Buried in Backatown
C.L.Ford
There is
a small town just west of the Mississippi River and north of New Orleans called
Donaldsonville, Louisiana.
The front street- historic
Donaldsonville- with its brick built cathedral and open town-square park, looks
more like a re-creation of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry than a modern city. Some of
the side streets leading to the front are cobblestone. The storefront shops
offer vintage overhead coverings and hanging signage. The white-washed gazebo
shaded by willow and oak trees and surrounded by trimmed grass centers the
town’s Southern country charm. The shotgun houses that line the street between
the factory and Hwy 1 give the appearance of an aged, but lively
community.
Just down the road, modern enterprises
such as Little Ceasars, McDonald’s and CVS dot the street. Once the road
curves, there’s a Wendy’s. Dollar Tree and Walmart greet the town visitors from
the back. With so much going on, it’s hard to notice what lies beyond the main
drag. I didn’t want to know. I chose to keep driving until I reached my
destination: Lowery Elementary. The place had become a kind of hell and every
day, I angrily drove past the factories and into this quaint little town to
teach disrespectful children in a terribly built “new” school. Past the facade
of small town living, U.S.A.
But behind the main street, just
beyond the train track and over the bayou lies the truth- Backatown. Backatown
is America’s hidden shame: poor people aren’t abroad. Poor people, destitute-starving
poor people, save-the-children poor people,
turn-the-tv-to-the-next-station-because-I-can’t-take-these-images poor people
live right here in our right now. The
monster we’ve tried to hide with billboards and bridges and the clichéd
railroad track to separate us from them still lives and breathes in this
“other” place. And one thing it will not let this country forget: There is no
poor like “country” poor.
In Backatown, there are few
visitors, so strangers are automatically enemies until proven otherwise. In
Backatown, men piss in the barely paved streets as old women sit on their
lopsided porches. In Backatown, the projects are the nicer housing. Some of the
houses are no more than glorified slave quarters (glorified only because they
have doors). Split wooden planks, grayed from weathering and neglected, dot the
neighborhood corners. Children play in overgrown weeds on dead-end corners wearing
the same dirty hole-riddled uniforms that they come to school in. The metal
pieces from the trailer homes slide sideways barely bolted together. Two
makeshift shacks with dirt floors hold a multi-generation family. They sit
outside until the air cools.
In Backatown, *[i]Jermeka
plays outside with her friends. She’s shocked and excited, but mostly puzzled
to see her teacher “back here.” When asked, she claimed a run-down white shotgun
house nearby as her home. Once out of Jermeka’s listening range, the school
secretary tells us that the pink shacks joined together behind the white house
is her actual home. She and her many siblings live there, mostly watching each
other as her mother works. Down the road, a third grade girl holds her infant
sister like a beach ball. It’s the best she can to as she also tries to keep an
eye on her two toddler-aged siblings, playing in the almost front yard.
In Backatown, there is a nine
year old boy named *Daniel. Daniel is an angry kid. He’s frustrated and
frustrating. He fights and screams and kicks. Daniel lives at 506 and ½ *West Number
St. The house next to Daniel’s has “506”
spray-painted on the front of its puke green frame. Daniel’s home is a lean-to
shed built on the side of the dilapidated house. The blue door boarder skips
around the unpainted door, paint and wood chipped off the sides. On the door,
in the tiniest block numbers, reads “506 ½.” This is the center of Daniel’s
world. And so every night Daniel goes to sleep in maybe ½ of a bed. He wakes up every day in ½ of a shed. He rides
a bus to school so that he can get half a balanced meal and half an education-
sometimes. And somewhere along the line,
this country decided it was acceptable for him to have half an existence. At
some point, we closed one eye and squinted out the other, threw away his
chances, gave him ½ an address, and call it justice. Daniel may be the
homegrown nightmare awaiting this country, because Daniel’s angry. He doesn’t
know why and he can’t explain it, but he knows something isn’t right, and he’s angry.
Daniel’s angry and he has every right to be.
Behind Dupont and Ommet and CF
industries is a river town named Donaldsonville, Louisiana. It is a microcosm
of America- a beautiful finish built on top of a worn, crumpling community
where hopelessness is kept at bay by a train track- for now. This place set
aside is a shadow of our culture and our values. We mask it with multimillion
dollar industries that are slowly killing the people that live there, the
people whom these companies will not hire. This place is called Backatown. Buried in
Backatown, where only struggle and ugliness and anger make sense, lies America’s
worst kept secret: the class war isn’t new and it isn’t on the middle class.
The war on the poor rages just beneath the surface of our society. It has been
for years. And it’s growing weary and more desperate and dangerous.
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