Nagin offhandedly mentioned that Hurricane Gustav was to be the ‘storm of the century’ and the ‘mother of all storms’. A part of me chastised his fear mongering while I also admitted that if I were in charge of such a city that saw many residents stay because they didn’t want to leave and saw those that did want to leave unable to find a way out during Katrina and Rita, I may have subscribed to such tactics as smoking the New Orleanians out, calling their bluff, telling the people that they would drown, if only to make sure they didn’t.

A friend of mine planned to fly on August 29^th and did so.

This is when the selfish nature began.

How was I supposed to play hostess when we were planning for an evacuation? Would any restaurants be open? Where can we evacuate too that we would have privacy? What’s going to happen to all of my furniture? –I had never owned any as an adult until this summer- will they cancel school for too long? BUT I’M FINALLY SUPPOSED TO GRADUATE!

Then the possession of New Orleans came into play.

THIS IS MY CITY. I became who I want to be here. I’ve stayed here longer than any other place I’ve moved since I was 17. This is the city I have fallen in love in. This is the city I fell in love with. This is the city I work in. I work for this city.

And finally, the thoughts I am most ashamed of:

How could New Orleans do this to me? If it floods, I’ll get people out and do disaster response, but I will not come back.

Evacuating was a chore. I stared at thousands of vehicles ahead of me as we crawled along I-10 East at 5mph for about 5 hours. I was suffocating in the car. I brought my most prized possessions. A medallion belonging to my grandfather, my favorite pillow and blanket, pictures of my family, James Baldwin books, and my dresses. My god, the dresses. I wondered if I had made the right choices. Why had I brought my textbooks? If the city drowned, then so would my school, just like last time and I wouldn’t need them.

I should have brought more dresses. I had a lot of time to think about these things. And knew that as I looked from side to side in stop and go traffic at three in the morning that everyone else was asking themselves the same questions. We were evacuating alone, together.

Eventually it was time to stop worrying and start trying to stay awake. We put the I-Pod on shuffle, listened to an absurd amount of Damian Marley and performed exhausted, hysterical renditions of ‘We’re Gonna Make It’. The evacuation became bearable when the analyzation of our situation became un.

 It took us 15 hours to get to Tennessee; usually this is an eight hour drive.

When we got to Clarksville, sanity hit. How lucky was I that I had a vehicle and someone to evacuate with? The city had very responsibly evacuated those who did not have their own transportation early, but undoubtedly this was a slightly traumatic experience for those who had to do it this way. On the news (how trustworthy can this source ever be?) we saw families each carrying a yard bag of belongings and being loaded on to buses. Children, families, and the people with the things to lose. Granted, I complain about this very aspect of myself a lot, but was cheered to be able to say as I evacuated, that I own nothing. Some people had to leave the city with the understanding that only three years after having rebuilt their livelihood, they may once again lose their house or business, they’re assets and worth. I could take my skills and perform them anywhere and sustain a living –granted these are only making coffee and being charming, but they suffice, they fit the random schedules I keep for hobbies and the rest. I evacuated to a place where I had my own room, my best friend from California, and I got to see Nashville. Lucky. Lucky.

But irrational and tired, I still asked: New Orleans, how could you do this to me?

Gustav went west and weakened. Baton Rouge is in a terrible state. My house is fine for the most part. I have a feeling there was water in it at one point as there are worms and other parts of outside, inside, but its standing and I will start living there again when the electricity and plumbing work. We had to throw out all our food before leaving. I found that I can put everything I own on top of my bed –hey, I guess buying a bed that comes off of the floor was a good investment- and that among the first businesses to start operating post-hurricane are corner bars.

I learned that the Change Agents I work with and those at Be the Change I work for are the most supportive, kind, generous and compassionate network of people I’ve come across (how could I be surprised?). I learned that my dad still considers me his baby girl as he made sure to let me know how sick to his stomach he was the whole time I was evacuating. I learned that the people who invented the “New Orleans, Proud to Crawl Home” bumper stickers had created a sustainable slogan, because they always will. I guess I can go get me one now, right? Wrong. As I have mentioned before, I’ll never be seen as New Orleanian enough to do some things. Like call it home.

I learned that among the first people back after evacuating were the very same who responded to Katrina. The volunteers. Less immediate use for them this time, but the sentiment is appreciated.

