HOODOONOLA

2011-09-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

More on wise economy, work, labor, magic, hoodoo, art, music... dancing the dance ...The Long Road to Recovery, by Richard Florida, author of the best-selling book, RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS

2011-09-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

Given the regular precipitous plunging of the global economy and the distinct possibility of its demise as we know it ( a demise that will be celebrated by many and lamented by the few who actually benefit ~ the so-called job creators) the following may be of interest:

"Three Ways to Create an Economy That Works For ALL of US, Not Just the Rich", from YES! Magazine / By Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel

"Less Work, More Living ~ Working fewer hours could save our economy, save our sanity, and help save our planet", from from YES! Magazine, by Juliet Schor

Jobs

2011-07-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

   I haven't been posting here as I have been so busy working various jobs, developing projects, looking for jobs and projects and more. Whew! It all gets weirder and weirder everyday ..... unemployment is, it was announced today, at 9.2%, though we all know it is considerably higher than that, especially for those working in the creative industries, given the self-determined and independent nature of the sector. Joblessness and unemployment is also much higher among women and people of color, given the increasingly (again) racialized and genderized nature of the good ole US of A. Just about every economist on the planet, both the Nobel laureates and the quacks all say we are poised for a 'jobless' economic recovery. How does that work? If it is jobless how is that any kind of a recovery????

   In the next few weeks over the course of the summer and the run-up to Labor Day, I am going to be posting my ideas for an economic recovery that can provide jobs and a better quality of life for our families and in communities.

Freret Street Festival, this Saturday, April 2, 2011

2011-03-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

New Orleans Freret Street Festival is coming up on Saturday, April 2, 2011. This fest is one of New Orleans' best long running neighborhood festivals, with great music, crafts, food and more.

The music line-up this year is as follows:

Lagniappe Brass Band
Free Agents Brass Band
101 Runners
Tanglers Bluegrass Band
Sunpie & Louisiana Sunspots
Tin Men
N’Fungola Dance & Drum
Billy Iuso
Creole String Beans
Big Sam’s Funky Nation
The Help
Debauche
Los Poboycitos

Where
Freret Market
Freret St & Napolean St
New Orleans, LA 70115
Price
Free and open to the public
Time(s)
Saturday April 2 (12:00 PM - 05:00 PM)

Katrina V 2010

2010-08-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

I started this blog while living in Memphis in the fall of 2005, having evacuated there from New Orleans just before the hurricane hit. Five years on, a lot of things have changed for the better, but at the same time some things have stayed the same or gotten worse. Just as many of us were getting back on our feet, the 2008 financial collapse proved a set-back that many have been unable to overcome, and then, that was followed by the April, 2010 Big BP Oil Spill. South Louisiana has been besieged by one disaster after another, of one sort or another, in the 5 years since Katrina made landfall. These disasters have brought change both positive and negative. On a hopeful note, at the grassroots we have come together as a community and restored our faith in ourselves, our creativity, culture, skills and abilities, and our resiliency. I remember reading a piece about New Orleans shortly after arriving in Memphis. It was written by a woman who was an anthropologist. I do not remember her name or much about the piece, but have never forgotten the term she used to characterize the city and our greatest asset as the "Improvisational Impulse".
We are more confident now, and more creative than ever and employing our improvisational impulse in ways that will keep us resilient and bring New Orleans a sustainability we haven't had for awhile, if ever. Poverty, neglect, racism, joblessness, social and economic inequality were all on the rise before Katrina and the disaster caused by the failure of the Federal Levee System only made matters worse in the years since.

In the months leading up to Katrina I had gone back to school at the University of New Orleans to further my work in developing a thesis and a workable program model for developing the region's cultural economy in a way that would be inclusive and serve to alleviate the long held historic poverty of the city. That first semester at UNO I took two courses that would influence my post-K work - The History of New Orleans Music, with professor Connie Atkinson, the former of publisher of the city's great music magazine, Wavelength, and Public Culture, with professor Nick Spitzer, also the producer of the syndicated public radio program American Routes. For Spitzer's class, my term paper was titled NEW ORLEANS, A STUDY OF POVERTY & THE NEW CULTURAL ECONOMY, following is that paper:

New Orleans is a city of contradictions. A place where opulence and poverty, sin and salvation, celebration and depression coexist. A city known both for its richness of culture and the poverty of its populace, a city where at the dawn of a new century racial and class divisions continue and where the income-gap has become a yawning, ever-widening abyss, contributing to a host problematic social issues. Mention New Orleans anywhere in the world and you’ll receive instant acknowledgment of its wealth of musical and cultural attributes , followed quickly by an inquiry as to how the city is coping with its ongoing problems of poverty, crime, and poor public education. This paper is concerned with this question in the context of what has been termed the new emerging ‘cultural economy’, and will attempt to explore possible ways the city’s music and culture may be utilized within various current economic development efforts to reduce the incidence of poverty in the city.

What is the new cultural economy? Definitions can be hard to come by, as it remains an emerging concept that in many respects is still developing, so it is worth looking into several that have been put forth in recent years. Severyn T. Bruyn, (http://www2.bc.edu/~bruyn), offers one definition:

“Cultural economy is about how a symbolic life is generated in midst of scarcity and about the tension of differences among people in everyday life. Culture is linked with the economy through symbolic interaction and broadly, through human history. This broad inquiry begins with primitive symbols and rituals and moves forward through history to include today's market system.”

The World Bank offers a two definitions of culture in relation to their Culture-Poverty Initiative:

“The term "culture" has two usages or definitions within the World Bank. The first, wider, definition describes particular shared values, beliefs, knowledge, skills and practices that underpin behavior by members of a social group at a particular point in time (with potentially good and bad effects on processes of poverty reduction). The second definition describes creative expression, skills, traditional knowledge and cultural resources that form part of the lives of people and societies, and can be a basis for social engagement and enterprise development. These include, for example, craft and design, oral and written history and literature, music, drama, dance, visual arts, celebrations, indigenous knowledge of botanical properties and medicinal applications, architectural forms, historic sites, and traditional technologies. The research-learning program includes both usages of the term culture, to the extent they affect the Bank's core mandate to reduce poverty and should potentially affect how we do business.”

However, in discussing local and regional economic development efforts within the cultural economy, the following definition of the ‘creative economy’ may be most useful:

“At the core of the creative economy are those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have their potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.” – Creative Industries Task Force, Creative Industries Mapping Document (Dept. of Culture, Media and Sports 1998 U.K.)

But how can these definitions be applied to the development of workable and effective strategies for poverty reduction? As Bruyn said, “culture is linked with the economy .... broadly, through human history.” So a look back is warranted.

Karl Marx developed the ‘Mode of Production’ theory in which he said that the key element within the industrial economy was the discovery and application of new sources of energy. Manuel Castells brings this forward into the information age to introduce the similar concept of the ‘Mode of Development’ in which the key element is developing new forms and sources of information.

Where are these new forms and sources of information, knowledge, and ideas? And how can they, upon discovery, be applied in a way that generates jobs, meaningful livelihoods and wealth for individuals and communities? Discovering the answer to that question seems to lie initially in doing away with old assumptions and developing new definitions of what knowledge is..... and where it is, who has it and who doesn’t.

