Music Exports Vital to Marketing NOLA Cultural Commodities

 

By Mario Perkins

Neighborhoods Partnership Network

The Cultural Economic Summit on Friday, February 2, 2007, in New Orleans was a chance for the city to toot its horn and share the many exports available here. It was also a time to reflect on the past 17 months and examine the past, present and future of post Katrina/Rita Southern Louisiana, as so eloquently spoken by Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu.

Following the Summit, a smaller group discussed “Tax Incentives to make Louisiana Competitive for the Arts.” The presenters were Chris Stelly of Louisiana Film and Television and Michael Cain from the Lt. Governor’s office. Mr. Cain was taking input from the discussion directly to Baton Rouge in an effort to tailor an incentive program to take advantage of the rich cultural heritage in New Orleans. There were approximately 20 cultural arts professionals in the session representing a wide spectrum of interests: digital imaging, performing arts, literary arts, music executives, jazz foundations, government interests, promoters, non-profits, and independent film-makers.

The city has recently had success in
attracting the film industry with incentives from Baton Rouge in such films as Déjà Vu and All the Kings Men. However, the music industry here feels that it has not had the same level of promotion and is not a major export compared to cities like Nashville and Austin. There is obviously a great musical heritage here and there was some strong insight from the panel on how to market such a valuable commodity to the rest of the world, such as state support for participating in international music tradeshows.

Other topics of discussion included training creating qualified labor, eliminating brokers from accessing tax credits, tailoring incentive plans for small businesses rather than a one-size fits all plan that suits primarily giant corporations, a professional intellectual property infrastructure and housing incentives for the cultural community.

In the end, Mr. Cain summarized the one and a half hour discussion by highlighting education and publication of existing grant and loan programs, luring more venture capitalists, expediting the incentive plan process at the state level, workforce training incentives, and a more direct focus on local art and artists. If the state’s initiatives stay in-line with the art community’s needs, then New Orleans will be well on its way to becoming a economic cultural powerhouse.

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By Orissa Arend

New Orleans

The woman standing next to me in line waiting to talk to Saundra Reed at the
Conference for Volunteerism and Social Entrepreneurship scowled at me and declared, “None of this is going to work unless we undo racism like they taught us at the People’s Institute workshop.” I didn’t know her, but I burst in with my agreement. We were part of a breakout group called Solving Problems Through Social Entrepreneurship.

The larger conference was a giant pep rally in the Convention Center organized by the Office of Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu. The keynote speakers were cheerleaders for hope, insisting that some bad things like racism had been washed away by those treacherous waters, maybe so.

I thought back to the adrenalin-laden days when we dined on MRE’s in makeshift communal compounds and built myriad versions of NOLA’s ark. But some of the bad things like drugs and crime and racism can be reconstructed in a heartbeat and they’re not deterred by Road Home red tape.

Saundra Reed, of the Central City Renaissance Alliance, had spoken in the breakout session in support of the recent Silence is Violence march against crime. In one brief week the planning for the march erupted out of murders that touched almost everyone. The event could have become a white knee-jerk reaction to crime – get tough, find the bad guys, lock ‘em up and throw away the key. Instead it became a multi-racial effort
of some 5,000 people reflecting and respecting many different takes on the “solution” or networks of solutions. The protesters remained yoked together by a common anger, grief, and love for their city that fueled not just the march but also subsequent action.

The whites parading from the French Quarter cheered the arrival of the mostly black strand from Central City. But still the black protesters, even these weeks later, had some explaining to do to other black folk about why they had joined in at all. That may have been why Ms. Reed brought up racism. She said racism was very much in evidence in present-day New Orleans and needed to be dealt with before we could make any headway against crime.

In the breakout session I had my hand raised to thank Ms. Reed for bringing up racism, knowing it would elicit barbs of denial in a mostly white audience. I was wishing I, or any other white person, had brought it up first.

The facilitator didn’t call on me. She called on a man who denied that the march was inspired by the killing of a white woman. He stressed his progressive credentials. The typically white response made me wish I could press a little melanin button under my navel that would make me change shades like those clear lenses that turn to sunglasses in the light.

I told the lady standing next to me in line that if they had called on me, I would have said, “What does anti-racist social entrepreneurship look like? We and by ‘we’ I mean white people need to figure that out through listening and heeding the advice of people of color. Racism is OUR problem even though we minimize it out of wishful thinking or because the “benefits” that accrue from it have come to seem natural. We constructed it and we will reconstruct it in the blink of an eye, sometimes without even realizing we are doing it. It is primarily our responsibility to dismantle racism both because we built it in the first place and because we are mostly in charge.”