I learned that New Orleans had learned from last time. The evacuation was a huge success and I hope it will be as successful the next time –let’s face it, there will be a next time. The attention gained and sustained through Katrina had not gone to complete waste. Government response time to even a hurricane warning was phenomenal and I feel secure to see the national guard here now when still so much of the city is blacked out. Granted, I may sing a different tune depending on how long they stay, but I am thankful.

The selfishness subsides. Everyone gets back to work, whatever that means for them. Hopefully next week after the summit, we will begin to volunteer again. Survival.

Then service. Perhaps with passage of groundbreaking legislation this January, a life of service can beget one’s survival.

I chastise myself for thinking the way that I did about evacuation. Ashamed for taking the weather so personally. It’s indicative, though, how much care and investment has been dispensed. If anything, I finally have a common experience with people who call New Orleans home. I evacuated, I hope to get reimbursed for the grip of money I spent leaving the city, I came home to a grocery-less fridge without the funds to replace the food, I went to school pretending not to worry about my Day of Action for a couple of hours. I cried for fear that I could not come back.

Trifecta. I now have put my blood (www.lifesera.com) sweat (www.cityyear.org) and tears here.

I do know what it means to miss New Orleans and I am proud to call it home.

Everyone can tell, too, that I’ve only got two New Orleans summers under my belt because of all the complaining I do about it. I know someone is a New Orleanian when within the first two sentences of our introduction, they ask me where I’m from. As if to say, “I got your number, girl, you’re not from here”. While usually this doesn’t matter to anyone -it’s just an observation that ought to be called out within salutations- it’s lately begun to matter to me.

I moved to New Orleans to do an AmeriCorps program. The people I met and the work that we did created a culture within a city with a culture unparalleled. And I belonged to it. All of us were working for very little, many of us were far away from home, and had never been to New Orleans before the storm. Most of us fell in love and stayed. We targeted the bars with cheapest specials and free food, we know where the plasma donation centers are, where the used clothing stores are, we know when volunteer service days are, we enjoy the free things to do in New Orleans. We made each other feel at home if no one else would- though most did. But the network has thinned since I’ve been here. People have burnt out too quick on the many ’scenes’ you can get involved in. People who had no intention of staying but couldn’t leave wake up one morning in a shotgun hung over and sick and wanting of their mother decide to pack it in and go home, people follow loved ones out, people can’t progress in their field and maybe feel that there is no pipeline from volunteer gutting houses to ED running the nonprofit that brings volunteers in to help this city in whichever capacity it requires- even if it means no longer gutting houses.

And then there are people like me, who find that the ones that made her belong have gone or are going and now she doesn’t. I know that I’ll be here for some time. And I am glad of it. But the network needs to exist.

I saw a man in a wheel chair today at the park and he was exercising his arms. With him were two men riding slowly on their bicycles, one behind and one in front to clear the path. They were laughing together and joking around. I was pacing ten steps behind them on the loop for about an hour or so and felt privy to their dynamic and was left with a question, “would anyone do that for me, here?” On the night before I turned eighteen my mom and a group of friends took me to get my first tattoo. The entire time the dude was stabbing into my back with a needle we were all singing show tunes from Disney movies, culminating with a rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody that Freddy Mercury would have been proud of and which made the tattoo artist giggle so hard he had to ask them to leave so that he wouldn’t biff up my sweet tat. Our dynamic was magical. And musical.

I look at the people around me and know I have that rapport with some, but I also look at these people and wonder which will leave next. Not with accusation, but a genuine… sort of concern over how I will survive without a group of cool cats to look out for me and for me to look out for.

The age group I’m in, is often characterized as a ‘3 year generation’ insomuch as they can’t stay in anyplace longer than that. I never promised that I’d stay in New Orleans, but I do feel pangs of guilt for even thinking about moving elsewhere. I love it here very much but learned very quickly that if you’re not a tourist the romance can wear thin (OH but it’s ALWAYS there!) and the faults of a city that exports this romance and mystique as a buyable product affect you, especially if for some reason you have found yourself caring about its progress. I care because of empathy, or because I read a lot of James Baldwin or Richard Wright, Chomsky and Zinn, because I believe in equal opportunity in the education system and have worked in the schools here or whatever reason.

The faults can get to you if you’ve got none of those things you see are essential to survival. Like people who need you and people you need.

But only if I look at it that way.

