After the aftermath

Long after the flashbulbs pop and mass media has fixed its unblinking gaze on the latest and gravest political scandal, amber alert or natural disaster, small working-class communities are the ones left in the dark to pick up the pieces. LSU professor James Catano has taken leave from the university to shoot documentaries that will tell the stories of two such communities. The first, Steel Voices, follows blue collars in the steel mill trenches of Homestead, Penn., a community depressed since the closing of a major mill in the 1980s. Catano himself grew up in the industrial belly of Ashtabula, Ohio, and labored in steel mills while studying at Notre Dame.

For his other project, Catano travels every few weeks to St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes to meet fishermen and oystermen struggling to make a living and rebuild their communities devastated by Katrina. “I’d never seen anything like it,” Catano says about his first trip to the area. “They’re like ghost towns down there. And as soon as it’s not on the front page, you stop seeing stories about the struggling people.”

Like the Northeastern seaboard, fishing in South Louisiana is not just a pastime or small business, it is a bona fide industry as integral as petrochem or pigskin. But here, fish prices have plummeted, towns remain wrecked and boarded up, decent icehouses are rarer than snowballs in hell, and the government—both state and federal—is not providing enough support for a quick rebound.

Despite this, Catano is amazed by the resolve he’s seen from those he’s interviewed. “If you consider the seven stages of grieving, I’d say they’re halfway between anger and, well, they’re still pretty angry. But they’re not giving up.” Catano aims to finish a short version of the documentary next summer and seek more funding for a feature-length film.