Hard times in the Big Easy

Today is my final day of trying not to voice my observations on post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans and the people I have met here. I guess the long hours at Harrah's Black Jack tables and too many shots of Patrón can not quiet the voices in my head of the people I have had the honor to meet and listen to.

You see, I have been walking the streets of New Orleans for four weeks and four days now. It all started with meeting and interviewing former John Ehret High School basketball coach Brian Simmons. In our first meeting he seemed to be staring right into my soul -- a look that not only disarmed me, but strengthened me. Brian Simmons is a modern day hero. One of the reasons the film Patriots is being done here. And I get the honor of portraying him in the film. But his story isn't the only story of courage and dignity displayed during and after Hurricane Katrina that I have heard here.

Beth Abadie and her friend "Pepsi" talked to me for 2 hours about how the media did not document the pain and loss in the St. Bernard Parish, Chalmette, St. Tamany Parish and Slidell. These women on any given Sunday looked like good God-fearing white women that may have supported Laura Bush and her husband at one point, but not anymore. Their cries of anger were of how CNN reported on the Lower Ninth, but left out how they had to fight to survive and fight their own police just to get back to their homes, pets and missing family members in St. Bernard.

One St. Bernard woman told me that the insurance company she had been paying refused to reimburse her because there was no "evidence" of her home to determine if she had wind damage or water damage. She was outraged, because all that was left of her home was the plumbing sticking out of the concrete slab.

I looked at my arms and I had "chill bumps" all over them. I asked the woman to please repeat to me what she just told me. I could not believe my ears.

I have heard stories from the "Chalmations" of Chalmette (wiggers). My Chalmation brothers wanted to make it very clear that they would "throw down" for me at my beck and call. I certainly wasn't going to argue with them on Canal Street at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Love is love.

West Bank's "Thaddeus," a waiter at NOLA's (a restaurant) offered to personally make me some crawfish after I responded to him with a perfectly accented, "Ya' heard me!" His 6' 5" frame chuckled, and he told me he was glad I wasn't coming in trying to "act like a celebrity or something." My wife and I laughed and the food and service was down home impeccable!

I have walked and walked and talked and listened to about 75 hours of conversations. All insightful and disturbing stories. None of which can be told or covered in 750 words!
I have talked to Robert Green in the Lower Ninth Ward about the best way to approach Forest Whitaker or me about his script ideas. I have been embarrassed at a tour bus driver's stopping on Tchoupitoulas Street, screaming my name and thanking me for being in New Orleans filming.

People from Uptown, Downtown, East Bank, Mid-City, Algiers Point, Lakeview, Metairie, Jefferson Parish, Garden District, French Quarter, Teamsters, Busboys, Prostitutes, Hustlers, W Hotel Bartenders, Undercover Security at Harrah's and Orleans Parish Policemen have all poured their rage, love of the city, confusion, distrust, suspicions of the city government and their disappointment into my very soul, and I have loved and dreaded every minute of it.

Their voices hold me and have carried me as I tried to walk home from Tipitina's after four hours of unbelievable music from a local musician named "Trombone Shorty." I was bopping along Tchoupitoulas at around 7 the next morning smoking a cigar when I was cut off at a corner of the street.

"Mr. Washington?," a voice exclaimed.

I walked slowly towards the car, leaned in the window and said, "Who's asking?"

The man and woman looked at each other and said, "Do you need a ride?"

I said, "How far am I from the W Hotel?"

They exclaimed, "Damn! You too far! Get in the car, we take you home. You walkin' thew da hood man!!" I was sweating and had been walking for 30 minutes already. So I got in the car, signed an autograph and tipped them a $100 bill. The couple on their way to work said, "No one is going to believe this, can you sign this $100 bill?" But before her man could speak, I said, "Nope, no one is going to believe you picked me up walking down Tchoupitoulas Street at seven in the morning, but if you don't spend that $100 dollars you're crazy!"

This is just the tip of the iceberg on the vibrancy and the indominatable spirits of the people of New Orleans. When I was here last November with the artist Mark Bradford to help raise $100,000 for the opening of photographer's Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick's L9 Center for the Arts, I had no idea that I would be coming back to New Orleans so soon.

I arrived here on April 9, 2008 and I am glad I am here. I am glad that the people of New Orleans have embraced me with their hospitality. I am always amazed at how everyone I meet tells me that I haven't had "real gumbo" until I have had theirs! I thank God and I ask God everyday that I walk these streets: Please allow me to get a smile, a laugh, a hug out of each and every one I meet here. Only then, I will feel like I am truly being a servant to the people and at the very least I will know that my spirit has turned one crying voice into a hopeful one.

God bless the Big Easy.