively played a role in it, and I have let this
involvement steer and power the course of my life. All of my beliefs about nature, materialism,
good and evil, manhood, social justice, the role of government, and individual
responsibility in society, among other topics, have to a large extent been
defined by my experiences in New Orleans.
I have let those beliefs influence every major decision I have made
since my first time volunteering in New Orleans in 2007, from deciding where to
go to college to where to go to law school.
I leapt at the chance to go on the Action for Human Rights trip down to
New Orleans, as soon as I heard about it at WCL. I was chasing the satisfaction and direction
rebuilding work gives me, especially at a crossroads in my life (where I think
a lot of people are after their first semester in law school), and also wanting
to continue following the recovery of the city, helping where I could.
It was my first and only visit to the National World War
II Museum in New Orleans while I was visiting Tulane University Law School last
March that convinced me to do law school at WCL, pursuing human rights,
probably with an international direction.
After this alternative winter break trip, however, I am, if not
re-considering, then re-evaluating everything.
As I have grown over the past semester, so has my understanding of what
New Orleans needs to survive and thrive. I came down expecting to do more rebuilding
work (which I did do for a day at the St. Bernard Project), expecting to feel
good about getting another family or two back into the homes they have been
denied for over seven years, but knowing that somehow, so many more dilapidated
houses and empty lots wait for their residents to return, even after all this
time and so much spent energy. I leave
New Orleans with a much deeper understanding of why this latter fact is so, and
what I can do as a future member of the legal profession to help change
it. I realize now the extent to which
human rights concerns are a major issue in the United States, as well as
internationally.
I believe without question that the human rights of
thousands of citizens of the United States of America, the country with the
best legal system on the planet, if not in all of history, have been
continuously violated before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The storm only revealed and exasperated the neglect
and exploitation already at play in the city: crumbling infrastructure; broken
educational institutions; predatory land dealings; corruption and abuses at all
levels of government, especially in the law enforcement, judicial, and
political institutions; all of it often involving racial and economic
discrimination. All of this can be
summated into two concise legal issues, which I have witnessed before the
alternative winter break trip, but that I now understand more deeply: a lack of
transparency in the legal system, and a need for a re-thinking of legal ethics.
Billions of
dollars have poured into New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Yet, after seven years, there are few, if any
consistent results in the recovery process.
Yes, the French Quarter was up and running again almost immediately after
the storm hit, but some of the city’s other neighborhoods are still in
shambles, and nearly physically uninhabitable in many instances. In the Lower Ninth Ward, where I was placed
at Lower Ninth Ward Village, streets have gone to gravel, manhole covers are
missing, utility service is spotty, with many leaks in the system, and there is
little to no police presence. The one
nearby school is a charter school, so most of the neighborhood’s children must
be bused out every day to go to different schools. Looming over all of this is an uncertainty in
the strength of the rebuilt levee system, which in the Lower Ninth Ward, would
not even protect the neighborhood from a storm surge of Katrina’s height.
There seems to be a general popular consensus that a
corrupt city government wants conditions in the Lower Ninth Ward to become so
unbearable that its residents give up fighting and leave, allowing for
re-development of the area into gentrified prime real estate. Whether this is true is one matter, but
another more pressing one is simply that no one can have an answer either
way. No one knows where all the money is
going, and why it has not reached the people who need it. No one knows the reasons behind why the city
is passing ordinances allowing it to aggressively seize private lots, after
charging the owners of these lots thousands of dollars in fines first for minor
“offenses” like not mowing the yard while residing out of state, unable to
return home. There is simply a wall of
silence and bureaucracy no one can get through to seek answers, money, or if
nothing else, closure. Where is the
legal oversight? Where are the auditors
for the city, state, and all of the non-profits? Who is fact-checking the auditors?
Another issue is that even if it is perfectly legal for
the city to re-develop a neighborhood as it pleases, is that ethical? How is the conflict between the legal rights
of local government and corporate entities and the legal and human rights of a
community ultimately resolved? At what
point does it become the responsibility
of government, using the law, to help people come home after being displaced,
even if this interferes with the economic desires of developers? I do not have the answers to these questions
after this trip. All I know is that
these questions have to start seriously being asked, and I want to be in a
position to ask them and command answers out of people, rather than simply
demanding them. I want to keep writing
this history between New Orleans and I, now with a legal mind.
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