Elect a Crook, It's Important!
For dinner Tuesday night we ate with Jim Kelly, CEO of Providence Community Housing and Catholic Charities. As part of the perks of DukeEngage we get a group dinner once a week at a fancy restaurant with a speaker. However, I would not need to be coerced with a pricey menu to listen to Jim Kelly again. He has knowledge about all facets of New Orleans life. His connections run so deep it turns out he works with some LPHI people which I found interesting. Jim spent a great deal talking about mental health issues and how economic/social/political issues all have an effect on the health of people. When I heard that we were listening to a speaker from Providence I did not expect to be hearing about health issues. However, I guess that was one of the main points of the talk: every aspect of our lives is related to our health.
With four DukeEngage kids working with Providence, I realized how all of our internships really relate to one another. You cannot pick one problematic issue with New Orleans and talk about that singularly. Sounds simple, but it is very difficult and disconcerting to think about. The rebuilding process is very difficult. The U.S. economy is evidently lacking so in New Orleans the situation is worsened because of the necessary rebuilding. I believe it is now the poorest American city. Mental health issues abound and when people sought refuge after the hurricane, they had to worry about possibly paying mortgage payments etc. on their new homes in their new city/state and on their New Orleans home. They had to focus on rebuilding on top of these payments. And on top of this, families had to worry about a horrible school system. How can residents return with a bad school system? What did a family with four kids all placed in different schools have to go through when Katrina hit?
Talking to Mr. Kelly made me realize how important public health work is, PARTICULARLY with respect to disaster relief. Doctors must leave not just for personal reasons but if there business goes down 40-60% can you blame them? Now that upper-class workers such as doctors and lawyers have left many investors into the economy have left. Concurrently, quality health care diminishes with less medical personnel available. Jim said something interesting: “we have sickness-care not health care.” We have no methods of prevention available.
He echoed my statements from my last blog about non-profits really driving the rebuilding process. However, he places less blame on inactive leaders/businesses because they focus on profit and therefore must take fewer risks. They wait for non-profits to spearhead a project then become involved. Also, he described how funny politics is here. Mayor Ray Nagin won his first term with an 80% white vote and 20% black vote…the numbers were the exact opposite when he was re-elected. How weird? Once, a corrupt governor here ran and people advertised for him with the slogan “Elect a crook, its important” because the crook running for government was running against David Duke who, as we know, is a very influential bigot.**See Below**
To cap this blog off we will end with a great, personal story from Mr. Kelly: After Katrina had hit there had been so many old, ill, and fragile people at Louis Armstrong Airport. Literally ALL of baggage claim was packed. He walked in and said the only thing he could do is act as a son. He touched people, comforted them, etc. Then he went into an adjacent room from the baggage claim area and it was also full of ill people. However, these sick people were in critical condition. They were sending Hospice people to come help them. He ministered to each person individually. When he got to one woman he spoke to her, told her she looked beautiful and that she will be ok as God would take care of her. After he finished talking to her he realized she was in comatose and had just been staring straight ahead with a blank expression. At that point Jim blessed her with the sign of the cross on her head. Suddenly, he felt her hands push up from her chest. He pushed them back down and told her that she would be alright. She then pushed up again and he pushed down. Then she pushed harder for a third time and she reached up frailly and returned his blessing with the sign of the cross. What a powerful moment! United in prayer and Christ.
** I do not like to sucker-punch people as I did in this sentence about David Duke so to make things clear, David Duke claims, and I quote, he is not a “white supremacist” but only a “white nationalist” who supports “racial segregation and white separatism.”…You have got to love Louisiana politics.