It seems from the various definitions of the creative and cultural economy that have been put forth in recent years, such as those cited above, that one of the old assumptions that needs to be done away with in order to unearth these new sources of knowledge and information essential to the new economy is that the poor are poor because they are unknowledgeable and therefore have nothing to offer. The notion of doing away with such an essentially baseless assumption is one that Albert Murray fiercely advocates in The Omni-Americans and is also the basis of Paulo Friere’s classic, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, both of which members of the New Orleans School Board and local economic development leaders would do well to read, and re-read, given their own obvious low level of comprehension.

The recent emergence of grassroots innovation networks, that are bottom-up initiatives that recognize that innovation does not come solely from the province at the top, provide evidence that the old assumptions, and with them old ineffective economic models, are beginning to be placed in their proper place in the past. In addition, these grassroots innovation networks provide an alternative to urban growth coalitions that are typically made up of business leaders acting ostensibly in the interest of community, but in actuality more in their own self-interest as revealed in the research of John Logan and Henry Molotch. One example in New Orleans of a grassroots innovation network is the recently formed Central City Renaissance Alliance, made up almost exclusively of people who live and work in the long neglected area of the city, where Census Bureau statistics reveal a median household income $1,000.00 below the Federal poverty line of $16,000.00. And while the area has been largely neglected since the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, its location, bordering the Garden District and the CBD, has it of late being eyed by developers as large portions of the Magnolia and Guste housing developments are torn down, raising the distinct possibility of many long time residents along with their vital culture being displaced in the process. However the area also has a long tradition of successful resistance to dominance by outside forces that will hopefully prevent future displacement.

In order to address the concepts within the context of the local New Orleans cultural economy, again, a look back at the city’s rich musical and cultural heritage is necessary. The World Bank, as cited earlier, maintains in the second of its two-fold definition of culture as an asset and resource for poverty reduction, that the, “... second definition describes creative expression, skills, traditional knowledge and cultural resources that form part of the lives of people and societies, and can be a basis for social engagement and enterprise development.” Henry Kmen in his paper, Music in Early New Orleans, details the popular and well-attended Balls, held with such frequency in the city that new American Governor Claiborne felt compelled to write to then U.S. Secretary of State James Madison of his concern that residents of the city spent entirely too much time engaged in frivolous rather productive activity, indicating his feeling that some regulation of such activity was called for. However, the Balls served an important function to New Orleans in general, and to its economy, as music and dance allowed the ethnically diverse population of the time to transcend the language barriers that prevented other avenues of social engagement. And this frequent manner of social engagement created many spin-off businesses, or ‘enterprise development’ in the words of the World Bank, from the making of costumes and masks for attendees to wear to the balls, to the employ of musicians and bands to perform at the balls, transportation to and from the balls, and more. By 1840 there were more than 80 ballrooms or dance halls in the city. In turn many musicians from throughout the region migrated to New Orleans knowing there was abundant employment for them here, that in turn spurred the opening of many music stores that sold and rented instruments and led to the development of a thriving music publishing industry to keep up with the demand for sheet music. It appears in retrospect that the balls were responsible for the formation of the initial agglomeration industries that today serve the city’s tourism industry so well.

Similarly, the city’s long held tradition of social aid and pleasure clubs can be viewed as a predecessor or early model of today’s grassroots innovation networks.

New Orleans R&B heyday from the late 1940’s to the early 1960’s provides another example of grassroots innovation and enterprise development stemming from social engagement and within an area of concentrated poverty, as such areas are usually referred to as, centered as it was around the Dew Drop Inn across the street from the Magnolia housing project. Another way of looking at the developments if thus time and another term that might be applied, to do away with old assumptions and within the context of the cultural economy, might be ‘concentrated creativity’. The Dew Drop Inn was also a hotel and and many of the musicians that played there on a regular basis also lived there, or in the surrounding neighborhood, fostering the regular social engagement and interaction that led to innovation and enterprise development of the kind that then attracted business, as independent record labels flocked to the city to record the New Orleans sound. Frank Pania was more than just a night spot and hotel owner, he was also a booking agent, regularly booking regional tours for the musicians that performed at the Dew Drop. And for a period, many of those New Orleans artists dominated the national music charts. Some credit the British Invasion as the reason for the descendency of New Orleans music, but Dr. John, in his book Hoodoo Moon, describes the times following the election of District Attorney Jim Garrison, who despite being elected with support of the city’s club owners, chose to engage in regulation of the social engagement that was occurring around the city’s many music clubs, raiding clubs for violation of the Jim Crow laws and regularly arresting musicians, leading many, including Dr. John, to head to Los Angeles or New York, causing a weakening of the grassroots innovation network of the time a lessening of the social engagement and interaction that produced such an abundance of creative activity.

Following this period, the area’s oil and gas industry was thriving, providing employment for many. But this was employment of a different kind, organized in a different way that was unlike the independent self-employment and entrepreneurship that had been engaged in by generations of New Orleans craftsmen, artisans, and musicians. In addition, the new markets that emerged from the oil and gas industry were so capital intensive that entry and participation in them required the investment of huge amounts of financial resources unavailable to those that had for so long engaged in independent self-employment.

The oil bust however once again brought to the fore the value of the city’s creative industries as tourism moved in to take the place of oil and gas and give rise to what is now being increasingly viewed as - the cultural economy! Although this position of the tourism industry as the region’s now dominant industry and largest employer presents a number of problems, perceptual and otherwise, in utilizing music and culture to reduce poverty, as well as address the problems of the city’s failing public educational system. The tourism industry’s sustainability as the city’s dominant industry is dependent upon the continued maintenance of large pools of low wage labor, making it in turn necessary to devalue the individual creativity activity it depends upon. And as the largest industry and employer in the city the tourism industry has the attention and ears of the city’s leaders and decision makers, resulting in its overriding influence in the direction of the development of the creative industries. Examples abound, the most notable being Richard Florida’s Creative Index in which he ranked the top 50 most creative cities in America and in which New Orleans ranked number 42. Civic and business leaders were aghast at the ranking with many referring to Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnagie Mellon University, as a quack. However, the index was not based on the number of creative people in a given city but rather whether those creative people that resided there were valued by the community and able to earn a living through their creative efforts and such is not the case in New Orleans, where the music industry is not thought of as an industry in itself but rather just a part of the tourism industry, thus accounting for the feelings of many of the city’s musicians that they are just sharecroppers to the tourism industry. Another example of the domination of the tourism industry is direction of development of the music industry is the August, 2004 Jazz Town Hall meeting held by the city’s Office of Economic Development/ Arts & Entertainment/ Music Business Development. Tourism industry officials were present in full force and the entire discussion, directed by Scott Aiges, Director of Music Business development for the city, centered around ways to import audiences to New Orleans, ostensibly so musicians will have more employment and be able to earn more. However, this notion runs contrary to the music industry rule of thumb that audience development and expansion, (that results in increased income), requires musicians to regularly release product (CDs) and to tour in promotion of their products and services, ideally hitting each market twice per year. Musicians present at this meeting expressed much frustration with this, feeling that their needs were being ignored in favor of the tourism industry’s needs.

