IT TAKES A WOMAN!

Elinor Norstrom is the first woman to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize in Economics. It's about time. She won for her research in economic governance and how people and communities manage resources much better than governments or private companies. Norstrom's work is very similar to my own and what I've been doing in terms of organizing CulturePAC as a New Orleans Public Action Coalition for Economic Equity & Opportunity

Support New Orleans music & culture...right now there are several ways - the first is to vote for Derrick Tabb as CNN's Hero of the Year.  Derrick has been nominated  for his dedication to our city, its neighborhoods, music, culture, traditions, kids and our future in forming, along with Allison Reinhardt, the ROOTS OF MUSIC, a tremendous program that gives kids musical instruments and teaches the long-held New Orleans musical and social tradition of marching bands. ROOTS OF MUSIC is an after-school program that busses kids from their schools and also provides instruction in teamwork, tutoring in educational subjects and more.....so click the link and vote ~ vote often too!  Pass on the link and get your friends, family and neighbors to vote too!

Also, New Orleans community radio station WWOZ, probably the best radio station on the planet, starts its annual fall fundraising campaign today.  Tune in, listen and donate to keep New Orleans music flowing around the world!

Billionaires for Wealthcare

This is a joke, but at the same time, NOT........ as, to paraphrase a tune, "Era of the Artificial Heart" by blues 12 string singer songwriter Paul Geremia, "..... human rights are on the auction block, in the era of the artificial heart...", from labor and income to healthcare and housing, it seems inequality is on the rise in America and everything is about profit....

This great music video is "Brought to you by Billionaires for Wealthcare, a grassroots network of health insurance CEOs, HMO lobbyists, talk-show hosts, and others profiting off of our broken health care system. We'll do whatever it takes to ensure another decade where your pain is our gain. After all, when it comes to healthcare, if we ain't broke, why fix it?

For more visit:http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com

Credits

Video:
Shot by Brian Fairbanks
Edited by Jesse Freeston
Produced by Marco Ceglie & Andrew Boyd

Song:
Lyric and Arrangement by Felonius Ax
Vocals by J. Paul Geddy Lee
Chorus: Rhea Cission & X. S. Profette
Electric guitars & bass: Djingle-Djangle Reinhardt
Acoustic guitar: J. Paul Geddy Lee
Snare drums: Georgie O'Marauder
Recorded and mixed by Georgie O'Marauder
Produced by Felonius Ax

Full lyrics by Felonious Ax:

Battle Hymn of the Health Insurance Companies 
(AKA Let's Save The Status Quo)

(to the tune of Battle Hymn Of The Republic)

Rejoice and let us glory in the profits we attain
By rationing the remedies for suffering and pain.
And no one's gonna mess with all our monetary gain.
Let's save the status quo!

Chorus:
If our healthcare corporation
Never faces regulation,
We'll be brimming with elation!
Let's save the status quo!

We bought a bunch of senators and congresspeople too.
They serve our corporate interests and we tell them what to do.
This gravy train will stop the day a healthcare bill gets through.
Let's save the status quo!

Chorus: If our healthcare corporation (etc.)

Our PR team is crackerjack. Were framing the debate!
Were spreading lots of lies and were unleashing lots of hate.
Well drive a stake into the bill the day it leaves the gate.
Let's save the status quo!

Chorus: If our healthcare corporation (etc.)

A decent public option is an option we wont bear.
And Medicare for Everyone would kill our market share.
Well never win the game if all the rules are just and fair.
Let's save the status quo!

Chorus: If our healthcare corporation (etc.)

In every other wealthy nation healthcare is a right.
But not here in America, no not without a fight!
Were fighting for the right to monstrous profits day and night.
Let's save the status quo!

Chorus: If our healthcare corporation (etc.)

Lyric by Felonius Ax
Minister of Musical Manipulation
(TheBillionaires.org)

Save Charity Hospital

Come on out on Saturday NightSeptember 19, 2009 at 8:00pm to Howlin' Wolf!  Show your support for saving Charity Hospital and have a great time with some great music ~ just $5!

DJ Captain Charles warms the crowd. Other featured artists take the stage including Harold brown, Lee Oskar, BB Dickerson, Howard Scott and other special guests.
Then the LOWRIDER BAND takes the stage, consisting of the original multi-platinum recording artists of hits like ‘LOW RIDER,’ ‘WHY CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS,’ AND ‘THE CISCO KID’ .

Send 'em the medical bills you can't afford to pay!!

HoodooNOLA's Sneakin' Sal confronting Republican Congressman Joe Cao on Health Care Reform and his relationships with insurance industry lobbyists, Billy Tauzin & PHARMA

More...............from Susan " I would suggest to everyone who is trapped by the healthcare machine that they do the same thing that Sally did. Send your unpaid bills to your Congressman or Senator! Tell them to pay the damn bill or fix the health care system. Send the bills to the President! Send them the bills!"

