Date Published:
January 1, 2007
"IT'S EITHER GOING TO BE A COMMUNITY CELEBRATION or a protest with
people getting arrested," says 22-year-old Minh Nguyen without a hint
of irony in his voice. It's a rainy August night in New Orleans East,
and Nguyen is speaking to a room of about 40 teens and twentysomethings
who call themselves the American Young Leaders
Association (VAYLA). Nguyen, who chairs the group, is presenting the
two scenarios that could play out on the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 15.
This is when residents anticipate the closing of the Chef Menteur
Landfill, a dumpsite located only a half mile up the road from the
Village de l'Est neighborhood, the heart of the Vietnamese American
community of New Orleans East. Opened in February 2006 under an
executive order signed by Mayor Ray Nagin, the unlined landfill was
created to hold over a fourth or New Orleans' Katrina debris. According
to community members, most of what is being dumped is unsorted waste,
and some fear that toxins are already seeping into the soil--a
Louisiana wetland, no less. But the mayor's executive order is set to
expire on the evening of Aug. 14, and after months of community
protest, bolstered by political pressure from New Orleans city council
members and environmental groups throughout Louisiana, Nagin has stated
that he will not seek a renewal of his order. All signs point to the
closing of the landfill come the morning of Aug. 15. But Nguyen and his
fellow organizers do not presume anything. For there are several wild
cards still at play, including the possibility that the Louisiana
Department of Environmental Quality (
LDEQ LDEQ - Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality)--an
agency that many residents had originally counted on as an ally--may
actually assert its authority in keeping the site open. So VAYLA is now
preparing for plan A and plan B: the former, a celebration in honor of
the community's victory should the landfill be closed; the latter, a
massive protest that will include a human blockade at the landfill
entrance, effectively preventing the trucks that dump at the site each
day from entering.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In the case of a protest, arrests are an absolute certainty. The ardent
hope in the room is that those in power will simply find it politically
untenable to keep the landfill open. Yet tonight one also senses that
the VAYLA members are itching for a good fight. There is spirited talk
of what it will take to miss work and school in order to do "jail
time." And it's not just youthful exuberance or devil-may-care
posturing that drives the talk. After being displaced for months, these
youth understand what there is to lose in life.
"The landfill
is a hard slap in the face," says Steven, 16. "It's like the mayor was
saying he didn't care how difficult it was for us to get back here."
Steven and his parents, who for 20 years worked as crabbers in the Gulf
Coast, initially evacuated to Houston before relocating to Southern
California. There his parents made a decision to permanently relocate
to the west coast. They assumed that the shrimp and crab industries of
the Gulf had been decimated by Katrina. But by December, only two
months after his family's relocation, Steven began to show clinical
signs of depression. A once straight-A student, he found himself unable
to concentrate on schoolwork. Before long, he couldn't muster the
mental and physical energy to go to classes. His visits to a therapist
did little to help him. Finally, he pleaded with his parents to give
New Orleans another try. Steven's family returned to Village de l'Est
at the beginning of the new year. Along with their neighbors, they
gutted and rebuilt their home. Then came the landfill.
Katrina had dumped the waters of the Intercoastal Canal into the living
rooms and bedrooms of Village de l'Este. And no sooner had the
community returned than the mayor ordered a thousand trucks each day to
dump Katrina trash in its backyard.
The morning of Aug. 15
turned out to be a celebration. Nearly 250 residents and allies
gathered at the shuttered gates of the landfill, cheering its closure.
With the anniversary of Katrina less than two weeks away, the victory
out East served as a vital boost for those concerned with the right of
return and a just reconstruction in New Orleans. But it also took many
New Orleanians by complete surprise. By January, as most displaced
residents were only beginning to trickle back into the city to pick up
the pieces of their lives, the normally low-key Vietnamese of New
Orleans East were already four months into their return and rebuilding
process. The community was so well organized that it was able to
mobilize over 400 protestors to the steps of City Hall for the first
landfill rally. For all the news of returnees scraping by without basic
resources such as electricity and running water, the residents who took
to City Hall that day somehow managed to arrive with sleekly printed
signs and T-shirts denouncing the landfill. Nobody--neither the elected
officials nor the protestors' supporters outside--was prepared to see
this level of organization.
