two years ago...

"The family huddled on the platforms, silent and fretful. The water was six inches deep in the car before the flood spread evenly over the embankment and moved into the cotton field on the other side. During that day and night the men slept soddenly, side by side on the boxcar door. And Ma lay close to Rose of Sharon. Sometimes Ma whispered to her and sometimes sat up quietly, her face brooding. Under the blanket she hoarded the remains of the store bread.
The rain had become intermittent now--little wet squalls and quiet times. On the morning of the second day Pa splashed through the camp and came back with ten potatoes in his pockets. Ma watched him sullenly while he chopped out part of the inner wall of the car, built a fire, and scooped water into a pan. The family ate the steaming boiled potatoes with their fingers. And when this last food was gone, they stared at the gray water; and in the night they did not lie down for a long time."
- The Grapes of Wrath

Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina drowned the Louisiana Gulf Coast. I wasn't there, but the storm had an impact on my life because since 2005, I have interviewed several Katrina survivors. I still keep in touch with them. Its hard to believe its been two years since the storm, because the lives of those I interviewed have changed very little since they first came here by bus with nothing but the stained clothes they wore, and a handful of family photos (if they were lucky). They are still walking a very fine line between security and destitution. These families use grandmother's SSI disability checks to pay the energy bill. They go without necessities such as nutritious food and eye glasses, just so they can make rent. Their lives are like the salvaged photographs taped on the living room walls: torn, blurred, water stained. Yet something recognizable remains. Or it could, if we as citizens demanded our government provide the kind of significant recovery assistance that is necessary for people to recover from total and utter destruction.

As President Bush parades around New Orleans, offering nothing but false promises as he has done over the last two years, thousands of survivors remain in Texas. Their futures are very uncertain and they have been offered few opportunities for long-term recovery. They are on the fringes economically, politically, and physically. The evacuees I interviewed live in apartments on the far edges of Austin-- neighborhoods that have long been racially segregated. When survivors were left to fend for themselves at the Superdome or on the desolate highway to Metairie, that was only the beginning of the abandonment. Most families have long ago lost their FEMA assistance, and they have just become part of the anonymous working poor. They were poor in New Orleans, but now they have no history, no connections, no social foundation. How can President Bush fly from Washington to New Orleans and announce today that he sees "a more blessed day ahead"?

So that is what Im thinking about as my birthday approaches.