While there have been numerous efforts over the last decade or so to develop the city’s music into a full-fledged industry in its own right, most of these efforts have proved ineffective due in large part to the lack of accurate identification of primary and secondary stakeholders, and outreach to and inclusion of these stakeholders in the development process. An example of this is Greater New Orleans Inc.’s (formerly MetroVision) formation of an arts and entertainment industry cluster to develop a strategic plan to move the development of the creative industries forward. Greater New Orleans Inc. is the economic development arm of the Regional Chamber of Commerce. Out of the approximately 40 cluster members there were only one or two who were working musicians and as a result there was much distrust of this cluster within the city’s music community, which in fact proved warranted as the cluster met for 14 months and paid Dadco Consulting $50,000 to develop the strategic plan, only to never meet again toward implementation upon completion.

Similarly, there is a distinct lack of interface and collaboration within city government to marshall resources that could result in effectively moving development of the music industry forward and creating spin-off entrepreneurial activity and jobs. An example of the lack of interface includes that between the City's office of Music Business Development and Arts and Entertainment with the City of New Orleans Department of Economic Development, the Workforce Investment Board or the city’s Job 1 office, which provides the area with workforce development and training. A large component of the Workforce Investment Act passed by Congress involves entrepreneurial training and provides for investment into entrepreneurial activity. The development of microlending groups and organizations, such as the Newcorp and the Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s SEED (Supporting Enfranchising Economic Development) locally and MEDAL (Microenterprise Development Assoc. of Louisiana) state wide, grew out of the entrepreneurial investment component of the Workforce Investment Act and concerted interface by the city’ s Department of Economic Development’s offices of Arts and Entertainment and Music Business Development that should be considered essential to developing the music industry and creating artist enterprises, small businesses, and jobs. Nor is there interface between the Workforce Investment Board and Job 1 and the Music Business Co-op , a cooperative endeavor between the City and the Tipitina’s Foundation. Dialogue and interface between these two should begin toward effective collaboration on training the city’s low-income, unemployed and underemployed in non-performing aspects of the music and entertainment business in preparation for and to facilitate the effective entry and participation of this population into the new markets of the emerging growing cultural economy. Currently the sole target of the Music Business Co-op has been musicians. Musicians interviewed by the New Orleans Blues Project have expressed frustration with this, as it seems to most that the city expects them to be their own booking agents, managers, record labels, marketers and promoters, accountants, secretaries, publicists, and floor sweepers, feeling that is too many hats to wear and wondering why the same expectations are not heaped upon producers of products and services in other industries. Wearing that many hats leaves musicians little time for their primary endeavor and fails to expand the creation of the jobs base that potentially surrounds the area’s large talent base and allow for the retention locally of the economic benefits of the music. Higher earning artists in New Orleans currently all have managers, booking agents, publicists, and in many cases record labels, located far outside the region, resulting in an economic drain of million upon millions of dollars from the local economy annually. Most of these higher earning artists would much prefer to have managers, agents in publicists locally, but there are none to speak of...indicating that is imperative that we must foster and facilitate the development of this type of activity and employment to stem the drain.

A glaring example of the lack of interface is the one by principals within just the city’s Department of Economic Development - the July, 2003 RFP for groups or partnerships to consult, develop, and implement the city’s “Comprehensive Event & Municipal Marketing Plan” that came from the city’s Marketing Department which, like the offices of Arts and Entertainment and Music Business Development, is part and parcel of Department of Economic Development (and physically located in the same hallway) yet several inquiries about the progress of the plan and the possibility for integration of producers within the city’s creative industries in the development and implementation of it, have resulted in blank unknowing stares - they literally have no idea what is going on in an office just a couple of doors down the hall !

The following is an excerpt of a study done by Steven Tepper in relation to strategies for developing a region’s creative assets, especially those of music, that puts forth a more worthwhile strategy than many of those developed locally:

(full text available at www.culturalpolicy.org)

Creative Assets and the Changing Economy - Steven Jay Tepper

"Finally, I would argue that it is better to think about the creative industries

at the local and regional levels, where policy issues related to economic and

workforce development are more obvious and where it might be easier to find

synergies between the different parts of the sector—nonprofit and commercial,

large and small firms, new media and old media.

As one example of a local strategy, Walter Santagata (2002) has argued for the importance of “cultural districts” as sources of sustainable economic growth (furniture districts in Italy, textile districts in Milan, or wine districts in France) and has identified several policy interventions to help cultural districts thrive.

There are also numerous examples from European cities (Manchester, Glasgow) of policies designed to build an infrastructure to support small and emerging cultural businesses in such areas as design, music, digital media, and broadcast. Such policies range from establishing industry forums for the identification of sectoral needs to creating publicly supported venture capital funds dedicated to the promotion of products and services made by creative industries. Other strategies include investing in digital media labs; creating low-cost production facilities; supporting art and technology studios; arranging expos to showcase new designs or local design talent; organizing trade missions around particular products or services;

providing business development support and training ; creating employment bulletins; providing managed workspace and cheap short-term leases for artists; and offering tour support for new musical acts

These types of local policies, described by Justin O’Connor as 'cultural production strategies', are where the rubber hits the road in the creative industry debates—and where industrial approaches to the cultural sector make perfect sense."

I came upon Tepper’s study as I was developing the Blues Project’s program model, “Community Development Through Music” designed to be a workforce development and entrepreneurial training program in non-performing aspects of the music and entertainment business. Additionally, it is an initiative that is targeted toward the low-income unemployed and underemployed and those considered low-educational achievers in the traditional institutional sense. Despite being considered low-educational achievers, this population exhibits a high creative acumen and qualified understanding and knowledge of the music and culture of the city that can be employed to offset the negative effects of their low educational achievement. Also within that high creative acumen is a highly developed independent entrepreneurial spirit that is made evident by looking at the history of creative activity engaged in within the cities poorer neighborhoods like Central City and Treme, and both of which have had grassroots innovation networks in place for many decades in the form of social aid and pleasure clubs, neighborhood music clubs, vernacular churches, Mardi Gras Indian groups, that, in the words of Michael P. Smith, “.... continue to be a watershed for rhythm and consciousness and a source of constant inspiration”, as he wrote in his piece, Behind The Lines: The Black Mardi Gras Indians And The New Orleans Second Line. These traits can easily be viewed, in Manuel Castells’ ‘Mode Development’ line of thinking as the key element of ‘new forms and sources of information’ that forms the basis of the information or cultural economy and its related new creative markets. These new creative markets are easier to enter for the low-income, as they are, as mentioned earlier in this paper, less capital intensive, and as a result possess great potential for entrepreneurial and small business development within poorer neighborhoods like Central City and Treme. That potential is heightened by the growing mico-lending movement as cited earlier, providing access to capital to those normally excluded as result of their low-incomes and lack of financial assets. There is beginning to be recognition within the cultural economy that an individual’s creative abilities are an asset. In Central City, the location of the Hope Credit Union by the Enterprise Development Corporation of the Delta there, and its offering of Individual Development Accounts where upon an individual saving $1,000.00 a match of as much as an additional $3,000.00 is provided, may spur the independent entrepreneurial activity that develops into small businesses that provides jobs. Certainly such developments within the micro-lending movement provides much-needed resources toward the development of artist enterprises and lends the best hope to continued growth of the area’s music industry.

