Attention NEW ORLEANIANS:

Ooh, I want this t-shirt. Seriously. Katrina radar image superimposed with Saints logo on the front. On the back, a fictitious weather report, with the names of the best loved Saints players worked into the paragraph. For example, a heavy BREES is expected. It's $20. I WANT. I MUST HAVE....


great Saints shirt here

"Trouble The Water" in September

From We Could be Famous blog

People really should start getting excited about Trouble the Water, which will play at Canal Place starting in September. It's follows a 9th ward family that actually began filming their own little documentary of the water rising. If you don't see it you hate New Orleans and hate America.

I was actually privileged enough to see a screening of the film at Netroots Nation and will testify that it is incredible. Their work is the real-deal and will almost undoubtedly be nominated for best doc at the Oscars.

When I saw that it was made by the producers of Fahrenheit 911, I was a little bit concerned that our tragedy would nothing more than a Bush-bashing flick. Yet, Tia Lesson and Carl Deal don't do that at all. Reality bashes Bush and they didn't really have to draw and lines of connection or assign responsibility or blame. Instead, we get to see the personal strength of our neighbors in the face of the administration's malicious neglect of our region.

It's a big winner in my eyes, though painful to watch on an emotional level - how could it not be?

Thanks. I will be there!

V-Day

Well, V-Day in New Orleans starts at 10 Friday morning. There is going to be a special blessing ritual to cleanse the Superdome of the energy of those awful post-Katrina days. There will be lots of speakers and panels. Also, there will be massages and yoga and other such relaxation-related goings-on for the women of New Orleans (fabulous - I just wish some of the visiting counselors would be staying for good, since we now have only about 1/4 of the counselors we had here pre-Katrina - and we have LOTS more need now).

Alix Olsen, whom I LOVE, is going to be there tomorrow afternoon.

I will be attending the actual Monologues Saturday night with my cousin, which is truly in the spirit of sisterhood because I adore her and she's one of those busy, busy superwomen with whom it's difficult to schedule social time. So this will be a rare treat.

On top of that, I was expecting cheap tickets in the upper nose bleed section, but Mr.Me surprised me with more expensive tickets near the stage - for me and my cousin.

He also surprised me yesterday by setting up what had become a junk room into a real office. I have a desk, an adding machine with tape, the printer/copier/fax right there, four file cabinets. He set up files for all of my genealogy stuff, which had been in boxes for three years. I can now find all the tax stuff, all of the bills. Geez, I'm in danger of becoming a grown-up! Somebody save me from myself!

I guess maybe the office thing finally got done because Tuesday night at 7:30, the law school to which I recently applied called. There are one or two more things they need (proof that I paid my speeding ticket!?), but it sounds like I'm in. This school offers a public interest concentration, which could lead to some great non-profit, political, administrative, or other advocacy work. The school also has several different clinics in which third year students can work - and one of them does nothing but domestic violence work. Another does environmental justice work, which is just huge here in Louisiana. Not only do we have these terrible environmental problems caused by the petrochemical industries, but because the companies in those industries bought up land along the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that was once all sugar plantations, there are these African-American populations there, descendants of slaves, who are suffering the health effects of the pollution. Most of the white people who want to leave have left. In this area, around the antebellum home called "Oak Alley," has sprung up "Cancer Alley." The locals - primarily African-American people, sometimes living in relic "freedmen's" shacks - suffer shocking rates of miscarriages, leukemias that are rare in the rest of the American population, skin rashes, eye and nose irritations, and birth defects. I would love to do some environmental advocacy work. The law students at Tulane have actually won some cases in this region, have managed to keep some new industries from locating here. Of course, the evil state responded by changing the rules under which law students can handle these cases - requiring that the citizens form a non-profit BEFORE coming to the clinic (no, they need lawyers FIRST to help them form the non-profit!), that they prove the average income level of the plaintiffs is below poverty level, all kinds of hoops, things unheard of in other states - all because some law students won some cases against the petrochemical industry!

Ramble, ramble, ramble. And to bed.

Calling Brothers and Sisters of the Diaspora - COME HOME

And my mom too...

COME BACK TO NEW ORLEANS

Eve Ensler gets it! Ensler in New Orleans:



Yesterday I did a blog post about the Mardi Gras Indians.

Today, paying homage to a Southern goddess:


(hat tip Katrina Film)

Also this month is a series of Irish, Italian, Irish-Italian, and Irish-Italian-Islenos parades and masses in honor of St. Patrick's and St.Joseph's days (lots more at Time Pic)

Finally, this week is also time for the St. Joseph's alters around the city (partial lists here and here, with a good explanation of the tradition at that second link).

