Cruisin' With the Doc Crew

In a dysfunctional place that often calls itself "the city that care forgot," I was honored to travel with the Columbia College documentary crew to chronicle how 58 students and faculty helped rebuild the chaos in the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East, and St. Bernard Parish. The crew consisted of my former students: Zack Rockwood, Nora Clark, and Mark Perkins as well as Jesse McAlpin, who was not a former student, but whose uncle Mike McAlpin and I worked on a couple PBS documentaries. Our job was simple: record the narratives of citizens grappling with the chaos while our students helped rebuild their hurricane-damaged homes. The story centered on the power of volunteerism here on the front-line of a traumatized community. There are some who think either all is well in New Orleans or that the Crescent City, which is shaped like a bowl and might very well fill up once again with the next hurricane, shouldn't be bothered with. Preachers, like Rev. Charles DuPlessis of Mt. Nebo Bible Baptist Church, discussed the "moral imperative" that residents here are "Americans, not refugees, and should be treated as such since natural disasters can and do occur in every part of this country."

Historians like Baba Luther Gray pointing out this was America's first multi-cultural city long before New York City. "It's the place where jazz was conceived and where American dance was born," Gray said. We shot photos of the hallowed ground called Congo Square (now Armstrong Park) where African slaves were trotted out two centuries ago at the spiritual place of the Houmas Indians and made to dance in order to be more effectively marketed as healthy workers. Across the street is the Storyville section of the French Quarter where jazz was officially born, named after the jasmine scent often used in bordellos where America's only original art form was played. Nora, a professional tap dancer, performed at this sacred site. That same night, she danced with spoken word artist, Asia, at Sweet Lorraine's in what HBO Def Poet Shakespear called "a New Orleans first combining poetry and tap." We captured all of those images and more. For me, it was especially meaningful to revisit with my teen son, Amman, our relative's home at 1704 Deslonde, and discover it was now the headquarters of Common Ground, a Black-led recovery non-profit. Meanwhile, down the street, residents, like Bessie Montgomery of 1405 Deslonde, assessed us this way: "Columbia College Chicago made a difference."

-- Stan West

April 2, 2008 @ 1:06 PM