If I look and St. Charles Avenue, I know that I’ll probably never be invited into one of those mansions, the closest I’ll get to seeing myself inside of one is getting hit with the right light on the streetcar passing through and seeing my reflection in one of their picture windows. If I look at a 7th Ward second line parade, I know that I’ll always stick out like a sore thumb if only for the utter awe displayed on my face (I look like a child at Disneyland for the first time). I know that I don’t go to the churches and that -even after some practice- parades in February are a little too much of a marathon for me.

But that’s alright. The things that surprise me and label me a permanant spectator are the reasons why I believe this city is beautiful, why it’s always exciting, why it enchants me more than perhaps some who have been here forever. And I belong in some capacity to what this city is becomming. As Danielle mentioned in her address to the graduating City Year Louisiana Corps of last year, the city that people will come to in the next five to ten years will not be the same that they left. Due to many reasons, as she said, gentrification could be a part of it among others. But there are other influences and I don’t think I’m being too presumptuous in saying that this city will look different because of the people that stayed and the people that came after and the people coming back after. The ones that worked in it and worked for it when the mail wasn’t working, when the lights weren’t on, when the kids in the schools didn’t have permanant addresses, when the media was dragging its name through its own mud…

…you know I have a friend whose born and raised here who says that the people who live here in New Orleans now are the green berets of citizens. Now that may be some of that culture pride sinking in here, but I’ll accept it. Because he said ‘the people in New Orleans now’. Because that includes me. Because I guess. I’m a part of it. A small part that became a greater movement.

Some reading may question what this has at all to do with service. To me it shows that Service is a culture. Service should be apart of our culture. Even if its not military, even its not disaster response -and even if it IS- service is what makes us all connect, it is our investment in each other, it is proof positive that we believe in our own potential to take action for and because of those who can’t and that people would take the same actions if we were unable to. Service gives you rights because it helps you to exercise them. Service and volunteering puts you in a room with strangers with valuable experience that you can learn from.

Service is an export. If this city can export and sell romance, why not the spirit of volunteerism? People are looking at New Orleans as if it is a person. To see what it will do next. To see if it will survive. You can bet it survives in part thanks to its culture. Its several cultures, I should say, which includes the new culture of service.

And back to belonging. I may not belong in a mans on St. Charles, but I do belong to the new New Orleans. And in a year or two or more I may not be here. But a part of me will always be. Wherever I end up. I will have stories and memories of this place and be thankful for what these components have made me. And say ‘cheers’.

I will raise a glass to Stockton, California. The place of my family and truest oldest friends, the place I lived for twenty years. But I will raise my next glass - - to New Orleans, Louisiana, the place that I grew up.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (despite all the youtube haters) -with an adendum, my name is Mallory Jordan Josol and I am still

 a part of  Service Nation, but more importantly, I am a part of New Orleans.

And most importantly,

New Orleans is a part of me.

Not beaten for fighting, but charged for tithing and always inspired by Richardish Wri(gh)ting, Peace out from New Orleans,

Mal

Oh also. You should love Ms. Danielle Purifoy because she is obsessed with James Baldwin too. And that’s awesome.

Danielle:

A few weeks ago at sunset, I drove to the Port of New Orleans to hear the Mayor speak about the state of the city.  The room was filled with suits, and buttons and signs and cameras, and endless affirmations of the city’s strength, resilience, and unity.  One New Orleans.  Rethink. Renew. Revive.  Recovery in Progress. 

I wondered as I took my seat, if those words were honest.  Those words weren’t the sort I was hearing very often in my office, the office responsible for the recovery of the city.  And they certainly weren’t the words I was hearing from the 147 residents I managed on a daily basis, who sought me out from as far as Las Vegas, desperate to return to the only home they could call home, the place where they wanted to spend their last days.  New Orleans.  For them, as for many people in the Katrina diaspora, the Big Easy had become the Big Maze, a neverending labyrinth of shifting walls, sharp curves, and dead ends.  Yes, the Recovery was in Progress.  But not so much for them, the people who have made New Orleans New Orleans for centuries. 

      The Mayor’s words, with all of their eloquence, suggested a changing of the guard of sorts, a focus on increasing the city’s magnetic pull for unprecedented investment, physical transformation, and wealth.  Putting a new dress on an old lady, so to speak.