Additionally, within the music and entertainment industry at large, one of the primary forms of investment is sponsorship, and a source that has not been explored or exploited locally. Entertainment sponsorship is an $11 billion dollar industry in North America and can be a source of investment to provide the tour support for musical acts that Tepper encourages in his study. Developing sponsorship as a source of investment however will likely require an effective collaboration between local grassroots innovation networks and the larger, non-grassroots public and private sector decision makers, a difficult task given the mistrust at the grassroots of city’s business and civic leaders, but perhaps not insurmountable, as the top, perhaps, within the new cultural economy needs the bottom more now than ever before.

Look for my next post on.....

IT TAKES A WOMAN!

2009-10-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-08-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-13T13:27:00.000-07:00

HOODOONOLA: We Need Social Economy Initiatives

We Need Social Economy Initiatives

2009-08-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

Socialism?

Economic Development in New Orleans

2009-08-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

~ 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

2009-07-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

HOODOONOLA: CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

2009-03-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

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.

More Hurricane Hoodoo in NOLA

2008-09-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

This from New Orleans filmmaker Lily Keber and Jordan Flaherty and Saket Soni from the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial
Justice, Bill Quigley from Loyola Law Clinic, Carol Kolinchak from
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and many others on Gustav and the ongoing hurricane hoodoo against the public by the privatization elite ~

KATRINA THIRD ANNIVERSARY * GUSTAV EVACUATION * REPUBLICAN CONVENTION

2008-09-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

As New Orleans approached the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we held our breath, boarded our houses, loaded our cars, called 311 for state and city evacuation assistance and prayed and hoped big time. The week before we watched as the Wild Tchoupitoulas, the Meters, Tab Benoit, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and other south Louisiana artists performed for the Democrats in Denver in hopes that the "Change We can Believe In" was in fact change we can believe in... that maybe after 3 years the workingclass, low-income and renters in New Orleans will have their needs acknowledged, addressed and met, rather than see their ranks continue to swell as a result of the failed Katrina response, the failed Road Home program and failed economic policies of Democrats and Republicans alike. It's been a road home filled with potholes and ditches for most. It's also been a Republican privatization program of unprecedented proportions - the first ever domestic structural adjustment program - and one that has seen affordable housing demolished and rents rising more than 46%. It's become harder and harder to live here - and for more and more people. Young urban professionals from elsewhere are flocking here for the 'opportunity' our still devastated city provides as they build their resumes and careers. The good paying jobs are going to these young people, while the rest, folks that have lived here for generations and built and rebuilt this city over and over again, and have paid their dues, are left to flounder, castigated for being poor, had their contributions and opportunity denied...
As the Democratic Convention ended, Gustav began his track through the Gulf. I left on Saturday, August 30th with my son. It was his 30th birthday. We drove up the old Blues Highway 61 towards Memphis. We drove through the night and arrived in Memphis just before dawn on Sunday morning and watched during the next couple of days as Republicans packed bags with toothbrushes and toothpaste for folks on the Gulf Coast, watched as Sarah Palin asserted her hockey pitbull lipstick politics while many folks from New Orleans were shuttled and herded to shelters in northern LA, TN and elsewhere ~ to shelters loaded with cots, cockroaches, bathrooms not working and no air conditioning. Some folks that came to TN on the trains said there were armed guards on the trains not allowing people out of their seats, sometimes not even to go to the bathroom. People were not allowed out of their seats to talk to their friends and neighbors evacuating with them. Their luggage had to go through security never seen at train stations - their belongings checked - because they were poor and had to rely upon the state for their safety they deserved nothing better than to be treated as less than American - at least that is the hidden Republican agenda, to relegate the poor to such status. It will only happen time and again and will grow in arrogance and aggressiveness unless we stand as a people and demand better.
There were a lot of young mothers on those trains.
Palin's daughter's pregnancy shouldn't be political everyone was saying, yet when a poor teenage girl in New Orleans becomes pregnant it becomes very, very political and her life chances and those of her baby become severely diminished by virtue of their address, class, income, skin color and a host of other societal predeterminates that are very political, yet are assigned to the individual.

I think we're all tired of suburban princesses and their overarching sense of entitlement. I know I am and find all this rather disturbing after decades of the superficial Republican family values routine, that is only about their families and screw other families and their greedy consolidation of capital that leaves nothing for most other families, most other young mothers and children, a sense of privilege and entitlement that has contributed to rising poverty, joblessness and inequality in America. Some greedy shit. Just what we need - an 80's beauty queen in the White House - this is the chic that made all our lives miserable in high school and now we're going to have one as Commander in Chief! Oh Lord Help Us! McCain sure seems smitten with her though, as most jocks are with beauty queens. The football star and the beauty queen, except this is a presidential election - The War Hero and the Beauty Queen.
Bristol Palin is one lucky unskilled unwed teenage soon-to-be-mom. She, like so many other pregnant high schoolers, has made an impulsive and ill-thought out life changing decision for which, were she not the Republican VP nominee's daughter would be up shit's creek, unable to take responsibility for such a decision at all. If she were a New Orleans teenager she'd be in big trouble and looking at a life of great difficulty. Let's hope she can be a better parent than her own mother has been. Bristol Palin's mom should have provided the guidance necessary to prevent such impulsive acts. It's well-known that many young teenage girls become pregnant because they are not getting the love and attention at home that they need. It is impulsive and unconsciously manipulative. That's not Bristol's fault, but it is her mother's and her father's too. Neither appears to be a very effective parent - two really ineffective parents, despite having all the available resources to be such.
If you can't parent a teenager effectively and provide such necessary guidance to your child, especially when you have the money and other resources to parent effectively - if you still can't - then you have no right assuming you can run a country - Sarah Palin strikes me as way too impulsive and manipulative herself and I suspect her daughter's sense of privilege and entitlement comes from mommy dearest as well. We do not need these attitudes in the White House. We need change, effective change that is not exclusive and crony driven, such as we have for the last 8 years. Palin is hyper greedy and crony driven it appears, as well as impulsive, shrill, predatory, narrow and small minded and clearly suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, which her nomination as VP will likely only aggravate.
What a nightmare it would be for America were Palin and McCain to win in November - what a nightmare it would be for New Orleans and struggling young single moms here and everywhere. Bristol Palin can sit on her ass and be a bon bon eating stay-at-home teenage mom, but almost all other young moms must work full-time and parent full-time, struggling to make ends meet, become educated, deal constantly with inadequate career prospects and income, inadequate child care services, suffering almost constant housing and job insecurity and a host of other problems that Palin and gang will only make worse.
Even those of us with stellar resumes are unable to find work here in New Orleans.

