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The Poisoned Generation
中毒的一代
The story of a decades-long lead-poisoning lawsuit in New Orleans illustrates how the toxin destroys black families and communities alike.
新奧爾良市歷經數十年的鉛中毒訴訟揭露了黑人家庭和社區是如何被毒物破壞的
CASEY BILLIESON WAS fighting against the world.
CASEY BILLIESON曾與整個世界對抗。
Hers was a charge carried by many mothers: moving mountains to make the best future for her two sons. But the mountains she faced were taller than most. To start, she had to raise her boys in the Lafitte housing projects in Treme, near the epicenter of a crime wave in New Orleans. In the spring of 1994, like mothers in violent cities the world over, Billieson anticipated the bloom in murders the thaw would bring. Fueled by the drug trade and a rising scourge of police corruption and brutality, violence rose to unseen levels that year, and the city’s murder rate surged to the highest in the country.
Casey Billieson背負著與許多母親同樣的重擔：盡其所能為兩個兒子創造光明的未來， 然而她面對的困難是異乎尋常的。 一開始， 她就不得不在Lafitte住房專案社區(新奧爾良市公共住房專案之一， 公共住房是由政府為低收入者建立的居住設施)撫養孩子， 這裡靠近新奧爾良犯罪高發核心地區。 1994年春季， 像其他生活在暴力充斥城市的母親一樣， Billieson預感到了即將到來的犯罪浪潮。 毒品交易橫行、員警腐敗殘暴、謀殺率全美第一， 新奧爾良當年暴力之氾濫令人觸目驚心。
Four hundred and twenty four people were slain in New Orleans in 1994, a murder rate that may have been the highest ever in any American city. Rival drug dealers killed each other while cops killed witnesses and whistleblowers in plain sight. Almost 1 percent of all young black men in the city were killed that year. Many of those murders were committed in the yards and units near where her sons, Ryan and Ronnie—then aged 5 and 3 years old—played or stayed with relatives and friends. Even as a Bill Clinton-led federal government used popular fears of “superpredators” to redouble the nation’s commitment to mass incarceration, Billieson attempted the superhuman task of trying to provide her children with a way out of Lafitte.
1994年， 新奧爾良市有424人被殺害， 這可能是美國史上最高謀殺率。 販毒團夥之間戰火紛飛， 而員警公然殺害目擊者和舉報者。 將近1%的黑人青年死於非命。 許多謀殺就發生在她所在社區附近，
But the obstacles for a young mother and her two children ran deeper than the onslaught in the streets. “They played inside a lot,” Billieson said, “and we thought they’d be safe that way, but then we learned even that was bad for them.”
但這個年輕母親和她兩個兒子面臨的障礙遠不僅是街頭犯罪。 “孩子們大多時間待在家裡” Billieson 說， “我們原以為那樣更安全， 後來才知道並非如此。 ”
Inside the apartment, her boys were insulated from the crossfire outside. But like thousands of others seeking shelter behind the peeling walls muffling the bubbling bass dripping from Crown Vic speakers, the poison of lead would find a way into her sons’ bodies all the same. Ryan and Ronnie, along with thousands of other poor children in New Orleans whose parents believed they could shelter their children from the violence outside, would become an entire poisoned generation.
雖然公寓可以將外面的交火隔絕開， 然而那斑駁破舊的牆壁無法阻止鉛毒入侵孩子的身體。 Ryan、Ronnie 和新奧爾良市成千上萬窮人家孩子， 是整整一代遭受毒害的人。
Lead was only one of many ecological risks her family faced. The playgrounds where Ryan and Ronnie played often brimmed with pools of fetid, standing water—owing to New Orleans’s fabled and constant flooding—that were sometimes tainted with battery acid. Billieson had heard tell about the regurgitated sewage and chemical waste from Louisiana’s booming petrochemical operations that flowed back into dirt common spaces where her children learned to walk, all while they breathed in the emissions from the nearby roads and highways.
鉛僅僅是他們面對的風險之一， Ryan 和 Ronnie 玩耍的場地經常被臭水塘淹沒， 這些新奧爾良經常性洪水導致的積水， 有時會被蓄電池酸液污染。 Billieson 聽別人說過， 路易斯安那繁榮的化學工業排放的汙物，
Some other kids across the virtually all-black New Orleans housing projects had it even worse. That year, the Press Park section of the Desire projects and its nearby elementary school were declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency for a concoction of known contaminants leaching from a closed landfill.
新奧爾良住房項目居民幾乎全是黑人， 有些孩子情況更糟。 當年， Press Park 社區和小學因為遭到廢棄填埋場的淋濾污染， 被美國環保署宣佈為超級基金污染場址(美國《環境應對、賠償和責任綜合法》， 也稱《超級基金法》。 美國環保署(EPA)依據《超級基金法》， 建立了從環境監測、風險評價到場地修復的標準化管理體系)。
Billieson did her best to protect her boys, and she certainly wasn’t naive about the sicknesses that dogged her neighborhoods. People in the projects were well aware that their environments weren’t healthy, and she went the extra mile; researching the specific risks her kids faced, including those from lead, at the public library. But what do you do when everything is contaminated?
Billieson 盡其所能保護孩子， 而且她絕非對危害一無所知， 住房項目居民很清楚環境不健康， 她甚至還到圖書館查了這些危害的細節。 但是， 當周遭一切都被污染時， 你又能做什麼？
Around the time Ryan was entering kindergarten and Ronnie was supposed to be learning how to count to 10, the boys began struggling with the childhood learning goals Billieson set for them. “They had learning disabilities, and when I say disabilities, I mean learning at a slower pace,” Billieson told me. But black kids in the projects were written off and diagnosed with learning disabilities all the time, and good, affordable doctors were scarce. There still wasn’t much even the most diligent parents could do.
當時Ryan 正是上幼稚園的年齡，
One afternoon word spread around Lafitte that a group of white folks—a rarity in any of the projects outside of the occasional housing authority official or police officer—was asking around about lead poisoning. “A lawyer and his team were in the area doing testing on the soil, and I was on my way to the doctor’s office with my kids,” Billieson said. “So I stopped and had a conversation with them about lead poisoning. A suggestion from them was to have the kids tested.”
一天下午社區傳言一群白人——除了偶爾出現的專案主管和警官， 白人可是稀客——正在走訪調查鉛中毒問題。 “一個律師和他的團隊在做土壤測試， 當時我正要帶孩子們去看醫生， ”Billieson 說， “所以我停下來和他們談了談， 他們建議給孩子做個測試。 ”
When the blood came back, Billieson found out that both of her children were poisoned and likely had been for years. In a panic, she called the lawyer who’d left his card with her. That phone call began a legal war of attrition that spanned more than two decades, three presidents, and one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history.
血測結果出來了， Billieson 發現兩個孩子都中毒了， 而且很可能中毒多年。 驚慌之中， 她撥通了律師留給她的電話。 這通電話開啟了一場漫長的法律消耗戰，
GARY GAMBEL WAS a young man in 1994. Just a few years past the Louisiana state bar exam, he’d recently helped start the law firm that now sits in the heart of the business district and boasts his name across the front door. He was known among friends and law school classmates for his activist leanings, and those leanings had turned into full-blown fever by the time he met Casey Billieson that spring day and told her to get her kids tested for lead poisoning.
1994年， Gary Gambel 還是個小夥兒， 剛通過路易斯安那州律師資格考試沒幾年， 現在他的律師事務所坐落在商業中心聲名遠揚。 他當時在朋友和校友當中以激進傾向而出名， 當那年春天碰到Casey Billieson 、讓她孩子做鉛測試後，這種激進傾向達到了頂峰。
Gambel had been trying to find a way to investigate the lead-poisoning issue in New Orleans housing developments ever since an old associate of his uncovered several positive lead-poisoning tests while working a different case involving public-housing residents.
Gambel 的一個老同事曾在辦理案件時揭露過幾起鉛污染問題，從那時起他就一直設法調查新奧爾良市住房專案的鉛污染。
“He called, and he said we had a doctor who works for a medical program in the projects and all these kids are coming in lead poisoned,” Gambel told me. “So I went to go meet them, and I met one mom and then her neighbor.”
“他打電話給我，說有個居民健康計畫醫生，還說所有孩子都鉛中毒了。” Gambel 對我說，“所以我去見了他們，然後碰到一個母親，還有她的鄰居。”
His plan was originally to take some of cases on a pro-bono basis, helping families move out of lead-contaminated homes and pressuring the housing authority into providing them abated or renovated units. But he soon found that just about all the families he spoke to had kids who tested positive for lead poisoning, and the city hadn’t abated any units across its developments. Gambel’s response when realized he’d stumbled onto one of the worst public-health crises in America was one of awe: “I said, ‘God, we need to do something.’”
原本他打算以公益律師身份接幾個案子，幫助這些家庭遷出鉛污染公寓，向當局施壓給他們提供新住處。但是他很快發現，他詢問的所有家庭的鉛毒測試都呈陽性，政府卻沒有絲毫作為。當Gambel 意識到自己涉足的案件是美國最大公共健康危機之一時，他的回應是：“老天啊，我們必須要做點什麼。”
Even then, dozens of positive blood tests later, Gambel—a business lawyer by training—and his small start-up firm didn’t quite realize the nature of the leviathan they hunted. The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) had been labeled as a “troubled” housing authority by the federal office of Housing and Urban Development since 1979, and by 1994, HANO housing was among the most miserable places to live in the country.
即便拿到大量鉛毒測試陽性結果，Gambel ——這名商業律師以及他剛起步的小事務所，依然沒有充分認識到他們面對的困難。新奧爾良房屋委員會(HANO)自1979年以來就被聯邦住房與城市發展部(HUD)稱作“混亂的”。到1994年，HANO成為了美國最痛苦居住地之一。
HANO was once the crown jewel of the mid-20th century program of federally funded public housing. Even at the height of Jim Crow, the well-built HANO projects anchored mixed-class, inner-city black neighborhoods. But the projects had deteriorated since then, aided by white flight, reductions in services, and a backlash against black political power. By the time Billieson was entering adulthood in the late ’80s, the big projects—Calliope, Magnolia, Florida, Lafitte, and Desire—that had once been known as brick bastions of the black working class, were known through hip-hop for bleakness and toughness.
20世紀中期，HANO曾是聯邦政府基金公共住房專案翹楚。建造過Jim Crow 這樣的混合階層模範社區。但住房專案自那之後逐漸變質了，服務減少、遷居來的白人發起反黑人政權浪潮。到80年代末期Billieson 成年時，曾被稱作黑人工人階層堡壘的幾大住房項目，變成了悲慘的代名詞。
HANO authorities simply didn’t respond to thousands of complaints or keep buildings up to code. In 1994, 1 5 years after HANO was labeled a “troubled” development, HUD inspectors visited 150 units in the neighborhood and found that all 150 units failed to meet standards—with problems including peeling lead paint, asbestos exposure, and massive roach infestations—and that none of the units had been updated at all in 10 years. HUD rates housing authorities on a 100-point quality scale, with a score below 60 indicating a “troubled” development. In 1994, Billieson was raising her boys in a project that had just received a score of 26.
HANO當局沒有理會大量投訴，也沒有按規定修繕建築。1994年，HUD督察員調查了150個公寓，發現這些公寓全不合格，問題包括鉛塗料污染、石棉污染、蟑螂氾濫等等，這些公寓都10年來沒有任何改善。HUD 用百分制給公寓評分，低於60分即被視為“混亂的”。而Billieson 居住的公寓僅得到26分。
There is no safe level of lead in the human body. Even at low levels, chronic exposure can damage the brain and the central nervous system, and can cause symptoms from hearing loss to IQ deterioration to lack of impulse control. Over time, lead gets absorbed into the bones, making them brittle and stunted, and causes teeth to crack and rot. Exposure in young children with developing minds and growing bones is most destructive, and in times of serious stress and trauma—common in places like the New Orleans projects in the 1990s—those effects are magnified. Each poisoned child in HANO dealt with at least some of those issues, many or most of them for life.
人體對鉛元素不存在安全劑量，如果長期接觸，即便含量很低，也會損害大腦和中樞神經系統，導致聽力損失，智力衰退。時間久了，鉛會被骨骼吸收，造成骨骼易碎、發育不良，牙齦腐爛。這對發育期兒童來說尤為致命。這些症狀在HANO 項目兒童身上非常明顯，他們大都受害終身。
The first sign of lead trouble in HANO came in 1985, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set the standard for lead-poisoning intervention at 25 micrograms of metal per deciliter of blood. Kids were regularly testing at levels well above that level across New Orleans in 1985, even more so in the projects. In 1987, a group of residents in the St. Thomas housing development, led by resident Virginia Mitchell, filed a lead-poisoning lawsuit against HANO that was eventually settled with a consent decree demanding HANO take action to abate lead in its units.