“New Orleans, and New Orleanians, are reinventing themselves,” he said with all the enthusiasm of a slam dunk.    And he used this word, “reinvention” to represent a broad spectrum of changes within the city:  life long renters who were becoming first time homeowners at the age of 65, the creation of a new theatre district along Basin and Canal Streets, the influx of new technological industries that will create thousands of new jobs for New Orleanians.

      And he had it partly right.  Yes, the changes he cited were indicative of a shift in the paradigm, the demographics, and the culture of this old great city.  Some might call it progress.  Others will use more coded language, like gentrification, and still others may call it a shame.

But whatever you want to call it, the principles underlying this “reinvention” are not new.  Business interests, demographic shifts, flashing lights, and big productions, progressive or otherwise, are nothing new.  What is new, is you.  Is us.

      What we represent is the reinvention of the American citizen, one who is more concerned with the advancement of people than the advancement of economic interests, one who believes as much in community as in the individual, and one who knows that changing an inequitable democracy requires a commitment of time and energy that cannot be bought or sold in any market, or deterred from its intended purpose, which is to serve.  That is what I call reinvention.  Real change and real impact– in real time. 

Thanks to you, this city, and its surrounding areas (I’m not forgetting you Baton Rouge!) has regained its footing in the world.  Your warmth and your reach have been felt by children who needed you even before Katrina, and depend on you now at the very least for encouragement and positivity.  Your love has astounded those folk, who, like the 147 residents I manage, didn’t feel like they had a prayer of returning home until you showed up at their doorstep, or what was left of it, ready to work.  And for free. 

It is you, and those who come after you who will ensure that this city will be home to the new and the old, the wealthy and the low income.  It is you who have reinvented New Orleans.

And after you leave here, if you leave here, it is you who will place this region back into the American imagination.  You will tell the stories and be the advocates for increased resources, better education, and integration of this too often ignored region with the rest of the nation.  And whatever field you choose, you will enter it knowing that the work you’ve done here, and the skills you’ve gained will enable you to maximize the potential for good that your job, and those who work with you, can do.   

It is us who will ensure that, no matter what the outcome of this year’s election, the movement for change, the reinvention of the American democracy, is unstoppable. 

My first goal after graduating from City Year and accepting a fellowship with the Mayor’s Office, was to find a way to better integrate volunteerism with my work in the Recovery Office.  And it was you who helped me to achieve that goal.  On Earth Day, April 22, you helped me and my team to install the first city-sponsored phytoremediation sunflowers garden in New Orleans.  The research conducted in this garden over the next year will enable our office to create a citizen’s guide to phytoremediation as a cost effective means of remediating lead from soil.  And, to be sure, as our remediation programs continue to grow over the years, volunteers like you will be integral to its success.

If you leave Louisiana, I hope that you come back often, and if not often, then at least once or twice in the next 10 years.  The place you will find, whether you’re in Baton Rouge or New Orleans will not be the same place you left.  This city will be a different world.  Perhaps the only things you’ll recognize are the trees.

I don’t think you’ll get more satisfaction out of seeing change anywhere you go after this… you’ll know that you did your part here… in the beginning.  You helped southeast Louisiana to rise again.  

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your spirit.

Thank you for your love. 

Congratulations. 
 

-Danielle Purifoy

The Day of Action is conceptualized. I don’t have many committee members, but those I have are inspired and inspiring. 

This is important because this job is tough. To rally people behind an idea, a very possible, a very important idea, but an idea nonetheless is difficult. I am fortunate to have most people be super receptive and morally supportive of Service Nation’s objectives. Most people I talk to are even behind the vision of the Day of Action in New Orleans despite the fact that it will not showcase any one nonprofit or organization that chooses to participate more than another.

I gotta say though, that I feel like most of the things I’ve achieved as a Change Agent thus far are accidents. I just meet with as many people who have the time as possible and let them know about Service Nation and let them know about the Day of Action and ask them for help. People offer what they can, but in a city that seems to be an incubator for nonprofits and AmeriCorps programs, a city where everyone is doing not one but two things working not one but two jobs, it’s hard to get time commitments from people. This is understandable. I hope to turn the spirit of volunteerism, social entrepreneurialism and patriotism into something tangible and demonstrable on September 27th. At times it can get overwhelming.

Like Cat, my computer crashed. Like many of the Change Agents, I have a small committee with large scale goals; we’re trying to accomplish these goals on donated time and materials. I’m sure I’m not the only one of the Change Agents who feels this is exciting, but at times, intimidating.

