Sports Desk: Super Bowl Edition
Hard to imagine a more joy filled Super Bowl than the one we
got to witness Sunday night. Even
with the Focus on Family ad being shown and The Who taking up space that could
have been filled by lots of bands who would have better represented the spirit
of Miami and the two teams playing in the game, the fact remains that we saw
pretty much everything that is great about sports and the people who play
them. We saw Colts guard Kyle
DeVan who went from being a substitute teacher to playing in the biggest game
of the season. Jeff Saturday, the Colts Center, was an electrician during a
year away from the NFL. Drew Brees, the QB for The Saints, has been called too
little to play in the NFL. All in all it was a day of second chances and good
lessons about hard work and perseverance.
Two days later it still feels awfully good to think about
that game. And yet, like the jambalaya I made on Sunday, time makes everything
deeper and a bit more complicated.
Today the words “New Orleans” are still on the lips and the sports pages
of America. But what about next
week? What about our responsibility to that city and the people who live in it?
One reason Drew Brees is a hero in New Orleans is that he went there after the
storm and made a commitment to lead that team to victory as a means of lifting
the city up and helping it get back on its feet. I wonder what that means after
the game. I’ve been doing a good
deal of research on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for another project of mine. I
decided I’d take the lead of that Google ad everyone was talking about after
the Super Bowl:
I typed in the words “MLK New Orleans.” The results weren’t
nearly as romantic but they were perhaps a better indicator of where that city
stands than any of the pre-game coverage. When you type those words (let your
soundtrack be the VIP Ladies All Stars second line band) the first link you’ll
see is “MLK Charter School.” First you’ll see the address and then you’ll see a
link to their homepage:
http://drkingcharterschool.org/
The photos of smiling students and an admiring President
only tell part of the story. One of the ways New Orleans has begun to “come
back” is to hand its schools over to the corporate charter system. Dr. King Charter School is a part of a
network sponsored by Capital One, the same company that makes a good deal of
its money providing credit cards to people with bad credit. The day after the Super Bowl Capital
One, citing the current economic climate, announced interest rates on most
cards’ outstanding balances will jump from 8.01 percent to 15.31.
People have all kinds of different opinions on the corporate
charter system. President Obama is a big fan and it is true that in parts of
New Orleans there seem to have been improvements to the abysmal state of
education. If one goes by test scores (a tricky business) then things are
marginally looking up. Some schools are seeing better attendance trends. The
challenge with those schools is the same challenge a team faces. Will folks
stick around after the victory? Certainly the people of New Orleans will. But
there’s a real question if the companies who run these schools are really in it
for the long haul. What happens if Capital One comes to the same crossroads as
so many of our other financial institutions? What programs will be cut first?
More importantly, will we still be watching? The Saints are a story we love because everyone roots for
the underdog. What about the fact that charter schools in New Orleans are
reportedly turning away special needs children? A common term that is used is
“dumping.” Not surprisingly this is the same term used to describe hospitals’
practice of putting indigent people back on the street instead of providing
them proper care. Big hospitals, big schools, big prisons, big business. As we
cheer the return of the Saints and The Big Easy it is important to think about
the oversight that allowed so many people’s lives to end up underwater. Today the homeless population in
New Orleans numbers 12,000 and a third of city residences remain empty for one
reason or another. There is so
much to celebrate but we’re really just at the start of the game.
As I write this I’m listening to the rainfall in Los
Angeles. I’m also swaying back and forth to a recording my friend, the writer
Nelson Eubanks, made me of the The V.I.P. Lady All Stars second line band from
a few weeks before Katrina. He was living in New Orleans and recording all the
second line bands. Those weeks before the storm he wrote to me saying things
were awfully tense between the bands and the police. On the recordings he’d
send me you can hear the cops coming through and people arguing or mostly just
saying, “Let em pass. Let em through.” At one point you hear an old man’s
voice. He starts saying, “A storm is coming. A storm is coming.” That’s not
meant to be romantic or theatrical. It’s meant to say there was trouble in that
city and everybody but the majority of America knew that to be so. We almost
lost the second lines in the flood. And the Superdome was hailed in some Super
Bowl coverage as the “home” for people displaced by the storm.
It wasn't a home. It was a horror. It was also the logical result of what
comes from the neglect and abuse of the poorest and least protected among us. I keep playing back Tracy Porter’s winning
touchdown.
