Displacement

This weekend, I helped out at the Common Ground Nursery. Common Ground does a lot of really cool stuff in the city, everything from free legal services to rebuilding. This project in particular works on prepping plants at their nursery in New Orleans east to later be planted in the marshes of the Louisiana coast. (Marshes which, may I remind everyone, make up 40% of the marshes of the continental United States. This statistic never fails to impress me.) On reflection, I realize a rhyming element of the day was displacement. Here we were, a group of people from across the country who found ourselves in New Orleans. There were people from Minnesota, New York, Canada, Georgia, Connecticut, Texas, South Carolina, California. Displaced from our roots to come plant form new roots at the Common Ground Nursery in New Orleans East.
The roots we were planting originally came from the marshes themselves. Yet here they were in a fenced off portion of a home décor store. The store lets them use the large space without rent, so long as they pay for their water usage. They will later return to their native marshlands, moved by a big white pickup truck, driven by out-of-towners. This is a popular system of wetland restoration that the Louisiana coast has come to rely heavily upon.

After we were done with our work at the nursery, we headed to Dong Phuong, a Vietnamese bakery/ restaurant. I ordered one of the best po-boys I’ve ever had for less than $2. It was a Vietnamese take on a po-boy and it was delicious. 14207 Chef Menteur Highway: check it out. The people in the restaurant were Vietnamese for the most part. There is a huge population of Vietnamese people in the neighborhood Dong Phuong is in. It got me thinking about the immigrant population in New Orelans.. New Orleans has a unique mix of immigrant populations. Vietnamese for one, Haitians, Hondurans, a new and growing population of Mexicans, etc. New Orleans used to even act as a port for human importation when the city acted as a hub for slave trade that came into the port of New Orleans.

My point is that the entire process of making sure native plant species remain in these vital marshes is all based upon a complex chain of displacement on a number of levels. It is a microcosm of a globalized world. Even the process of globalization is reflective in the process! The heavy traffic that comes through the Gulf Coast, fueled by the oil that comes from the Gulf both contribute hugely to the destruction of the wetlands, which exacerbates the hurricanes the destroy the area, both of which are things that Common Ground is working to combat. Is this a mesh I am sensing?