Post-Katrina Populist Funk
For a Free New Orleans & Peace On Earth: grass roots activism, stories of neo-American survival & free media from down south.Video Episodes:
14 Views
16:39:46 05/06/08
People Say! Post-Katrina Populist Funk
[LESS INFO] 14 VIEWS | ADDED 16:39:46 05/06/08
Click Image to Download the VIDEO 32 mgs 9 minutes
(please be patient - it may take a minute to download)
THIS IS REPOSTED IN HONOR OF THOSE PLAYING, SINGING, VISITTING, HELPING, RETURNING, CELEBRATING, MOVING, WORKING AND DANCING INTO THE FUTURE this jazz season. I am also seeking support (video production equipment, camera, funding) for continuing this work. Anyone who would like to participate in the continuation of this phunk, please contact: mblack@notvcollective.org. LOL
New Orleans ~ Post-Katrina Populist Funk
Disastrous Hurricanes, maritial law & curfews, housing crisis, toxic earth, closed schools and hospitals, abandoned elders, centuries of festering racism, a neo-police state... while the "New" New Orleans struggles to survive and exist outside of the the American illusion of democracy, the most dynamic grass roots efforts in the country claim the streets, deliver food, celebrate, build homes and tell the truth in this visual collage set to the song "People Say" by the legendary Nola band, the funky Meters.
This is no Red Cross special:
Fight For Your Rights & Please Support Self-Determaination and Equality for the Gulf South and all Peoples.
Related Links ::: Common Ground Collective , People's Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition , N.O. H.E.A.T. , Resource Action Group , Mississippi Muslim Association , NOAH Coalition , Hip Hop Caucus , People's Institute for Survival & Beyond
6 Views
23:39:48 05/17/06
NO Landfill! New Orleans Begins Dumping Millions of Tons of Hurricane Debris in New Orleans East Wetlands
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 23:39:48 05/17/06
Bayou Sauvage Tour + City Hall Rally Click Image to Download the VIDEO 13 mgs 8 minutes
Stop the Illegal Dumping in New Orleans East!
We are one big inter-connected tidal pool of humanity floating on a gorgeous and endangered wetlands. This is a VIDEO tour of the Bayou Sauvage and Chef Mentuer Landfill Site for the new illegal dump for millions of tons of hurricane debris plus views of the May 10 rally against the landfill at City Hall.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the region is left with literally millions of tons of debris to collect and dispose of as an essential part of the recovery process. New Orleans Mayor Nagin, who is up for re-election on May 22, claimed "emergency powers" and circumvented public hearing processes and safety standards to designate and begin dumping debris in New Orleans East - not 20 yards from the Bayou Sauvage wetlands and a mile from a community of thousands of predominantly Vietnamese and African-American families.
Not only is New Orleans East a profound and unique multi-generational community that spans time and geography from New Orleans back to 3 villages in Vietnam, but it is also bordered by the nation's largest urban wildlife refuge, the Bayou Sauvage, and home to many endangered species as well as alligators, turtles, egrets, nutria and other swamp critters.
Despite massive flooding and lack of government support, the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East has accomplished profound recovery and rebuilding on their own initiative, organized largely through the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, to account for the welfare of community members, gut and rebuild homes, and host many volunteers who have come to the region and need support for their work.
The Vietnamese community in New Orleans East is leading the fight against this landfill which Mayor Nagin approved by sideswiping law that demands community hearings before a landfill can be built. On May 10th, members of the Versaille Community and the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, together with the Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and also representatives of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network gathered together at City Hall and demanded that Mayor Nagin hear their protest. A 3 day moratorium was put on the dumping (to be lifted on Monday) until, Mayor Nagin said, he could "prove... that it is safe".
The landfill is designated to be 100 acres, 30 feet deep and another 80 feet high. See the video tour of the Bayou Sauvage and the Chef Menteur Landfill site with Father Dung Nguyen and feel for yourself the unique and interconnected landscape that is threatened by the city of New Orleans's illegal dumping.
For more info about the New Orleans East community after Hurricane Katrina, scroll down to story and view video.
For more info about the Landfill, see the story posted by Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East:::>>>
Related Links ::: FACTS ABOUT THE LANDFILL , Mary Queen of Vietnam Church
1 Views
20:32:19 04/09/06
Universal Human Rights: Public Protests Impending New Orleans Elections & Human Rights Abuses During Katrina
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 20:32:19 04/09/06
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Click to Download VIDEO 27 MB 11'30minutes.mov quicktime On Saturday, April 1 2006, several thousand people marched across the Mississippi River Bridge from the Convention Center in New Orleans to Gretna, Louisiana to protest human rights abuses that occurred following hurricane Katrina and the upcoming mayoral elections on April 22. When people tried to cross this bridge, the "Crescent City Connection", while fleeing the city and the rising floodwaters immediately following hurricane Katrina last September, they were turned back at gunpoint by police from the city of Gretna. Protestors marched on this symbolic bridge to also protest the upcoming elections for New Orleans mayor. With less than half the city returned, and most of the residents relocated to new addresses, displaced voters, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Rainbow Push Coalition, and other national and local civil rights advocates called for the post-ponement of the elections until equal access to the candidates, information about the election, and actual voting places can be guaranteed to all residents. In particular, voting rights advocates pointed to satellite voting opportunities given in the United States by the government to Iraqi and Bosnian citizens that are being denied to tens of thousands of displaced residents of New Orleans. Many protestors compared the expense and burden on poor and predominantly African-American residents to travel back to New Orleans just to vote for mayor to the poll taxes and Jim Crow laws that historically prevented African-American peoples from representation in electoral politics in the Southern United States. The NAACP has set up a hotline for New Orleans voters: 1-866-Our-Vote (1-866-687-8683). Pass it on. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL: This past weekend's protest in New Orleans coincided with some of the largest protests in U.S. history. In other cities around the United States, hundreds of thousands of protestors also marched against anti-immigration legislation and immigrant worker policies. To look more at both these protests and larger movements in relationship to universal human rights and equal representation, see related links: Democracy Now! Monday April 3 2006 , New Orleans indymedia More video for a Free New Orleans and Peace On Earth at::: www.N.O.Tv Collective.org
3 Views
03:00:28 01/06/06
Basin St. Blues: Iberville Housing RIghts March Dec3'05
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 03:00:28 01/06/06
A Small Band of Public Housing Rights Advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects and Marched down Canal Street calling for the Re-opening of habitable public housing and schools
Click Image to Download the VIDEO 8 mgs 3 minutes
On Saturday, December 3, a band of housing rights advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects on Basin St. Saturday in support of New Orleans residents' right to return to their homes and called for the re-opening of the city's public schools (2 or 3 public schools are open in Orleans Parish now). With 80% of the city flooded from hurricanes Katrina & Rita, and over a million Gulf South residents dislocated from their lives, the housing shortage, rapidly rising rents, and lack of sustainable government supports faces many thousands of people who wish to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Evictions - both illegal and legal - are epidemic in the New Orleans area and returning home or the lack of ability to return to a home, rain down further struggles on the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In particular, people who needed public assistance to meet basic needs and the right to their home find the rug pulled out from under them as the city makes plans to tear down public housing, closing even livable and marginally damaged housing with little or no dialogue with displaced residents.