1985年，美國疾控中心(CDC)設立了鉛中毒起訴標準——每100毫升血液中含超過25微克鉛即可視作中毒，人們隨即發現了HANO 的鉛問題。St. Thomas 社區居民自發成立小組，將HANO 告上法庭，最後雙方達成和解，要求HANO採取措施治理污染。
HANO did nothing, and the trickle of complaints became a deluge in 1991, after the CDC decreased its actionable guidelines for lead exposure from 25 to 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood. According to a 1993 Government Accountability Office report, “during 1991 the New Orleans Housing Authority settled over 60 lawsuits that cost over $1 million in claims and attorneys’ fees.”
然而HANO 什麼也沒做。1991年，CDC把起訴標準從25微克降到了10微克，人們的憤怒達到了頂點。1993年政府問責報告中稱：“1991年一年內，HANO吃了超過60個官司，賠償超過1百萬美元。”
The onslaught of lawsuits was such that HANO lost its ability to secure commercial liability insurance. HUD forced the city to cede control over the HANO developments to a succession of private third-party managers who still couldn’t get a handle on lead poisoning. The city-appointed board and the managers squabbled constantly, according to federal oversight reports.
大量訴訟讓HANO聲名狼藉，甚至沒有商業保險公司願意接單。HUD命令HANO將管理權委任給協力廠商私人組織。然而鉛污染問題依舊沒有改善，委任的董事會和管理層經常吵得不可開交。
While Gambel was looking for potential plaintiffs, HUD declared HANO in breach of its contract and stepped in to create an oversight agreement. The scandals regularly made national news outlets. A Washington Post article from April 1994 quoted the former HANO managing director Shelia Danzey: "I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel for at least five or six years, and that's a light that is pretty dim.”
正當Gambel 尋找潛在客戶時，HUD宣佈HANO違反條約，並介入監督。這些醜聞經常出現在媒體頭條，1994年4月華盛頓郵報一篇文章引用HANO前主任Shelia Danzey 的話說：“過去5、6年我看不到什麼希望，即便有也非常渺茫。”
Dilapidated homes remain fenced off by the Housing Authority of New Orleans near the Desire Development Area. (Claire Bangser)
Desire社區附近被HANO隔離的廢棄房屋
It’s no surprise then, that a legion of lead-poisoned black residents in the New Orleans projects had answered Gambel’s summons, most of them concerned mothers and their affected children.
考慮到所有背景，新奧爾良市遭鉛中毒的黑人居民響應Gambel 號召就一點不奇怪了。他們中大部分是焦慮的母親和受影響的孩子。
There were Billieson and her two sons. There was Sheila Green in Lafitte, whose twin sons, Ronald and Donald, tested well over the 1991 lead guidelines, with one son receiving almost four times the legally actionable amount and exhibiting hyperactivity and multiple learning disorders. There was Joyce Galmon in C.J. Peete Housing, whose four kids had speech problems. There was Detress Lewis, also in C.J. Peete, whose two children had blood-lead levels twice as high as even the looser 1985 guidelines, and whose complications were so severe that they had to be hospitalized.
這裡面就有Billieson 和她兩個兒子，以及Sheila Green ，她一個孩子血鉛含量超過標準4倍，有嚴重的認知障礙。Joyce Galmon 四個孩子都有語言障礙，Detress Lewis 兩個孩子超標兩倍，嚴重的併發症迫使他們住院治療。
Hundreds of women who’d been born in the projects and poisoned with lead their whole lives passed metals in utero to their children, whose first breaths took in clouds of white leaden dust. Lead levels per deciliter of blood among the plaintiffs regularly measured in the 20- to 40-microgram range, with spikes above 50 micrograms. (The water-contamination crisis that began in Flint, Michigan, in 2014 was triggered by blood-lead levels over the current upper limit of five micrograms per deciliter.)
成百上千的女性出生在受污染社區，她們的孩子也因為血液傳遞而遭受毒害，原告的血鉛水準通常在20到40微克之間，最高的超過50。(作為對比，2014年密西根州水污染導致的鉛中毒危機，當時鉛上限標準是5微克。)
“I had to get involved,” Billieson told me. “When I looked at the flyers and the books, I knew it was life or death.”
“我必須做點什麼，” Billieson 告訴我，“當我看到名單和資料時，我意識到這是生死攸關。”
NEW ORLEANS PROBABLY won’t ever face a lead-poisoning crisis nearly as bad as the HANO episodes of the ’90s. But an understanding of just how toxic the substance is has risen over the past few years, even as science has revealed the sheer ubiquity of its remnants in places as disparate as Los Angeles, Flint, and Baltimore.
新奧爾良從未經歷過像 HANO事件那樣嚴重的鉛中毒危機。近些年，隨著科學研究發現鉛殘留在洛杉磯、弗林特、巴爾默特等地普遍存在，公眾對鉛的危害也愈加瞭解。
For some HANO kids, even the stability of a fast-food job is permanently out of reach. Marcel Coleman—one of the then-infant plaintiffs in the Billieson court dockets—was shot and killed in the Florida neighborhood in 2015. Among the leading plaintiffs, Ronald Green was also killed, and many others didn’t make it to see the settlement. Some of the young men—made turbulent, their mothers claim, from the lingering effects of lead—who should have collected settlements missed out, locked away in places with names like Angola, Dixon, and Elayn Hunt.
對很多HANO 孩子來說，即便一份速食業的穩定工作也是遙不可及的。Marcel Coleman——Billieson 訴訟原告嬰兒之一，2015年被槍殺。許多人都沒活著看到處理結果。其中許多年輕人製造了騷亂，她們的母親聲稱，因為鉛中毒揮之不去的影響和久拖未決的處理，他們只能被關在Angola、Dixon、Elayn Hunt 之類的地方(矯正中心)。
For each of these missing victims, the unasked question is the same: How much of a role did lead poisoning play in their fates?
I spoke to Howard Mielke at his lab at the Tulane Medical Center. Mielke, a geographer and environmental researcher, is one of the most prominent lead-poisoning experts in the country, has dominated the lead-poisoning research in New Orleans for years.
每個受害者都有一個同樣的問題：鉛中毒究竟多大程度上改變了他們的命運？
我在杜蘭大學醫學中心和Howard Mielke 進行了交談，他是地理學家和環境學家，也是美國最著名的鉛中毒專家，多年來主導著新奧爾良鉛中毒研究。
In 2012, Mielke and co-author Sammy Zahran examined crime—specifically aggravated assault—in six cities, including New Orleans, and its relationship to lead in gasoline emissions. Their results were startling: Increases in lead aerosols were strongly associated with increased crime, and according to their research, differences in lead levels accounted for about 90 percent of the variation in crime between the six study cities.
2012年，Mielke 和Sammy Zahran 合作研究了包括新奧爾良的六個城市的犯罪率——尤其是嚴重傷害罪，和汽油鉛排放量的關係。結果是令人震驚的：含鉛氣溶膠量的增加和犯罪率增加有很強的相關性，相關性高達90%。
Howard Mielke looks at soil samples in his lab at Tulane University School of Medicine. Mielke, a research professor in the pharmacology department, researches the causes and impacts of lead contamination. He was an expert witness in the Billieson v. City of New Orleans case. (Claire Bangser)
Howard Mielke查看他在杜蘭大學實驗室中的土壤樣本，他是藥物學系教授，研究鉛污染的起源和影響，他是Billieson 案件中的專家證人
The lead-crime conundrum is a relatively recent addition to the sociology of crime. In early 2016, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones detailed the chronology of this line of research, which actually starts in 1994. Rick Nevin, a HUD consultant on the risk-impact analysis for lead-paint reduction rules, developed a hypothesis that the main societal cost of lead poisoning was its effect on crime, mediated through its cognitive effects on boys and young men. That hypothesis was expanded by Amherst College researcher Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, who identified critical pathways of the potential effect—with juvenile delinquency, ADHD, and low IQ connecting populations of young black men to ultimate criminal outcomes and incarceration.
在犯罪社會學研究中，鉛—犯罪關係是比較新的命題。2016年初，《鐘斯母親》專欄作家Kevin Drum 詳細介紹了該研究的歷史。1994年，HUD顧問Rick Nevin 提出假設，鉛中毒造成的主要社會影響，是影響青少年認知能力從而導致犯罪增加，阿默斯特學院研究員Jessica Wolpaw Reyes豐富了該假設，他提出了影響的具體方式——青少年犯罪、注意力障礙、低智商共同導致黑人青年的高犯罪率和入獄率。
Enthusiasm about the lead-crime hypothesis has been blunted by recent research. A 2015 report from the Brennan Center on factors that caused the decline in crime since the ’90s calls the hypothesis “controversial,” and notes that some elements of Reyes’s work have been difficult to reproduce, although it does list lead poisoning as one of 13 possible crime factors in the decade. A study that same year by researchers Janet Lauritsen, Maribeth Rezey, and Karen Heimer also did not find a significant correlation between lagged lead poisoning and homicides using a different dataset.
但鉛—犯罪研究熱度近年有所下降，2015年布倫南中心的一份報告稱，90年代以來逐漸下降的犯罪率證明該假說是“有爭議的”，雖然Reyes把 鉛列為13種犯罪因素之一，但他的實驗結果很難重現。另一批研究者使用不同資料在同年展開的研究，沒有發現鉛中毒和謀殺之間有顯著關係。
Even if lead plays a smaller role in crime outcomes than Mielke, Nevin, and Reyes suspect, it’s possible that it contributed to the most violent time and place the country has ever seen, especially given the extremes found in HANO. What’s known without a doubt is that communities don’t thrive when poisoned, regardless of whether that poisoning is the disease or just another symptom.
即便鉛中毒的影響比某些學者猜想的小，鉛也很可能是那段前所未有的暴力時期的促成因素。我們所能肯定的是，一個中毒的團體不會興旺。
Now, even as the White House pursues the marginalization of the EPA, HUD, and lead-remediation programs, familiar alarms sound in places like East Chicago and in Flint, where the water is still not quite safe to drink.
現在，白宮正試圖邊緣化EPA、HUD、鉛修復項目，與此同時，像東芝加哥、弗林特這樣的地方的水依然不安全，人們依然生活在警報之中。
THE MERITS OF the plaintiffs’ cases against HANO seem obvious in retrospect, but their battle was not destined to be easy, nor would it guarantee them better lives.
在對HANO的訴訟中，原告的優勢似乎是不可阻擋的。然而事實是，他們的戰鬥註定不簡單，也無法保證更好的生活。
For starters, when Gambel took on the cases it was near-impossible to settle with HANO or receive any money from judgments against them, since they didn’t have any liability insurance. Plaintiffs could technically win, and often did, but since they couldn’t exactly seize a public-housing authority’s assets in cases of nonpayment, they often won big fat piles of nothing.
首先，當Gambel 接手這個案子時，幾乎不可能和HANO達成任何賠償和解，因為沒有保險公司給他們提供保險。原告們經常在法律層面上勝訴，但判決書是一紙空文，因為即便委員會拒賠，他們也無法逮捕任何官員。
"When I filed that lawsuit, in hindsight I was just naive,” Gambel said. “As a young lawyer and a start-up firm, there were a lot of people asking me, ‘How are you going to do this?’”
“事後來看，當時我還是太年輕了，” Gambel 說，“作為一個年輕的、事業剛起步的律師，當時許多大佬問我‘你有什麼金剛鑽？’。”
It helped that Gambel’s work had attracted the interest of lawyers from other firms that had experience suing HANO. Among them was Joe Bruno Sr., a trial lawyer known for taking on huge cases. In contrast to Gambel, then a fledgling business lawyer at a small firm with an environmentalist streak, Bruno was television’s idea of a lawyer, and he was known even then for taking on big cases against big companies after big disasters.
所幸Gambel的工作吸引了不少有HANO訴訟經驗的同行，辯護律師Joe Bruno Sr. 是專接大案的大佬，相比Gambel 這種乳臭未乾的菜鳥，Bruno是電視偶像的存在。
Bruno had represented one of the earlier plaintiffs in a lead-poisoning suit against HANO, in which a judge handed down a million-dollar judgment that the plaintiff couldn’t collect because of insufficient liability coverage. But his approach informed the gambit the plaintiffs needed to try to be able to recoup something. In that first case, Bruno’s team had found that HANO’s private-property manager had a limited pool of liability insurance and could be successfully sued.
Bruno曾接受過一個HANO案子，法官判了上百萬的賠償，超過了承保範圍。但是他的手段讓原告看到了希望，Bruno團隊發現HANO的私人財產管理部門有一個保險資金池，最終被成功執行賠償。
By the time the Billieson-led plaintiffs filed suit, HANO was run by the private-management company C.J. Brown, which had liability insurance from a few different companies. C.J. Brown was contracted by the city of New Orleans under HUD’s directive to clean up the crumbling housing developments, but their method of doing so actually made the lead problem worse and, in turn, made them potentially liable for poisoning hundred of people.