For my friends from around the country, here are some photos of what St. Joseph's alters may look like.




And, of course, no New Orleans-related blog entry of mine is ever complete without a finger flip to those who want the city to just die.

Potpourri

LonerGrrrl explains the need for women only spaces. Just brilliant! (hat tip to The Burning Times)

What brings this subject to the forefront just now is the inclusion of men at a Sheffield, UK, "Reclaim the Night" rally. At rallies I've attended in the past, there was a "SpeakOut Against Rape" portion that was indoors and included men as well as women. There was a march in the streets for women only. While women marched, men held some sort of consciousness-raising discussions indoors. I would have been very upset had men been allowed in the march. The idea is for WOMEN to insist on our right to be in the streets, unescorted, after dark.

Another thing bringing this subject to the forefront just now is the inclusion of men on the York Student Union's Women's Committee.

The latest Carnival of Radical Feminists is up.

There is also the latest Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution.

Hillary Clinton keeps campaign contributions from a CEO with a brazen history of sexual harassment. It's as bad as the Jack Nicholson endorsement. It makes me wonder why these men donate to a woman candidate anyway. Guilty consciense? Cluelessness? With Nicholson, he does have a movie clip in his endorsement film in which he says, "There's nothing sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning." Other than maybe repeatedly bashing a woman's head into the floor, I guess. What is it - some kind of domination fetish? Because we already know it's always about the sex. Always. Vote for Hillary because she's a member of the sex caste and it's sexy to pretend she's the boss. Pardon me while I barf.

The U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women is meeting this week.

On the American presidential campaign: "Leveraging the Power of Race and Gender".

Remembering Barbara Seaman

On the bus with Obama, in search of some Howlin' Wolf: here.

Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian keep pushing their gender stereotypes into public education.

Andrea Smith has been denied tenure - letter-writing campaign.

Linking misogyny and murder in the U.K.: here and here. (via feministing)

Charlotte Allen, who previously pronounced Katrina a good thing that happened to New Orleans now announces that women are really, really dumb (both stories at feministing). I realize I'm two years late commenting on her New Orleans column, but I must say that I would love to meet the local who told her Katrina had been a good thing for the city. I wish Allen had interviewed my grandparents, who are in their eighties, who have ended up spending these last years of their lives struggling to rebuild their home. I wish she could have seen my military veteran grandfather in the weeks after Katrina, driving dazed all over Baton Rouge, desperately trying to find new shoes to fit wide, weathered, eighty-plus year old feet, his eyes filling up with tears as he explained, "We try them out for a few days and then have to return them. Honey, when you're our age, you just don't go buy shoes at Wal-Mart." I wish Allen had met my mother-in-law, widowed just a year before Katrina, following forty years of marriage, gas mask on, trying to scrape mold off of things in her home; suddenly hearing every midnight noise magnified through the walls of her FEMA trailer; one night watching the police chase a man who jumped over her fence as she sat trembling in that little can of a building; suddenly realizing just how vulnerable she really was when she was sexually propositioned in her wrecked home by a contractor she informed about her recent widowhood; spending countless hours for more than a year calling government agencies, contractors, repair companies, delivery companies, utility companies, the mortgage holder, insurance companies, friends, family members. I wish Allen had talked to my mother, a schoolteacher who got transferred to a school 90 minutes and two toll bridges away from her home (without any compensation for increased gasoline costs), who lived in a rental property the owners refused to clean up (these owners threatened to double the rent when she complained), who slept each night for six months listening to the tree rustling inside of the ceiling above her bed, there where it had been lodged since Katrina, hearing critters scurrying around up there until she finally couldn't take it anymore, the nerve pills making her too dopey to work, so she finally moved 2400 miles from here. I wish Ms. Allen could interview everyone we know about now living under the threat of getting cancer as a result of exposure to the formaldehyde in their FEMA trailers.

Can I just say something to Charlotte Allen? Fuck. You.

(I know that last part wasn't especially well written, but I'm tired and that article really made me mad.)

What Katrina Taught Me

As an activist, I have a habit of collecting stories about nasty stuff. I read a lot of horrifying stories and although they upset me, they also motivate me to work for change. That, the hope that things can be changed, is what keeps me going. Some people ask me how I can stand it (especially my mom), and I reply that I just don't know any other way to be.

