FoodMusicJustice.com

New Orleans was worse than you think…and other US cities are at current risk of even greater catastrophes from…levee failures.

That’s the conclusion of group of respected civil engineers who have studied natural and engineering disasters (New Orleans was an engineering disaster) all over the world.

Here’s Part One of the two-part series.

There’s more. Click here for PART TWO: California’s levees are even worse

Want to look up the status of the New Orleans levee system?

It used to be as easy as contacting the Corps local librarian. Now all the records have been removed to a warehouse and the public no longer has access to them.

Is this one of the Corp’s post-Katrina improvements?

The local New Orleans business magazine does an excellent job of covering social justice issues.

Obviously, it’s not the magazine’s “beat” but when it does cover the subject, it’s worth reading.

When the artist known as ReX faced tens of thousands of dollars in fines for posting positive public art, the magazine not only covered the story, but also covered his nemesis, a dangerous lunatic called the Gray Ghost who is paid by the city to essentially vandalize public property with a gray paint roll.

(If New Orleans didn’t exist, someone would have to make it up, the only problem being no one would ever believe it.)

This issue of New Orleans City Business covers a particularly vicious practice of local police, setting up homeless people for petty crimes and then charging them with felonies that could result in their imprisonment for up to a decade. Great journalism.

Click here to read the article

Larry came to our benefit workshop last April for St. John’s Church #5 in the 7th Ward and then went with us to visit the various rebuilding projects they’re working on.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that he’s the new president of NOREIA, the New Orleans Real Estate investment Association.

In my mind there need be no conflict between grass roots entrepreneurship and social justice. In fact, the two forces well-joined can create miraculous changes in material conditions.

Larry is developing a new model for harnessing ethical entrepreneurial energy to bring blighted homes back on the market in New Orleans, a city that needs this desperately. And if the model works in NOLA - and I’m sure it - it will work everywhere.

UC Berkeley Professor Ray Seed discusses what California can learn from New Orleans and how to prevent a similar catastrophe in California and the rest of the country.

This talk was delivered September 12, 2006. Astonishing for its detail so soon after the catastrophe. Astonishing for how few people have had access to this basic information nearly three years later.

“The most costly peace-time failure of an engineered system in North American history.”

“Much worse than most people realize…”

The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank uses electronic media to collect, preserve and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The University of New Orleans and George Mason’s Center for History and New Media created and maintain this online database in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and other institutions.

Click here for more: The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank

“We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the levees.

Please everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.”

The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents said local officials had known for years that the levees were unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours passed before rescue workers showed up.

“The people responsible for this should be brought here and have a bullet put in their head.” Said a parent holding a photo of his 16 year old daughter.

New Orleans?

Actually, China. I substituted the word “levees” for “schools.”

This came from the front page of today’s New York Times. The topic is the anger of Chinese citizens against the government for knowingly allowing unsafe infrastructure that resulting in the death of thousands of people.

“Bullet in the head” for the people responsible? Rough justice in old China.

And imagine. They had to wait two whole hours for relief workers to show up.

This is not to minimize the horror and tragedy of what happened in China - and Burma. It is meant to show that even in countries overtly ruled by gun thugs, people have retained their common sense and sense of outrage, something apparently lost in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Citizens take up burden of storm relief

“Andrew Jack reports from the capital on how help from individuals for the victims is in sharp contrast to the response from the ruling regime.

…Ordinary citizens are taking up the task of providing relief to the regions worst effected by the storm.

Resigned to the government’s inability to safeguard it’s own citizens, a disparate network of individuals, businesses, and religious groups are braving their own hardships to organize convoys of supplies, food and medicine to send to the delta.

…Private relief appeared to outnumber official aid operations.”

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?

Yes.

But this happens to be a description that appeared in today’s’ Financial Times of the current state of affairs in Burma, a bottom-of-the-economic-barrel Third World country run by a group of power mad psychopaths.

What’s Washington’s excuse?

This is the second in a series of “finished” video pieces.

The first was about the birth of a new parade, the St. Claude Easter Parade sponsored by the Goodchildren Carnival Club.

http://foodmusicjustice.com/2008/04/29/easter-parade-new-orleans/

This one features Carol Kolinchak, an attorney who has successfully fought official New Orleans on behalf of Indian tribes and Second Line parades. It was filmed at this year’s Super Sunday.

Enjoy!

Incompetence and fraud on the part of the US Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors are the reason for 95% of the damage to New Orleans after Katrina.

So far the Corps has evaded any financial liability because of a legislative loophole that exempts them from any damage caused by their flood control projects.

But guess what?

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