Billieson 案件中，HANO當時已被私人管理公司C.J. Brown 接管，這家公司有好幾份商業險。HUD指定該公司處理住房專案問題，但是他們的處理措施反倒加重了鉛問題，所以，他們是個潛在的賠償來源。
“C.J. Brown wanted to go in and renovate whole sections of development instead of constant abatement and maintenance all over,” Gambel told me, “which led to a sliver of the units getting a lot better while most of the rest got worse.”
“C.J. Brown 公司插手後想把住房項目推倒重來，而沒有穩步改善、減少(問題)，” Gambel 對我說，“結果是極少部分人獲益，大部分情況更糟了。”
"My thinking was that if you could get an enormous judgment against them, maybe with the pressure, HUD might fund it,” he said. “And let's be realistic: Cases get settled because of pressure. The defendant believes that if they proceed to trial, they're likely to pay more money than if they settled the case."
“我的想法是，如果能龐大的訴訟向他們施壓，那麼他們的上級，HUD可能會撥款，讓我們現實點吧：只有施壓事情才能得到解決，被告會感覺拖下去會花更多錢，不如早點妥協。”
HANO cases and suits for a raft of different issues, including lead poisoning, were so backed up that the Louisiana Supreme Court had to appoint a special judge to handle them, Judge Joe DiRosa. The first step for the team of lawyers required establishing damages to a whole class of kids, and liability on behalf of HANO, C.J. Brown, and the contractors they used.
HANO案件包括鉛中毒等一系列問題，該案件得到的呼聲是如此之高以至於路易斯安那州最高法院不得不指派一個特別法官——Joe DiRosa 來審理。律師團隊第一步要求先全面評估孩子們的傷害狀況，以及HANO、C.J. Brown公司和他們使用的建築承包商的責任。
There was clearly lead paint, not only in the housing units, but peeling in common areas like stairwells and around outdoor rails. But it turns out that paint was only one avenue by which children in HANO projects were being exposed to lead. HANO lawyers brought forward Mielke to testify as an expert witness. His research indicated that much of the lead in the inner-city’s soil near roads and highways came from leaden fumes deposited by automobiles in the decades before the stuff was banned from gasoline, although not from the home.
鉛塗料是一個顯而易見的因素，屋內裝修和公共設施都有。但鉛塗料只是接觸源之一。律師團隊提請Mielke做鑒定證人，他的研究指出城市中公路附近土壤中的鉛，大部分來自長期以來機動車含鉛燃料排放。
“In the Billieson case, I looked at it differently from the people saying it was all lead-based paint,” Mielke told me. As a crusader against soil-based lead poisoning and its connection to automobiles, Mielke said his testimony was not that the children of HANO weren’t damaged nor that they didn’t deserve recompense, but that the plaintiffs had gotten at least some of the causality wrong.
“在Billieson 中，人們都說鉛污染全部來自塗料，我與他們看法不同，”Mielke 對我說，作為反土壤鉛污染的改革者，Mielke 說他的證詞並不意味孩子們沒有受到傷害或不應得到賠償，而是原告們多少搞錯了因果關係。
The trial court originally denied the class-action certification based on that testimony and the murky nature of the “constellation of factors” contributing to varying individual levels of lead poisoning. But on appeal, a judge found that pieces of Mielke’s testimony actually helped established culpability for HANO, because HANO was still responsible for abating and cleaning lead in the soil. “Mielke was a great guy, and he really cares about this stuff,” recalled Gambel. “And I think his testimony actually showed how bad we needed to do something.”
初審法庭最初駁回了集體訴訟，理由就是這份專業證詞，以及導致不同個體鉛中毒水準的“多種因素”的模糊性。但在上訴法庭中，一個法官發現，Mielke 的證詞其實能證明HANO的過錯，因為HANO有責任減少、清除土壤中的鉛。
The appeals court finally certified as a class the children who lived in the HANO projects during C.J. Brown’s management at some point between birth and the age of 6, but still the saga dragged on. DiRosa died in 1997, and a succession of ad hoc judges was appointed by the state Supreme Court to replace him. For the next six years, Billieson et. al v. City of New Orleans languished between courts.“We put this case together for trial over 20 times,” Gambel said.
上訴法庭最終認同了C.J. Brown 公司管理HANO專案期間年齡在0~6歲的孩子們的訴訟主張。然而好事多磨，DiRosa (即前文特別法官)在1997年過世了，高等法院指派了一些臨時法官替代他。在接下來的6年間，Billieson 們在和新奧爾良市的戰鬥中疲於奔命。
As the case continued, the issues of lead poisoning and other environmental dysfunctions in the HANO projects continued unresolved. Even though the pressure on HANO from the lawsuit spurred a limited campaign of lead abatement in the projects, kids still showed up poisoned at doctor’s visits. For seven years after Gambel and Bruno’s team filed the lawsuit in district court, the lead levels in homes and in children’s blood remained high enough to qualify them to join the class.
案件如火如荼，而HANO鉛中毒和機能障礙問題依然沒有解決。受案件壓力，HANO開展了有限的鉛治理專案，孩子們依然顯示出中毒症狀，在Gambel、Bruno團隊提起訴訟7年後，孩子們的血鉛水準依然足以加入到集體訴訟中。
As the list of plaintiffs compounded, Gambel and the other lawyers who frequently visited plaintiffs and advocated on their behalf became known to the residents of the HANO housing developments as “the babies’ lawyers,” although the people they represented stopped being babies long before the case approached resolution. Those children had children, and those children grew up in those same projects. The group of mothers who’d led the charge against HANO as young adults themselves began to watch a generation of their grandchildren grow up in their homes and choke on the same lead dust.
隨著原告規模越來越大，Gambel 和其他律師經常拜訪原告和為他們發聲的行為在HANO居民中聲名遠揚，他們被稱為“‘嬰兒的’律師”。雖然他們的委託人在案件接近解決時早已成年，但當年的這些孩子也有了孩子，他們的孩子在同樣的社區長大，那些曾經的年輕母親，目睹了孫輩出生，然後吸入著同樣的鉛塵。
Billieson did what she could, even though the plaintiffs were rarely actually called to court to testify. “I did so many depositions, and it still took years and years,” she told me. It seemed to her, like it seemed to most of the HANO residents, that the cycles that kept them bound to the poisoned lands of the generations before them would never really change.
Billieson 盡力了，雖然原告很少被傳至法庭作證，“我做了那麼多口供，案子依然年復一年拖著。”她告訴我，在她和大部分居民看來，將他們一代代人束縛在中毒土地上的命運怪圈，永遠不會改變。
Then in August of 2005, walls of water from Hurricane Katrina buckled the Louisiana levees and destroyed everything.
直到2005年8月，卡特裡娜颶風的巨浪衝垮了路易斯安那州防洪堤，摧毀了一切。
AFW OF THE places the denizens of HANO escaped still stand, walled off by barbed wire. Press Park is a ghost town of brick monoliths, with each building marked by the hand of God in a green high-water mark and by the hand of humans in sprawling graffiti, with some characters stretching over 20 feet tall. The old industrial red-brick Moton Elementary stands sentinel behind them, an eerie malevolence of ivy curtains, skittering rats, and broken windows.
如今居民已經離開了，但HANO建築依在，被鐵絲網封鎖起來的廢墟荒蕪破敗、鏽跡斑斑、老鼠橫行，紀念著讓人毛骨悚然的往事。
When the surging floodwaters broke through the Industrial Seaway and Lake Pontchartrain, they didn’t single out races or neighborhoods to target. The city and its layers of segregation and poverty did the job of assigning victims themselves. Housing discrimination in the city had forced generations of black residents into segregated wards and neighborhoods, often located in the areas with the highest risk for both lead poisoning and flooding.
當湍急的洪水掃過城市時，大自然並沒有針對某一個種族或社區。而人類自身根據種族和財富指定了受害者。這座城市的居住隔離強迫黑人居住在一起，那些社區大多位於鉛污染和洪水風險最高的地區。
The resulting destruction was more thorough and more devastating than any single incident of racial violence or hatred. One statistic about Katrina helps put things into context: A Brown University report showed that the most damaged areas in the city were 75 percent black, while undamaged areas were only 46 percent black. And some of the most thorough and permanent depopulation in the city came in the HANO “Big Four” projects—C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, Lafitte, and B.W. Cooper. Casey Billieson and her two boys—then teenagers—escaped the chronic horrors of Lafitte by fleeing an acute catastrophe.
這場災難比任何種族暴力和仇恨來得都徹底。布朗大學的一份災情報告顯示，受災最嚴重的地區75%是黑人居民，未受災地區僅有46%的黑人，某些傷亡最嚴重的地區，來自於HANO“四大金花” C.J. Peete、St. Bernard、Lafitte、B.W. Cooper(社區名)，Casey Billieson 憑著這一嚴重災難，才得以逃離噩夢。
Black people generally were much more likely than white counterparts to be “Katrinaed,” and only around 44 percent of them returned within a year. The black Katrina diaspora mostly bounced around cities in the South—Houston, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Birmingham, and Atlanta—and among them were most of the residents of HANO and the plaintiffs in the Billieson lawsuit, many of whom had never before left the city.
黑人相對白人普遍更容易“卡特琳娜化(代指卡特琳娜颶風受害者或移民)”，他們中只有44%一年內返回家園，很多都移居到了南邊城市，休斯頓、巴吞魯日、達拉斯、伯明罕、亞特蘭大。Billieson 案件中的大部分原告都在其中，他們中很多人從未離開過新奧爾良。
Billieson found herself in plenty of different cities across Texas and Louisiana, and other plaintiffs wound up in places like Nashville, Tennessee, or as far off as Chicago. By the time the city began a rebuild in earnest after the flood, HANO residents had been displaced to 36 states, and many were simply unreachable. Seventy-five thousand black people never returned to the city, and its strong majority of black residents has declined since.
Billieson 輾轉於許多城市，其他原告也各奔東西。當新奧爾良真正開始重建時，HANO居民分散到了36個州，許多人都失去了聯繫。7萬5千個黑人再也沒有回去，自那以後，這座城市的主要黑人群體就衰退了。
The HANO residents who did want to return found a city that seemed intent on moving on without them. With most of their residents displaced to other cities, and with hundreds of units that had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair, the city council voted in 2007 to demolish many of the HANO projects and rebuild them with a mixed-income housing system supplemented with a Section 8 private-voucher system. The stated purpose of the plan was to help fix the worst problems with racial segregation and lead-paint issues in the units.
那些想回家的HANO居民，卻發現這座城市不在意他們了。因為大部分HANO居民都移居他地、大量設施被破壞且無法修復，2007年市議會投票決定拆除大部分HANO專案，重建不同收入階層混合居住的住房體系，並提供完善保障。該計畫的目的是解決最嚴重的種族隔離和鉛污染問題。
The rebuilt units in places like the Desire neighborhood look like little slices of subdivided suburbia now, complete with swimming pools and basketball courts. But, as the wide, empty swathes of green and the patches of barren concrete foundations that surround them indicate, New Orleans simply didn’t rebuild nearly enough units, and in some places, the public-housing capacity only rebounded to 10 percent of its pre-Katrina levels.
重建的社區看起來很精緻，有游泳池和籃球場。但是周邊大片的綠化帶和地基顯示了，新奧爾良沒有重建足夠的社區，有些地方容納量只有災前的10%。
As a result, Billieson and many of the other black folks who were “Katrinaed” simply couldn’t make it back to New Orleans proper. The vouchers they received for assistance in renting homes in mixed-income neighborhoods didn’t always work out—especially when expenses like utilities aren’t covered—and discrimination often reared its ugly head again when black renters tried to find homes in mostly white neighborhoods.
因此，Billieson 和其他受災黑人沒辦法回家鄉。政府發放的租房代金券在混合收入階層社區並非總能起效，尤其是補貼沒有覆蓋水電費之類。而黑人想在白人社區租房的話，依然要面對各種歧視。
With most of their old homes demolished, and barred from the areas of New Orleans that were actually investing in recovery, many of the former HANO residents who did return were forced to live in homes in the suburbs or on the outskirts of the city, in places like the outermost reaches of Eastern New Orleans, Metairie, LaPlace, and a collection of towns along the West Bank of the Mississippi. Casey Billieson lives in LaPlace now and told me that the place is “full of people who came from where [she] came from.”
