Lending a hand in New Orleans leaves Vashon bloggers touched

"Living down here is unlike anything I have ever done. The social fabric is torn apart and there is a sometimes subtle, sometimes in-your-face orchestra of human loss all around you." — Logan Price, Dec. 23, 2006

When best buddies Logan Price and Nick Simmons left the calm of Vashon Island for the chaos of New Orleans last October, they held tickets for a return flight one month later.

"A month seemed like a long time at first, but after being down there a few weeks, it was pretty clear that we couldn't just leave," Price said after returning last week with Simmons from what turned into a nearly seven-month tour of service.

Price, 23, and Simmons, 22, enlisted as volunteers with Common Ground Collective, a disaster-relief organization with a political bent that formed after Hurricane Katrina to help prevent the displacement of people in the city's Ninth Ward -- almost all poor and African American -- by cleaning, clearing out and securing their damaged homes.

Removing debris and health hazards makes it more difficult for the government to declare the houses uninhabitable, seize the land under eminent domain and redevelop the neighborhood.

Raised by socially conscious parents in nontraditional settings -- in a cohousing community, in a political co-op and aboard a sailboat -- they have turned their values into action, doing dirty, dangerous and backbreaking work for disadvantaged Americans in New Orleans.

The two relayed their experiences through a Web log that became required reading among their extended Vashon Island family and like-minded people across the globe.

Price's writings are part indignant, part poetic:

"The floodwaters of Katrina merely further eroded the already deep valleys of inequality, as if oppression like toxic floodwater follows some kind of gravitational law."

The pair conceived the Web site, originally called Vashon Go South, as a letter home. Enhanced by photos, audio and video, the site became something bigger when other Common Ground volunteers spread the word to their own supporters as a way to keep them apprised of the work being done.

The Web site recently relaunched as www.thedispatch.info, with an ambition to become a venue for narratives by others doing hands-on social and political activism.

"We're able to tell a story from a place of not just observing what's going on, but taking part in it," Simmons said. "Our mission isn't journalism. It's getting the work done."

Price said he hopes the site will inspire a generation of peers despondent over the current state of affairs -- war in the Middle East, global warming and unbridled consumerism.

Renewing home ties

"There is a reason to embrace this hectic place. This is where I learn, and I am getting closer to the truth every day, just keeping my eyes open."

Price wrote that entry about New Orleans last February.

"I think of this as his continuing education," Betty Martin, Price's mother, said last Saturday night.

Price and Simmons returned Saturday to Vashon Cohousing, an 18-house, 12-acre community where the pair spent their formative years.

A potluck dinner in the community house brought together about 50 supporters, including several teenagers who sat transfixed through an hourlong slide show that Simmons compiled and Price narrated.

Last fall, some of the same people gathered for a benefit Cajun dinner that raised $4,000 for the New Orleans trip, including about $1,000 in tools sold at cost by the Vashon True Value Hardware store.

"Logan and Nick going down to New Orleans and doing what they did, I think they are kind of akin to the civil-rights workers of the '60s," cohousing resident Cynthia Waller said.

Yet it wasn't that long ago that the two were playing with Legos at Price's house.

Price grew up with a lot of books but no TV. His parents took him and his sisters on trips in an old Volkswagen van. Home-schooled early on, Price spent his high-school years living with his mother in a political co-op in Seattle. He enrolled early at Seattle Central Community College, where he organized students around political issues.

"It's great he can put his ideals into action," Martin said about her son. "Finding a way to do that is not always easy. I'm very proud of him."

While Price is quiet and serious, Simmons is easygoing and playful. An only child reared on a boat sailing the Baja Peninsula, he always has possessed an adventurous spirit, said his father, Evan Simmons. In 1999, when both boys were teenagers, Evan Simmons took them to the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Seattle, where they were tear-gassed the first day.

In New Orleans, Simmons headed Common Ground's busy tech-support team while Price coordinated volunteers -- not as simple as it sounds, as some were using the volunteer center as a flophouse and taking drugs, which was not tolerated.

A grim business

"It can be an emotional and meditative process, scraping out the debris of someone's broken life, what feels like the post-apocalyptic fallout of a failing empire."

That's how Price described gutting a house, which involves removing all belongings, taking the home down to the studs and boarding it shut.

During Saturday night's slide show, Simmons explained how sometimes they had to remove refrigerators that hadn't been opened for 18 months. Although they wore polypropylene suits and respirators to protect against black mold and other toxins, the gas masks didn't block out the vile stench of rotting food.

Housed in an old school that once served as a shelter for hurricane victims, Price and Simmons rationed toilet paper and settled on a steady diet of Chef Boyardee ravioli. One day, Price barely escaped gunfire from a house next to the Common Ground media center, an incident he reflected upon in his blog:

"For the residents of this area bullet lines trace themselves in and out of lives like some strange friend who knows everyone. He comes to dinner, or hangs around the bar, rolls with the police. When children play outside he stands in the distance, he is a regular part of their lives, a feature of the geography."

Another section of the blog deals with the St. Bernard public-housing project, which the government sought to demolish but residents fought to reinhabit with the help of activists.

Price plays journalist, interviewing both St. Bernard activists and residents, including a man who lived there for 37 years. When Price asks him what he wants to tell people, he responds: "Help. Help, help, help now."

Finally back home, Price and Simmons hope to travel to Germany in June to report on the protests surrounding the Group of Eight (G8) summit. Wherever they go, whatever they do, they won't soon forget their education in New Orleans, as Price wrote:

"The best lesson I have learned is show respect to EVERYONE in everything you do, recognize their humanity, and they will show at the very least an (ounce) of respect for you. This has been my M.O. and my greatest armor."

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com