Do It For the Love
I was born in the city of New Orleans and have lived here over half of my life. I’d never moved outside of the state until September of 2004. It was both terrifying and exciting to leave behind the relationships I’d nurtured all my life. It was a chance to separate from those who had helped define me and to figure out who I was more independently. I was going to get paid to get a PhD. It was an opportunity to make a childhood dream come true – living in New York City. I told myself that I could not pass it up. “New Orleans ain’t goin’ anywhere! Things change real slowly down here,” were words I’d said to friends when they considered moving away. But less than a year after I had moved, my city would be torn apart along with its residents, leaving us all heart-broken.
I was in New Orleans, visiting home from NYC, when Hurricane Katrina shifted its course and headed towards the city. Experienced with the flooding that can occur there in any fast deluge and familiar with worst case hurricane scenarios, none as horrifying as the reality was, I evacuated to Baton Rouge two days before it hit just east of the city. People who aren’t used to it don’t understand how difficult the decision to evacuate or not is, which we and others in hurricane-prone areas struggle with, sometimes several times a year. The decision must be made before there is certainty about where the storm is going to strike. So if you leave and head in the wrong direction, you may get hit away from home.
Many also do not understand the sense of personal obligation to others that a lot of folks down here are raised to abide by in their daily lives. My own brother-in-law never wants to evacuate because his elderly clients in the neighborhood need his assistance to prepare for, survive, and clean up after a storm. And he is not an isolated case of willingness to risk one’s safety for the sake of neighbors’. I took these deeply felt social bonds somewhat for granted before moving away. The failure of the federal levees which left the city to flood ensured that I could never do that again. Nor could anyone I know down here.
The social expectation to engage and help those around down here in the South, emanates from what Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon calls ”porch life” – the outdoor socializing, greeting, and visiting in daily passing that acquaints neighbors with one other, gives a sense of connection to those around us and is integral to the European-Caribbean architecture of city residences well-suited to the subtropical environment. The ubiquitous and comfortably furnished porch is the site of daily socializing, often shared with virtually anyone who passes by. However, this social emphasis is also tied to slavery and racial discrimination that left people with particular cultural features out of formal social safety nets, such as insurance policies. The majority of the street parading traditions in the city developed out of the informal social safety nets these segregated people created, which are based on social ties and the concept of mutual obligation. They celebrate and strengthen these ties regularly in the back streets of New Orleans (vs. main streets where more formal and less frequent mostly-white Mardi Gras parades occur).
I learned so much about the street social life of New Orleans’ black working-class and the beauty and importance of this communal energy, from Sylvester Francis. I came upon his place, the Backstreet Cultural Museum in 2001 in the historic Tremé neighborhood and have been working with him since. Sylvester has been documenting the parades of downtown back streets for decades, collecting the largest known library of photographs, super 8 film and videotapes of these regular celebrations. He has documented jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indian parades and events, and the weekly parades of the social aid and pleasure clubs. Jazz funerals celebrate those people who were most respected for their contributions to the community, Mardi Gras Indian tribe members the most revered of all. Often they are sponsored by the social aid and pleasure clubs, which developed in the 1800s to pool resources to provide assistance to members in times of need. However, the “pleasure” part of their mission is just as important, so sharing for this purpose is also key. Each club performs an annual anniversary parade (a “second-line”), which is one hell of a funky party where anyone is welcome to join in - every Sunday for 8-9 months of the year!
What impresses me most about these traditions is the enormous amount of voluntary work involved and how the degree of sharing one does (of time, work, resources) correlates directly with one’s social status. It’s quite the opposite of how most of us are taught to think and work – as entrepreneurial, individualistic, profit-seekers. The value of these practices is lost to many who don’t need them or who don’t fully understand their history and purpose. The Backstreet Cultural Museum’s mission to support, document and preserve the parading social tradition is even more critical since Hurricane Katrina. The museum itself is the result of Sylvester’s social network and his dedicated work as a documenter - the building for the museum was originally lent to him by its owner, a former employer, and most of the exhibit materials were donations from the community.
After three and a half years in New York City, I am now living happily back home here in New Orleans, still working on my PhD and donating my time as Secretary of the Board of Directors at the Backstreet, in this time of great flux. Researchers, volunteers, and profiteers have poured into the city from around the country over the past three years, with a broad range of agendas and intentions, both progressive and exploitative. Residents are well aware that they must be attentive and diligent, ready to fight to have some control over the massive changes to our city. I and other long-term residents I know are galvanized to effect an overall decline in local apathy and to forge an even stronger communal spirit than before.
As infrastructure crumbles around the country as our levees did, and corporate interests continue to drive governmental policies, voluntary communal efforts will prove increasingly critical to growing numbers of people – and collaborative efforts such as this very magazine, will become even more prevalent. But it all starts with nurturing your everyday relationships. Wherever you happen to live, take the time out to sit on your porch or stoop, talk to neighbors who pass by, connect people with one another, brainstorm, offer help whenever you can, support local businesses and get to know the other regulars there. As Sylvester might say, do it for the love. Our human interdependence offers more security than any financial investment or retirement plan. This is what it means to be social creatures.