因為絕大部分老房都被毀掉或拆除，同時還被禁止居住在政府大力投資的重建區，許多回鄉的前HANO居民被迫居住在郊區或郊外。例如最邊緣的密西西比河西岸沿岸的Eastern New Orleans、Metairie、LaPlace等，Casey Billieson 現居住在LaPlace，她告訴我，那兒到處都是和她同樣出身的人。
Just a few years after Katrina, New Orleans had transformed to an emblem of the reverse white flight and suburbanization of poverty seen in many American cities over the past decade. Old neighborhoods in the part of New Orleans’s black belt like Treme gentrified. And as recent research from Mielke shows, the resettlement of the city by those fortunate enough to be allowed in was aided by the floodwaters having washed away lead-polluted soil.
卡特琳娜颶風幾年後，像過去幾十年許多美國城市發生的那樣，新奧爾良變成了白人遷移和郊區貧困化的標誌，而老黑人社區中產階級化了。正如Mielke 的最近研究指出，那些有幸重新在新奧爾良定居的人，要“感謝”洪水沖走了鉛污染土壤。
Nabil Baddour, pictured here at Tulane Medical School, helped start NOLA Unleaded, a New Orleans concerned-citizens organization that addresses lead poisoning in children. (Claire Bangser)
Nabil Baddour攝于杜蘭大學醫學院，他協助成立了NOLA Unleaded 組織
In the boom in environmental and public-health awareness after the flood, the city also began responding to lead-poisoning incidents with much more vigor. Andy Young was part of a wave of young people who managed to move into the Bywater neighborhood just after the storm, during “that weird spot in time when they would still give credit to the likes of us and we could afford housing down here,” as she recalled. In the legacy housing that stood not too far from some of the most lead- and crime-riddled pieces of the old New Orleans, parents still had to be on high alert.
隨著洪水過後環境和公眾健康意識的覺醒，新奧爾良也開始投入更多精力解決鉛中毒案件。Andy Young 就是覺醒青年之一，她回憶道：“在那個年代，他們還多少尊重我們，我們也還買得起房。”然而即便經歷過洪水的沖刷，生活在曾經鉛污染、高犯罪地區的父母們，依然高度警戒。
When Young’s children and several other children in the neighborhood tested positive for lead, concerned parents and former city health-education coordinator Nabil Baddour joined forces to form the organizing group Nola Unleaded. With assistance from Howard Mielke, the group pushed for lead testing in the neighborhood playground, Markey Park. In 2010, under Mayor Mitch Landrieu and then-Health Department Commissioner Karen DeSalvo, the city agreed to not only remediate Markey Park, but to test all of the public parks in the city and remediate those that failed. This group of concerned parents, at least, had managed to make the city listen, and they found the truth of the matter: Lead remediation is pretty easy for a motivated city with resources.
當Young 的孩子和其他幾個孩子血鉛測試呈陽性時，憂心忡忡的父母和前市健康教育協調員Nabil Baddour ，在Howard Mielke 的協助下共同成立了Nola Unleaded(無鉛新奧爾良)組織，該團體推動了社區廣場的鉛檢測。2010年，在市長Mitch Landrieu 和時任衛生部門專員Karen DeSalvo 的努力下，該市同意檢測所有公園，並治理不合格者。這個平民團體，最起碼努力讓城市傾聽了他們的聲音，而且他們發現：如果政府樂意提供資源，那麼鉛治理是一件很簡單的事兒。
Andy Young stands in Markey Park. After learning that her children had high levels of lead in their blood, Young worked with NOLA Unleaded to advocate for lead remediation in Markey Park, which reopened in 2013. (Claire Bangser)
Andy Young 攝於Markey Park
The swift response from the New Orleans health department surprised many of the Bywater parents. As Young told me: “Nothing moves quickly here. Nothing. Except for gentrification. Other than that, actually fixing stuff? Doesn't happen." But the city had found a way of working for its post-Katrina denizens, even as many of those washed away by the flood still languished in court.
政府的迅速回應令許多市民吃驚，Young 對我說：“我們住的這兒，一切都進展緩慢，除了城市紳士化(Gentrification，城市鄉紳化是西方國家再城市化過程中，城市中心區更新(復興)的一種新的社會空間現象。類似于我國大中城市內的“城中村改造”或“舊城改造”)，真正意義上的改善？不存在的。” 但城市終於還是找到了解決途徑，與此同時，許多被洪水趕走的原告，依然滯身在法庭上。
There’s a room in Gary Gambel’s office in downtown New Orleans, kept under lock and key and surveilled constantly by a receptionist watching from a citadel-like bureau. The lawyers around the building call it the “lead room.” The entire space is filled with boxes, Polaroids, and files documenting the whole 22-year-long history of Billieson v. New Orleans. More than just a collection of court documents and filings, the place is a warehouse of the things that have been lost since 1994 and of the Wagnerian saga that wound about lives of poison, displacement, and redemption.
在Gary Gambel 在新奧爾良市中心的辦公室裡有一個房間，保衛嚴密，戒備森嚴。律師們稱其為“鉛屋”，房間裡放滿了盒子、膠片和檔，記錄了22年以來Billieson 案件的歷史，這個房間收納的不僅僅是法庭檔案，更是1994年以來逐漸消失的史實記錄，像瓦格納傳奇那樣的——生活的毒藥、妥協和救贖。
In that room, Gambel talked to me late last year about the case that had defined much of his legal career. He’d just finished one of the last major fights in the case, a dispute over a half-million-dollar fee paid by the court to a “special master” appointed to help distribute settlement funds. “It took me 20 years, and I didn't think I'd live to see the end of it," he confessed. Indeed, two lawyers on the defense side and one on the plaintiffs’ side died during the proceedings.
在那個房間裡，Gambel 去年給我講述了這個很大程度上決定了他職業生涯的案件。他當時剛剛結束了案子中最後一個主要訴訟——一筆超過50萬美元安置費的發放問題。他坦言：“它花了我20多年，我覺得我不能活著看到它完結了。”事實上，兩個辯方律師和一個原告在訴訟過程中過世了。
Gary Gambel stands in a room full of files related to the Billieson v. City of New Orleans case. (Claire Bangser)
Gary Gambel站在滿是卷宗的房間裡
As the defense ran out of maneuvering room and the hopes of a settlement against HANO grew, the lawyers bickered am ong themselves about their demands. Gambel wanted to push for a $600 million settlement that would have given the class-action plaintiffs somewhere between $170,000 and $300,000 apiece, but Bruno pushed back and aimed somewhere at or below the $100 million level. Lawyers on both sides worked to hammer out a settlement, a process rife with accusations and continuances.
因為案件久拖不決，律師們都希望儘快結束案子，他們之間也會爭執。Gambel 想要一筆6億美元的和解費，最終分給每個原告17萬到30萬美元。而Bruno 提出反對，他希望1億美元左右以儘早達成協議。各方律師都苦心于終結這個噩夢般的案件。
Finally, in 2011 the small armies of lawyers reached terms on an armistice: a $100 million settlement split between $67 million in cash awards and $33 million in housing vouchers to the plaintiffs. Half of the $67 million would go to the affected individuals and the rest would be used for legal fees.
最終，2011年，律師團隊達成了共識：1億美元的賠償，6700萬現金支付，3300萬以住房券形式發給原告，6700萬現金中一半給原告，一半是律師費。
Still, even with a settlement on the table, the people who had been poisoned by HANO were not much closer to receiving compensation. Katrina had destroyed many of the city’s medical records, thus disqualifying several of the plaintiffs and potential plaintiffs, who had to demonstrate that they had elevated blood levels before the age of 6 in order to receive settlements. The attrition from the storm was indiscriminate. Joan Dominique, who lived in the Desire projects, told me: “My oldest daughter was awarded over $14,000, but they told me my other two children didn’t have records. But they found them in a basement in City Hall later.” There were many other potential settlement recipients across the country, displaced by the storm, whom the city could not reach. The seemingly random assignment of eligibility still incites anger in some communities today.
然而，即便形成了解決方案，受毒害的HANO居民離賠償金到手依然有一定距離。卡特琳娜摧毀了該市的許多醫療記錄，所以部分原告喪失了資質，為獲得賠償，他們不得不證明自己在6歲之前的血鉛水準高於標準。颶風的影響是無差別的。Joan Dominique 告訴我：“我的大女兒收到了14000美元賠償，但他們告訴我找不到另兩個孩子的記錄，還好後來在市政廳的地下室找到了。”全國各地分散著許多因颶風而遷走的潛在獲賠人，新奧爾良無法聯繫上他們。直到今天，這種在部分社區看來是“隨機分配”的賠付方式依然引發著他們的怒火。
When the feeding frenzy among lawyers subsided, what remained for the plaintiffs almost seemed an afterthought. Dominique’s three children received settlement checks of around $14,000. Casey Billieson’s sons, now 27 and 25 years old, and living and working with families of their own in New Orleans, received a total of $35,000. The average settlement amount per person among the 2,000 qualified plaintiffs was $17,000.
當對律師的不滿平息後，人們似乎才想起原告的境遇。Dominique 三個孩子收到了大約14000美元的賠償。Casey Billieson 的兩個兒子，現在27歲和25歲，和他們自己家族居住生活在一起，總共收到了35000美元，2000多個有獲賠資格原告的平均賠償金額是17000美元。
After spending months speaking to plaintiffs, I began to suspect there’s very little that New Orleans can ever do to truly compensate them for the terrors they face. Estimates from the CDC put the average lifetime costs for even mild and initially asymptomatic cases of lead poisoning around $50,000, and many of the HANO children had tested for lead levels that indicated immediate medical emergences. Most of the plaintiffs were already too old for the money to help with education, and they’d probably already lost thousands in potential earnings from the psychological and educational effects of lead poisoning.
在花了幾個月和原告交流後，我開始懷疑新奧爾良真正能做的補償實在太少太少。在美國疾控中心估算中，即便是最輕程度的鉛中毒，終生醫療費用也要50000美元，而很多HANO孩子情況嚴重得多。這筆錢本該用來幫助他們的教育，而大多數原告年齡早就過了。更不要說因為鉛中毒，他們喪失了多少教育學上和心理學上的潛在收益。
“We did receive compensation, and no, I don’t think it was adequate,” Billieson told me. “I think they could have had more of these kids tested ... They should send us the research [too], because none of us knew anything about lead poisoning, and we didn’t know what the side effects could’ve been.”
“我們確實收到了賠償，但是，我覺得那遠遠不夠，” Billieson 對我說，“我覺得他們本應檢測更多孩子……他們應該提供研究報告，因為當時我們沒人瞭解鉛中毒，也不知道會帶來什麼負面影響。”
Dominique’s anger was more palpable. “I don’t know that you can correct the problem, but we can help [the children] now,” she said to me over the phone. “Buy them homes. Get them educated. These are things they took from these kids. You can never make up the gap, but you can try to do something. And there are funds. The city is still operating.”
Dominique 的憤怒更加直白，“我不知道你們能不能糾正這個問題，但是我們可以幫幫這些孩子。”她在電話中對我說，“給他們提供房子，讓他們接受教育，這是孩子們被
奪去的東西，你們不能完全彌補過錯，但你們可以試著做點什麼，有各種基金，城市還在運轉不是麼？”
“The award that we received was nowhere near what it needed to be to compensate these kids for their trouble,” she continued. “It just wasn’t enough.”
“我們收到的判決，根本不足以補償孩子們的問題，遠遠不夠。”
I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE to reestablish contact with Casey Billieson in the weeks since I left New Orleans. Just after my last visit, a tornado ripped through her town of LaPlace, damaging and destroying hundreds of homes. While nobody was seriously injured, it brought one more round of rebuilding for the community of displaced people now living there.
我離開新奧爾良後的幾周時間都沒法重新聯繫上Casey Billieson ，就在我最後一次拜訪她後，一個龍捲風襲擊了她的社區，造成了上百所房屋損失，雖然沒有人嚴重受傷，但居住在那兒的人又得等新一輪重建了。
The stories of disruptions among the families poisoned in HANO still reverberate. Joan Dominique’s daughter was placed in a similar position after catastrophic floods in Baton Rouge destroyed thousands of homes. Young men mentioned in court filings flit in and out of institutions, and members of the original generation of concerned mothers who launched the lawsuit, worn down by sickness, sorrow, and superhuman effort, find themselves in and out of hospitals and physicians’ offices.
HANO中毒家庭的故事沒有結束。法院檔中提到的年輕人在社會進出于福利機構，最初一代提起訴訟的母親們，在疾病、悲傷、過勞中漸漸老區，在醫院和診室間惶惶餘生。
Saley and Yancy Johnson, both 18, play basketball in the Desire Development Area of New Orleans, where they grew up. (Claire Bangser)
18歲的Saley and Yancy Johnson在新奧爾良 Desire社區打籃球，這是他們長大的地方
For people living in precarious financial, environmental, and social conditions, black skin often carries with it a life of additional traumas. Strata of segregation and exclusion manifest in the most fundamental factors of life—from the air people breathe to the water they drink—and even when they don’t kill outright, they often exacerbate existing issues. For those in the poisoned generation and beyond, blackness is a tightrope, and lead poisoning is just one of the ways to fall.