The Magnolia @ Washington & LaSalle Streets, New Orleans

2008-07-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

Magnolia R.I.P. Gone, but not forgotten, 1941 -2008

Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians heading to Democratic National Convention

2008-07-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

The Wild Tchoupitoulas are going to the 2008 Democratic National Convention! An amazing First in America and Big Time Kudos to all the folks that pulled this together, from Rueben Williams of Thunderbird Management, Tab Benoit, Cyril Neville, James Carville, Bill Taylor of the Tipitina's Foundation, the Friends of New Orleans and many others!
Now you know the Republican convention is really gonna pale in comparison. "New Orleans?" they say...."Mardi Gras Indians? " Duh!
The convention is just days before the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and presents a great opportunity for us to remind the nation that New Orleans is a great American city. To remind the nation of what the late great New Orleans artist John Scott said of the city at the end of the PBS American Experience episode on New Orleans ~

"The promise of that city is the lesson that can be learned from that city. At its best, when the people are doing what they do naturally--blending a seamless culture it has a oneness about it that very few places in the rest of this country has. New Orleans' promise is we can teach America how to be America. If anybody's listening."

The Shock Doctrine - The Video

2007-09-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE ~ DISASTER CAPITALISM

2007-09-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

Appearing at New Orleans' Loyola University the Saturday before the 2nd Anniversary of Katrina was writer and activist Naomi Klein, whose forthcoming book (September, 2007) is titled THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: DISASTER CAPITALISM.
We know something about Disaster Capitalism 'round these parts these days as public housing residents and other renters are denied the right to return, and now with huge insurance bills and huge increases in property tax assessments it appears the powers that be in that predatory capitalism realm are trying to force even middle-class homeowners out of New Orleans. Every third house is for sale, while economic opportunity is being denied to all except the elite, it seems........
I think Klein has it right on this one, from the events in NYC on 9/11/01, to Iraq in '03, to Katrina in '05 ~ the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting not only poorer but displaced, forced to be come nomads.......

Naomi Klien speaks at Loyola Law School

RESIST DISASTER CAPITALISM WITH DISASTER COLLECTISM
Share information and resources!
Two years on from Katrina I believe that a social economy approach is necessary to mitigate the abuses of the private market and to hold the disaster capitalists at bay.....
Presently New Orleans Department of Economic Development is in a shambles, with the 3rd Director in as many years having just recently resigned. I don't think this is an accident, but rather a covert initiative on the part of the private marketeers, the neoliberal FREE marketeers...their idea of free markets is lots of profits for them "For FREE" and screw everyone else......
these cats that view the world in terms of a Winner- Loser scenario.....when they talk about how much opportunity there is on the Gulf Coast now they are speaking of the $BILLION$ of dollars in Gulf Opportunity Zone money for rebuilding and manuvering so New Orleans' economic development apperatus is disabled allows them to tap into that money much easier -- to take the money and run.......as they have done in so many other places. And it makes it more difficult for the grassroots to tap into these funds and do something significant - more community and broad-based......
These tactics stifle collectivism at a time when it really needs to be encouraged and facilitated.
With more homeless in New Orleans than before Katrina, we need to think in different terms, outside the capitalist-consumerist box and maybe consider co-housing initiatives and collective and cooperative worker-owned businesses. This is where our economic development funds should be going, instead of funding NFL franchises.........instead they're making it it so ordinary people are worried about trying to rebuild, scrambling every day through low-wage jobs to come up with a few bucks to pay the rent, or for homeowners ~ scrambling to pay hugely inflated insurance and property tax bills....... this way folks are knocked-off balance and can't afford to pay attention to what is really going on, let alone actually exercise their democratic civil rights and liberties to try to organize and work together to make things right for themselves, their families and their neighborhoods and communities. Tactics of racial and economic division are being employed in New Orleans, producing more poverty, classism, racism, economic injustice, crime...........Divide and Conquer tactics that seem to be coming from the Republican White House through U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office here.......as every well-respected and trusted populist black Democrat is indicted.......as they go after the state's film office as well as ordinary people as 'corrupt'. I believe the White House and the Republican party is corrupt and worse, Sneaky &Predatory, as evidenced by the rich and republican getting richer and the poor getting poorer.................ARM YOURSELF WITH THE TRUTH!
DON'T BELIEVE FOR ONE MINUTE THEY TRYING TO HELP NEW ORLEANS!

8.29.07 A DAY OF PRESENCE - 2nd ANNIVERSARY OF KATRINA - THE CONVENTION CENTER 2 YEARS LATER.....

2007-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

TRUMPETS IN THE HOUSE! Kermit Ruffins & James Andrews
Social Activist Malik Rahim, the founder and organizer of the COMMON GROUND COLLECTIVE, a group that has done amazing things for survivors in the Ninth Ward and Algiers, from enlisting health professionals to ferry in prescriptions past military immediately after the disaster, to bringing in thousands of volunteers to help gut and rebuild flooded homes...

You might recognize Phyliss Montana (cntr) in this photo. She was the outspoken, heartful and eloquent focus of Spike Lees' Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke". Also in the photo is New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and behind Ray & Phyliss is former City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson, who it has been said is hoping to get another seat on the council now that Oliver Thomas has been ousted. Clarkson is probably most noted for her initiative to place arm rests in the center of city benches so the homeless could not use benches to lie down on, rest or sleep. Nagin's main agenda these days seems not so much the city's recovery, but rather scouting higher offices to run for, and jetting around the country to raise campign funds. Which is OK by this voter because I think we need some new blood in city government, somebody heartfelt and eloquent. My vote will go to either Rahim or Montana for Mayor...............or maybe they can both serve as Co-Mayors!!!
Nagin is continuing to dis the City Council and this week councilmembers had to subpoena a member of the Mayor's adminstration just to garner a simple meeting........Geez Ray, what is that about????? Stop acting like a spoiled little kid, will ya??? Please try and cooperate with the council and the people --- the city's citizens -- your constituency--- you know the folks that elected ya........

MARCH AGAINST THE RED CROSS

2007-08-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

This from the People's Hurrican Relief Fund, posted on the CLU listserv ~

WHY WE MARCH AGAINST RED CROSS

Red Cross has solicited and received billions of dollars to aid Katrina survivors. A large portion of that money (possibly $80 million) was directed toward the Means to Recovery program. Red Cross officials donâ€™t agree on the actual amount and have tried their best to hide the program and make it difficult for desperate survivors to receive these funds.

The Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and other groups across the nation are protesting on Monday, August 20 at Red Cross offices t0 demand that Red Cross do right by the people these funds were received for.

We are calling for:

1. Immediate disbursal of all funds received for Katrina-Rita Survivors with a target date set for completion

2. Elimination of the Case Manager process and implementation of a swift, simple process for getting funds into the hands of needy survivors

3. Total Accountability for all funds received and disbursed. A â€˜dollars-to-demographicsâ€™ accounting of funds received for survivors

4. Immediate identification and release of any funds that were directed to other agencies for Katrina-Rita relief

5. Congressional and local investigations into the use of Katrina-related funds by all government and non-profit agencies

My Name Is New Orleans

2007-07-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is some cool stuff. This guy is great and eloquently speaks ( in New Orleans Speak) for many of us here in HoodooNOLA!
Where Y'at!!
Who Shot The LA LA!! I don't know! But I think it was a forty fo!!