I try to keep a sense of humor about it. When writing in-kinding letters I fancy myself as Jack White from the White Stripes singing “Rag and Bone”, never heard it? Give it a listen. It definitely explains my ‘I’ll take whatever I can get for free and use it at the Day of Action’.

Somethings aren’t that funny.

Like Jonah Goldberg’s article posted on our ChangeWire (I don’t want his site to get more hits and have not posted the link), check out the Changewire. It’s quite discouraging to see someone who writes like that get so much attention. I guess the noble thing to do (and probably, what James Baldwin would do) is respond to it in-kind and get the same attention for the opposition. Lazy it may seem, but I will be honest. I don’t understand sometimes why people need so much convincing much less understand why someone would write something so irrational and volatile regarding the topic of national service.

That’s what happens when the wrong one person makes a difference.

 I am inspired by all volunteers, the change agents, the champions who fund ventures which would further national service related goals, but I must say that I am also motivated by those who stand against it. We and our strength must overpower Jonah Goldberg’s blog In fact, I ate it for breakfast this morning (it tasted stale-ick) but it will fuel me in my work today.

But this weekend I am taking a break. I am in Tennessee, visiting my best and longest friend, Melissa. She moved here with her husband who is stationed here in Clarksville. Service brought us both to the South from Stockton, California. Another way to get through this summer of planning is to remember that there are people in our lives who will love us regardless of whether or not we change the world or even try to. Luckily those people in my life have supported me while I at least try to change the communities I live in and work for what I believe, but also know by the tone in my voice when to say “slow down, Mallory, you can’t do it all, all the time”. Which is something I’m sure anyone who works for anything the believe in may need to hear for every once in awhile.

I swear when I get an idea in my head about how something should be, I HAVE TO ACHIEVE THE VISION AS REALITY. I take it personally if I don’t. Like.. if I decided that there should be unicorns at the Day of Action and there were no unicorns there I would consider myself a failure as a person in life. It aint easy being North, you know what I’m saying? It’s probably that I may actually BE the North pole, metaphorically speaking of course. I’m not really a pole, that would be crazy!

Anyway. The point of the blog? Oops, forgot, but here:

-consider the obstacles opportunities

-keep your service friends close, but your lifelong friends closer (they’re gonna love you no matter what!)

-listen to the White Stripes

-DONT listen to Jonah Goldberg

-remember that you are just one person

-but keep in mind that one person can change things and it might as well be you, too.

-before you do ANYTHING, ask yourself what James Baldwin would do, you can get all if his books on half.com for like 50cents

… if he were alive, he’d probably blog, thus on this blog, here is a poem that I’ve been reciting like a mantra this week and one that came to mind often during 150 hours of power while in City Year last year. Please understand that I don’t take it in a religious context. Its the context of “who do I think I am doing this stuff? Oh well its gotta get done”. Yes. That context.

Here:

The Giver by James Baldwin

If the hope of giving

is to love the living,

the giver risks madness

in the gift of giving.

Some such lesson I seemed to see

in the faces that surrounded me.

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted,

what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?

The Giver is no less adrift

than those who are clamouring for the gift.

If they cannot claim it, if it is not there,

if their empty fingers beat empty air

and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer

knows all of his giving has been for naught

and that nothing was ever what he thought

and turns in his guilty bed to stare

at the starving multitudes standing there

and rises from bed to curse at heaven

he must yet understand that to whom much is given

much will be taken, and justly so:

I cannot tell how much I owe. 

The background story and the reason why I am writing this?

Just another reason why I believe that things must change, while I believe we should invest in human capital via national service (this case may have more to do with socialized health care, but this is more a cry for attention than stumping ground) and why I love fainting at Wal Mart as opposed to other more stingy - dare I say, sheisty?- places (I’m lookin at YOU House of Blues!).

After graduating from the AmeriCorps program I moved to New Orleans to join in June of 2007, I could not not find a full-time job. Meaning, the jobs I were looking at were great jobs [for my experience and education (or lack, thereof)] with full-time hours and benefits. Working in schools in some capacity seemed to be the option I had. However, since I was going back to school myself, I needed a job with super flexible hours.