對於那些生活在危險的金融、環境、社會狀況下的人來說，黑皮膚是一生的額外創傷。種族隔離和排斥在生活的最基本要素中都顯露無疑——從人們呼吸的空氣到他們喝的水——即便這種隱性隔離不直接殺人，也會讓現存問題惡化。對於中毒的一代來說，黑人身份是一個枷鎖，鉛中毒只是其中之一罷了。
Even among those who have found their way back into a clean city, the legacy of lead continues. “There’s still a Desire project,” Joan Dominique told me. “There are still kids there. The problem is still ongoing. There is still a seed’s seed of my mother living in that project. We left those kids behind.”
即便那些回到清潔城市的人，鉛遺留問題依然持續，“Desire 專案還存在著，” Joan Dominique對我說，“那兒還有孩子，代代相傳，我們虧欠了那些孩子太多。”
評論翻譯
論壇地址：http://www.ltaaa.com/bbs/thread-443643-1-1.html
Woof • 3 hours ago
Trump tried selling leaded water, Trump Water®,
turns out people didn't care for it.
川普想賣鉛水，“川普牌水”，
這說明人們根本不關心。
M Enigma @Woof • an hour ago
Turns out you are a moron.
這說明你是個智障。
Nwb2017 @Woof • an hour ago
Trumpkins like it, it taste like kool aid.
川粉肯定喜歡它的味道。
Sam Smith • 21 minutes ago
Doing the same thing over and over, changing nothing, is the definition ofinsanity.
Have you learned that "government" isn't the answer yet?
A great man once said:
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from thegovernment and I'm here to help."
~ Ronald Reagan
重複錯誤而不改正，這就是精神錯亂的定義。
你們現在知道“政府”不是解決問題的答案了嗎？
一個偉人曾說過：
“英語中最恐怖的話語莫過於：我來自政府，我是來幫你們的。”
by Ronald Reagan
M Enigma • an hour ago
I never understood how everything is about race. I grew up dirt poor, but westill had enough sense to buy a scraper and some paint when we lived in lousyhousing. I guess that take effort as no-one , including the government wasgoing to do it for us. So you can wait for your "leaders' to grab ascraper and bring paint and let the lead seep into you body or do somethingabout it.
我無法理解關於種族的一切，我雖然出身貧窮，但依然努力改善生活環境，我想政府不打算替我們做的，我們可以自己努力。你可以等待“領導”的幫助，然後讓鉛一點點進入身體，或者自力更生做點什麼。
BlackMamba, Romperstiltskin @M Enigma • an hour ago
A bucket and a brush for everyone, what genius public policy omg.
Or we could actually hold our elected officials accountable which people aredoing.
自力更生，多麼天才的國家政策。
也許應該讓我們選舉的官員為這些事負責。
M Enigma @BlackMamba, Romperstiltskin • an hour ago
So your "public policy" is for people to do nothing while waiting forthe government to save them and end up dying. Yep typical liberal stupidity.God forbid you do something about your fate except lay there complaining aboutyour fate. But again you are the face of liberalism. Victims victims victimswith no hope if the government doesnt help. you. Nice public policy you havethere.
所以你的“國家政策”就是人們無所事事等政府救助直到死，這真是典型的自由主義愚蠢，原來上帝禁止你做任何事以改變命運，除了躺在那兒自艾自憐，說到底這就是你們的自由主義嘴臉，受害者、受害者、受害者(心理)，政府不幫忙就一點希望沒有。真是不錯的國家政策。
Fredda Weinberg • 2 hours ago
The good news is that lead isn't stored in tissue or bone, so if you wereexposed, as we were, damage need not be permanent.
好消息是鉛不在組織和骨骼中積留，所以如果你像我們那樣曾接觸過，損傷不是永久性的。
當那年春天碰到Casey Billieson 、讓她孩子做鉛測試後，這種激進傾向達到了頂峰。Gambel had been trying to find a way to investigate the lead-poisoning issue in New Orleans housing developments ever since an old associate of his uncovered several positive lead-poisoning tests while working a different case involving public-housing residents.
Gambel 的一個老同事曾在辦理案件時揭露過幾起鉛污染問題，從那時起他就一直設法調查新奧爾良市住房專案的鉛污染。
“He called, and he said we had a doctor who works for a medical program in the projects and all these kids are coming in lead poisoned,” Gambel told me. “So I went to go meet them, and I met one mom and then her neighbor.”
“他打電話給我，說有個居民健康計畫醫生，還說所有孩子都鉛中毒了。” Gambel 對我說，“所以我去見了他們，然後碰到一個母親，還有她的鄰居。”
His plan was originally to take some of cases on a pro-bono basis, helping families move out of lead-contaminated homes and pressuring the housing authority into providing them abated or renovated units. But he soon found that just about all the families he spoke to had kids who tested positive for lead poisoning, and the city hadn’t abated any units across its developments. Gambel’s response when realized he’d stumbled onto one of the worst public-health crises in America was one of awe: “I said, ‘God, we need to do something.’”
原本他打算以公益律師身份接幾個案子，幫助這些家庭遷出鉛污染公寓，向當局施壓給他們提供新住處。但是他很快發現，他詢問的所有家庭的鉛毒測試都呈陽性，政府卻沒有絲毫作為。當Gambel 意識到自己涉足的案件是美國最大公共健康危機之一時，他的回應是：“老天啊，我們必須要做點什麼。”
Even then, dozens of positive blood tests later, Gambel—a business lawyer by training—and his small start-up firm didn’t quite realize the nature of the leviathan they hunted. The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) had been labeled as a “troubled” housing authority by the federal office of Housing and Urban Development since 1979, and by 1994, HANO housing was among the most miserable places to live in the country.
即便拿到大量鉛毒測試陽性結果，Gambel ——這名商業律師以及他剛起步的小事務所，依然沒有充分認識到他們面對的困難。新奧爾良房屋委員會(HANO)自1979年以來就被聯邦住房與城市發展部(HUD)稱作“混亂的”。到1994年，HANO成為了美國最痛苦居住地之一。
HANO was once the crown jewel of the mid-20th century program of federally funded public housing. Even at the height of Jim Crow, the well-built HANO projects anchored mixed-class, inner-city black neighborhoods. But the projects had deteriorated since then, aided by white flight, reductions in services, and a backlash against black political power. By the time Billieson was entering adulthood in the late ’80s, the big projects—Calliope, Magnolia, Florida, Lafitte, and Desire—that had once been known as brick bastions of the black working class, were known through hip-hop for bleakness and toughness.
20世紀中期，HANO曾是聯邦政府基金公共住房專案翹楚。建造過Jim Crow 這樣的混合階層模範社區。但住房專案自那之後逐漸變質了，服務減少、遷居來的白人發起反黑人政權浪潮。到80年代末期Billieson 成年時，曾被稱作黑人工人階層堡壘的幾大住房項目，變成了悲慘的代名詞。
HANO authorities simply didn’t respond to thousands of complaints or keep buildings up to code. In 1994, 1 5 years after HANO was labeled a “troubled” development, HUD inspectors visited 150 units in the neighborhood and found that all 150 units failed to meet standards—with problems including peeling lead paint, asbestos exposure, and massive roach infestations—and that none of the units had been updated at all in 10 years. HUD rates housing authorities on a 100-point quality scale, with a score below 60 indicating a “troubled” development. In 1994, Billieson was raising her boys in a project that had just received a score of 26.
HANO當局沒有理會大量投訴，也沒有按規定修繕建築。1994年，HUD督察員調查了150個公寓，發現這些公寓全不合格，問題包括鉛塗料污染、石棉污染、蟑螂氾濫等等，這些公寓都10年來沒有任何改善。HUD 用百分制給公寓評分，低於60分即被視為“混亂的”。而Billieson 居住的公寓僅得到26分。
There is no safe level of lead in the human body. Even at low levels, chronic exposure can damage the brain and the central nervous system, and can cause symptoms from hearing loss to IQ deterioration to lack of impulse control. Over time, lead gets absorbed into the bones, making them brittle and stunted, and causes teeth to crack and rot. Exposure in young children with developing minds and growing bones is most destructive, and in times of serious stress and trauma—common in places like the New Orleans projects in the 1990s—those effects are magnified. Each poisoned child in HANO dealt with at least some of those issues, many or most of them for life.
人體對鉛元素不存在安全劑量，如果長期接觸，即便含量很低，也會損害大腦和中樞神經系統，導致聽力損失，智力衰退。時間久了，鉛會被骨骼吸收，造成骨骼易碎、發育不良，牙齦腐爛。這對發育期兒童來說尤為致命。這些症狀在HANO 項目兒童身上非常明顯，他們大都受害終身。
The first sign of lead trouble in HANO came in 1985, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set the standard for lead-poisoning intervention at 25 micrograms of metal per deciliter of blood. Kids were regularly testing at levels well above that level across New Orleans in 1985, even more so in the projects. In 1987, a group of residents in the St. Thomas housing development, led by resident Virginia Mitchell, filed a lead-poisoning lawsuit against HANO that was eventually settled with a consent decree demanding HANO take action to abate lead in its units.
1985年，美國疾控中心(CDC)設立了鉛中毒起訴標準——每100毫升血液中含超過25微克鉛即可視作中毒，人們隨即發現了HANO 的鉛問題。St. Thomas 社區居民自發成立小組，將HANO 告上法庭，最後雙方達成和解，要求HANO採取措施治理污染。
HANO did nothing, and the trickle of complaints became a deluge in 1991, after the CDC decreased its actionable guidelines for lead exposure from 25 to 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood. According to a 1993 Government Accountability Office report, “during 1991 the New Orleans Housing Authority settled over 60 lawsuits that cost over $1 million in claims and attorneys’ fees.”
然而HANO 什麼也沒做。1991年，CDC把起訴標準從25微克降到了10微克，人們的憤怒達到了頂點。1993年政府問責報告中稱：“1991年一年內，HANO吃了超過60個官司，賠償超過1百萬美元。”
The onslaught of lawsuits was such that HANO lost its ability to secure commercial liability insurance. HUD forced the city to cede control over the HANO developments to a succession of private third-party managers who still couldn’t get a handle on lead poisoning. The city-appointed board and the managers squabbled constantly, according to federal oversight reports.
大量訴訟讓HANO聲名狼藉，甚至沒有商業保險公司願意接單。HUD命令HANO將管理權委任給協力廠商私人組織。然而鉛污染問題依舊沒有改善，委任的董事會和管理層經常吵得不可開交。
While Gambel was looking for potential plaintiffs, HUD declared HANO in breach of its contract and stepped in to create an oversight agreement. The scandals regularly made national news outlets. A Washington Post article from April 1994 quoted the former HANO managing director Shelia Danzey: "I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel for at least five or six years, and that's a light that is pretty dim.”
正當Gambel 尋找潛在客戶時，HUD宣佈HANO違反條約，並介入監督。這些醜聞經常出現在媒體頭條，1994年4月華盛頓郵報一篇文章引用HANO前主任Shelia Danzey 的話說：“過去5、6年我看不到什麼希望，即便有也非常渺茫。”
Dilapidated homes remain fenced off by the Housing Authority of New Orleans near the Desire Development Area. (Claire Bangser)
Desire社區附近被HANO隔離的廢棄房屋
It’s no surprise then, that a legion of lead-poisoned black residents in the New Orleans projects had answered Gambel’s summons, most of them concerned mothers and their affected children.
考慮到所有背景，新奧爾良市遭鉛中毒的黑人居民響應Gambel 號召就一點不奇怪了。他們中大部分是焦慮的母親和受影響的孩子。
There were Billieson and her two sons. There was Sheila Green in Lafitte, whose twin sons, Ronald and Donald, tested well over the 1991 lead guidelines, with one son receiving almost four times the legally actionable amount and exhibiting hyperactivity and multiple learning disorders. There was Joyce Galmon in C.J. Peete Housing, whose four kids had speech problems. There was Detress Lewis, also in C.J. Peete, whose two children had blood-lead levels twice as high as even the looser 1985 guidelines, and whose complications were so severe that they had to be hospitalized.
這裡面就有Billieson 和她兩個兒子，以及Sheila Green ，她一個孩子血鉛含量超過標準4倍，有嚴重的認知障礙。Joyce Galmon 四個孩子都有語言障礙，Detress Lewis 兩個孩子超標兩倍，嚴重的併發症迫使他們住院治療。
Hundreds of women who’d been born in the projects and poisoned with lead their whole lives passed metals in utero to their children, whose first breaths took in clouds of white leaden dust. Lead levels per deciliter of blood among the plaintiffs regularly measured in the 20- to 40-microgram range, with spikes above 50 micrograms. (The water-contamination crisis that began in Flint, Michigan, in 2014 was triggered by blood-lead levels over the current upper limit of five micrograms per deciliter.)