SOMETIMES THEY ARE HEADS OF STATE, PRESIDENTS OR VICE PRESIDENTS

2007-07-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

Experts: Terror suspects not brainwashed
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

LONDON - Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's No. 2. George Habash of the PLO. Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas strongman in Gaza. All trained as doctors — as did at least seven suspects in the failed bomb attacks in Britain.

The general public often is shocked to see that doctors — the world's healers — can become militants or even terrorist killers. But some experts believe it is part of a socio-economic trend in which wealthy families highly educate their sons, who sometimes become radical and have the education they need to become leaders.

"People often assume that terrorists are poor, disadvantaged people who are brainwashed or need the money. But the ones who actually perpetrate violence without handlers and manipulation are highly intelligent by necessity," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.

................. OR ARE HEADS OF STATE, PRESIDENTS OR VICE PRESIDENTS.............OR LARGE MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS.....
GENERALLY ANYONE WITH WEALTH AND POWER!! By the looks of it .............

HOW TO KILL AN AFRICAN AMERICAN CITY IN 33 STEPS

2007-06-26T18:25:00.001-07:00

Professor Bill Quigley is a brilliant and active member of the New Orleans community, always willing to fight the good fight.
The following is about as real and true as ya get and I thank him for summing it up all so succinctly, for all the laypersons in the hinterlands of America.............

By Bill Quigley. Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.
You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps - just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars - 25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans - will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.

Step Three. When the disaster hits make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response - have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.

Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.

Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.

Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.

Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men and young people helping the elderly, the sick and the trapped survive, but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns not to attract attention and get help, but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that "those people" left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.

Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.

Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.

Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors and friends. Give them a little bit of money, but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation lived together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.

Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane operators and bulldozers. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. They become essentially disposable workers - use them, then lose them.

Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African- American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them.This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.

Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African- American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.

Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program for the homeowners up so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.

Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African- Americans, from coming home.

Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union - the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.

Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government to extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the "good" kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.

Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.

Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African- American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law which makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear - do not think about returning to the suburbs.

Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.

Step Twenty One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Use money instead to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive homeownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as less than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.

Step Twenty Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build up other less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal - if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.

Step Twenty Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.

Step Twenty Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self- medication and drug and alcohol abuse, and of course crime.

Step Twenty Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.

Step Twenty Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available, not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.

Step Twenty Seven. Strip the local elected predominately African American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can - housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions, that way no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid, you know what is best for them much better than they do.

Step Twenty Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them - the local African- American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans since they do not control the rebuilding money.

Step Twenty Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state even we do it for other countries and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say "Well, they didn't even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning."

Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well- connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out exactly where the money went for a long time. There is no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts - at best they get modest subcontracts from the corporations which got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2000 - that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip- offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims - as critics can say "Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it, how much more can they expect from us?"

Step Thirty One. Keep people's attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast. Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war - support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists - that always seems to work.

Step Thirty Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on - accuse them of "playing the race card" or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who "just want to go back to the bad old days." Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African American spokespersons where possible.

Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.

Note to readers. Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans after Katrina.

ISHAK ~ The PEOPLE

2007-06-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

ISHAK ~ The PEOPLE, Sunset People & Sunrise People,"Wanne tol hokinul....roads join together"

We in modern day America have much to learn from Louisiana's early native peoples and those of today, their descendants....we can gain an understanding of more effective ways of dealing with our own current struggles through learning of theirs.........( http://www.beau.org/~velmer/atakapa ), especially in terms of preserving our environment, Louisiana's wetlands.
We need to begin efforts of resistance to the destruction to our wetlands by the mineral extractors, Halliburton, et al.....
who claim in billboards that they will stay "...until the Gulf runs dry"!

Indian Downtown Super Sunday, Creole Wild West, May 27,2007

2007-06-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

In memory of our Big Chief Sally Cruz, March 22, 1930 - May 25, 2007
For Johnny, Sally, Stella, Eleanor, Jackie, Jack, Zack, Seth, Sarah, Hannah, Emma, Bilbo and the entire extended Cruz Gang of Wild Indians!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

DANCIN' GROUND

2007-05-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

I've been working! Workin' with the Wild Tchoupitoulas & Golden Commanche, Jack Cruz, Big Chief Roderick Sylvas, Spy Boy Juan Pardo, Marilyn Barbarin, Junkyard Dog, Uganda Roberts, and a host of other New Orleans conspirators - the New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy ---
We have just released our debut CD, "DANCIN' GROUND", below is an audio-slide version of the title cut - check it out....
and ya can buy it at CDBaby.com or the Louisiana Music Factory : www.louisianamusicfactory.com
The tune comes from a little known story, that the original inhabitants called the area Tchoupitoulas, which meant "Dancin' Ground".....we've brought that forward and issued it as a call home to our people, those displaced by Katrina, to come home to the Dancin' Ground.
Another added note ~ The New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy is a music and cultral collective, a social enterprise......as we believe that taking a more united, inclusive equitable social economy approach to the rebuilding of New Orleans is essential in order to mitigate the abuses of the private market ----- to resist the domestic structural adjustment program ( a WTO Game) of privitization that is happening in New Orleans. As Big Chief says, "We won't bow down, we won't run", ........ and Wildman John, "Do what ya wanna, do what ya Know!"

Sudan Dancin' in New Orleans - Sudan Social & Pleasure Club parade Nov. 12, 2006

2006-11-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

Different Day...Same Old....or ... .Are Things Really Changing??

2006-11-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Went to a meeting a few weeks back....geez, we're all getting really meetinged out around here these days, but how else except through civic engagement are we to effect any chang????
Anyway, back to the meeting. It was a 3rd District planning meeting and our esteemed mayor C. Ray was there......
He announced one of his bright new ideas, one which came about as a result of his Labor Day economic development trip to NYC - "We're gonna bring Broadway to New Orleans!!!"

That's just plain backwards! What we need to do is bring New Orleans to Broadway.
I see more incredible dancers out on the street on a usual Sunday secondline than I ever saw on Broadway. Sorry New York...hard as y'all try ya can't dance - at least not like New Orleans can.........and lots of music biz in NYC, but the music itself is here, everywhere! The singers, songwriters, arrangers, horn players, guitar players, bass players, percussionists........All here.
Mardi Gras Indians, social aid & pleasure clubs, brass bands..........all here. New York needs us.........we need to bring New Orleans to Broadway.......C. Ray got it backward again.........but at least he's considering the issue, but also likely considering it, as so many so-called leaders aournd here usually do when it comes to developing the cultural economy - from the point of view of the tourism industry and importing audiences, as opposed to exporting our music and culture.
We're all pretty tired of waiting on these guys to get their acts together. Might help them to talk with some actual artists and musicians instead of tourism honchos. Course cats like Ray aren't interested in talking to the little people...the person on the street or the secondline........cuz they ain't the big money people. Ray ain't interested, despite appearances....like his psuedo folksy 'down' routine.
And where did the 28 million the Louisiana Recovery Authority have for marketing the state go?????
Yeah You Right! The usual places- for the usual lame television and newspaper ads - the New Orleans Tourism & Convention Bureau and the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation - None for the musicians out on the road, the touring musicians, who have always been the most effective marketers - yeah, they're still doin' it on their own dime, and still better than either of organizations mentioned above. It ain't right the way that the musicians are soooo underappreciated here.
When's the payday for the musicians????? Like the payday Wynton Marasalis received back in April????
Hey Mitch Landrieu!!!! Hey Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism! Ya can't be just about tourism and not culture.....! When y'all gonna come through for some tour support for the city's musicians?
When are we gonna export our culture. Where are those strategies??????? Instead of these lambrained ideas for bring NYC/Broadway culture to New Orleans???? Or Lincoln Center productions. They have plenty of private capital to tap into - musicians here don't.....so let's not waste scarce public money and resources on propping-up New York culture as if we didn't have any of our own!
I'm working on some projects though that might, hopefully change some of that, which I'll begin writing on here soon.....
Thanks for reading, Sneakin' Sal

