I found a good collection of articles by Larry Blumenfeld (including an audio piece.)
Larry’s doing a super job of documenting the post-Katrina music scene in New Orleans.
Will the music survive?
This should be THE question of our time for everyone who cares about the future of music and culture in America.
The Open Society Institute, a project of George Soros, has funded the creation a very worthwhile web site.
Articles, audios, videos about the unnatural disaster - it wasn’t Katrina - that destroyed 80% of one of America’s great cities and the heroic rescue and rebuilding efforts of the people of New Orleans.
Just discovered an online gem hosted by Dan Phillips. Here’s how he describes his mission:
The Yes Men - political pranksters par excellence - visited New Orleans last August to draw attention to HUD-created inequities in the city’s public housing.
Here’s an audio account of the event produced by WWOZ’s Street Talk project:
Open Source Organizing
Quintus Jett, a professor at the Thayer School of Engieering at Dartmouth College, is leading the Gentilly Project.
The Project is making GIS technology (Geographical Information Systems) available in a public, web-based form so that the Gentilly community can create an easily accessed database to track the condition of neighborhood properties and the progress being made to restore them.
Jett is particularly interested in what he called “open structure organzing.” (more…)
My friend Howie Jacobson conducted this interview a few months months after the levee failures.
It’s with Mike Ellis, a social worker from Ithaca, NY, who visited New Orleans to provide counseling and help gut houses Christmas 2005.
This interview captures the trauma people suffered, the way the people of New Orleans have been abandoned and the courageous community-based, self-help efforts that are ongoing - and deserve our support.
Audio: Interview with Mike Ellis
“Stay awake to what’s happening down there. I’ve only touched the surface.” - Mike Ellis
From “The Great Deluge” by Douglas Brinkley. (New York: William Morrow, 2006)
Among the guests staying in the Hyatt were the Black Men of Labor, a social club that was a legendary part of New Orleans’ annual Labor Day Parade. Five members of the club - Fred Johnson Jr., David Sylvester Jr., Todd Higgens, Reynard Thomas, and Roland Doucette - had boarded up their homes, sent their families away, and evacuated to the Hyatt.
They were worried about the poor and elderly who hadn’t evacuated New Orleans. Together they decided to be the first first responders. While almost everyone else was looking for cover, the Black Men of Labor stared out of the hotel lobby windows, anxious to help storm victims.
“Divine Inspiration brought them together,” Banks recalled. “These weren’t guys who waited around for FEMA. They didn’t get a quarter. They were native sons of the city. What the Black Men of Labor understood was that it was our friends and family members stuck. Nothin’ could hold them back.”
Black Men of Labor Parade - 2002
From the notes to the videomaker:
“I recorded these sounds and images in 2002. The Katrina disaster is ongoing. Many including Black Men of Labor co-founder Fred Johnson are still displaced. If you can donate time or money please find one of these local groups to help. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THE RED CROSS! Music by permission of Fred Johnson/Black Men of Labor. Words by permission of Professor Helen Regis, LSU Department of Anthropology.”
An in-depth audio program about the Black Men of Labor with interviews produced by WWOZ
Photos:
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