What happens when a mural celebrating diversity is quickly defaced with hate messages? Is it just a fight among graffitists? Or is it a comments page writ large, reflecting a nation divided?
The writer, a Chicagoan with deep ties to the Seventh Ward as a veteran inner-city teacher, neighbor, and mother, was always regarded as a Yank. Until Katrina hit, and all the rules changed.
The writer moved to the U.S. over 50 years ago, never expecting the two nations to reestablish ties. Nor how she, and other émigrés, might feel about it.