Roots, Race, Resilience, and Resistance. That was the theme for our Journeys trip in New Orleans in the Spring of 2018. Exploring this theme provided me the opportunity to become engrossed with this trip, so much so, that I do believe that I have learned life lessons that I will continue to carry even after my GBL course ends.
But wait I’m getting ahead of myself, a little background is needed here.
Journeys is a week long trip either globally or nationally and it is a part of a semester long course called GBL 102. This course is designed as a critical component of Agnes Scott College’s Summit initiative and is part of Agnes Scott’s mission to prepare its students to become global citizens. Each class and trip covers a theme that you devolve into before, after, and during the trip.
My trip was top New Orleans (NOLA) and our theme was Roots, Race, Resilience, and Resistance. But how does that theme relate to New Orleans?
I learned in those seven days on the trip that it has everything to do with NOLA.
Let’s start with Roots. The Roots aspect of the theme focused on grassroots groups that we met during the trip, such as the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and their work with NORCO, LA a place we came to know as “Cancer Alley”. It also focused on New Orleans’ locals and the roots that they have placed down in NOLA and how sometimes those roots were becoming removed or displaced by things like Katrina or gentrification.
This brings us to the Race aspect of theme. This topic not only covered NOLA’s rich history of different cultures, ethnicities, and races that settled in NOLA, but also it covered how marginalized groups are treated in present day issues and it brought up the importance of understanding the racial dynamics of NOLA by learning the history of more than just a single story.
In discussing Resilience we met with people like Warrenetta Bank in the Lower 9th Ward, a community leader who with volunteers from all over the country an the world, are helping to rebuild their community and the Lower 9th Ward from the destruction that was caused by Katrina.
Finally, the last topic on the theme Resistance meant to me a combination of all these things before how marginalized groups are forming and joining with grassroots groups to not only rebuild their homes but to also fight back the history of repression and the racism that is still happening in New Orleans via gentrification, unfair incarceration, health and toxic waste, and the problematic school system that is rampant.
Discussing and learning about the various topics in this loaded theme made me learn so much about New Orleans. Discussing about it before the trip was nothing compared to watching it play out right in front of my eyes. The lessons that I learnt that stuck with me is that NOLA is more than just its tragedies, it’s a living and thriving place with a bigger than life community, but the flipside to that is to not recognize NOLA’s past struggles and to not take the time to understand groups current struggles is to fall into dangers of a single story and to glamorize and fantasize a place that still needs progress. The theme to this trip helped me understand this.
I think that having a theme or topic that you concentrate on when you go to a particular place makes the experience much more meaningful, because you are actually being mindful about what your observing and experiencing. I recommend that everyone has something they’re trying to learn for a trip and that they start learning about it even before they go on the trip so they get this meaningful experience, such as my trip to New Orleans.
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