Two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still crying out in need. And two years after the storm, UUP members are still giving their time and their talent to help this proud but nearly moribund region revive.

Two UUP members — Sandra Spier and Janelle Gordon, both of Brooklyn Health Science Center — were part of a group of 40 unionists from around the country who traveled to New Orleans for two weeks in late June and early July to help repair homes and schools.

In volunteering to be part of AFT’s Union Summer program, Spier and Gordon also became the latest members to participate in what has become a passionate commitment for UUP. Members from around the state have made more than a dozen trips to New Orleans and the surrounding region to help with rescue and recovery. Some chapters have made multiple trips, either through union programs at the state or national levels, or through collaborative community efforts.

A shocking sight — still

Spier and Gordon struggled to find the words to adequately convey their reaction to the devastation. Their descriptions of abandoned neighborhoods, children who had drifted nearly two years without attending school and homes falling apart reflected the shocked impressions of their UUP sisters and brothers who had seen earlier versions of the destruction.

Perhaps the saddest part of all, both women said, is the realization that many of the worst-hit sections of the city seem to have hardly recovered. Their colleagues who journeyed to New Orleans in the weeks and months after Katrina described huge swaths of the city as abandoned wastelands. Much of that bleak scenery appears to have hardly changed, Spier and Gordon said.

“There’s not much infrastructure in many of the schools,” Spier said. “The Lower 9th Ward is not habitable; there’s no water, no schools. In the Upper 9th Ward, one out of five homes is affected. So you can see why people aren’t rushing to fix things up.”

Children lose precious time, schooling

Gordon had a chance to talk with some students while she helped paint hallways in a high school in the Upper 9th Ward. The children had lived like refugees in

an undeveloped nation for most of the last two years. They described an odyssey that started with their families fleeing the killer floods in New Orleans, extended to a series of temporary homes and ended with their return to their barely recognizable city.

“They just got back into school in January, so they had been out of school for a year and a half,” Gordon said. “These kids had lived in three different states.”

She found the children’s stories wrenching, even as she realized that the children were true survivors.

“I guess children are very resilient,” Gordon said. “They thought of it as a one big adventure; I was bawling.”

Difficult conditions, heartfelt appreciation

Spier and Gordon were part of a group of nine New Yorkers who joined unionists from all over the country. The

volunteers stayed in dormitories at the University of New Orleans, where they had air conditioning but sporadic power; lights would go out and elevators would stop in mid-travel. Strangers bound together for two weeks as volunteers made do with the unpredictable conditions, because they realized that any inconvenience was both temporary and minimal compared to what New Orleans residents have faced.

“Everyone was working together as a unified group,” Spier said.

Contact with residents was limited, because so few people have been able to return to the neighborhoods where the volunteers were working, Gordon said. But in her few conversations with residents, she came away knowing that residents recognized that she was a unionist, and appreciated that fact. New Orleans has seen its share of well-meaning volunteer organizations whose good intentions ended up as disorganized or limited assistance. Gordon said she came away from her two weeks with the feeling of a job well done.

“Because we were union people and because we went with a true caring spirit, everyone that I worked with did what they did well, and cared about what they did,” she said. “It was a job to be pleased with, because we cared.”

— Darryl McGrath