Soon the struggle over the
landfill grabbed headlines in The New York Times and other major print
media outlets. Meanwhile the TV news networks followed the story
week-to-week, anxiously awaiting its final outcome. New Orleans East,
hardly known as a hotbed of activism, had overnight become something of
a beacon for a grassroots movement determined to assert the rights of
the most marginalized Katrina refugees.
As an Asian American
community subsisting in a New Orleans long divided by the
black-and-white fault line--the depth of which was fully exposed by
Katrina-the residents of Village de l'Est are especially susceptible to
enlistment as a model minority wedge. Yet a deeper and more clear-eyed
examination of the conditions that led to the community's impressive
organizing efforts reveals that the landfill struggle is not so much an
example of model minority-ism as it is a model example of what its
takes for the grassroots to win in post-Katrina New Orleans. Indeed, as
a "success story" it is, by turns, a lesson in why intergenerational
and multiracial collaborations are indispensable, a crash-course in the
distinct political history of the Southeast Asian refugees, and a
startling example of just how quickly the longstanding politics of a
community can shift.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
"The
landfill struggle, everything we're fighting for out here--this is
about the Vietnamese and the Blacks together," asserts James Bui. The
Gulf Coast regional director of the National Association of Vietnamese
American Service Agencies (
NAVASA),
Bui has these days grown accustomed to fielding questions about
Black-Asian relations in New Orleans. He is quick to stay on message:
The Vietnamese Americans are not in this for themselves; and they will
not be cast against African Americans. The topic comes up quite a bit
when one considers that pre-Katrina New Orleans East was approximately
75 percent Black, with Village de l'Est representing the sole
Vietnamese American majority (yet, even here, Blacks constituted
well-over a third of the neighborhood). Post-Katrina, however, the
return of Black residents to the East has, per capita, paled in
comparison to that of the Vietnamese. And although most returnees are
in the same boat when it comes to the rebuilding of homes, public
schools and hospitals, the Vietnamese Americans have been exceptional
in their quick reopening of ethnic community institutions and
businesses. As a startling example, 75 percent of the Vietnamese
businesses are now open in the East, compared to less than 10 percent
of Black-owned businesses. To be sure, the disparity along racial lines
can seem rather stark at times. And according to Bui, these differences
are only exacerbated by a mainstream media that insists on viewing the
organizing efforts out East as strictly a "Vietnamese thing." These
media accounts often leave out salient details such as the extent to
which the political strategy that led to the closure of the landfill
was directed by a coalition of groups known as Citizens for a Stronger
New Orleans East, which consists of both Vietnamese- and Black-led
groups. Or the fact that the Southern Christian Leadership Council leant invaluable support to Queen Mary of Vietnam Catholic Church--the
religious, cultural, and political hub of the Vietnamese community of
New Orleans--as the latter coordinated return and rebuilding efforts.
Or, finally, that Father Thi Vien Nguyen, head of the church, has made
it a point to demonstrate multiracial solidarity by attending the
rallies, town hall meetings and community events put on by Black
community groups seeking the right to return and the opening of schools
and health centers. "These are the things you're not reading about in
the Times," says Bui.
And then there's the matter of where to
put the remaining Katrina debris now that Chef Menteur landfill is
closed (as well as the question of where to move the mountain of trash
that currently sits at the site). LDEQ and the Waste Management
Corporation, which runs the landfill, have their sights set on
Waggerman, a multiracial, working-class town on the outskirts of New
Orleans. Although officials have assured residents there that the site
will be fully certified and properly lined, local resistance to the
dumping has already begun. "I'm completely with them," says Father
Vien, suggesting that the Vietnamese American community would stand
squarely with the protestors of Waggerman should dumping commence
there.