~Susan~

U.S. Rep. Cao on Health Care

More on healthcare in America..... and in New Orleans

OK... I subscribed to ADSENSE here on my blog hoping there might be a few bucks that could trickle in around it...Life is tough here in the Big Easy these days... thanks to cats like David Vitter, who has done nothing to help create jobs or make life better for anyone other than a few of his ideologically close cronies....giving rise to ever greater rates of inequality in our (un)fair state...so what does ADSENSE do, put David Vitter on my blog - this is a note to let all who read this know that I think the senator is the very definition of a creep.  In fact, come election time - PLEASE VOTE DAVID VITTER OUT OF OFFICE! 

HOODOONOLA: We Need Social Economy Initiatives

HOODOONOLA: We Need Social Economy Initiatives

We Need Social Economy Initiatives

Socialism? 

Economic Development in New Orleans

Mayor Ray Nagin kills plan to form partnership N.O. economic development council - NOLA.com

Mayor cites lack of diversity even as City Council prepares to offer nominees

Shutting this down is the best thing Ray Nagin has ever done for New Orleans.  This was all the usual suspects,the business and economic elite, working for the most part to maintain and continue the status-quo of poverty, low wages and inequality that has plagued the city for so long.  They just had a different rap this time around, employing a more contemporary lexicon and such phrases as 'best practices, but there was nothing best practices about any of it.  The process was seriously flawed and exclusive from the get-go.  The joint effort between the Horizon Initiative and the City, (primarily Councilman Fielkow), can only be described as abysmal and if it was any indication of the future of this new economic development council and agency  - then we all, as a city, were in deep dodo....

This public private partnership's initial efforts were pathetic and in no way could they be considered best practices - stakeholder identification and outreach beyond the elite business class was wholly inadequate, as was any effort toward making the development of this new agency inclusive and citizen driven.  Attendance at required public meetings in December '08 was practically nil, because the groups involved failed to adequately inform the public.  Very few of New Orleans' citizens were aware of what was happening here and it all looked as if a fast one was being pulled.  The entire effort seemed driven by monied private interests and all-in-all it looked to be an impending raid on the public coffers by these private interests, more than anything else - there was nothing public about it. 

Councilman Fielkow is now claiming the suspension of this development is retaliation for the Council's veto to move City Hall to the Chevron Building..... but he is just playing politics in the usual way too.... no different.....

I remember Councilman Fielkow warning folks at a Horizon Initiative membership meeting in January of the 'nay-sayers' in the community, of which CulturePAC, a group I am with that works for economic equity, was one.  

Similarly, when a few of us questioned certain tactics and inadequacies at December's public meeting we were also quickly branded 'negative' and 'nay-sayers', also.  Our legitimate concerns that there were no mechanisms to deal  with the problems and social ills of poverty and rising economic inequality or no mechanisms for building wider community wealth were simply dismissed as negative.  "Say something positive ... we want to hear something positive", said the company women in their do's, power-suits and spike heels.  Geez, it was more like a high school pep rally than a public meeting.  We knew then that this effort, despite the Rand report that said the problem with economic development in New Orleans was its historically EXCLUSIVE nature, would all, never-the-less, remain that way.  I was personally concerned that this was a group that had long ago deemed themselves smarter than everyone else in the city, and therefore they should continue to be the exclusive decision-makers on all things economic - despite more than 150 years of poverty-making by these cats and their forebears.

It is truly the time for change, but this is not the way, this is no change at all - no innovation, new ideas, alternatives, just the same old, same old.... so kudos for Nagin for doing the right thing and preventing this raid on the public coffers.  

I and CulturePAC will continue to work to ensure that economic development processes in New Orleans are inclusive, equitable and citizen-driven, allowing for new voices, new ideas and new pathways toward wider community benefit than in the past.  

HANO SUCKS

~ HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS ~ RENTS RISING ~ HOUSING INSECURITY ~

    VULNERABILITY, JOBLESSNESS & HOMELESSNESS ON THE RISE

               THE HOUSING AUTHORITY OF NEW ORLEANS - HANO -

Can they be more ineffective???  That's what many folks are wondering these days - the pic above is from New Orleans Indymedia.org 0f a gathering/protest at HANO headquarters -  

Try moving from DHAP to Section 8 in this city...... and you will find out just how ineffective HANO is - get the word out about Friday's board meeting - bring your friends, family and neighbors and let's hold these public servants/arrogant bureaucrats accountable.  New Orleans and its economy will never get better if everyone has to struggle daily with this kind idiocy while also struggling to survive in such an environment of concerted business and government depravity that has brought so many to their knees.  Time to RISE UP! 

