At the start of the year, I decided to take a break from political portraits to try my hand at cartoons. I’ve been submitting to the New Yorker weekly for a number of months – and they even bought a cartoon (!), though it hasn’t run.
I drew this – a riff on their desert island gag – last week, as we waited for the flood waters to recede. Once they did, for the rest of the week, my boyfriend and I spent our days cleaning out houses of friends and family. One family we helped got six and a half feet of water overnight – just hours after they returned from their son’s wedding reception. My boyfriend’s family’s cabin – built by his grandpa – flooded to four feet. We spent a day demolishing my friend’s parents’ house, as she rushed back from Missouri to help. With flooding – especially in the Louisiana heat – time is of the essence so that these houses don’t sustain further damage through toxic mold.
Bob Mankoff passed on the drawing, but I wanted to share it anyway. Whether the floods in Louisiana got the national coverage they deserved or not (I don’t think they did), the region is devastated. A week later, the water is gone but thousands are still living in shelters. One hundred and ten thousand households have applied for recovery assistance. EBR schools, which were open for two days before the storm, won’t reopen until September 6, which means 42,000 kids will miss three weeks. Baton Rouge has not recovered from Alton Sterling and the police shootings in July; now, on top of that, thousands are homeless.
President Obama is coming Tuesday; I hope his visit brings attention and resources to a disaster that will continue to impact our community for months, if not years to come. If you have the resources to help, please consider donating to the Baton Rouge Area Foundation or the Baton Rouge Youth Coalition. And thanks for sharing this – please don’t let Baton Rouge stand on its own.
-emily