New Orleans One Year Later

2006-09-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

September 1, 2005 I was unsure I would ever be in New Orleans again as I watched the city sit in what was being called a toxic soup. I sure didn't envision being back at the Maple Leaf for the Krewe of Oak's Midsummer Mardi Gras again, or being in Congo Square on Katrina's anniversary for White Buffalo Day, the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars, Cyril Neville and his Tribe 13 in from Austin, TX, a drum circle and hundreds of other New Orleanians, back where it all began...........300 years ago........

Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame & Drum Circle, Backstreet Cultural Museum

2006-08-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Visit: www.backstreetmuseum.org

The photos below are from the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame ceremony and the Rhythmic Roots Drum Circle, an incredible event that happened on Sunday, August 13th. Healing energy for New Orleans people........all people.......no tourism industry wonks screwing things up...........the sort of thing the state's office of "Culture, Recreation & Tourism" should be supporting.....and exporting......with some of $28 million the Louisiana Recovery Authority has for marketing the city and state....
I'm still dreaming of what could be........

New Orleans Music, Culture & Tourism Vultures

2006-08-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

The tourism industry vultures appeared before the New Orleans city council last week with a grandoise Power Point Bourbon Street song and dance about the economic impact of their industry. Their talentless little magic show didn't fool many of us, and hopefully not the city council....it basically came off as typical corporate cook-the-books bullshit- their usual effort to get money from this cash-strapped city and state and to tap into whatever Federal disaster money may make its way here in the next few months, as if rebuilding the tourism industry should be a priority.
Screw that, the tourism industry has ample private capital to tap into.......public monies should go to the public....and the tourism industry has done nothing for New Orleans past, present, or will in the future, except to keep wages low and the general populace in poverty. Let's not reward them for this.......instead let's put our faith and money where it belongs - into the creative activities of the people, the residents of the city - the musicians, artists, dancers, the social aid & pleasure clubs, the Mardi Gras Indians - without whom there never would have been a tourism industry here to begin with.......It’s time to put the horse before the cart for a change......
Meanhwile **** The Louisiana Recovery Authority has $28 million to market the state to tourists! ****
What can we expect to see from this money? Probably more lame TV and newspaper ads that fail to depict the creative artistic and cultural vitality of the city. This money will likely be dispersed to entities beholden to the Hilton's and Marriott's, such as the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., the Convention and Visitor's Bureau, the HO’tel-Motel Association, etc.all the while workforce development and job training programs for the vast underemployed, i.e. underpaid, masses continue to offer nothing more than career development in making beds and cleaning rooms, as if that is all anyone in New Orleans is capable of producing. For years the state has sold itself as a great palce for big business to locate because of its huge low wage workforce....... there are obvious reasons why New Orleans looked like a third world country on CNN a year ago, cuz its policy makers are thrid rate despots......
What should happen with this LRA marketing money if the state is truly committed to building its 'cultural economy' ????????
How about dedicating $5 million of the marketing $moola$ to a program that will provide tour support to the many touring musicians, that have always been Louisiana's most effective cultural ambassadors. Those musicians that have been touring for years and years, cats like Mem Shannon, The Wild Magnolias, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and the Roadmasters, Jon Cleary, the Dirty Dozen........
Meanwhile we also need workforce development programs that foster the city’s improvisational impulse - the creative entrepreneurial spirit that resides within the soul of the city’s populace...and maybe of the tourism induistry had any balls they would pony up to provide seed money for small businesses.......yeah, dream on girl!

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux - Bon Temp Roulet

2006-07-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Oak Street & Kenny Brown at the Maple Leaf- July 14, 2006

2006-07-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

What would we be without the music? Without the Maple Leaf? What would we do at those midnight moments when there is nothing left to do but dance away our sadness at the current 'bidness as usual' state in New Orleans, as if Katrina never happened...........our media celebrity mayor trapsing around the country in search of ever better photo opps, as far from the city and as far from real as he can possibly get........what's happenin' C. Ray!????
Kenny Brown, down from the Delta, was there at the Leaf, July 14th, to help us get through the night. Killing the blues by playing the blues...........showing us the way through.......

WHOO Dooo......

2006-05-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

WALTER "WOLFMAN" WASHINGTON, NEW ORLEANS MAYORAL CANDIDATE MITCH LANDRIEU, JACK CRUZ

WYNTON MARSALIS & BRING BACK NEW ORLEANS COMMISSION

Mo' Hoodoo

2006-05-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

Mayor C. Ray Nagin is running neck n' neck with Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu. God Help New Orleans. Who to vote for?
Who is the lesser of the two evils? It would seem to be Landrieu. Maybe......??????
Wynton Marsalis endorsed him yesterday. Of course that is after the office, Culture Recreation & Tourism, that Landrieu oversees, gave Marsalis and his gang at the Lincoln Center $50,000.00 to perform Marsalis' piece "Congo Square" in Congo Square a few weeks back. Nice payday for a New Orleans cat made good...but one who hasn't lived in the city for years and years, sittin' back comfortably ensconced in NYC while pulling strings and yankin' chains hereabouts.... way to go.....

There are lots of talented musicians here sinking ever deeper into obscurity and poverty....what about them? When is their big $50,000.00 payday? That money could have gone along way, contributed significantly to New Orleans' cultural economy development, had it been used instead as tour support for the city's musicians to get out on the road for the summer.
Summer here this year post-K is going to be a bitch....no doubt about it........
Marsalis' endorsement of Landrieu was a bit of a slap to Nagin who put the NYC musician on his Bring New Orleans Back commission, as head of the cultural committee. (see above)
Meanwhile it seems Nagin, who says he a democrat, but contributed $1,000.00 to Pres Bush several years back and likely engineered an even larger contribution from his then employer, cable media dicks Cox Communications, is talkin' outta the side of his mouth and doing quite well at it. Look for the Republicans to win a big one if Nagin gets elected. Nagin is tight with big wig New Orleans 'developer' Joe Canizaro, a Bush Pioneer Contributor (mega $$$), who built Canal Place back in the 1970's with the Shah of Iran as his partner. Nagin is clearly in Canizaro's pocket and an election win for Nagin will ensure significant progress for the Republicans toward turning Louisiana into the RED State (Dead State?) they want it to be.....