WAGE THEFT in New Orleans

I went to the City Council Special Projects/Economic Development meeting last week, where one of the agenda items was Wage Theft in New Orleans.  This item was on the agenda because of the recent study " Under Siege: Life for Low-income Latinos in the South" by The Southern Poverty Law Center.

This was some of the most eloquent, articulate and impassioned testimony I have ever heard in the New Orleans City Council Chambers.  It was sad though that only two members of the City Council were present for this testimony at a time when so many of the residents of the city are dealing with such abuses of the private market and at a time when there is an initiative to form a new public private economic development agency, one that we should all hope will move us past such abuses, past the Plantation-Sharecropper economic model the region has employed for more than 150 years - one whose very foundation is built upon exploitation and continues the poverty-making status quo.  Council members Feilkow and Willard-Lewis were the only members present.

Unfortunately this impending new economic development agency looks to be more of the same.  As I testified at a recent City Council Economic development Committee meeting, if the stakeholder identification, community outreach and public information efforts of the group forming this new agency are any indication of their future efforts, we're in deep shit, as very few people in the city are aware of this important development.  It has not been a democratic or transparent process at all, despite the millions of dollars committed by The City.

CulturePAC, a Public Action Coalition for Economic Equity that is seeking to ensure this new agency is inclusive and citizen-driven and is calling for 30% of the seats on the board go to the low-income, since that is the percentage of city residents living in poverty. CulturePAC contends that those who are able to amass capital and wealth, who have exclusive access to vast amounts of private capital are not always the smartest in the room, and are often times the most complacent.  Our low-income community is made up of many of our best and brightest, our most creative, with new ideas and awareness of beneficial alternative economic pathways, with knowledge, skills and abilities in innovation, adaptability and sustainability.   

Please join CulturePAC in making life in New Orleans better for all, rather than just a select few.  Join CulturePAC in developing inclusive economic development policies, strategies and initiatives that will build a more diverse, just and sustainable economy for our region.   

Old Economy v. New Economy

This is what we're talking about! We need creative cultural producer-worker cooperatives in New Orleans in order for our creative cultural products and services not be appropriated and corrupted, for producer worker autonomy - musicians, artists and activists are an independent and suspicious bunch in New Orleans and across the region and for very good reason-
We need producer-worker cooperatives for an equitable, fair and just economy for New Orleans and our nation - for social and economic justice.

Martin Hess in a 2004 piece titled, ‘Spatial’ relationships? Towards a
reconceptualization of embeddedness, for the journal Progress in Human Geography, cited Karl Polayni, writing:
Activities that began as social i.e. of a non-market economy with their forms of reciprocal and
redistributive exchange, were constituted on the basis of shared values and norms that had
their roots in social and cultural bonds rather than monetary goals, societies based on
market exchange reflect only those underlying values and norms that consider price. They do
not recognize any other obligations. Therefore, Polanyi conceived market economies as
disembedded from the social-structural and cultural-structural elements of society.
...... while historically preceding economies were embedded in society and
its social and cultural foundations, Polanyi argues that modern market economies
are not only disembedded, but ‘instead of economy being embedded in social
relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system’ (Polanyi, 1944:
57).


And that is what New Orleans and so many other regions, cities and towns across America needs so urgently now - an economy that is "reciprocal and redistributive ...... constituted on the basis of shared values and norms", based upon, "social and cultural bonds" rather than - strictly "monetary goals."

For more on the New v. Old Economy go to the Summer 2009 issue of YES! Magazine and the U. S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (See: Links & Resources section at the right of 

page ) .....

Missin' Snooks

Deacon John and June Yamagishi perform at Snook Eaglin's service at the Howlin' Wolf in New Orleans, Feb. 27, 2009

HOODOONOLA: CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

HOODOONOLA: CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

In New Orleans, the most effective change has always come from the bottom, up from the streets, from the traditions and rituals of the city's people and usually from those most in need of change.
The annual St. Joseph's Night community celebrations on the streets of New Orleans are a perfect example. St. Joseph is the Italian Patron Saint of the Laborer and Families. More than 100 years ago Italians and African Americans neighbors joined their heritage and traditions to celebrate the Saint together every March 19th in one of America's most unique gatherings.
As the sun sets people begin gathering at the sacred ground in Central City at Washington and LaSalle Streets and at Second and Dryades Streets. As the sky turns from pink, to purple to a deep midnight blue, rhythm and chants can begin to be heard.
Soon mutli-colored feathered plumes can be seen floating in the distance and the chants, beats and rhythms become louder as Mardi Gras Indians make their way to the four corners, and the people begin to sing and dance with their arrival on this most special night.