ABSTRACT
In January 2007, a number of students from the University of Baltimore’s Hurricane Student Network and I spent a week in New Orleans in an attempt to contribute a pebble to the massive task of reconstructing and rebuilding New Orleans. During one of my “gutting”2 assignments with the People’s Organizing Committee,3 I was assigned to help clean, gut, and restore a public housing unit. As a group of us went through the household’s contents, encountering numerous rats and other harmful parasites, my first instinct was to throw away all of the contents of the house.