成百上千的女性出生在受污染社區，她們的孩子也因為血液傳遞而遭受毒害，原告的血鉛水準通常在20到40微克之間，最高的超過50。(作為對比，2014年密西根州水污染導致的鉛中毒危機，當時鉛上限標準是5微克。)
“I had to get involved,” Billieson told me. “When I looked at the flyers and the books, I knew it was life or death.”
“我必須做點什麼，” Billieson 告訴我，“當我看到名單和資料時，我意識到這是生死攸關。”
NEW ORLEANS PROBABLY won’t ever face a lead-poisoning crisis nearly as bad as the HANO episodes of the ’90s. But an understanding of just how toxic the substance is has risen over the past few years, even as science has revealed the sheer ubiquity of its remnants in places as disparate as Los Angeles, Flint, and Baltimore.
新奧爾良從未經歷過像 HANO事件那樣嚴重的鉛中毒危機。近些年，隨著科學研究發現鉛殘留在洛杉磯、弗林特、巴爾默特等地普遍存在，公眾對鉛的危害也愈加瞭解。
For some HANO kids, even the stability of a fast-food job is permanently out of reach. Marcel Coleman—one of the then-infant plaintiffs in the Billieson court dockets—was shot and killed in the Florida neighborhood in 2015. Among the leading plaintiffs, Ronald Green was also killed, and many others didn’t make it to see the settlement. Some of the young men—made turbulent, their mothers claim, from the lingering effects of lead—who should have collected settlements missed out, locked away in places with names like Angola, Dixon, and Elayn Hunt.
對很多HANO 孩子來說，即便一份速食業的穩定工作也是遙不可及的。Marcel Coleman——Billieson 訴訟原告嬰兒之一，2015年被槍殺。許多人都沒活著看到處理結果。其中許多年輕人製造了騷亂，她們的母親聲稱，因為鉛中毒揮之不去的影響和久拖未決的處理，他們只能被關在Angola、Dixon、Elayn Hunt 之類的地方(矯正中心)。
For each of these missing victims, the unasked question is the same: How much of a role did lead poisoning play in their fates?
I spoke to Howard Mielke at his lab at the Tulane Medical Center. Mielke, a geographer and environmental researcher, is one of the most prominent lead-poisoning experts in the country, has dominated the lead-poisoning research in New Orleans for years.
每個受害者都有一個同樣的問題：鉛中毒究竟多大程度上改變了他們的命運？
我在杜蘭大學醫學中心和Howard Mielke 進行了交談，他是地理學家和環境學家，也是美國最著名的鉛中毒專家，多年來主導著新奧爾良鉛中毒研究。
In 2012, Mielke and co-author Sammy Zahran examined crime—specifically aggravated assault—in six cities, including New Orleans, and its relationship to lead in gasoline emissions. Their results were startling: Increases in lead aerosols were strongly associated with increased crime, and according to their research, differences in lead levels accounted for about 90 percent of the variation in crime between the six study cities.
2012年，Mielke 和Sammy Zahran 合作研究了包括新奧爾良的六個城市的犯罪率——尤其是嚴重傷害罪，和汽油鉛排放量的關係。結果是令人震驚的：含鉛氣溶膠量的增加和犯罪率增加有很強的相關性，相關性高達90%。
Howard Mielke looks at soil samples in his lab at Tulane University School of Medicine. Mielke, a research professor in the pharmacology department, researches the causes and impacts of lead contamination. He was an expert witness in the Billieson v. City of New Orleans case. (Claire Bangser)
Howard Mielke查看他在杜蘭大學實驗室中的土壤樣本，他是藥物學系教授，研究鉛污染的起源和影響，他是Billieson 案件中的專家證人
The lead-crime conundrum is a relatively recent addition to the sociology of crime. In early 2016, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones detailed the chronology of this line of research, which actually starts in 1994. Rick Nevin, a HUD consultant on the risk-impact analysis for lead-paint reduction rules, developed a hypothesis that the main societal cost of lead poisoning was its effect on crime, mediated through its cognitive effects on boys and young men. That hypothesis was expanded by Amherst College researcher Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, who identified critical pathways of the potential effect—with juvenile delinquency, ADHD, and low IQ connecting populations of young black men to ultimate criminal outcomes and incarceration.
在犯罪社會學研究中，鉛—犯罪關係是比較新的命題。2016年初，《鐘斯母親》專欄作家Kevin Drum 詳細介紹了該研究的歷史。1994年，HUD顧問Rick Nevin 提出假設，鉛中毒造成的主要社會影響，是影響青少年認知能力從而導致犯罪增加，阿默斯特學院研究員Jessica Wolpaw Reyes豐富了該假設，他提出了影響的具體方式——青少年犯罪、注意力障礙、低智商共同導致黑人青年的高犯罪率和入獄率。
Enthusiasm about the lead-crime hypothesis has been blunted by recent research. A 2015 report from the Brennan Center on factors that caused the decline in crime since the ’90s calls the hypothesis “controversial,” and notes that some elements of Reyes’s work have been difficult to reproduce, although it does list lead poisoning as one of 13 possible crime factors in the decade. A study that same year by researchers Janet Lauritsen, Maribeth Rezey, and Karen Heimer also did not find a significant correlation between lagged lead poisoning and homicides using a different dataset.
但鉛—犯罪研究熱度近年有所下降，2015年布倫南中心的一份報告稱，90年代以來逐漸下降的犯罪率證明該假說是“有爭議的”，雖然Reyes把 鉛列為13種犯罪因素之一，但他的實驗結果很難重現。另一批研究者使用不同資料在同年展開的研究，沒有發現鉛中毒和謀殺之間有顯著關係。
Even if lead plays a smaller role in crime outcomes than Mielke, Nevin, and Reyes suspect, it’s possible that it contributed to the most violent time and place the country has ever seen, especially given the extremes found in HANO. What’s known without a doubt is that communities don’t thrive when poisoned, regardless of whether that poisoning is the disease or just another symptom.
即便鉛中毒的影響比某些學者猜想的小，鉛也很可能是那段前所未有的暴力時期的促成因素。我們所能肯定的是，一個中毒的團體不會興旺。
Now, even as the White House pursues the marginalization of the EPA, HUD, and lead-remediation programs, familiar alarms sound in places like East Chicago and in Flint, where the water is still not quite safe to drink.
現在，白宮正試圖邊緣化EPA、HUD、鉛修復項目，與此同時，像東芝加哥、弗林特這樣的地方的水依然不安全，人們依然生活在警報之中。
THE MERITS OF the plaintiffs’ cases against HANO seem obvious in retrospect, but their battle was not destined to be easy, nor would it guarantee them better lives.
在對HANO的訴訟中，原告的優勢似乎是不可阻擋的。然而事實是，他們的戰鬥註定不簡單，也無法保證更好的生活。
For starters, when Gambel took on the cases it was near-impossible to settle with HANO or receive any money from judgments against them, since they didn’t have any liability insurance. Plaintiffs could technically win, and often did, but since they couldn’t exactly seize a public-housing authority’s assets in cases of nonpayment, they often won big fat piles of nothing.
首先，當Gambel 接手這個案子時，幾乎不可能和HANO達成任何賠償和解，因為沒有保險公司給他們提供保險。原告們經常在法律層面上勝訴，但判決書是一紙空文，因為即便委員會拒賠，他們也無法逮捕任何官員。
"When I filed that lawsuit, in hindsight I was just naive,” Gambel said. “As a young lawyer and a start-up firm, there were a lot of people asking me, ‘How are you going to do this?’”
“事後來看，當時我還是太年輕了，” Gambel 說，“作為一個年輕的、事業剛起步的律師，當時許多大佬問我‘你有什麼金剛鑽？’。”
It helped that Gambel’s work had attracted the interest of lawyers from other firms that had experience suing HANO. Among them was Joe Bruno Sr., a trial lawyer known for taking on huge cases. In contrast to Gambel, then a fledgling business lawyer at a small firm with an environmentalist streak, Bruno was television’s idea of a lawyer, and he was known even then for taking on big cases against big companies after big disasters.
所幸Gambel的工作吸引了不少有HANO訴訟經驗的同行，辯護律師Joe Bruno Sr. 是專接大案的大佬，相比Gambel 這種乳臭未乾的菜鳥，Bruno是電視偶像的存在。
Bruno had represented one of the earlier plaintiffs in a lead-poisoning suit against HANO, in which a judge handed down a million-dollar judgment that the plaintiff couldn’t collect because of insufficient liability coverage. But his approach informed the gambit the plaintiffs needed to try to be able to recoup something. In that first case, Bruno’s team had found that HANO’s private-property manager had a limited pool of liability insurance and could be successfully sued.
Bruno曾接受過一個HANO案子，法官判了上百萬的賠償，超過了承保範圍。但是他的手段讓原告看到了希望，Bruno團隊發現HANO的私人財產管理部門有一個保險資金池，最終被成功執行賠償。
By the time the Billieson-led plaintiffs filed suit, HANO was run by the private-management company C.J. Brown, which had liability insurance from a few different companies. C.J. Brown was contracted by the city of New Orleans under HUD’s directive to clean up the crumbling housing developments, but their method of doing so actually made the lead problem worse and, in turn, made them potentially liable for poisoning hundred of people.
Billieson 案件中，HANO當時已被私人管理公司C.J. Brown 接管，這家公司有好幾份商業險。HUD指定該公司處理住房專案問題，但是他們的處理措施反倒加重了鉛問題，所以，他們是個潛在的賠償來源。
“C.J. Brown wanted to go in and renovate whole sections of development instead of constant abatement and maintenance all over,” Gambel told me, “which led to a sliver of the units getting a lot better while most of the rest got worse.”
“C.J. Brown 公司插手後想把住房項目推倒重來，而沒有穩步改善、減少(問題)，” Gambel 對我說，“結果是極少部分人獲益，大部分情況更糟了。”
"My thinking was that if you could get an enormous judgment against them, maybe with the pressure, HUD might fund it,” he said. “And let's be realistic: Cases get settled because of pressure. The defendant believes that if they proceed to trial, they're likely to pay more money than if they settled the case."
“我的想法是，如果能龐大的訴訟向他們施壓，那麼他們的上級，HUD可能會撥款，讓我們現實點吧：只有施壓事情才能得到解決，被告會感覺拖下去會花更多錢，不如早點妥協。”
HANO cases and suits for a raft of different issues, including lead poisoning, were so backed up that the Louisiana Supreme Court had to appoint a special judge to handle them, Judge Joe DiRosa. The first step for the team of lawyers required establishing damages to a whole class of kids, and liability on behalf of HANO, C.J. Brown, and the contractors they used.
HANO案件包括鉛中毒等一系列問題，該案件得到的呼聲是如此之高以至於路易斯安那州最高法院不得不指派一個特別法官——Joe DiRosa 來審理。律師團隊第一步要求先全面評估孩子們的傷害狀況，以及HANO、C.J. Brown公司和他們使用的建築承包商的責任。
There was clearly lead paint, not only in the housing units, but peeling in common areas like stairwells and around outdoor rails. But it turns out that paint was only one avenue by which children in HANO projects were being exposed to lead. HANO lawyers brought forward Mielke to testify as an expert witness. His research indicated that much of the lead in the inner-city’s soil near roads and highways came from leaden fumes deposited by automobiles in the decades before the stuff was banned from gasoline, although not from the home.
鉛塗料是一個顯而易見的因素，屋內裝修和公共設施都有。但鉛塗料只是接觸源之一。律師團隊提請Mielke做鑒定證人，他的研究指出城市中公路附近土壤中的鉛，大部分來自長期以來機動車含鉛燃料排放。
“In the Billieson case, I looked at it differently from the people saying it was all lead-based paint,” Mielke told me. As a crusader against soil-based lead poisoning and its connection to automobiles, Mielke said his testimony was not that the children of HANO weren’t damaged nor that they didn’t deserve recompense, but that the plaintiffs had gotten at least some of the causality wrong.
“在Billieson 中，人們都說鉛污染全部來自塗料，我與他們看法不同，”Mielke 對我說，作為反土壤鉛污染的改革者，Mielke 說他的證詞並不意味孩子們沒有受到傷害或不應得到賠償，而是原告們多少搞錯了因果關係。
The trial court originally denied the class-action certification based on that testimony and the murky nature of the “constellation of factors” contributing to varying individual levels of lead poisoning. But on appeal, a judge found that pieces of Mielke’s testimony actually helped established culpability for HANO, because HANO was still responsible for abating and cleaning lead in the soil. “Mielke was a great guy, and he really cares about this stuff,” recalled Gambel. “And I think his testimony actually showed how bad we needed to do something.”