Hurricane season just days away, 12 days after this Saturday's election.......Is it time to evacuate again?????????

Hoodoo City Elections

2006-04-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

The hoodoo ramps up as a variety of candidates jostle for a variety of city-wide positions from mayor to city council to assessor to criminal and civil sheriffs...
Mayor C. Ray Nagin is going for a second term, but has lost most or all of his white uptown "Isle of Denial" base for a variety of reasons ranging from his "Chocolate City" and other glib remarks that spotlight his inability to be thoughtful and effective, to his failed economic policies and cronyism that dwarfs that of the Morial Administration.
Hey Ray! Just in case you didn't know.....New Orleans is creole- the essence of creative multiculturalism...or at least it used to be.....
The Isle of Denial money folks that funded Nagin previously now seem to be throwing their money at Audubon Institute CEO Ron Forman. Yeah OK, he turned the zoo into a worldclass facility, got the Aquarium built - but an insect museum?? Please. Ranks right up there with the D Day museum.
Before Katrina, New Orleans needed better schools, better housing and better jobs and what do we get? Huge facilities celebrating war and bugs, and scarce public funds going to football and Walmart. The sorry-ass Saints, (actually sleazy car salesman Tom Benson), not the schools, get $18 million and Walmart, $28 million in tax increment financing - the Tchoupitoulas Walmart looted the city long before the Katrina looting. Where is the people's insurance against these acts of theft?
None of the mayoral candidates with the exception of Tom Watson and Virginia Boulet, can even bring themselves to utter the word POVERTY, which remains the most pressing issue, as it was before the storm. And white uptown Republican mayoral candidate Peggy Wilson speaks of nothing else but preventing the "...pimps, gangbangers and welfare queens..." from coming back by establishing a 'tax free' city... funny, because Wilson is just an independently wealthy version of a pimp/gangbanger/welfare queen......and a bigot with no talent at all, except at divisiveness. Time to hang it up old girl!
As I said in my previous post, the city and its tourism industry has traded off the efforts of the poor for decades....it was the music, arts, culture - the unique improvisational impulse, that sprang from the city's poor neighborhoods that saved the city from the 80's oil bust, not the Saints, not the tourism industry, not the hotels, elitist museums celebrating war and bugs.....
It is time this is acknowledged.
It is assumed that the reason so many in New Orleans are poor is because they lack skills and talent - which is a totally erroneous assumption - there's a ton of talent here, and ironically, there is probably much more at the lower end of the economic spectrum than at the upper end, judging by folks like Peggy Wilson and her ilk....
Talent has traditionally gone unacknowledged in New Orleans in order to create the situation where the talentless with money can more easily exploit the talents of those without money.
Like every other city in America, New Orleans is scrambling to develop a high-tech sector and a bio-medical sector, but once again that is likely to prove to be a 'putting the cart before the horse' strategy, as it does not build upon the strengths and ingenuity already present.
Build the creative and cultural sector and the others will follow. Build vibrant liveable and INCLUSIVE neighborhoods and small businesses and the rest will follow. Build friendly inclusive neighborhoods where residents can walk to the store, where kids, teenagers and adults can ride their bikes of the sort we had pre-Katrina.
It is almost impossible to ride a bike or walk in the new New Orleans anymore.....huge pickups and SUV's are everywhere, impatiently careening through the city's old narrow pre-auto streets at breakneck speeds ........none of the candidates have addressed this issue either.
Election day is Saturday April 22nd. I wish both Tom Watson and Virgina Boulet could serve together. A Power duo. Black & white, male and female - thewy could bring some much needed balance. And maybe the job, given the present circumstances, id too much for just one mayor. Two heads are better than one....and both serving could also serve to eliminate the "Bidness as Usual" factor.........
more later..........Sneakin' Sal

2006-02-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome to HoodooNola.......

2006-02-03T11:07:00.000-08:00

Hoodoo has taken on new and deeper meaning in New Orleans in these new century Post-Katrina days, once again, as the soulless moneymongers attempt to assert their version...........
This blog will document their attempts to dominate, to take over and remake New Orleans in their unholy (though they think of themselves as the only holy) $$$ image........This blog will also expose the suspects for Hoo they are....expose the truth and curse their underlying predatory motivations against the people - those few still here and those trying to return.....And....this blog will shine the light on the real people, whose efforts made New Orleans America's most unique, most interesting, and most creative city....those unsung heros whose spirit, creativity, knowledge, talents, and adaptability of the real and true New Orleans who possess what urban anthropologists have routinely come to refer to as our "improvisational impulse'.... imbued within our souls.......

Michael Depp, in his piece "The Time is Now: New Orleans and the Poor", on NPR's "All Things Considered" , put it to the nation the other day when he said, "....For now an economic wall has been built around the city's broken remnants.......Prior to Hurricane Katrina, poverty overwhelmed the city. Poverty starved the city's public education system. It spawned ever-escalating rates of murder and violent crime. It festered in public housing. Make no mistake though. New Orleans also needed its poor. The working poor that is.
We had to have poor people to clean hotel rooms, bus tables, wash dishes and fill the thousands of low paying jobs that supported our vital tourism industry. But we also needed poverty's culture. Mardi Gras Indians, second line parades, jazz funerals and jazz music for that matter. These were all poverty's beautiful children. New Orleans put them out front and center to be admired by the world. Poverty was not a monolith in pre-Katrina New Orleans. It contained different, complicated and sometimes contradictory faces. The drug dealing thug and the beautiful, grandiose Mardi Gras Indian.
So who do we let back in? The poor are multitudeness (sic) but so are the upper and middle classes now nervous at the prospect of their return. Some decry the poor out of simple bigotry. They envision a new, smaller city teaming with professionals and white picket fences where there is no room for poverty's dirty faces. Others have more measured concerns. New Orleans didn't have nearly the social services or infrastructure to effectively deal with poverty before Katrina. How can we welcome back the poor without letting their problems overwhelm the city again?
Of course what all of us here are going to learn soon enough is that you can't cheery pick among the poor. You can't bring back the hotel chambermaid and leave her troubled son behind in some other city as someone else's problem. The price of cheap labor is steep in social consequences. Before the storm we were unable to deal with the consequences. Can we, will we now?
We are in an odd moment in New Orleans today. Like the Pied Piper, Hurricane Katrina took away the scourge of our poverty in one grand and sweeping action. But now our streets are empty and it's dull in our town. Our poverty is gone but we are bereft of our poor."

And today, on the front page of the Washington Post - " A City Fears for Its Soul- New Orleans Worries That Its Unique Culture May Be Lost", by Manuel Roig-Franzia, a Washington Post Staff Writer who writes with understanding and love...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202746.html

New Orleans, the city and its tourism industry, has long traded on the creative work and efforts of its poor.........and the economic benefits were reaped by just a few.........ya can't have it both ways.....that kinda hoodoo ain't gonna fly no mo'...cuz we're back...everything has changed, and is gonna keep changing.........wrongs are gonna be made right and the skeletons gonna be dancin' in the streets!!