What I've learned from Katrina though is that while stories about horrible things can make me upset, angry, or sometimes tearful, it is random acts of selfless generosity that really make me cry.

The week of Katrina, I was staying in a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. There I met a family who had been stuck at the New Orleans Convention Center during Katrina and who had spent a few days exposed to the elements on the interstate. Back in New Orleans, the husband had built a little privacy shield and makeshift toilet for his wife, who told me that he also never left her side, as there had been rumors of rapes. Her mother explained to me that most of her family had disowned her daughter when she married because they are white and the husband is black. "But," she said, "look at how he cared for my daughter. I will never again let anybody question their marriage. I don't care what anyone says. He proved he is a good man." The family had arrived in Little Rock by bus, and I ended up spending a day helping them get assistance at the Red Cross, get prescriptions filled, etc.

At one point, we were lost and so we stopped at a 7-11 to ask for directions. A man in workman's overalls approached my car, which has a bumper sticker that says "New Orleans: Proud to Call it Home." "Are you from New Orleans?" he asked. When we affirmed that we were, he opened his wallet and offered my passenger some cash. She hesitated to take it, but I told her, "You need it. Look, people are watching the news every day and they're pissed, and they can't figure out how to make it right, so if somene wants to do something for you, you should let them." So she accepted. As we drove away, she began to sob. She hadn't cried before - not when we talked about our the state of our beloved city, not when she talked about running from the rising water, not when she told me about being without food and water at the Convention Center, not when she talked about the fear of being raped, not when she talked about losing everything and not even having clothes for her children or her prescriptions or even eyeglasses. And yet, she began to sob over being handed $20. After all, she said, "I am a hard-working person, you know. I've never taken charity from anybody before."

And I have seen this happen again and again. People don't cry so much over what they've lost. They're much more likely to cry over what they are given.

I remember when the Red Cross explained to a woman in Little Rock that her debit card could be used anywhere. "Oh, good," she said, "I need to get these children some school supplies." "No," I told her, "don't spend it on that. Didn't you hear? Wal-Mart is going to give you credit to spend on school supplies. Show them your Louisiana driver's license, and they will give you school supplies." Her eyes opened wide and she said, "You mean, I can get these children some pens and some notebooks? Really?" When the Red Cross volunteer affirmed what I'd said, the woman moaned, "Oh- Jesus-thank-you-Lord," her face crumpled up, and she began to sob.

Even now, I hear stories about angels coming to New Orleans to help and these are the stories that fill my eyes with tears. Human depravity and cruelty can sometimes make me cry. But what Katrina has taught me is that the depth of human generosity almost always makes us cry.

Our government has forgotten us. The media remembers us only on anniversaries. The presidential debates commission won't bring candidates to the scene of the government's crime. And still, still, angels from all over the United States keep on coming.

high school kids from Rockford, Maine

people from Missoula, Montana

cops from Michigan, New York, and Oklahoma are still coming here to rebuild cops' homes (see video of a big New Orleans cop brought to tears by the generosity of others)

It's strange to think that the same species capable of such evil (the only one that sometimes kills without reason, the only one that makes war and fights its own kind not just to establish dominance but to the death) is also capable of such generosity. What I've learned since Katrina is that it's the latter that is most likely to make us cry.

Affordable Test Kits for Trailers, Mobile Homes

This organization seems to have the least expensive test kits for formaldehyde. Most kits are $100, but this one is $50 (click on the post title for the link). Maybe the others send pros out to do it; this one is do-it-yourself.

Also at that site are mold test kits for $40 and radon kits for $10.

We were supposed to go out for a belated Valentine's Day dinner next week. I wonder if I can persuade "teh huzzband" that a test kit is the gift I really want...

The "we could be famous" blog has the goods on toxic FEMA trailers.

The NBA is good to NOLA and so is Jack Cafferty

I saw the head of the NBA on CNN last night. He was so gracious. He was asked why the NBA came here when the Commission on Presidential Debates didn't choose New Orleans to host. He cited the big events New Orleans has hosted, including Jazz Fest, Mardi Gras, Essence Fest, the BCS bowl, and numerous conventions (including two major medical conventions, whose leadership decided that meeting in NOLA was a "moral/ ethical" matter). He said that the NBA had to come to New Orleans to help out. Thanks, NBA! They love us more than the politicians do - although we've known since K-week that our government doesn't love us.