初審法庭最初駁回了集體訴訟，理由就是這份專業證詞，以及導致不同個體鉛中毒水準的“多種因素”的模糊性。但在上訴法庭中，一個法官發現，Mielke 的證詞其實能證明HANO的過錯，因為HANO有責任減少、清除土壤中的鉛。
The appeals court finally certified as a class the children who lived in the HANO projects during C.J. Brown’s management at some point between birth and the age of 6, but still the saga dragged on. DiRosa died in 1997, and a succession of ad hoc judges was appointed by the state Supreme Court to replace him. For the next six years, Billieson et. al v. City of New Orleans languished between courts.“We put this case together for trial over 20 times,” Gambel said.
上訴法庭最終認同了C.J. Brown 公司管理HANO專案期間年齡在0~6歲的孩子們的訴訟主張。然而好事多磨，DiRosa (即前文特別法官)在1997年過世了，高等法院指派了一些臨時法官替代他。在接下來的6年間，Billieson 們在和新奧爾良市的戰鬥中疲於奔命。
As the case continued, the issues of lead poisoning and other environmental dysfunctions in the HANO projects continued unresolved. Even though the pressure on HANO from the lawsuit spurred a limited campaign of lead abatement in the projects, kids still showed up poisoned at doctor’s visits. For seven years after Gambel and Bruno’s team filed the lawsuit in district court, the lead levels in homes and in children’s blood remained high enough to qualify them to join the class.
案件如火如荼，而HANO鉛中毒和機能障礙問題依然沒有解決。受案件壓力，HANO開展了有限的鉛治理專案，孩子們依然顯示出中毒症狀，在Gambel、Bruno團隊提起訴訟7年後，孩子們的血鉛水準依然足以加入到集體訴訟中。
As the list of plaintiffs compounded, Gambel and the other lawyers who frequently visited plaintiffs and advocated on their behalf became known to the residents of the HANO housing developments as “the babies’ lawyers,” although the people they represented stopped being babies long before the case approached resolution. Those children had children, and those children grew up in those same projects. The group of mothers who’d led the charge against HANO as young adults themselves began to watch a generation of their grandchildren grow up in their homes and choke on the same lead dust.
隨著原告規模越來越大，Gambel 和其他律師經常拜訪原告和為他們發聲的行為在HANO居民中聲名遠揚，他們被稱為“‘嬰兒的’律師”。雖然他們的委託人在案件接近解決時早已成年，但當年的這些孩子也有了孩子，他們的孩子在同樣的社區長大，那些曾經的年輕母親，目睹了孫輩出生，然後吸入著同樣的鉛塵。
Billieson did what she could, even though the plaintiffs were rarely actually called to court to testify. “I did so many depositions, and it still took years and years,” she told me. It seemed to her, like it seemed to most of the HANO residents, that the cycles that kept them bound to the poisoned lands of the generations before them would never really change.
Billieson 盡力了，雖然原告很少被傳至法庭作證，“我做了那麼多口供，案子依然年復一年拖著。”她告訴我，在她和大部分居民看來，將他們一代代人束縛在中毒土地上的命運怪圈，永遠不會改變。
Then in August of 2005, walls of water from Hurricane Katrina buckled the Louisiana levees and destroyed everything.
直到2005年8月，卡特裡娜颶風的巨浪衝垮了路易斯安那州防洪堤，摧毀了一切。
AFW OF THE places the denizens of HANO escaped still stand, walled off by barbed wire. Press Park is a ghost town of brick monoliths, with each building marked by the hand of God in a green high-water mark and by the hand of humans in sprawling graffiti, with some characters stretching over 20 feet tall. The old industrial red-brick Moton Elementary stands sentinel behind them, an eerie malevolence of ivy curtains, skittering rats, and broken windows.
如今居民已經離開了，但HANO建築依在，被鐵絲網封鎖起來的廢墟荒蕪破敗、鏽跡斑斑、老鼠橫行，紀念著讓人毛骨悚然的往事。
When the surging floodwaters broke through the Industrial Seaway and Lake Pontchartrain, they didn’t single out races or neighborhoods to target. The city and its layers of segregation and poverty did the job of assigning victims themselves. Housing discrimination in the city had forced generations of black residents into segregated wards and neighborhoods, often located in the areas with the highest risk for both lead poisoning and flooding.
當湍急的洪水掃過城市時，大自然並沒有針對某一個種族或社區。而人類自身根據種族和財富指定了受害者。這座城市的居住隔離強迫黑人居住在一起，那些社區大多位於鉛污染和洪水風險最高的地區。
The resulting destruction was more thorough and more devastating than any single incident of racial violence or hatred. One statistic about Katrina helps put things into context: A Brown University report showed that the most damaged areas in the city were 75 percent black, while undamaged areas were only 46 percent black. And some of the most thorough and permanent depopulation in the city came in the HANO “Big Four” projects—C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, Lafitte, and B.W. Cooper. Casey Billieson and her two boys—then teenagers—escaped the chronic horrors of Lafitte by fleeing an acute catastrophe.
這場災難比任何種族暴力和仇恨來得都徹底。布朗大學的一份災情報告顯示，受災最嚴重的地區75%是黑人居民，未受災地區僅有46%的黑人，某些傷亡最嚴重的地區，來自於HANO“四大金花” C.J. Peete、St. Bernard、Lafitte、B.W. Cooper(社區名)，Casey Billieson 憑著這一嚴重災難，才得以逃離噩夢。
Black people generally were much more likely than white counterparts to be “Katrinaed,” and only around 44 percent of them returned within a year. The black Katrina diaspora mostly bounced around cities in the South—Houston, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Birmingham, and Atlanta—and among them were most of the residents of HANO and the plaintiffs in the Billieson lawsuit, many of whom had never before left the city.
黑人相對白人普遍更容易“卡特琳娜化(代指卡特琳娜颶風受害者或移民)”，他們中只有44%一年內返回家園，很多都移居到了南邊城市，休斯頓、巴吞魯日、達拉斯、伯明罕、亞特蘭大。Billieson 案件中的大部分原告都在其中，他們中很多人從未離開過新奧爾良。
Billieson found herself in plenty of different cities across Texas and Louisiana, and other plaintiffs wound up in places like Nashville, Tennessee, or as far off as Chicago. By the time the city began a rebuild in earnest after the flood, HANO residents had been displaced to 36 states, and many were simply unreachable. Seventy-five thousand black people never returned to the city, and its strong majority of black residents has declined since.
Billieson 輾轉於許多城市，其他原告也各奔東西。當新奧爾良真正開始重建時，HANO居民分散到了36個州，許多人都失去了聯繫。7萬5千個黑人再也沒有回去，自那以後，這座城市的主要黑人群體就衰退了。
The HANO residents who did want to return found a city that seemed intent on moving on without them. With most of their residents displaced to other cities, and with hundreds of units that had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair, the city council voted in 2007 to demolish many of the HANO projects and rebuild them with a mixed-income housing system supplemented with a Section 8 private-voucher system. The stated purpose of the plan was to help fix the worst problems with racial segregation and lead-paint issues in the units.
那些想回家的HANO居民，卻發現這座城市不在意他們了。因為大部分HANO居民都移居他地、大量設施被破壞且無法修復，2007年市議會投票決定拆除大部分HANO專案，重建不同收入階層混合居住的住房體系，並提供完善保障。該計畫的目的是解決最嚴重的種族隔離和鉛污染問題。
The rebuilt units in places like the Desire neighborhood look like little slices of subdivided suburbia now, complete with swimming pools and basketball courts. But, as the wide, empty swathes of green and the patches of barren concrete foundations that surround them indicate, New Orleans simply didn’t rebuild nearly enough units, and in some places, the public-housing capacity only rebounded to 10 percent of its pre-Katrina levels.
重建的社區看起來很精緻，有游泳池和籃球場。但是周邊大片的綠化帶和地基顯示了，新奧爾良沒有重建足夠的社區，有些地方容納量只有災前的10%。
As a result, Billieson and many of the other black folks who were “Katrinaed” simply couldn’t make it back to New Orleans proper. The vouchers they received for assistance in renting homes in mixed-income neighborhoods didn’t always work out—especially when expenses like utilities aren’t covered—and discrimination often reared its ugly head again when black renters tried to find homes in mostly white neighborhoods.
因此，Billieson 和其他受災黑人沒辦法回家鄉。政府發放的租房代金券在混合收入階層社區並非總能起效，尤其是補貼沒有覆蓋水電費之類。而黑人想在白人社區租房的話，依然要面對各種歧視。
With most of their old homes demolished, and barred from the areas of New Orleans that were actually investing in recovery, many of the former HANO residents who did return were forced to live in homes in the suburbs or on the outskirts of the city, in places like the outermost reaches of Eastern New Orleans, Metairie, LaPlace, and a collection of towns along the West Bank of the Mississippi. Casey Billieson lives in LaPlace now and told me that the place is “full of people who came from where [she] came from.”
因為絕大部分老房都被毀掉或拆除，同時還被禁止居住在政府大力投資的重建區，許多回鄉的前HANO居民被迫居住在郊區或郊外。例如最邊緣的密西西比河西岸沿岸的Eastern New Orleans、Metairie、LaPlace等，Casey Billieson 現居住在LaPlace，她告訴我，那兒到處都是和她同樣出身的人。
Just a few years after Katrina, New Orleans had transformed to an emblem of the reverse white flight and suburbanization of poverty seen in many American cities over the past decade. Old neighborhoods in the part of New Orleans’s black belt like Treme gentrified. And as recent research from Mielke shows, the resettlement of the city by those fortunate enough to be allowed in was aided by the floodwaters having washed away lead-polluted soil.
卡特琳娜颶風幾年後，像過去幾十年許多美國城市發生的那樣，新奧爾良變成了白人遷移和郊區貧困化的標誌，而老黑人社區中產階級化了。正如Mielke 的最近研究指出，那些有幸重新在新奧爾良定居的人，要“感謝”洪水沖走了鉛污染土壤。
Nabil Baddour, pictured here at Tulane Medical School, helped start NOLA Unleaded, a New Orleans concerned-citizens organization that addresses lead poisoning in children. (Claire Bangser)
Nabil Baddour攝于杜蘭大學醫學院，他協助成立了NOLA Unleaded 組織
In the boom in environmental and public-health awareness after the flood, the city also began responding to lead-poisoning incidents with much more vigor. Andy Young was part of a wave of young people who managed to move into the Bywater neighborhood just after the storm, during “that weird spot in time when they would still give credit to the likes of us and we could afford housing down here,” as she recalled. In the legacy housing that stood not too far from some of the most lead- and crime-riddled pieces of the old New Orleans, parents still had to be on high alert.
隨著洪水過後環境和公眾健康意識的覺醒，新奧爾良也開始投入更多精力解決鉛中毒案件。Andy Young 就是覺醒青年之一，她回憶道：“在那個年代，他們還多少尊重我們，我們也還買得起房。”然而即便經歷過洪水的沖刷，生活在曾經鉛污染、高犯罪地區的父母們，依然高度警戒。
When Young’s children and several other children in the neighborhood tested positive for lead, concerned parents and former city health-education coordinator Nabil Baddour joined forces to form the organizing group Nola Unleaded. With assistance from Howard Mielke, the group pushed for lead testing in the neighborhood playground, Markey Park. In 2010, under Mayor Mitch Landrieu and then-Health Department Commissioner Karen DeSalvo, the city agreed to not only remediate Markey Park, but to test all of the public parks in the city and remediate those that failed. This group of concerned parents, at least, had managed to make the city listen, and they found the truth of the matter: Lead remediation is pretty easy for a motivated city with resources.
當Young 的孩子和其他幾個孩子血鉛測試呈陽性時，憂心忡忡的父母和前市健康教育協調員Nabil Baddour ，在Howard Mielke 的協助下共同成立了Nola Unleaded(無鉛新奧爾良)組織，該團體推動了社區廣場的鉛檢測。2010年，在市長Mitch Landrieu 和時任衛生部門專員Karen DeSalvo 的努力下，該市同意檢測所有公園，並治理不合格者。這個平民團體，最起碼努力讓城市傾聽了他們的聲音，而且他們發現：如果政府樂意提供資源，那麼鉛治理是一件很簡單的事兒。
Andy Young stands in Markey Park. After learning that her children had high levels of lead in their blood, Young worked with NOLA Unleaded to advocate for lead remediation in Markey Park, which reopened in 2013. (Claire Bangser)
Andy Young 攝於Markey Park
The swift response from the New Orleans health department surprised many of the Bywater parents. As Young told me: “Nothing moves quickly here. Nothing. Except for gentrification. Other than that, actually fixing stuff? Doesn't happen." But the city had found a way of working for its post-Katrina denizens, even as many of those washed away by the flood still languished in court.
