Life After Katrina: Approaching Justice

-- By JHS - 1 June 2017

A death of innocence

I grew up more during that week my family was trapped in downtown New Orleans than I had the entire twelve years of my life. I watched as streets flooded, trees uprooted, and buildings burned to the ground. Gunshots punctuated the stillness. Each night, I went to sleep hungry, thirsty, and sweating. There were no working toilets, no A/C, no electricity, no showers, no beds. The shelter could only offer paltry rations of one meal each day consisting of bread, cheese cubes, and a single cup of drinkable water. After seven nightmarish days, my family reached Houston as refugees with nothing but the sewage-stained clothes on our backs. Katrina had shattered my faith in humanity and rendered me a cynical, depressed twelve-year-old boy.

When I began to research why the levees broke and the government’s response was so inadequate, my general discontentment was channeled into a disdain for corruption and cronyism. Local politicians misappropriated funds for levee reinforcement to bankroll marinas and riverboat casinos. Federal funding for levee protection was slashed. FEMA was run by Mike Brown—an expert on Arabian horses, who also happened to be buddies with President Bush. Political and moral corruption was rife throughout every level of government and no one was forced to take responsibility for the carnage. When I realized that my suffering and the suffering of so many others could have been prevented, hatred boiled inside my chest. Hatred for men who would allow expediency and personal gain to come at the expense of innocent people. Hatred for the injustice I had witnessed in Katrina’s wake.

I hated injustice, but what I didn’t realize for nearly a decade was that this hatred was restrained by fear.

Hatred and Fear

As we parted ways at the Christopher St. station, Brit encouraged me to read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I read it on the subway and a chill rushed through me when I reached the passage Brit wanted me to find.

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.”

I saw myself in Dr. King’s “white moderate.” My support for Hillary was rooted in my commitment to order over justice. Although all humans crave stability to some extent, my fear of turmoil ran deeper because I knew what it looked like; I had seen the chaos of instability and I never wanted to see it again. Still, the thought of becoming Dr. King’s archetype tore at my insides.

Reconciliation?

My dad inspired me to become a lawyer. He’s my best friend, confidant, and hero. After graduating from Tulane Law, he worked for five years on the oil side of maritime personal injury, until he couldn’t sleep at night. “It was hard to ‘get jazzed’ about defending Transocean and BP,” he told me. That’s why he became a plaintiff’s attorney–because “it felt right.”

Safety regulations on oil rigs are scant. It's cheaper to pay for lobbyists and lost limbs than to install precautionary measures. Consequently, many injured offshore workers are not victims of bad luck, but of cold calculation. My dad came to see this clearly, and he abhorred it. His desire to right the wrongs inflicted upon these seamen imbued his work with purpose. And now, thirty years after trying a client’s case, he still answers their calls, attends their family weddings, and cheers at their children’s graduations. These men are like family to him. My dad is not John Brown, nor is he Dr. King, but he doesn’t need to be. He recognized the injustice in his small corner of the world and has worked hard for thirty years to make it better. One need not revolt to make the world a better place.

This summer, I am working at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans, and so far, I love it. Last week, I drafted a memorandum that helped prosecute a man who violently abused his girlfriend. This Tuesday, I watched a federal judge convict him. It was an unfamiliar feeling, making things happen using words, but it felt right.

Perhaps I have a future in federal prosecution. Perhaps not. My dad chose maritime personal injury as his arena and his career has shown me that the pursuit of justice is compatible with stability. I don't yet know which front I'll battle on, but I know that my dad’s example and my hatred for injustice will guide me.

But if we take away the rhetoric of the last paragraph, which seems to be intended to show that my statements were somehow received as the answer for you, the draft shows that the answer for you lies elsewhere. I'm not sure how one would transpose King's categories across time, which is why I asked people from the beginning of the course to try that experiment for themselves. John Brown's categories, and Thoreau's, are also not our own.

You want to confront injustice without destroying order. Robert Bolt's version of Thomas More is constructed in that fashion as well, which is why a man of the left such as Bolt considered his More "a man for all seasons." It's a lawyer's way of thinking, isn't it? Not somehow dishonorable, as you imply, because not the form of fighting injustice that extralegalists are inclined to follow, notwithstanding or because of the disorder they imply.

I think the route to the improvement of the draft is the loss of the apology, which seems out of place to me, in favor of the actual outcome of your own experience, which is to receive a call to arms that does not include an effort at revolt.

• #Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, JohnHammelStrauss
• #Set DENYTOPICVIEW = TWikiGuest

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.