After the segment was over, Wolf Blitzer mentioned to Jack Cafferty that the city was a great place. Cafferty said that he has been to New Orleans many times, both before Katrina and since, that his daughter graduated from Tulane this spring, and that "it's one of the greatest cities, not just in the U.S., but one of the greatest cities in the world. What has happened down there is not just a shame, but a crime." He was so angry that he actually got choked up when he got to the "it's a crime" part and turned his face away from the camera. Wow - crusty old white dude Cafferty nearly in tears over NOLA. Who would have thought??

Sweet Jesus, I Hate Robert Novak

Okay, there's a website for sweetjesusihatebilloreilly and there is a sweetjesusihatechrismatthews, but, really, somebody needs to do a sweetjesusihatebobnovak.

As if outing a C.I.A. agent isn't bad enough, Novak now sets his soulless sights on New Orleans:

I spent two days here with Donald E. Powell, federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, who conducts oversight on the remaking of New Orleans. Physical reconstruction is slow, and the city will never regain its former size or appearance. But civic leaders I met agreed that law enforcement, criminal justice, education and health care all are better than they were before Katrina. WaPo

OHMYGOD! Did he actually say that? Did he? Law enforcement is BETTER? Yeah, just that little problem with having 2 to 4 murders every weekend (special report). Criminal justice is better? Volunteers follow cases via Court Watch NOLA, which reports:

Court Watch NOLA has monitored 300 cases in the New Orleans criminal justice system in its first four months. Only four of those cases went to trial and two were for the same case after a trial ended in a hung jury.

It gets worse, said Karen Herman, coordinator of Court Watch NOLA. More than 68 percent of the time, court watchers observed cases rescheduled for another day through continuances. "Turnover and attrition" within the district attorney's office were the primary cause of the delays, according to Court Watch.

Five of the eight prosecutors have quit the Violent Offenders Unit since Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan created it in March....

Herman, a prosecutor for eight years under former Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick, said her return to Criminal District Court has been an eye-opener. She points to a case monitored by Court Watch NOLA that illustrates how the criminal justice system is failing the public.

Anthony Thomas was 17 years old when he was arrested Oct. 29, 2004, for armed robbery and carjacking. In the ensuing three years he was released from jail on bond and re-arrested three times without ever going to trial for 15 different offenses, including second-degree murder, possession of a stolen vehicle, possession of illegal firearms, flight from an officer and possession of marijuana, heroin and crack.

So, that's the D.A.'s side. What about the Public Defenders?

An angry New Orleans judge says he will release 42 criminal defendants on April 18 because they lack adequate legal representation.

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter lashed out at the Louisiana Legislature for making a "mockery" of the criminal justice system and also warned that he will no longer appoint the beleaguered public defender's office to represent poor criminal defendants in court.

"Indigent defense in New Orleans is unbelievable, unconstitutional, totally lacking in the basic professional standards of legal representation and a mockery of what criminal justice should be in a Western civilized nation," he wrote in an order issued last week.

The judge, one of 12 in the Orleans Parish criminal courts, has been pushing for more than a year to reduce the pre-Katrina backlog of poor defendants who have been in jail awaiting trial without attorneys. He has suspended prosecutions, released four defendants charged with misdemeanors and ordered lawmakers and Gov. Kathleen Blanco to appear in his court to explain why they have not provided more money for the public defender system.

"The Louisiana Legislature has allowed this legal hell to exist, fester and finally boil over," Hunter wrote. more

Oh, but, my dear judge, funny little man in a robe, it can't be all that bad. Robert Novak says it isn't. And Novak knows his s**t.

Education is better now, Novak tells us.

A major part of this reshaping of the city’s ethnic face and economic profile has been played out on the stage of the New Orleans public schools. The Bush administration and certain high level Louisiana government officials saw in the devastation of Katrina an opportunity to create a new national model of a ‘market based system of education’ that could replace the existing public school systems. To this end, state takeover legislation broke up the existing New Orleans Public Schools [NOPS], creating a balkanized patchwork of competing school systems, firing all of the teachers and staff in NOPS, and abrogating their collective bargaining agreement.

Eighteen of the best functioning New Orleans schools remained with a much smaller NOPS; two-thirds of these schools have been converted to charter status with NOPS as the authorizing agency. A recovery school district [RSD] run by the state Board of Education has responsibility for more than 20 schools, including the schools of last resort in this ‘market’ system, and is chartering more than 20 other schools. A number of charter school operators, including the Leona Group, KIPP, and several local universities, also run schools. Further, both NOPS and RSD have spun off a number of charter schools to an independent organization – the Algiers Charter School Association. The sheer number of competing entities creates much confusion among parents, students, decision-makers, community residents and the public in general. While these intermediary organizations multiply, New Orleans still has barely one-half of the public schools it possessed pre-Katrina....