Old reliable took me in with open arms. I swear, if I’m not working for AmeriCorps, I’m usually working for Starbucks, after a certain amount of time there, they offer health benefits to part-time employees. PLUS I love the way that hot milk dries on my skin. And the way that people act at 4am before they’ve ‘had their coffee’ -ha, as though its an excuse not to tip. I digress.

I had to donate plasma to supplement my income. I would still be donating if they’d let me. The kind people at the Metairie bloodbank maintain I don’t have enough iron in my blood anymore. They should know, they took it having drained my blood of its worth and then pumped it back into me empty of its rich magic… or ‘iron’ as they call it, twice a week for 6 months.

I like to imagine that now, my plasmanators are being injected into Nobel Peace Prize Winners, into inspiring artists that, for some reason, have lost blood and other assorted geniuses like Bono or Dwight Schroot.

On the day of the incident I was informed that they would no longer take my plasma. That this was the last time. I had lost too much weight (yo I’m donating so I can eat, ya’ll. Help me, help you!) so I couldn’t come back again and that in fact they shouldn’t let me do it this time. But I charmed them with my gappy smile and claims of: “If you don’t let me I won’t make groceries” in a syruppy sweet and somewhat pleading voice. They let me, begrudgingly and sought passive aggressive revenge for my guilt trip by exposing me to an unnecessary ‘double poke’. Holler if you know what I mean. If you don’t… well. Quit bragging.

I drove to Wal-Mart to cash my check and then by groceries with the money. While in line to cash out with the makings of ramen-ghetti (I invented this and will include recipe in upcoming volunteer cookbook), I fainted. It was funny because I knew how bad it looked. I knew that my eyes widened and said what I couldn’t because in the instant before I fainted I lost the ability to speak or even grunt, which is how I usually communicate when I haven’t eaten. My eyes said: “sh*t, I’m about to faint, I’m uninsured”. Then Bam! hit the floor.

Who knows how long. Not really sure.

I do know what revived me.

One employee said “call an ambulance!” and I shot up, still unable to communicate vocally and just shook my head NO NO NO NO NO. The employees brought me water and candybars, convinced I had gone into diabetic shock or had a seizure. I didn’t have the heart to tell them no, or the voice, so I ate the candybars and guzzled the water.

They kept trying to convince me to let them call a doctor, then I finally had to say: “I can’t afford it, I don’t have health insurance”. They understood completely. And let me go.

Why write this? To point out what is wrong with this story and what is right.

Wrong: I fear ambulances more than I fear a possible medical emergency; there are more people uninsured than insured (this is evident in that the employees knew-likely through empathy- what calling an ambulance would mean to me)

Right: Chocolate. Chocolate. Free chocolate

How can national service address this?

Well, a health corps may help to enroll disengaged community members in programs which would allow them some medical care at a discounted or sliding scale rate if not free. A health corps may teach people in schools how to help someone whose fainted, it goes against everything I believe in to say this, but I don’t think its always going to help to force feed someone candy. It only works with me because its chocolate.

And basically, its what my body knows.

Maybe the expansion of national service or recognizing people who have served as of value would result in more scholarships or opportunities for benefits… who knows? I kind of believe national service can address all of the social changes necessary. It seems really abstract to say this I know. And some would say that I’m treating it like a band-aid (I have been told this).

But everyone has faith in something.

Hopefully.

I place mine in myself. And you. And all Americans. I place mine in the national service movement. And that is enough for me. Is that okay?

If its not okay to have this kind of faith and to believe in this possibility that things can change and that I.You.We.theMass can be apart of it, then there is no reason to get up off the floor when I collapse in public because I cannot afford to eat, because I have sold all that I can sell legally to come by the money to eat and make rent, because education is hard to come by without debilitating debt, but so are jobs without an education. Because the changes are not being made. The needs not being met.

Leave me my faith and my free candy. Its all I can get without giving a tax cut sometimes.

Now go to Wal-Mart and buy a candy bar and some water on my behalf. Then download “Better Way” by Ben Harper. It will blow your mind.

Peace easy, cheesey and chocolate for free-zy, from New Orleans,

Mallory Josol

This particularly speaks to the importance of after-school programming, even if just for diversion’s sake.

Last night I went to Vaughn’s in the Upper 9 to go see Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers. It was a 10$ cover. I knew I was in New Orleans when they charged me at the door without telling us that Kermit in fact, would not be there tonight, when there was no apology after announcing he wouldn’t be there, and when no one complained about it because let’s face it- the stand in was just as awesome even though the name not as sweet.

