Nashville, TN – Nashville is devastated by last week’s flooding, which killed 23 people in Tennessee. $1.5 billion in damages have been reported as of a couple days ago, and that, “does NOT include public buildings, or any building contents,” according to a news release put out by the city. About two thousand homes have been identified as damaged. National news media have failed to cover the scope of devastation.

As soon as we arrived in Nashville we sat down with the Nashville Homeless Power Project (NHPP) and residents of Tent City to plan how we could best lend our support to those affected by the flood. NHPP is a group that organizes and does leadership development work with homeless people. They work closely with community members of Tent City, a huge homeless encampment downtown. About 150 people were living there before it was completely wiped out by the flood.

“I’ve been living here for 5 years,” said Papa as we toured the site. “I lost everything. The only thing left standing is the grill.”

Residents of Tent City explained to us how special the community was. Tent City was around for over 10 years according to the locals. The city had tried multiple times to shut them down over the years but the popular pressure from residents kept it going. People had different jobs there. One person wrote down the names of everyone staying there. There was a security team in place to ensure the safety of everyone in the community. A newer arrival taught meditation and holistic healing. People cooked, built, and retrieved new items for the camp. It was one of the most elaborate homeless tent cities in the country.

Diesel fuel and sewage cover the land since the flood, leaving a foul smell and environmental hazard that makes the area uninhabitable. Residents say they won’t return. The damage is too bad and the city now has a strong argument to attack people who attempt to move back. Community members of Tent City have built deep bonds with each other and are clear that this is a transition period for them, it’s not the end. If that area remains uninhabitable they will find a new location and rebuild.

“We’re gonna stick together,” said Teetee. “The city split us up into different emergency shelters but we’ll get back together.”

Across town we visited neighborhoods where every house was destroyed. Only the shells remained, with visible water lines sometimes up to 6 feet high on the walls. Alongside the street in front of the homes were all the belongings that formerly decorated the lives of families now struggling to move on. Piles of soaked possessions dripped with brown water and shared the stench of mold and mildew with anyone around. Stuffed animals, computers, furniture, clothes, everything had to go. Dry wall was torn out and thrown to the street, a moldy mess. Everything sat in big piles. In front of every house was their story of incredible loss. The piles waited patiently for a truck to come by to consolidate them and carry them away.

“We lost 95% of everything we had,” said one man behind his house. His backyard borders the stream that flooded the neighborhood. Him and his sister sat outside watching the news and throwing the interior of the house into a big dumpster. “We’ll carry on you know. It’s hard right now but I know that we’ll make it. We’re strong people.”

A car pulled into the driveway and offered me food. Some local volunteers, a woman and her two daughters, had hot food in the trunk of their car – corn, collard greens, chicken, biscuits - and they were going from house to house offering people lunch.

“We just figured people must be hungry. They probably don’t want to bother with cooking anything given everything they’re going through so we’re bringing them some food.”

In another part of town a thick black liquid covered the walls and the ground outside. Numerous people told us that a container of oil from one of several nearby refineries spilled into the area. We went to the place where the spill supposedly happened and found a dark film covering the area.

This may be the worst disaster to happen on U.S. soil since Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. So far the national news media have not given this story nearly the attention it deserves. This flood will test our government’s will to serve people in need. There are many lessons to be learned from Katrina about how institutions respond to catastrophes. Primarily, the private sector uses disasters like this to privatize public services and increase their profits at the expense of poor and working people. Lots of money also gets poured into nonprofit agencies and never reaches the people who need it most. Everyone will have to be vigilant in the coming weeks and months to make sure that people in Nashville are organized. Those directly affected by the flood should have a seat at the table and participate in decisions that affect them in order to ensure their interests come first and not those of people who seek to flood their own pockets with money.

The Nashville Homeless Power Project and residents of Tent City continue to struggle for economic justice in Nashville. We look forward to seeing them at the U.S. Social Forum to continue planning how to support the people of Nashville.

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