A much larger group of schools, including most of the RSD, is struggling mightily. The State Board of Education and the RSD has failed to provide them with the most elementary tools of education. New Orleans teachers told me stories of their RSD schools that, two years after Katrina, had neither textbooks for their students nor teaching materials for their teachers. Many RSD schools were beset with serious environmental problems such as mold, mildew and rodent infestation. Other schools were still unable to deliver a proper lunch to their students. Having dismantled the pre-Katrina teaching force, forcing large numbers of them into retirement and into other Louisiana parishes for work, this experiment in market education has created a major teaching shortage in New Orleans, heavily concentrated in the RSD schools. During our June visit, many RSD schools still lacked a full complement of teachers. A recent UTNO-AFT report, No Experience Necessary, describes in detail the difficulties New Orleans public schools are now facing in attracting and retaining qualified, experienced teachers. Throughout the 2006-2007 school year, students were actually turned away from the RSD schools and denied their right to a public education because there are no seats for them in those schools and insufficient school teachers to teach them.

My colleagues visiting RSD middle and high schools saw large numbers of security guards, one posted virtually every 100 yards in its halls, but there is a grave shortage of counseling and mental health professionals in these same schools, as well as throughout New Orleans. [The ratio of students to security guards has gone from a pre-Katrina 333-to-one to a post-Katrina 37-to-one.] Knowing how important mental health services were for New York City public school students following 9-11, I was shocked that New Orleans students who were Katrina survivors were not receiving even minimal assistance. Our AFT colleagues in the New York State Psychological Association were part of our June visit to New Orleans, and are working with UTNO on this important front.

One target of the takeover legislation was United Teachers of New Orleans, a great union with a proud legacy as one of the first integrated teacher unions in the South and the very first teacher union in the South to win collective bargaining rights. UTNO had built itself into a powerful educational and political force in New Orleans, and union-busters in Washington DC and Baton Rouge saw in the post-Katrina reorganization of schools what they thought was an opportunity to destroy it. They eliminated by fiat its collective bargaining agreement....more, and see National Model or Flawed Approach: The Post-Katrina New Orleans Public Schools (pdf) and also Dismantling a Community and, to learn how this neocons' wet dream was planned well before Katrina, read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Hmmm, well, that only leaves health care to be better post-K. Let's see. No ("more than 40 percent of adults in the New Orleans area have poorer healthcare access after Katrina than they had before the storm;" "70 percent of the adults without health insurance in Orleans Parish were African American;""among the most frequently reported health-access problems were deterioration in the ability to have health needs met now compared to before Katrina, difficulty in getting to a medical care center, and adapting to different medical providers after the storm;""the findings help explain why residents ranked getting medical facilities up and running as such a top priority only behind repairing levees and controlling crime"). No:

Almost all of the patients are elderly and in some cases, bedridden. Those who can manage to get to a doctor often can't find one.

How would Lawson describe the state of health care in New Orleans? "It's still on the respirator," she says. "It's still in the ICU."

Two years after Katrina, the health care system in New Orleans is as dilapidated as many of the still-unlivable houses, reports CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Katie Couric. Four hospitals remain closed, thousands of doctors have left, and a quarter of the adult population has no insurance.

"The hospitals in this area are literally hemorrhaging cash, hemorrhaging resources," says Dr. Kevin Jordan, chief medical officer at one of the few remaining hospitals. He says emergency rooms are even more overtaxed today because of the exodus of primary care physicians.

"You can wait anywhere from a month to a month and a half, two months to get a regular appointment, given that that doctor is willing to see you. Because remember, there's that much demand," he gestures with spreading arms, "and that much resource," he adds, closing the gap with his hands.

Hell, I can't find anybody to see me in less than two months. I wish. My doctor now has a three month waiting list - and that's to reup my diabetes meds.

And speaking of mental health (we were, weren't we?):

Payne said the number of psychiatrists in the greater New Orleans area was reduced by 80 percent after Katrina. The higher cost of living and the risk of future hurricanes have made returning to New Orleans less attractive for most specialists.

New Orleans' medical infrastructure was already top-heavy and not fully integrated with the mental health care system, Payne said, but after Hurricane Katrina "the entire health care system was literally dismantled."

