A few days after New Yorkers began to march and occupy Wall Street fall arrived in New Orleans. The first day of fall here feels much like the first day of spring in a colder, more northern city. Hibernation from seasonal oppression ends, and the local population emerges into the urban wilderness, ready to stretch their limbs and shake the dormancy from their desires, evoking a sort of Dionysian spirit of impulse and action, quick passions and senselessness. On that first day of autumn in New Orleans, crime went down but the colors extended their range, and strange characters of the city started to appear in greater frequency, all image and without message. I rode my bike through the Quarter after work and celebrated by drinking a bloody mary and watching Mem Shannon play blues in the French Market. Somewhere an impromptu parade began and ended. On Bourbon Street wildness began, the early onset of an absurdism that is everlasting but glimmers best in the dusk: silver men lying prostate in the street with balloon dildos, a police officer showboating by walking his horse backward, strippers and perverts watching the pedestrians for bait, bachelorettes drinking their first hand grenades and taking pictures under the bright lights, letting it all go one last time before tying the knot that forever forbids this kind of behavior without approval.
It felt like more people were on the streets. And so there was more energy in the air. The parking lot at City Park was full and the usual unsavory characters that lingered below the overpass on Claiborne had multiplied. Beer bottles and empty tin pans of chicken wings littered the mural'ed columns that support the Route 10 overpass. Homeless men and half-dressed hookers walked in the shade between them. I filled my car with gas and then filled my nose with heavy nasal swallows of fried chicken and po-boys from Manchu. I stopped and waited while the car in front picked up a middle-aged white hooker in a black bikini top. She crushed her cigarette on the sidewalk and got in with a smile.
That night I sat in a residential dining room with thirty other young men, women, and children. I had gone to services for a Jewish Holiday for the first time in five years. The service was Orthodox and a wall separated the men from the women. After, the rabbi invited us all to dinner. It was Rosh Hashanah and the first day of the Jewish New Year, number 5772 on the calendar We ate apples and honey and pomegranates and the rabbi wished we all have as many good deeds inside us as the pomegranate has seeds. He requested that we go around the room and declare our optimism for the new year in the form of a wish. The guests wished for better economic prosperity for our country, for world peace, global sensitivity, compassion, opportunity. I wished that everyone might have one good meal, but kept my true wish private, a more selfish wish that I drag with me everywhere—to experience novelty every day. When everyone was done, a seven year old named Shalom stood on his chair and made the final wish, “All of the above.”
* * *
I arrived on my bicycle at Tulane and Broad a few minutes past noon. The protestors were already gathered on the strip of lawn that led to the courthouse stairs. Behind the courthouse was the Orleans Parish Prison. The cops and correctional officers stood together and talked next to the news vans, whose radio towers spired to the top of the entrance of the jail. There, the following words were inscribed permanently in capital letters, “THIS IS A GOVERNMENT OF LAW, NOT OF MEN.”
On the opposite corner the Gypsy Mermaid had parked her “art car,” a large colorful van decorated in blue murals, pink artifacts, and glitter. She had painted the price of her services on the front of the van by the door. Twenty dollars for a complete prognostication of your future. Ten for a tarot card reading. Below the prices: “Take donations in gas and repairs.” Her hood was open and a stout young black man was leaning in, hooking jumper cables to her battery.
I locked my bicycle to a street sign on the corner and made my way into the crowd At the center a core of activists attempted to inspire the crowd to chant, “The people united/will never be defeated.” They accused the protestors in the back of not participating. I stood there quietly. There was no central message to OccupyNOLA. In some ways, that was part of its draw; political messages are exclusive, inaccessible to those who are angry but can't specify why. Instead we shared a common dissatisfaction, a spirited disagreement with the direction of our ship. Our numbers were the message. But as an absurdist, I am serious about very few things. And I cannot say anything seriously if it’s in the form of a chant. I was glad to just be there, angry and happy and quiet.
I took notes in an old pocket notebook I found in a drawer of my bedroom. I began writing in the first open space next to notes about things from years ago, a description of Mount Cardigan from its peak, an anonymous Boston phone number, and the name of a church where a friend was buried two years ago.
