Snitch

So I have been allotted months of futility, and nights of misery have been assigned. Job 7:3

January, 2007—New Orleans

The Reverend Clarence Washington, senior pastor fornearly forty years at Gethsemane Baptist Church, shifted his three-hundred-pound frame in the swivel chair and tossed the stack of unpaid bills into a wire basket on his desk. Behind on just about everything, he thought. That hurricane sure did a number on us. He could pay the smaller bills but would have to continue to beg and wheedle for time on the bigger ones. He and his wife, known as the church prophet, would both have to continue taking just half ofthe salaries they’d received before the hurricane sent much of his congregation to live in places like Baton Rouge and Houston.

He stood and stared out the second-floor window just as he had, amazed and distressed, on that last weekend of August, 2005, when Katrina’s precisely aimed blow flooded all the low-lying areas of the City. He had prayed fervently then and God had finally answered his prayers, but only after the waters had stayed for weeks wreaking destruction throughout his beleaguered neighborhood, Bacauptown. In many ways, the seemingly interminable aftermath of the storm was proving worse than the hurricane itself. When would things finally start to get better?

Often in more recent months, he had gained strength and taken pleasure from imagining the block across the street with a beautiful new building filled with apartments and businesses that would bring renewed life in place of the devastation. Just gazing out the window wouldbring him hope and, yes, feelings of civic pride that New Orleans’ revival could begin right there with the plan he’d conceived. But not today. Today he felt only discouragement and could detect only the sad reality left behind by Katrina—the blocks of weed-grown lots, the stench from the remains of the two-storypile of discarded refrigerators, the shotgun houses and small cottages dislodged fromtheir foundations that had been in poor condition even before the hurricane. All this poverty and rot and desperation just a few blocks from St. Charles Avenue. It’s not right … never has been.

Clarence turned his gaze to the bookshelf by the window, full of autographed photos from mayors and other Louisiana politicians over several decades. The one from the current mayor, received not long before the hurricane, was signed with the words, “To Clarence. Blessed are the peacemakers! Your friend, Hypolite Juneau.” The mayor, a longtime acquaintance and sometimes political ally, had given it to him at the opening of a now-vacant recreation center that was designed to keep the neighborhood youth off the streets. He could see the neglected center and its basketball courts in the distance, its windows broken and its crumbled parking lot now edged by five-foot willow trees. It saddened him that the few youths who’dreturned tothe neighborhood no longer had a usable basketball court.

The phone rang. Mrs. Walker, the church secretary for almost as many years as he’d been pastor, transferred a call from the accounts receivable department ofthe utility company.

“Hello, this is Pastor Washington. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

Gethsemane Baptist Church was one of the largest black churches in New Orleans, and it didn’t take the reverend long to get another extension ofhis due date.

“Sir, I assure you we are doing everything we can to get our bills caught up. All of our money in recent months went to the massive repairs we needed downstairs. I must ask fora little more time.” There was a short pause as Clarence listened to the caller’s tepid response. Undaunted, he said, “Bless you for this consideration, and may you have a glorious day.”

Clarence then called out his door. “Mrs. Walker, will you kindly get the mayor on the phone for me?”

Clarence did not like being dependent on white people. Growing up poor and black in the Ninth Ward, he’d had few interactions with white people, and most of those were with teachers and police officerswhen he was in trouble. And right now his whole future andthe future of his church and neighborhood felt as though they were dependent on the actions of a white man—a wealthy real estate developer—the mayor had forced him to partner with on the big neighborhood renewal project that had been his idea. This man—the , Clarence thought derisively—had made a lot