Checkpoint

National Guard checkpooint, St. Bernard Parish, October 2005

The National Guard and St. Bernard Parish Sheriff manned a checkpoint between the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.



The road was blocked by stacked shipping containers with a small opening where vehicles were allowed to pass. In another section, stacked cars were used to make the road completely impassable.





After spending some time in post-Katrina New Orleans, you start to get used to the strangeness of the place, the lack of people, the silence in the absence of birds or any animals but the terrified dogs running for cover, the humvees patrolling the streets, the grayish yellowish brown of the dead and muddy landscape, the broken blown-out signs and debris everywhere, the waterlogged cars jumbled along the streets and smashed into buildings.

And then you encounter this checkpoint and you think: they built this, made it out of the destroyed things around them. And you think: this is the most important thing to build, a barricade across parish lines? Is this admirable in its creativity or hideous in its implications?

So we asked. Many people we spoke to talked of the barricade making physical reality of a mentality that had existed for years.

One day, you drive through the checkpoint with your fellow relief worker who is Canadian, displaying your badges for the National Guardsmen before they allow you through. You look at each other. The US border with Canada is less protected, you both say out loud.

But the words are diminished by the sight of streets devastated by water which recognized no boundary and you remember again that the storm washed out all sense of normal life no matter which side of the dividing line you are on. You are living post-Katrina now. And so you simply drive on.