A man in a green hat handed me a slip of paper, a behavioral guide of what to do if apprehended by the New Orleans Police Department.
“If you are arrested—REMAIN CALM!”
I briefed through the bullet points and slid the paper into my pocket. Someone took the megaphone and yelled “Let’s GO!” We stepped off the grass and into the street.
Tulane Avenue was sordid in its appearance north of Claiborne Avenue. The Dixie Brewery loomed over all of it like a vapid lighthouse of its surrounding vacancies—its dome a lingering relic of that old, undying thirst. The brewery had long been a national success, an icon of New Orleans post-prohibition alcoholism. But Katrina despoiled the factory and they took their business to Wisconsin, still brewing the Dixie brand, still touting the New Orleans label. Around it, isolated instances of Title IX houses sprinkled Tulane Avenue, surrounded by empty dirt lots that were once filled with houses. The city enacted eminent domain and those houses were removed as whole to make way for the new VA hospital, an allegedly auspicious promise for the land, now marked by a few wandering construction workers, dusty weeds, and a set of lonely metal cranes.
The chants continued. A group of gutterpunks carried signs promoting anarchy (Flor de Lis + Anarchy = Love). “1…2…3….4…We declare class war!” A homeless man stood next to a cop car on Claiborne and yelled at us, “Go home, just go home!”
Someone brought horns and drums and began to play Bob Marley songs in the center of the march. I could no longer hear the chants, only the brass notes ringing out semi-relevant songs of protest. The people around the band danced and the politics became less important than our sense of place. This was New Orleans and it seemed at any moment we all might put down the cardboard signs, pick up beers, and say “Fuck It!” We would second-line instead. The boundary seemed thin.
There were no arrests. Instead the police stopped traffic and assisted the march on route. All the officers wore sunglasses and rode motorcycles. They looked disinterested, if not dispassionate, as if nothing short of heavy crime could ever garner an immediate emotion. They escorted us to Lafayette Square where protestors climbed the statue of the old American warhawk, Henry Clay, and surrounded him with flags, angry signs, and a megaphone. Henry Clay himself stands on top of a pillar like it was a platform. His hand is open and his mouth is closed as if he had just finished speaking, like he’s just offered an idea, a possible solution, a compromise. He seems to be saying, “So what do you think? What next?”
The megaphone rotated between speakers. Their messages were scattered
“Fire the police chief!” “Fire the mayor!” “End police brutality!” “1…2..3..4..Let’s declare class war!” “Eliminate classwarfare!” “Forgive student loans! Crush Fannie Mae!” “Dissolve the Federal Reserve! Print more money!” People began to leave.
The only common thread left was anger and disappointment. It had seemed so easy to walk together in a predetermined direction, but when we arrived, the effort to agree on a definition, to centralize the elasticity of our collective discontent, our desire for something better, seemed confused and implausible. Those standing under the shadow of Clay would stay and sleep in tents outside City Hall at Duncan Plaza for the next few weeks while the rest of us would sleep in beds. Were we not angry enough to abandon our routines? Too comfortable? Not dedicated to real changes? What changes were we going to make in our own lives? Or were we overheated? I walked away unsure, leaving behind the civilly disobedient warhawks and their one megaphone, still yelling different things at a high volume into a dissipating crowd.
It took forty minutes to walk back to the jail to get my bike. The intersection and the lawn were empty except for the usual traffic. A truck drove by with its back open. Inmates in orange jumpsuits sat precariously at its edge, their legs dangling over the black pavement of Broad Street as the truck pulled into a quiet jail. The courthouse steps were busy with suits, but the television crews were gone. So was the Gypsy Mermaid. A half-blind woman tried to cross Broad but her cane got caught in a cardboard sign left in the street. She picked it up and slammed it onto the curb. She turned back to the street and scowled and a young black man helped her cross over to the other side. I picked up the sign and read it. “We are the 99%.”
Sources include Louisiana Weekly, http://theneworleansblightblog.wordpress.com/, and the Times-Picayne
This post was inspired by Joan Didion's Los Angeles Notebook from her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. My content is original, but I made my best attempt at borrowing from her style.
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