Do you think people will be offended?
Bichlbaum: Not really, no. In our experience, at least the people that we've talked to on the ground, in these communities, they're not offended by it. They were extremely excited about it, they thought it was a great thing. I hear people saying, "You've raised false hope, you're making them think they're finally getting something from the government which has mistreated them for so many years," well, yeah… there's a chance.
However, we spoke to people in that community, people from the Lafitte housing projects who want to get back in, and they said, "We've been so disappointed, for so many years, you don't have to worry about hurting our feelings. Do whatever's most effective, do it, don't worry about how it affects us. If it draws attention to this, we can handle it. That's all we want, and if there's a few hurt feelings, we can handle it. We have hit rock bottom, we've been so mortally disappointed for so long, we can handle anything." We spoke to this man the day before, we spoke to others, and they had the same message, so we said, "Okay, we'll do it." And we had the reaction we expected. We don't actually care if anybody else is offended. That's fine with us, as long as they're not.
What effect do you hope to have?
Bichlbaum: Well, we hope to shame HUD. We hope to shame HUD, and the city, into listening to what people really want, and what people want is to get back into their homes. What the city should want is to get people back into their homes. You think about the issue for a moment and you realize this is what should happen. It would be good for everybody. And we hope that what we did can penetrate the people that are talking about it in a different way. That's the whole goal.
That's the ideal result -- having had experience doing this, what do you think actually will happen?
Bichlbaum: I don't know. In this case, you have a situation that's on the brink. We've never really had this, a situation that's on the brink of changing. Everything could change. If pressure is put on HUD, they could change their policy. There's nothing set in stone about it; it's like a house of cards, and all you have to do is poke it, show what's actually there, and it will all fall down, at least that's what we hope. But we don't know, because we've never been in a situation like this, where everything could just change suddenly. The real effect of what we've done in the past is to get a little more attention for topics that are already being fought over. In this case we hope that happens -- I mean, it has happened -- but we also hope that eventually people are outraged enough to force a change in HUD's policies. They already are outraged, but not enough people know what's going on, even in New Orleans. I mean, just look at the random contractors who came. They were outraged that HUD was going to tear these things down. All you have to do is show this to people, and they're outraged. If enough people are outraged, HUD won't be able to do it.
Is there any fear of legal repercussions for what you do?
Bonanno: Well, not exactly. We've been concerned about it at different times, but we've made sure not to find out whether it's legal. (Laughs.) Nobody really knows whether what we do is legal or illegal, and we think it couldn't be, because it's ethically appropriate. It's perhaps the best thing that we could possibly do as far as the ethics goes. The legality, a lot of that depends on whether these people press charges, and so far nobody has.
About the writer
A contributing editor with SMITH, a new magazine about storytelling, Alex Koppelman is the media critic for Dragonfire, an online magazine, and has appeared on CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC and CourtTV as a commentator on legal issues.
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