Dialogue, Disaster, and the Politics of Commemoration

Practitioners of dialogue often find themselves called in to support communities in the midst of a crisis – a public meeting that ended in a shouting match, a hate crime, even a death. I’m not an expert in the field, certainly, but I do know that much. I also know there’s something unique in the scale of devastation when it comes to a disaster. We remember where we were when. We remember tiny moments that expanded our gaze to the sheer magnitude of loss, whether we were on the ground or mesmerized by what we saw on television.

Manmade or environmental, “Greater natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina do indeed ‘wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done.’” They elevate both what unites and what divides: “In one sense, they remind us of our common vulnerabilities. As Sri Lankan tsunami victim Nimal Premasiri said of the American hurricane victims, God has made us equals in birth, life and death.’ Yet such disasters also “expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and unacknowledged inequalities.”

The last month has found us reconciling—or perhaps reckoning—with experiences of abject terror, utter loss, public outrage, recovery and resilience ten years after Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans and much of the Gulf.

Working at an organization dedicated to supporting communities in the midst of deepest vulnerability and need, I am compelled to explore the role of dialogue in talking about disaster. What shape can constructive dialogue take in the wake of such unthinkable disaster, both in its immediate aftermath and in commemoration? I’ll start by sharing what I know of Essential Partners’ response to Hurricane Katrina, and then examine what I’ve seen of the national conversation about New Orleans a decade after the storm.

Start by listening

Although I wasn’t part of the organization at the time, I’ve heard the lore that almost any entity (organizational, institutional, familial) creates in the aftermath of a tragedy of this scale. Post-Katrina, Essential Partners’ practitioners, like so many across the country, were appalled and pained by the loss of lives, homes, and communities in New Orleans. Everyone was eager to be of use, but it wasn’t clear what exactly would be valuable to such a community in experiencing such dire destruction – environmentally, physically, and psychologically.

We weren’t the only ones. As people were quitting their jobs to assist with rebuilding efforts, well-intentioned professionals across sectors were trying desperately to discern how their services could be of use. The need for dialogue was clear: issues like race, class, discrimination, corruption, governmental abandonment and the role of the media surfaced amidst the terrifying realities of displacement, violence, chaos, and the absence of all basic services. A quick glance at the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation's community news highlights the many and varied way that facilitators, peacebuilders, and mediators were involved.

Although our organizational preference is for in-person facilitation, rather than hopping on a plane to New Orleans to facilitate dialogue, we inquired about how we specifically could be of greatest service. We listened to local practitioners’ stories about what was happening on the ground, and where the needs for facilitated dialogue were most acutely felt. Bringing our staff resources to New Orleans wasn’t the recommended approach; instead, there were plenty of local leaders who had already earned trust, and were eager for additional training to restore trust, process collective trauma, anger, and loss, and rebuild their communities. Essential Partners opened up its workshops free of charge for practitioners intending to serve the communities affected by Hurricane Katrina.

It was a small act in the wake of a tragedy of unthinkable scale, worth mention not to pat ourselves as an organization on the back, but to highlight that the role of dialogue after a disaster is delicate, and the approach must come through careful preparation and conversation with community leaders. It's a tool in a too-empty toolkit - no substitute for (the so desperately needed) basic services, of course, but invaluable in repairing a community's social fabric: as one of our practitioners articulated, “[Dialogue] can help lay the foundation of trust and relationships without which long-term…progress will not be possible. It can help ordinary citizens feel a stronger sense of connection and commitment to each other, empowering them to make their voices heard more effectively.”

The tempting myth of “then” vs. “now”

Ten years later, New Orleans and its surrounding parishes continue to grapple with collective trauma, lingering damage, and a changed landscape, both physically and demographically. Commemorative events have been many and packed; due to overwhelming demands, New Orleans officlas had to open up additional seats for its Katrina 10 Commemoration: The Power of Community. Local museums and cultural institutions are featuring exhibits that seek to more deeply engage, asking “How, too, can museums and contemporary art help people think critically and constructively about the post-Katrina decade?” The hunger for engaging in that conversation is clear.

