CHILD WATCHÔ COLUMN

RETURNING TO KATRINA’S CHILDREN

By Marian Wright Edelman 

On December 6^th, while many Americans were still planning their holiday travel, a special group of women took a very different kind of trip:  They joined the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) to participate in a Katrina Child Watch® Visit in New Orleans. Malaak Compton-Rock, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and Holly Robinson Peete were among the prominent actresses, philanthropists, and businesswomen who toured the still-devastated Lower Ninth Ward and the St. Roch Trailer Village and visited the year-round CDF Freedom Schools site in the city. All of the prominent women who joined us are very accomplished people. Some are also the spouses and partners of well-known entertainers and athletes. But on this visit, they stood together as women and mothers determined to pay witness to the continued suffering of Katrina survivors a year-and-a-quarter after their monstrous trauma.

Several of these women participated in an earlier Katrina Child Watch visit in May to bring awareness to the unmet mental health, health, and education needs of children traumatized by the storm. After seeing the scope of the devastation in New Orleans first-hand, they left in shock but hopeful that progress would continue.  The December return visit gave this delegation an opportunity to see what progress was being made. The visit began at St. Roch, which was once an active park adjacent to the Lower Ninth Ward that children used every day. After Katrina hit, the baseball games and other play stopped, and FEMA filled the park with white gravel-like stones and moved in trailers to house displaced New Orleans citizens. The 92-unit trailer park now holds approximately 400 residents, a third of them children—many the same ones who used to play there. But there are few places for children to play in St. Roch now. FEMA has gradually taken away resources that initially were located in the trailer park. Without resources available on the grounds and very little in the city, families are left to get things the best way they know how. CDF, the Red Cross, and a few other organizations have stepped in to help, holding resource fairs and food drives and finding other ways to serve the families who live here.

The delegation then toured other sections of the Lower Ninth Ward, where entire houses were knocked off foundations, barbershops and corner groceries were flattened, and cars were tossed inside living rooms during the storm. What remains is coated in muck—a crusty layer of canal water, sewage and dirt. Mold is rapidly devouring interiors. There were 14,100 residents in the Ninth Ward before Katrina, and 60 percent of them were homeowners. Now it is just a ghost town and doubts abound about whether the community will ever be redeveloped or whether its neighborhoods will be razed and abandoned. Although less than two miles away from the famous French Quarter, the Lower Ninth Ward is far removed from the money and clout pulsating through downtown. 

The women’s tour ended with a visit to our year-round after-school CDF Freedom Schools site. The group of Hollywood women who attended the May Katrina Child Watch visit helped make this site and 13 additional summer CDF Freedom Schools sites possible with their generous support. They also leveraged money for a mobile health and mental health van. During this part of the visit, the December delegation learned more about the ongoing health needs in New Orleans. Long after the storm, there are still thousands of dislocated physicians in the three central New Orleans parishes that were evacuated. Many hospital beds are still unavailable and only 19 of the 90 pre-hurricane safety-net clinics have reopened. The delegation was able to understand how services like the mobile van meet a key need by helping get care to people who lack convenient access to a doctor or clinic. The visit ended on a high note as the women were briefed on the good work we have been able to do at our Freedom Schools sites with their help and were able to meet with some of the wonderful children in the after-school program. The entire visit was enriched by the presence of the wonderful Leah Chase, author of The Dooky Chase Cookbook. Like so many New Orleanians, she’s still living in a trailer.

I am so grateful to all the busy and caring women who took time to visit Katrina’s children and families. At a time when many people have already forgotten about Katrina’s children and moved on to new stories, these women are helping to remind others about just how much unfinished business is still left after the storm. I thank them for using their talent, commitment, and resources to make a much-needed difference. Katrina’s children and families still desperately need help, and we must not let them down.

Marian Wright Edelman is President and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund and its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind^® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.