Happy Johnson

"The 9th Ward is two-thirds African-American. Why am I the only one doing this – when we are the least prepared and hardest hit people in natural disasters?” Happy Johnson’s whimsical and mission-driven children’s books were conceptualised on the back of this question. The 9th Ward is the easternmost downriver portion of New Orleans and its geomorphology is one of the reasons it was hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. The other reason is its demographic, as its majority-African American population meant that systemic racism in resource provision diminished the funding and resources available to its residents for mitigation and adaptation strategies to natural disasters. Happy Johnson added that nearby fracking for oil and gas added to the land subsidence and flooding. In 2005, this neighbourhood was inundated, the high water stage breached all kinds of levees, and people lost lives, families, and friends. But Happy didn’t invite us in to tell us about Katrina; he enthused about youth resilience, urban adaptation, and restoring the Ninth Ward. In honour of his incredible efforts to get his African-American community onboard in building community resilience, I provide some context on the Ninth Ward, but mainly delve into how civic actors build community resilience through infrastructural and psychological improvements. He has such creative and effective methods to improve community resilience – through his organisation, the Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED), and children's books, just like Clara's!

1. A brief history

(Source: NASA Earth Observatory)

Historically, this area was covered by sugar plantations that stretched from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River. I’ve appended a photo so you can imagine – the brown areas are the lake and river, and the space between them is the Ninth Ward. If you didn’t know this, sugar is the chief commodity that drove the slave trade. I’ve appended another photo, this time of an artefact in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. It reads, “Sugar […] more deadly than gold. Unlike gold, sugar could be grown; it provided the possibility of unlimited wealth”. There was a finite amount of gold in the earth and you had to discover it; whereas sugar could be generated, and this characteristic of sugar led to the trade of millions of bodies from West Africa to America since the 16th century, so that colonial masters could use cheap human labour to work on sugar plantations to generate profits. The Ninth Ward’s history is steeped in injustice and racial politics that residents and politicians (like Cyndi Nguyen!) continue to fight today.

"Sugar: Drive of the Slave Trade" (Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.)

Its residents mainly comprised poor African Americans and immigrant labourers from Ireland, Germany and Italy who wanted a roof over their heads but could not afford proper housing in the city. Housing here was truly not ideal. First, it was the drainage receptacle of New Orleans so it often flooded, and this constant moist environment was a hotbed for disease. Second, it was geographically isolated from the city, so access to opportunities and critical infrastructure were not always robust. In a sanguine turn of events, this did lead to a history of strong civic activism in the Ninth Ward to combat neglect by city officials. Communities in the Ninth Ward have always fought hard to obtain funds and services, and Happy Johnson is one shining example of such resolute and disruptive spirit.

2. Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED)

I originally named this subsection “Hurricane Katrina”, but upon giving it further thought, I think focusing on how the community responded paints a more accurate picture of their spirit than focusing on what hit them. We began with a round of introductions, then Happy Johnson launched straight into emergency responses undertaken after Katrina and the resilience of his community. He talked about how CSED was an organisation that had short-term responses providing aid after Katrina, but was also very forward-thinking and knew all along that they would evolve their mission in the long-term. And evolve they did.

They focus on two missions: restoration and outreach. The first depends on coastal rehabilitation, protecting cypress swamps and forests that act as levees to reduce the height and velocity of storm surges and sheltering man-made levees from waves. Happy Johnson said, “you need to understand your coastal waterways.” 3 miles of wetlands reduce storm surges by 1 foot. During Hurricane Katrina, many levees failed as a result of exposure to waves – but none of the levees protected by wetlands failed. The Ninth Ward used to be surrounded by 30,000 acres of wetland, so you can imagine what superior and natural coastal protection this was – hurricanes would have had to navigate their way through thick, dense cypress forests, and Katrina’s devastating impacts would almost certainly have been significantly alleviated. Unfortunately, the Army Corps of Engineers had built the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) to provide a shorter route for maritime traffic, and it served as a superhighway for hurricanes to travel up the river. The MRGO has since been closed.

But CSED was taking no chances. They invested in infrastructural innovations like (1) a rain barrier on the edge of roofs to collect water instead of letting precipitation fall onto concrete where it can’t percolate and (2) greening the built environment in the Ninth Ward. For instance, the Front Porch Initiative gave grants to incentivise families to plant gardens that naturally retain rainwater and reduce the load on drainage systems. These are complemented by regular Sewerage and Water Board meetings.

They also made sure their efforts were targeted. Understanding their population, specifically the fact that one-fifth of the residents had no cars, they (3) put in place a system where residents could sign up for public transport in the case of a natural disaster, and (4) came up with a system called Evacuspots, where people could walk, ride, or Uber to locations throughout the city to be picked up and safely delivered to a massive shelter in New Orleans or elsewhere. There, they provide tax-free supplies because Happy Johnson says, “we’re not interested in disaster capitalism.” There’s no money to be made here, no ‘opportunity’ – just a profound determination to share with his community how to protect themselves.

This is a more physical aspect of protection. The second aspect, outreach, focuses more on preparing the community psychologically and socially to manage the impacts of disasters. “You need individual and community preparedness.” They work with the culpable – he says, “we help our polluters.” Although there is mandatory compliance to regulations, CSED talks to the polluters to make sure they understand and have the means to comply. They don’t just use a stick to whip polluters into compliance; they accompany them through the process to make sure they have the means to. “They’re both urgent issues – climate change and earning an income. Yes, we need to stop climate change. But you can’t tell that to someone who doesn’t have food on their plate. We have to help our polluters.”

One of his areas of specialisation is youth. He makes sure youth are involved, such as through teaching them how to build a Resilience Kit – whistle, can opener, hand crank radio, clothes, three gallons of water, food for three days – and then challenging them to prepare that in one week. And of course his children’s books! The series is called The Adventures of Happy and Big Wanda – Big Wanda the name of his old truck that he rescued from a junkyard. He told us that in his efforts with CSED, he got lots of press for it, and they told him that he needed to write a book. “I tried it. I wrote a few pages, then read it over and it was trash. But then someone said to me, why don’t you write a kid’s book? I thought, yes, a book would be like 200 pages? But a children’s book – that’s maybe 30 pages. I can do 30 pages.” There’s the genesis of his amazing books – the thought that he could swing something short and sweet. He shares how he combines trauma and water issues and community preparedness and individual preparedness all in a story about a little kid giving out supplies after a disaster in a truck running on vegetable oil. He wants youth in his community to see that character and relate to how he’s feeling, but also see that it’s possible to recover, and it’s possible to prepare for disasters. It’s a lot like Clara’s project where a local character is relatable to its audience, the Balinese, and inspires them to be like her in preserving and protecting their culture and language. To this end, of course when he had only one copy of his book with him, he gave it so someone just as inspiring as him – and Clara went home with a Happy Book™ : )

I liked this session because it was the first in a day where we got to meet people who were not the dominant race in the United States. I shared with Dr. Nicky that I enjoyed this day very much because all three of them (Happy Johnson, Cyndi Nguyen, Cassie Reeves) all talked about both social and environmental resilience very naturally, instead of just focusing on the latter. Because they understood that environmental issues often intersected with social issues, coming from minority backgrounds and witnessing first-hand how their communities may lack food access or environmental protection due to their ethnicity or race.

To end off, here's Happy Johnson's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/happyjohnson and an article I found about his work. He has a winsome personality and such interesting insights, and I can't wait to see how CSED and the Ninth Ward will continue evolving with civic actors like him!

(20 September 2019)