Feeling tired and miffed that Kermit wasn’t there, I and my friends went outside to take a breather when I was instantly accosted in a friendly manner by a coke dealer in a bright orange shirt. I mention the shirt because I think in his profession he should be less conspicuous. It was a good color on him though. I knew he was a coke dealer when after he said hi and introduced himself (we’ll call him ‘dude’ for the purpose of this blog) and I shook his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Mallory” he slipped a baggy of coke into my palm.

I said, “Dude, I don’t want this, take it back”.

He said, “oh, you want this” and proceeded to put a baggy of weed in my hand.

For about five minutes I had to try and convince this man that looking in his direction in no way meant that I wanted to ‘party’. He felt otherwise. He called me a liar. Said I looked like I needed it. Since it was coke, I could take ‘looking like I need it’ in a positive way and infer that he thought that my eyes were shiny or twinkly or… gleaming. Or maybe he just thought I needed to lose weight.  He even offered to let me smoke free and gave me a joint as I shook my head no over and over. It was all very friendly, but he was adamant and passionate and getting impatient with me because I wouldn’t take anything. I only kept talking to him because he looked familiar to me as if I knew him. Where from? No clue since I’m not really interested in the banana republic drug trade of New Orleans. The fact that we may have met before was disconcerting. Maybe he just reminded me of meth dealers from home. After a bit I just had to lay it on him:

“Dude, I’m not tryin’ to be what you’re on,  you’re really  freakin’ me out.”

He said: “Its alright baby I aint mad atcha”

Me: “Where do I know you from?”

Dude: “I don’t know baby, but I know you, you that b***h Hannah Montana.

Whattttttttttttt is this dude talkin’ about, man? She is a buxom, blonde 15-year-old. I look like a bloated, slightly ethnic (when I don’t straighten the mane) version of Molly Ringwald, minus the redhead appeal but with mild acne.

But at least I know now, where I knew him. He had told me this before as I walked to my car, parked outside the school I worked out of last year. You see, his house’s front porch faces the main entrance of a grammar school. He’s out there every day. All day… except apparently, when he’s at Upper 9 bars, just sitting on the porch. Maybe he’s not there anymore. Maybe it was never his porch. Maybe Dude or the even less likely moniker he gave me is not traceable. Maybe I just go and create a diversion every day after school so that they will not see him.

The story is unimportant, but the motivator is essential to the movement. These kids must have something to do after school. Every day. They need to be involved with their school’s after hours activities until Dude has gone to Vaughn’s. Otherwise he’ll be out there waiting for them. Likening them to celebrities. Telling them they look like they need it. At their throats like a feral dog. Putting the product IN THEIR HANDS and refusing to take it back. Making the connections that someone preferable did not make.

If we don’t have others out there to intercept –to block the line of sight- between school doors and Dude’s front porch, then we will have failed to prevent another generation of Dudes. Waiting on the porch, looking innocent and friendly. Waiting on the front porch to welcome the Kindergarten through 8^th grade students of a Central City school. Waiting on the porch for the next transaction.

Waiting on the porch for the bells to ring.

Peace out from New Orleans,

Mallory

I went to watch Governor Jindal speak last week about a new recycling program which should help the fisheries in New Orleans as well as strengthen the levees. They are going to use parts of I-10 that were damaged in the hurricane to bolster the sides of the levees. About 15 miles worth. Bipartisan support. Everybody wins. Metaphorically and quite literally everyone was excited because it seemed (no matter how ironic) that both the fish and the fishermen were going to win on this one.

Very serious people were there. Very serious things were mentioned.

There was a very serious person in particular there. A higher up at a New Orleans University who helped facilitate the event. He was dudded out in a seersucker suit and said nothing, but his outfit commanded respect, or at least, an audience. I thought “when I become a big deal, I will get a seersucker suit so that people will recognize me as being so awesome” I looked him up and down, trying to discern whether or not he would like to participate in the Service Nation movment. My eyes traveled downward. His pants were highwatering. On purpose. To reveal the brightest neon pink socks I have ever seen.

They were glorious.

I knew then, that this was a man who wants to help. Even if he doesn’t, he is my inspiration. This is the brand of awesome in New Orleans that I need to get behind this campaign.

At least, I can ask where he got his socks.

I never had to ask though. He found me later to ask me about the button.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of the pin.