As we re-member, a love note to NOLA and to life

This is a love note to my people, to friends and family and strangers who are loved simply because we went through the storm and the flood together. This is a love note to my people, friends and family and strangers who are loved because they bore witness and did not forget us. This is a love note to my people, friends and family and strangers who aren’t quite sure what we are talking about, but who send love and care anyways.

This is a love note to my people and to this place, which I love beyond reason, this home that welcomed a wandering, rootless Navy brat weirdo southern child and said, here, girl, you’re home. This is love note to my sisters and brothers and gender neutral sibs, organizing the movement, present to the struggle for love and life and dignity through the morass of devastation and systemic oppression. This is a love note to life – that ten years later, we who are alive grieve our dead and our loss and we dance on…we dance on.

–Rev. Deanna Vandiver
On the ten year commemoration of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood of 2005