政府的迅速回應令許多市民吃驚，Young 對我說：“我們住的這兒，一切都進展緩慢，除了城市紳士化(Gentrification，城市鄉紳化是西方國家再城市化過程中，城市中心區更新(復興)的一種新的社會空間現象。類似于我國大中城市內的“城中村改造”或“舊城改造”)，真正意義上的改善？不存在的。” 但城市終於還是找到了解決途徑，與此同時，許多被洪水趕走的原告，依然滯身在法庭上。
There’s a room in Gary Gambel’s office in downtown New Orleans, kept under lock and key and surveilled constantly by a receptionist watching from a citadel-like bureau. The lawyers around the building call it the “lead room.” The entire space is filled with boxes, Polaroids, and files documenting the whole 22-year-long history of Billieson v. New Orleans. More than just a collection of court documents and filings, the place is a warehouse of the things that have been lost since 1994 and of the Wagnerian saga that wound about lives of poison, displacement, and redemption.
在Gary Gambel 在新奧爾良市中心的辦公室裡有一個房間，保衛嚴密，戒備森嚴。律師們稱其為“鉛屋”，房間裡放滿了盒子、膠片和檔，記錄了22年以來Billieson 案件的歷史，這個房間收納的不僅僅是法庭檔案，更是1994年以來逐漸消失的史實記錄，像瓦格納傳奇那樣的——生活的毒藥、妥協和救贖。
In that room, Gambel talked to me late last year about the case that had defined much of his legal career. He’d just finished one of the last major fights in the case, a dispute over a half-million-dollar fee paid by the court to a “special master” appointed to help distribute settlement funds. “It took me 20 years, and I didn't think I'd live to see the end of it," he confessed. Indeed, two lawyers on the defense side and one on the plaintiffs’ side died during the proceedings.
在那個房間裡，Gambel 去年給我講述了這個很大程度上決定了他職業生涯的案件。他當時剛剛結束了案子中最後一個主要訴訟——一筆超過50萬美元安置費的發放問題。他坦言：“它花了我20多年，我覺得我不能活著看到它完結了。”事實上，兩個辯方律師和一個原告在訴訟過程中過世了。
Gary Gambel stands in a room full of files related to the Billieson v. City of New Orleans case. (Claire Bangser)
Gary Gambel站在滿是卷宗的房間裡
As the defense ran out of maneuvering room and the hopes of a settlement against HANO grew, the lawyers bickered am ong themselves about their demands. Gambel wanted to push for a $600 million settlement that would have given the class-action plaintiffs somewhere between $170,000 and $300,000 apiece, but Bruno pushed back and aimed somewhere at or below the $100 million level. Lawyers on both sides worked to hammer out a settlement, a process rife with accusations and continuances.
因為案件久拖不決，律師們都希望儘快結束案子，他們之間也會爭執。Gambel 想要一筆6億美元的和解費，最終分給每個原告17萬到30萬美元。而Bruno 提出反對，他希望1億美元左右以儘早達成協議。各方律師都苦心于終結這個噩夢般的案件。
Finally, in 2011 the small armies of lawyers reached terms on an armistice: a $100 million settlement split between $67 million in cash awards and $33 million in housing vouchers to the plaintiffs. Half of the $67 million would go to the affected individuals and the rest would be used for legal fees.
最終，2011年，律師團隊達成了共識：1億美元的賠償，6700萬現金支付，3300萬以住房券形式發給原告，6700萬現金中一半給原告，一半是律師費。
Still, even with a settlement on the table, the people who had been poisoned by HANO were not much closer to receiving compensation. Katrina had destroyed many of the city’s medical records, thus disqualifying several of the plaintiffs and potential plaintiffs, who had to demonstrate that they had elevated blood levels before the age of 6 in order to receive settlements. The attrition from the storm was indiscriminate. Joan Dominique, who lived in the Desire projects, told me: “My oldest daughter was awarded over $14,000, but they told me my other two children didn’t have records. But they found them in a basement in City Hall later.” There were many other potential settlement recipients across the country, displaced by the storm, whom the city could not reach. The seemingly random assignment of eligibility still incites anger in some communities today.
然而，即便形成了解決方案，受毒害的HANO居民離賠償金到手依然有一定距離。卡特琳娜摧毀了該市的許多醫療記錄，所以部分原告喪失了資質，為獲得賠償，他們不得不證明自己在6歲之前的血鉛水準高於標準。颶風的影響是無差別的。Joan Dominique 告訴我：“我的大女兒收到了14000美元賠償，但他們告訴我找不到另兩個孩子的記錄，還好後來在市政廳的地下室找到了。”全國各地分散著許多因颶風而遷走的潛在獲賠人，新奧爾良無法聯繫上他們。直到今天，這種在部分社區看來是“隨機分配”的賠付方式依然引發著他們的怒火。
When the feeding frenzy among lawyers subsided, what remained for the plaintiffs almost seemed an afterthought. Dominique’s three children received settlement checks of around $14,000. Casey Billieson’s sons, now 27 and 25 years old, and living and working with families of their own in New Orleans, received a total of $35,000. The average settlement amount per person among the 2,000 qualified plaintiffs was $17,000.
當對律師的不滿平息後，人們似乎才想起原告的境遇。Dominique 三個孩子收到了大約14000美元的賠償。Casey Billieson 的兩個兒子，現在27歲和25歲，和他們自己家族居住生活在一起，總共收到了35000美元，2000多個有獲賠資格原告的平均賠償金額是17000美元。
After spending months speaking to plaintiffs, I began to suspect there’s very little that New Orleans can ever do to truly compensate them for the terrors they face. Estimates from the CDC put the average lifetime costs for even mild and initially asymptomatic cases of lead poisoning around $50,000, and many of the HANO children had tested for lead levels that indicated immediate medical emergences. Most of the plaintiffs were already too old for the money to help with education, and they’d probably already lost thousands in potential earnings from the psychological and educational effects of lead poisoning.
在花了幾個月和原告交流後，我開始懷疑新奧爾良真正能做的補償實在太少太少。在美國疾控中心估算中，即便是最輕程度的鉛中毒，終生醫療費用也要50000美元，而很多HANO孩子情況嚴重得多。這筆錢本該用來幫助他們的教育，而大多數原告年齡早就過了。更不要說因為鉛中毒，他們喪失了多少教育學上和心理學上的潛在收益。
“We did receive compensation, and no, I don’t think it was adequate,” Billieson told me. “I think they could have had more of these kids tested ... They should send us the research [too], because none of us knew anything about lead poisoning, and we didn’t know what the side effects could’ve been.”
“我們確實收到了賠償，但是，我覺得那遠遠不夠，” Billieson 對我說，“我覺得他們本應檢測更多孩子……他們應該提供研究報告，因為當時我們沒人瞭解鉛中毒，也不知道會帶來什麼負面影響。”
Dominique’s anger was more palpable. “I don’t know that you can correct the problem, but we can help [the children] now,” she said to me over the phone. “Buy them homes. Get them educated. These are things they took from these kids. You can never make up the gap, but you can try to do something. And there are funds. The city is still operating.”
Dominique 的憤怒更加直白，“我不知道你們能不能糾正這個問題，但是我們可以幫幫這些孩子。”她在電話中對我說，“給他們提供房子，讓他們接受教育，這是孩子們被
奪去的東西，你們不能完全彌補過錯，但你們可以試著做點什麼，有各種基金，城市還在運轉不是麼？”
“The award that we received was nowhere near what it needed to be to compensate these kids for their trouble,” she continued. “It just wasn’t enough.”
“我們收到的判決，根本不足以補償孩子們的問題，遠遠不夠。”
I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE to reestablish contact with Casey Billieson in the weeks since I left New Orleans. Just after my last visit, a tornado ripped through her town of LaPlace, damaging and destroying hundreds of homes. While nobody was seriously injured, it brought one more round of rebuilding for the community of displaced people now living there.
我離開新奧爾良後的幾周時間都沒法重新聯繫上Casey Billieson ，就在我最後一次拜訪她後，一個龍捲風襲擊了她的社區，造成了上百所房屋損失，雖然沒有人嚴重受傷，但居住在那兒的人又得等新一輪重建了。
The stories of disruptions among the families poisoned in HANO still reverberate. Joan Dominique’s daughter was placed in a similar position after catastrophic floods in Baton Rouge destroyed thousands of homes. Young men mentioned in court filings flit in and out of institutions, and members of the original generation of concerned mothers who launched the lawsuit, worn down by sickness, sorrow, and superhuman effort, find themselves in and out of hospitals and physicians’ offices.
HANO中毒家庭的故事沒有結束。法院檔中提到的年輕人在社會進出于福利機構，最初一代提起訴訟的母親們，在疾病、悲傷、過勞中漸漸老區，在醫院和診室間惶惶餘生。
Saley and Yancy Johnson, both 18, play basketball in the Desire Development Area of New Orleans, where they grew up. (Claire Bangser)
18歲的Saley and Yancy Johnson在新奧爾良 Desire社區打籃球，這是他們長大的地方
For people living in precarious financial, environmental, and social conditions, black skin often carries with it a life of additional traumas. Strata of segregation and exclusion manifest in the most fundamental factors of life—from the air people breathe to the water they drink—and even when they don’t kill outright, they often exacerbate existing issues. For those in the poisoned generation and beyond, blackness is a tightrope, and lead poisoning is just one of the ways to fall.
對於那些生活在危險的金融、環境、社會狀況下的人來說，黑皮膚是一生的額外創傷。種族隔離和排斥在生活的最基本要素中都顯露無疑——從人們呼吸的空氣到他們喝的水——即便這種隱性隔離不直接殺人，也會讓現存問題惡化。對於中毒的一代來說，黑人身份是一個枷鎖，鉛中毒只是其中之一罷了。
Even among those who have found their way back into a clean city, the legacy of lead continues. “There’s still a Desire project,” Joan Dominique told me. “There are still kids there. The problem is still ongoing. There is still a seed’s seed of my mother living in that project. We left those kids behind.”
即便那些回到清潔城市的人，鉛遺留問題依然持續，“Desire 專案還存在著，” Joan Dominique對我說，“那兒還有孩子，代代相傳，我們虧欠了那些孩子太多。”
評論翻譯
論壇地址：http://www.ltaaa.com/bbs/thread-443643-1-1.html
Woof • 3 hours ago
Trump tried selling leaded water, Trump Water®,
turns out people didn't care for it.
川普想賣鉛水，“川普牌水”，
這說明人們根本不關心。
M Enigma @Woof • an hour ago
Turns out you are a moron.
這說明你是個智障。
Nwb2017 @Woof • an hour ago
Trumpkins like it, it taste like kool aid.
川粉肯定喜歡它的味道。
Sam Smith • 21 minutes ago
Doing the same thing over and over, changing nothing, is the definition ofinsanity.
Have you learned that "government" isn't the answer yet?
A great man once said:
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from thegovernment and I'm here to help."
~ Ronald Reagan
重複錯誤而不改正，這就是精神錯亂的定義。
你們現在知道“政府”不是解決問題的答案了嗎？
一個偉人曾說過：
“英語中最恐怖的話語莫過於：我來自政府，我是來幫你們的。”
by Ronald Reagan
M Enigma • an hour ago
I never understood how everything is about race. I grew up dirt poor, but westill had enough sense to buy a scraper and some paint when we lived in lousyhousing. I guess that take effort as no-one , including the government wasgoing to do it for us. So you can wait for your "leaders' to grab ascraper and bring paint and let the lead seep into you body or do somethingabout it.
我無法理解關於種族的一切，我雖然出身貧窮，但依然努力改善生活環境，我想政府不打算替我們做的，我們可以自己努力。你可以等待“領導”的幫助，然後讓鉛一點點進入身體，或者自力更生做點什麼。
BlackMamba, Romperstiltskin @M Enigma • an hour ago
A bucket and a brush for everyone, what genius public policy omg.
Or we could actually hold our elected officials accountable which people aredoing.
自力更生，多麼天才的國家政策。
也許應該讓我們選舉的官員為這些事負責。
M Enigma @BlackMamba, Romperstiltskin • an hour ago
So your "public policy" is for people to do nothing while waiting forthe government to save them and end up dying. Yep typical liberal stupidity.God forbid you do something about your fate except lay there complaining aboutyour fate. But again you are the face of liberalism. Victims victims victimswith no hope if the government doesnt help. you. Nice public policy you havethere.
所以你的“國家政策”就是人們無所事事等政府救助直到死，這真是典型的自由主義愚蠢，原來上帝禁止你做任何事以改變命運，除了躺在那兒自艾自憐，說到底這就是你們的自由主義嘴臉，受害者、受害者、受害者(心理)，政府不幫忙就一點希望沒有。真是不錯的國家政策。
Fredda Weinberg • 2 hours ago
The good news is that lead isn't stored in tissue or bone, so if you wereexposed, as we were, damage need not be permanent.
好消息是鉛不在組織和骨骼中積留，所以如果你像我們那樣曾接觸過，損傷不是永久性的。