"I don't see any resentment of the Vietnamese coming
from the Black community or any other community," says Norris
Henderson. "What I see is an example of what we all can do if we hang
in there together." Henderson serves as the director of Safe Streets,
Strong Communities, a New Orleans grassroots group that is leading the
organizing efforts to reform the dysfunctional NOLA prison and criminal
justice system, a system that overwhelmingly targets young Black men.
Having served over 27 years in prison himself, Henderson began his
organizing career as an inmate, working from the inside to successfully
win prison reforms under the most difficult circumstances. Henderson
knows perseverance when he sees it: "Most people don't think you can
win. They're too quick to become defeatist. But [the Vietnamese
Americans] had a common goal and they were persistent--they had what it
took."
Yet, in assessing all that it took, one cannot
overlook the Catholic church as a generative force behind the social
and political networking. Built in the mid-1980s, Mary Queen of Vietnam
is the largest Vietnamese Catholic church in the United States. "We
were lucky," Father Vien remarked. "The church was not badly damaged
and this allowed us to get back in [to Village de l'Est] to coordinate
the return and rebuilding effort." Indeed, for those returning only
weeks after the storm, the church served not only as temporary shelter,
but as the site for food and clothing donations, as well as a
clearinghouse for information on the whereabouts of missing family and
friends.
Along with the church, there is also the community's
long history of uprooting and displacement to consider, a past that may
shed some light on their
precipitant, against-all-odds return in Katrina's wake. This is embodied in an
88-year-old woman from Village de l'Est who goes by the nickname Ba Tam
(Grandma Tam). When boat rescuers knocked on Ba Tam's house on the
Wednesday following the massive flood, she told them that she was
feeling too weak to evacuate; she would prefer to rest for a little
while, and then leave with the last boat carrying Father Vien and the
other priests coordinating the rescues. But nobody informed Father
Vien. By Thursday, Ba Tam realized that she had been left alone in
Village de l'Est. She survived by catching fish swimming in the flooded
waters--having been "shocked" by the salt water from the Intercoastal
Canal, the fish swam slowly and were rather easy to catch. Then, Ba Tam
cured the fish on the scorching roof tops of abandoned cars. In time
she had enough food to last her a month. She would be stranded for a
total of eight days. According to Father Vien, surviving like this was
nothing new for Ba Tam. Her life as a refugee had long ago prepared her
for this.
"Before Katrina, I guess you could call us
libertarians," says Father Vien. "Our attitude toward government was:
You don't bother us, and we won't bother you." But Katrina ushered in a
new era. "It was impossible for us to not speak up," he said. "We
realized that if we speak, the powers will listen. They would have to
heed the people's voice. We had a responsibility to contribute, to push
for government accountability."
For NAVASA's Bui, there's no
mistaking the profound political shifts taking hold of the community.
"This is the first time I've seen a Vietnamese church practicing
liberation theology," Bui said. His point is substantiated by the
droves of young Vietnamese-American progressive students and activists
who have come to New Orleans East over the past year to support not
only the rebuilding effort, but to take part in what some consider an
unprecedented grassroots movement--a sign of what may be on the horizon
for Vietnamese American politics. In the week leading up to the closure
of the landfill, the VAYLA offices were abuzz with young activists from
around the country, including a cadre of law school students from UCLA
and community youth organizers from Houston, Boston, Philadelphia and
Florida. All were there to lend support to the landfill struggle. Mai
Dang, 22, from Orange County, is part of the Dan Than Corps, a group of
nearly a dozen young Asian Americans from around the country, mostly
Vietnamese, who have committed at least a year of their time to
rebuilding communities in New Orleans East, as well as in Biloxi and
Gulf Port, Mississippi. For Dang, the Vietnamese American youth who
have flocked to New Orleans represent a "spark" for what could be
longer-term change in a historically conservative Vietnamese American
political landscape. "When people first come down here, they come with
the desire to just help out, to give back," observes Dang. "But soon
they realize that what we're really fighting for is a social justice
movement."
Eric Tang is a New York City-based writer and activist.
