"I don't see ever living in Louisiana again."
I would also urge the Chris Rose groupies in the audience to read this interview carefully. Notice how Hester consistently fails to be the cartoon character the legibly smirking Rose is obviously expecting her to be.
Rose: It's hard to imagine New Orleans without you. You're being all serious on me.
Hester: You want me to tell a joke? Part of how I was able to do the work that I was doing and survive was through humor and levity, because the situation was such a crying shame that I was laughing to keep from crying. This place was breaking my heart. Every day I prayed to God to get me out of here.
Rose: Does it bother you that a lot of people think you're crazy?
Hester: That's one of the reasons I wanted to remove myself from the situation. People started looking at me as the gadfly, as the problem. But I'm not the problem. I was part of the solution. I just had a different style and strategy. It took something radical to get people's attention.
Rose: Don't you think you were a bit of, let's say, a disruption at the School Board meetings and made a mockery of the process?
Hester: How can you make a mockery of something that's already a mockery?
Instead she has some pointed things to say about the pre-Katrina apathy in New Orleans, and the post-Katrina phony narrative of an acitivist citizenry affecting useful change.
Rose: But don't you feel that now is that opportunity? That now could be your time?
Hester: My time is past. My role here was to shine a light on the problem. My time was to awaken people. I think they are awake now. Whether they do anything about it is up to them.
Rose: But there has never been a better time in New Orleans for hell-raisers, rabble-rousers and demagogues.
Hester: I don't think the kind of work I did fits a label of that sort. The problems here are so massive that no one individual like myself is going to be able to effect the changes that we need. We need everybody to take a stand. As long as people sit around and think somebody else has it covered -- somebody like me -- then they won't do a thing themselves.
That phony narrative is due in no small part to the tone-deafness of the local media (Rose included) when it comes to matters of social justice.
Rose: I'm a reporter. I need you.
Hester: See, you are wrong for that. The media was and still is one of the biggest parts of the problem. Whatever so-called journalists they have here are just about sensationalizing the problem and minimalizing the real issues. You're just about controversy, controversy, controversy.
Rose: We've seen the light.
Hester: No you haven't.
Rose is right about one thing, we do need Hester to come back... or at least more like her.
Update: I just realized that I posted something involving Rose and neglected to refer to him as a "pill-popper". Sorry. Won't happen again.
No comments:
Post a Comment