"Civil Rights are redefined every generation", says Tracy Washington, an attorney who spoke at tonight's Student Hurricane Network (SHN) orientation session in the offices of Jones Walker, a large Louisiana law firm. At the time it hadn't sunk in that I was sitting on the 52nd floor of a high-rise building that overlooked the city-scape of New Orleans, the site of a tremendous natural disaster and the footprint of a nation's failure to respond.
Ms. Washington knew she was part of something special when she stood in front of some three hundred law students that had gathered at this event to kick-off what would be one of the most well-organized and mobile student movements this country has ever seen. It was only appropriate to invoke the bygone days of Martin Luther King Jr. and the larger civil rights movement because this movement confronted us and we are among the first to stir awake and reckon with unfinished business.
"Yes blacks have the vote, but can we make sure we get the ballots?" She said something to that effect and summed up the problem this country faces. As far as the law is concerned (Brown v. Board, the Civil Rights Act, etc.) the government does not discriminate based on race, ethinicity or national origin and the legal scholars can exhale a sigh of relief that justice is blind on paper. This was the battle that MLK, Malcom and Gandhi fought, the battle for "tolerance". If most could agree they won this battle, Ms. Washington would say it was only a battle and not the war. Define the word tolerance and you define something or someone you would rather not put up with. Tolerate a black person's right to vote but nevertheless you make sure her vote is impotent. Tolerate the fact that a minority can attend school with your child but make sure your child attends a school where a minority's presence is remotely possible. "Yes we got those laws on the books, but it ain't workin', that's your movement." New Orleans is only one city among many that bore all the symptoms of a patient left half-treated. The hurricanes left her in critical condition but not beyond recovery. Our trip is not only a volunteer effort for the recovery of New Orleans, but the renewal of a war not yet won in cities and states across the country, a war against begrudging tolerance.