"Now that all the children are stressed, we clearly don't have enoughmental health care providers," said Dr. Harold Ginzburg, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Louisiana State University and Tulane University, both in New Orleans. "Tulane's medical school went to Houston," he told CNS. more

How about life in a FEMA trailer park? Mental health?

"What's it like to live around here?" I asked. "Well," he replied, "I'll be honest. Ain't a day goes by when I don't think about killing myself."

According to a recent study of 92 different Katrina FEMA parks published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, suicide attempts in Louisiana and Mississippi's parks are 79 times higher than the national average. Major depression is seven times the national rate.

When I first read those numbers, I found them hard to believe. But after three days at Scenic Trails, they made a lot more sense.

The residents there, in essence, are trapped. It is no longer possible for them to live outside the trailer parks. Prior to Katrina, most of the people who now live in the parks were renters.

Along the Mississippi coast, a family of four could rent a two- or three-bedroom apartment or small home for around $500 a month. But when the storm wiped the Mississippi coast clean, it took out all the housing infrastructure that supported these people. Most of them are minimum-wage workers who live paycheck to paycheck. Today, a two- or three-bedroom apartment in Hancock County, where Scenic Trails is located, costs $800, $900, even $1,000 a month. This is an impossible amount of money for the people who live in the parks, and there is no immediate end in sight. FEMA says it would like to close the parks, but state and federal government plans to rebuild low-income housing for Mississippi coast residents have yet to break ground. Housing experts says it will probably take years to produce enough low-cost housing to move people out of the parks.

And so they are stuck. And the place they are stuck is not the kind of place you would want to spend an extended amount of time. For two years, many have lived in travel trailers intended for weekend use. Families of four housed in a space the size of most people's living rooms.

Worse, as time wears on, the communities around them seem to be falling into a kind of madness. At Scenic Trails, almost everyone at the camp has been burglarized at
least once. Meth and cocaine addiction is rampant, and residents seem to be
turning against one another.

Recently, the park has seen a rash of animal mutilations. One resident told me that her cat had come home bleeding — a long, thin razor cut along its leg. Another resident said his dog's throat had been cut, and several people reported that someone in the camp had been feeding
anti-freeze to dogs. more

Well, it sounds good enough to me. You're right, Bobby Novak, it's all good; come on down!

NOLA pangs

Mayor Nagin gets caught playing cops and robbers with real life guns. Apparently, this photo has gone forth into the national press to make New Orleans look (even more) foolish:
here

(yat pundit comments on this blog that the Times Picayune has apologized for the photo and says it was a snapshot that did not accurately reflect what happened; I wasn't clear about this, but I was less concerned about what Nagin was doing than I was about the suggestion, in the mayor's letter to the T.P., that the photo has already gone out to media outlets nationwide...thanks, y.p.!)

Meanwhile, the city continues to prostitute itself (and I use that term most deliberately). The NBA rents Jackson Square for the evening, for the price of $5000. Meanwhile, locals as well as Jackson's Square's usual cadre of vendors, street artists, tarot card readers, and fortune tellers have to leave the area. Did I mention it was just $5000? From the NBA? For their private, all-access pass to New Orleans' preeminent public space?

As part of a four-day basketball showcase expected to produce major economic benefits for the city, the "2008 Celebration of Contribution" party is expected to draw a cadre of famous customers to merchants' shops along Jackson Square. But musicians, artists and tarot card readers who peddle their services on the square's slate-lined streets are crying foul, saying the party is leaving them on the sidelines during a potentially huge payday.

As crews got to work early Thursday setting up barricades along Decatur Street at St. Peter and St. Ann streets, dozens of entertainers found themselves ejected from park benches and removed from areas along the wrought-iron fences that typically
serve as art-for-sale galleries....

Sahuc said he objects in principle to City Hall renting out the area. Heavy equipment used in staging the party will damage the area's infrastructure, he said, and the event perverts the sanctity of the area formerly known as "Public Square."

"The city has been pimping the square, and we get nothing for it," Sahuc said. more

They are raising money for rebuilding projects, but even so, couldn't they - the "famous customers" of whom da Paper speaks - have held their party indoors, at one of the area's many convention halls rather than dragging heavy stages into Jackson Square and throwing artists, already struggling since Katrina, out of work for the duration?

Meanwhile, prepare for Katrina, the Opera:

The opera focuses on two primary stories, each centering on a pair of characters and their experiences through the flood. The first tale of Miss Leah and the Debris Man depicts the scary and inventive ways people survived in the days immediately after the levee breaks.