Reflections at the regional level both shape and are shaped by the national conversations about the schisms so painfully exposed ten years ago. That national conversation seems to have focused on celebrating, but also evaluating the resiliency of the city of New Orleans. New Orleans recently released a citywide resiliency strategy to serve as a barometer for progress in education, the economy, infrastructure, and much more. Said Chief Resiliency Officer Jeff Hebert, “As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we are pivoting from recovery to resilience to provide a better future for the next generation. Because the challenges we have faced over the past three centuries are different from what we’ll face in the future, we need to be prepared to stand up to these challenges in order to thrive in the centuries to come.”

As the mayor of New Orleans and President Obama reinforce the narrative of progress, celebrating the significant accomplishments since Katrina and articulating shared commitment to further progress, public debate has swirled about how gentrification, corruption, displacement, and discrimination have skewed the city’s trajectory towards equitable recovery. As it was in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, a recent study indicated that race is also a determining factor in shaping resident’s experiences of recovery, “a divide sustained over a variety of issues including the local economy, the state of schools and the quality of life.” Although I don’t pretend to know anything about on the ground dialogue programming in the communities of New Orleans, this kind of stark divide does suggest a need for more conversation and sharing of experiences across difference, which is of course challenging in the midst of such an itense media spotlight.

Stories, not just strategies

And oh, that spotlight. The public conversations about "then" and "now," where progress has been made and where it has faltered, are critically important, both in New Orleans and in national media. I’ve been following them as best I can. And while it’s essential to assess progress critically and plan resiliency efforts on a foundation of evidence-based outcomes, the narrative of a city, even a changing one, is more complicated than allowed by a framework of “then” and “now.”

Resiliency is about more than a strategy, a single story or a myth. It’s about listening to understand the many stories of death, survival, rebirth, and loss experienced by community members over the past decade. Personal narratives matter just as much ten years later, particularly in the singular challenges of mapping a diaspora, honoring the human lives lost, and understanding the complicated groans of community-wide change.

To be sure, I’d imagine there’s no dearth of personal narratives about the storm for those living New Orleans and its surrounding parishes, and I have no doubt that the media swirl and hunger for more information is exhausting. No doubt many are eager to move beyond the rehearsal of tragic narratives for the benefit of a faraway news browser who just wants to “get it.”

But for those of us interested in fully understanding the policies and the plans, it’s important to return to that original and enlightening project of listening not only to the political narratives of “then” and “now,” but the personal narratives of the last ten years. As champions of dialogue, but also simply as witnesses of a communities in the midst of the herculean efforts of recovery, healing, and self-definition, we must not overlook the complexity, nuance, and diversity of personal experiences before taking on the problem-solving of experts, or the mythmaking of the media.

Listen in, and join the conversation

Lucky for us, the stories of #Katrina10 (a fascinating hashtag to follow on Twitter, if that’s your medium) are rich, varied, and multi-sourced. Here are some stories I've come across of survivors of Katrina. Some live in New Orleans, others have moved, each is different and enriching. I’d encourage you to take a listen, and then share any interesting stories or articles you’ve read, listened to, or seen regarding the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

“It had been a decade since they arrived in Nebraska, a state they had known nothing about until Hurricane Katrina stripped their New Orleans home down to its floorboards on Aug. 29, 2005.” A Washington Post feature about a couple displaced to Nebraska by Hurricane Katrina.

“There's no single story about the storm, or about how people have fared in its wake. That's why we're sharing five very different stories with you. In our series ‘In New Orleans,’ you'll hear not just about the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, but also about what else has happened in the lives of these five New Orleanians during the ten years since: finishing graduate school, finalizing adoptions, running for public office, falling in love, and mourning a mother.” From the WNYC podcast “Death, Sex, and Money.”

From Faith & Leadership: “Five years after the devastating storm hit New Orleans, three community leaders talk about how Hurricane Katrina changed their ministries and their lives.”

A New Orleans-based community media project called the Listening Post is asking people to record their reflections on the disaster.