Human Rights and the Realities of Returning to New Orleans

Storm refugees, nearly all of them black, are on the move throughout the city. And they are refugees, as in, people fleeing misfortune and seeking refuge. NPR and other news organizations caved to pressure from critics who did not like the word. We substituted "evacuees." Some listeners thought "refugee" carried a pejorative foreign connotation, something that happens in Sudan or Somalia but never the United States. That's precisely why I preferred the term. I hoped it would shock people into realizing that an American city had sunk to Third World conditions.

Hawke and I hop out of the truck to interview a ragged string of refugees walking up Howard on the way to the Superdome, trailed by an obese woman in stretch shorts. "I got a bad heart. I ain't got no business travelin' like this," she says.

A woman with matted hair in a Tweety Bird T-shirt says, "We slept all night on the bridge. They say go across the river and the buses will pick us up. Now they're turnin' us all around. We need somebody who knows what's goin' on!"

I ask more questions, but they want answers. Where to get a meal? Where to find a bus?

"Tell the truth," a young man in a Bob Marley T-shirt asks in exasperation. "Y'all care about us?"

"Of course we do," Hawke replies.

"Well, help us," he says sharply. "They got people layin' up there on the bridge dyin' . . . I know y'all want our story, but we need help!"

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