"Debris Man becomes a shaman-like character, " Weigel said. "He knows how to survive on the street already and helps his neighbors."

Debris Man will be played by Cook himself, who saw the good that came out of people in his neighborhood because of the tragedy.

"There was an embracing of people, " Sylvester noted. "We haven't seen that in this country in a long time."

"Heroes became villains but villains became heroes, " Weigel said. "The drug dealers and pimps were keeping watch over the neighborhood and helping the old people there. When the guns and the cameras came out, so did the old stereotypes. Then they were pegged as thugs and looters."

I can't decide whether to be intrigued or afraid. Maybe I'll go check it out tomorrow night.

Oh, for god's sake, here's a "crying moment" I'd love to see the media tear apart (much more worthy of criticism than Hillary's little serious moment):

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency hates to get "sappy" in front of cameras, but he wants storm victims to know he's sorry that so many are still living in government-issued trailers more than two years after Hurricane Katrina hit.

FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said Thursday that the agency will rush to relocate roughly 35,000 families after government tests found dangerous levels of formaldehyde fumes in many occupied FEMA trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi....

Critics have faulted FEMA for not responding sooner to concerns that its trailers could be jeopardizing the health of occupants.

During an interview after Thursday's briefing, Paulison defended the agency's response to formaldehyde concerns. But he admitted he could have done a better
job of expressing sympathy for storm victims who have spent more than two years
in the cramped trailers.

"I didn't want to get sappy out there in front of the cameras," Paulison told The Associated Press, "but the truth is that we really do care and we really are working hard to take care of the people's needs and get them out of these travel trailers and mobile homes."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said fumes from 519 tested trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi were, on average, about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes. Formaldehyde, a preservative commonly used in construction materials, can lead to breathing problems and is also believed to cause cancer.

The findings stirred worry and anger across the Gulf Coast, where FEMA is already a dirty word and housing has been scarce since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

"Am I angry at FEMA? Of course I am. They should have started moving people out of these trailers once they first started finding problems," said Lynette Hooks, 48. She said that since she began living in her trailer outside her damaged New Orleans home in October 2006, she has suffered headaches and sinus problems, in addition to the asthma she had before...

As early as 2006, trailer occupants began reporting headaches, nosebleeds and difficulty breathing.

But as recently as last spring, a FEMA spokesman said the agency saw no reason to question the safety of its trailers. Just last month, congressional investigators accused FEMA of suppressing and manipulating scientific research to play down the danger — an accusation the agency denied. more

I'm amazed that this hasn't been a bigger topic of discussion in public health since before Katrina. For years, I've known that I have itchiness, allergies, and breathing difficulties after being in stores that sell clothing. I've also known for several years that I become ill in new buildings - the brand new movie theater made me sick every time I visited it when I lived in WA State, and the new law library at Gonzaga left me too red-eyed, itchy, and breathless to study. I researched the topic and quickly found that formaldehyde and other chemicals used in the wood and carpet of new buildings as well as on new clothes is an irritant. I find it so hard to understand how the federal government didn't know anything about this general public health issue until Katrina. I also wonder what chemicals might still be affecting my health here in this ten year old mobile home. Dog knows I'm tired all the time. Maybe it's that, maybe something else.

Notice also that Paulison says he "could have done a better job expressing sympathy." Yes, because it's not about action down here, just perception, yes indeed.

Olbermann calls O'Reilly Out

1. John Edwards said that on the way to the Ninth Ward to make his withdrawal speech, he spoke to a homeless person.

2. Bill O'Reilly didn't believe there were homeless under a bridge in New Orleans.

3. Keith Olbermann sets the record straight, as only Olbermann can:

Lower 9th has friend from Maine

Another angel:

The first time I saw Rick Prose, he was hammering on Roy Bradley s roof in the Lower 9th Ward. That was 11 months ago, when all he had in mind was helping Roy and his wife, Danielle, rebuild their house.

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Happy Mardi Gras

My favorite parade, Le Krewe D'Etat - because I love satire!
The 2007 program cover, program, and float list.
Deep Float on this year's satirical secrets

Slate: The Gardens That Care Forgot - How New Orleans Residents are Replanting Their Roots

Hot 8 Brass Band and other things NOLA

Great video:

Hattip to The Periphery.

