THE CONTRAFLOW PROJECT

It’s Saturday, 9.3.05. I am still tuned in, but feeling numb to this life and death reality show ratings bonanza. The television is now focused on Louis B. Armstrong International Airport, where they appear to be flying evacuees out to Houston or somewhere. I then switch back to NBC and see Campbell Brown interviewing this little boy named Charlie at the Morial Convention Center. He was looking out for his grandma and great aunt I believe. This young man would go on to say something that would haunt me, “we just need some help out here, it’s so pitiful, what we going to do”. After a week of nonstop viewership, listenership and readership, I was overwhelmed and just lost it for a minute. All I could think of was that immortal scene from a Good Times episode when Esther Rolle’s character “Florida Evans” found out James Amos’ character “James Evans” was dead, “…damn, daamn, daaamn!”. I decided to step back, so I crossed the street and went inside the Texas Station Hotel Casino in North Las Vegas and attempted to do some unwinding and celebrating, for it was my birthday. But, I could not get what that little boy said to Campbell Brown out of my head. It was then I began to strategize on how I would support the relief effort. I began preparing to shut everything down and head to Galveston and Houston to volunteer. I felt like I was joining the Peace Corps. I just could not sit out here in my home at the corner of Lake Mead Blvd. & Rancho Dr. and continue to watch what I considered at the time to be a genocide. I had to do something. I had to go…

M. Darryl Woods, Literary Responder
thecontraflow@yahoo.com