Less than 20% of pre-hurricane residents actually reside in New Orleans now, which currently hosts thousands of new building contractors, laborors, developers and gaggles of various military, security and law enforcement personel now set up shop in the no-flood zones, in a former arts high school, on enormous cruise ships and in public spaces in the city centers. With 80% of the city flooded and by devastating hurricanes, evictions, both illegal and legal, happen quickly, often with little or no legal formality with as few as 5 days or no notice at all in this tumultuous housing market and with little or no regard for any notion of housing rights. Residents of the cities extensive public housing wish to return home and reclaim their lives - or at least check on their home - however there is little dialogue with the Housing Aughority of New Orleans and information that HANO housing will be closed and bulldozed circulates fear and anger from displaced survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Despite the fact that most New Orleans residents are out of town, a few dozen marchers gathered in front of the Iberville Public Housing projects just outside of the French Quarter to show support for the city's poor and working people and marched freely down Canal Street to the Federal encampment by the Mississippi Riverwalk. The marchers called for the re-opening of habitable public housing and public schools, dialogue and the right of residents to return home. The Coalition to Save Iberville, New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NO HEAT), the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and Common Ground Eviction Defense represented at the march and can be contacted for support of Housing Rights.
Housing Is A Human Right.
Related Links ::: Common Ground Collective , N.O. H.E.A.T. , People's Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition
5 Views
22:19:26 01/01/06
Death to the System! Populist History & Spoken Word Healing with Kalamu ya Salaam
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 22:19:26 01/01/06
Kalamu ya Salaam announces Listen to the People Project & blows the roof off NYC Bowery Poetry Club w/ superdome poem
Click Image to Download - please be patient, the VIDEO is 37 mgs and 25 minutes
Announcing a Call to Action! Listening to the People + Superdome Systems of Thought
Kalamu ya Salaam on listening with compassion & the power of the spoken word to make history.
Help reclaim history in the making: anyone can participate in the databased oral history project called Listen to the People, directed by New Orleans own radical historian-dj-educator-activist "neo-griot" truth-teller poet, Kalamu ya Salaam.
"I don't want Bush and Cheney and secretary of defense Rumsfeld and that guy Brown to write the official record," Kalamu explains, announcing the Listen to the People oral histories project for the Gulf South diaspora. This project will be data-based in a demographic grid representative of the diversity of New Orleans, in particular, to be made accessible to the public for non-commercial purposes so that histories, lives, understanding and relief can be better understood and served.
Many thousands of people face cold, isolation and uncertainty in the coming year; much FEMA and Red Cross housing support expires, and in addition, a lack of rebuilding progress, the strange scarcity of trailers, and a cut-throat housing market compound the shock of disaster. Not only does the "Listen to the People" project serve history, but the process of story-collecting itself is a valuable tool with which people in other places can reach out to the peoples displaced by hurricanes Katrina & Rita. "Anyone can participate," Kalamu encourages - even if you don't have a cheap tape recorder, "just reach out and talk to someone". We can embrace the humanity of others whose humanity was so denied in the Days of the Superdome.
Tape it, film it, write it down or just be human and talk with folk; this project needs good people in the rest of the states to help reach out to the displaced and connect their stories into history in the making. For more information contact Kalamu ya Salaam & the "Listen to the People" project at http://www.kalamu.com.
Kalamu ya Salaam himself explains this epic project & its meaning in the first 2/3's of the accompanying video - please help put the Word Out! The last part of the video is a "poem"... it is untitled and indescribable -just prepare for the roof to blown off your hearts and minds.
"Death to the System!"
& may this New Year be filled with friends & family, old and new. In the spirits of Aung San Suu Kyi and Martin Luther King Jr, may the courage to speak, listen and care replace weapons, fear and apathy. Love, Health & Peace on Earth - Salut!
(This video was recorded live at the Bowery Poetry Club for a poetry Katrina relief benefit on September 30, 2005 in New York City. To use this material or to contribute to Listen to the People, please contact Kalamu ya Salaam at http://www.kalamu.com)
Related Links ::: Kalamu ya Salaam & the Listen to the People Project
01/06/06