Same blog has a wonderful piece about trying to figure out whatever the hell is the problem that the rest of the country has with us - they don't like our values, they imagine the place is a den of vice, they're racist, they don't like poor people - and what we might do about it:
here

Ashley Morris on when those crazy Vermonters threaten to seceed from the Union and why the same thing wouldn't work for us.

Honore has his say:

The gruff, cigar-chomping general who led federal troops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is convinced that the United States hasn't learned its lesson from the storm.

As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore prepares to retire from the Army and hand over his command Friday, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a "culture of preparedness" to prevent another post-disaster disaster.

"There's an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They're not," Honore, 60, said at his office at Fort Gillem outside Atlanta. "What happened in New Orleans could have happened anywhere on the eastern seaboard."

Also a blog that includes some interesting and kind commentary about relief work in New Orleans (hattip to Ashley Morris).

Officer Killed by Rapist was Eight Weeks Pregnant

Cotton, 24, was shot several times Monday morning with her own gun. Police said she approached Bernel Johnson, 44, of Kenner as he was sitting in a miniature strip mall parking lot in the 2100 block of Earhart Boulevard. At some point, Johnson allegedly attacked her, wrestled away her gun, and beat and shot her. She was pronounced dead a short while later.

The shooting shook the NOPD to its core. Cotton graduated from the first recruit class after Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Warren Easton High School and lived in eastern New Orleans.

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Katrina and the Guiding Principles in Internal Displacement

The Institute for Southern Studies reports on "Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles in Internal Displacement."

A Global Human Rights Perspective on a National Disaster
January 2008

Hurricane Katrina was not only a domestic tragedy: The U.S. government's insufficient efforts to prevent families from being uprooted, its inadequate emergency response, and the still-lagging recovery are at odds with internationally recognized human rights principles that the Bush administration has promoted in other countries.

That's the finding of "Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement" (pdf), a new reportby the Institute for Southern Studies.

The report is the first in-depth look at how closely U.S. officials abided by the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in the wake of Katrina. The United Nations adopted the Principles in 1998 to protect the rights of people uprooted by war, storms and other calamities.

"Leaders in Washington have embraced the U.N. Guiding Principles for helping disaster victims abroad," said Chris Kromm, co-author of the study and Institute director. "But there's serious concern that the Principles continue to be ignored at home in the Gulf Coast."

My Favorite New Orleans video

This shows - finally - what home means.

Katrina Activists are Women

The new online issue of The Journal of American History is all Katrina-themed. It's called "Through the Eyes of Katrina: the Past as Prologue" and features 20 essays and articles.

I especially like this article on the women who organized after the storm. As is so often the case, it is women who do the organizing. It was women who, decades ago, formed historical societies to preserve the French Quarter which was, at that time, an urban core marked by blight and crime. The men were going to tear it all down; women organized to save it.

I also like this article on Katrina and carnival. I appreciated the explanation of how carnival functions not only as an expression of cultural identity and celebration but also as an important forum for satire, which has been a preferred vehicle for discourse here for hundreds of years. This piece is also a great example of how articles written by locals stand out for their use of humor. Since Katrina, I had been trying to figure out why, so often, articles written by earnest outsiders fall flat. I think I've finally found an explanation: outsiders often write articles that don't include humor and any article that doesn't make the reader laugh can't, by definition, be an authentic representation of what happens here. It just can't.

Miss Diverts Katrina Housing Funds to Expand Port

While thousands of Mississippians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina remain in FEMA trailers, the federal government on Friday approved a state plan to spend $600 million in grants earmarked for housing on a major expansion of the state-owned port — a project that could eventually include casino and resort facilities....

“It’s just insanity, true insanity,” Sister Martha Milner, a Catholic nun and longtime housing advocate, said...

The money in question is part of $5.5 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that Congress authorized for Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, about $3.4 billion was allocated to replace and repair some of the nearly 170,000 owner-occupied homes destroyed or damaged by the storm. Another $600 million was set aside for programs to replace public housing, help small landlords fix their units and foster construction of new low- and moderate-income housing....

In its “Mississippi CDBG Recovery Fund Report Card,” the Steps Coalition reported that as of mid-January more than 13,000 Mississippi families — or a total of 35,129 people — remained in FEMA housing, nearly 90 percent of them in small travel trailers and most of them ineligible for the CDBG-funded grants....

New Orleans working class hit by cost squeeze - The Boston Globe

Forty one thousand rental units were lost during Katrina and aftermath. Now, rental units are unaffordable for working people. Wages are ten dollars an hour. Rent is $1400 a month. Utilities have gone up 33%.

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