The stranger looked at me wide-eyed. You never know who you are next to in a post-Katrina line or what diatribe you might unleash by an innocent comment. “I’ve never heard anyone say that,” she said.

Orissa Arend is a mediator, psychotherapist, and community organizer in New Orleans

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Orleans Yacht Harbor Edit…..

Edit…..

Where those new waves…

Rolling. Ever unfurling…..

Tapping the tepid edge beyond the breakwaters

Slurring, slowly stirring like drinking straws

The sky too, dark and ominous… moments splintering

Comfort of day over evenings rise….

Where those new waves

There dazzling

Flight of pinfish

Flickering caught colors

Seagull reflection and inflection

Haw! Haw!

Soaping up in newness

the plentitude of circus fish

Schooling beneath glass surfaces

Like Escherism, like dancing, like drawing

Then your pitterpatterpitterpatterpitpatpitpat

Your Friendly lilt

Drolling exercised sentiments

Like streets let out of shopping stores

Yacht Harbor Ode

With the dirty candy wrapper and thick rouge

Of dried wasted rain

Drolling of such exercised sentiments

Found

The motherly and grandmotherly

And errand child curbs

Catching busses

Demonstrating

Weekends

Like dating and memories

Like harvesting fruits

Only more brutal, more citified….

your pitterpatterpitterpatterpitpatpitpat

your pitterpatterpitterpatterpitpatpitpat

your pitterpatterpitterpatterpitpatpitpat

Rolling. Ever unfurling…..

Tapping taptaptapping

the tepid edge beyond the breakwater

Tapping taptaptapping

the tepid edge beyond the breakwater

-Anonymous

 

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NPN WEDNESDAY
FORUMS

NPN Forums are held from 6-8pm
on Wednesdays twice a month at:

Musicians Union Hall
2401 Esplanade Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70119

Wed., March 21
Uniting Neighborhoods and Volunteers

Wed., March 28
Brick by Brick: A workshop on housing issues with non-profit organizations, special discussion building CDC’s, and neighborhood associations.

 

 

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April is Child Abuse Prevention Month

Prevent Child Abuse Louisiana has many events planned and activities going on throughout the state heading into April, Child Abuse Prevention Month. PCA Louisiana asks you to think about what you can do to support families that month. Do you have a blue wristband or ribbon to wear during April? If not, you can call your regional office and get one today.

Find out more at www.pcal.org or call 225-925-9520. The State Office is located at 733 East Airport Ave, Suite 101, Baton Rouge. You can also call the KIDLINE at
1-800-CHILDREN. For free parenting help by phone call 1-800-244-5373.

 

Louisiana Winter Comes to a Close

 

Lower Ninth Ward resident Linda Jackson (right), speaks to
Louisiana Winter students.

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is the national effort to develop federal legislation to create 100,000 jobs to rebuild the region using Gulf Coast residents.

Louisiana Winter brought together 130 students from 25 colleges to the Gulf Coast for a week-long campaign to make this vision a reality.

The students believe that the government must include the following principles when drafting federal legislation based on the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project:

First, a living wage should be no lower than $12, but $15 is more appropriate.

Second, rebuilding the 260,000 homes destroyed is one of the top priorities. Other top priorities include building schools, hospitals, parks, community centers, and roads.

Third, training is imperative. Paid apprenticeships should be provided to learn the skills of construction, plumbing, electrical work, and brick building.

Fourth, the government response has been inadequate and ineffective.

 

Caring for the Caregivers

The Contemplatives in Action house

Contemplatives In Action, located at 3014 Saint Thomas Street, offers its space to a diverse group of staff, individuals, and groups for the purpose of retreats, trainings, meetings, solitude, reflections, prayer services, etc.

Their home is a converted shot-gun house with large and versatile space. They seek to create an environment that is flexible enough to meet the many needs of our city and its people. They welcome retreatants, colleagues, neighbors, writers, community groups, prayer circles, students, organizational staffs, families, and many others!

Contemplatives in Action believe the day-to-day work of rebuilding our city and our lives requires that we take care of ourselves and one another in the process..

Their next Open House Social is Friday, March 16th, 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

Find out more at www.contemplativesinaction.org, email Meg Griffiths at meg@contemplativesinaction.org or call 504-891-8483.

 

Road Home Reaction

 

The Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT) was formed in the last week of September when problems with the Road Home Program for Homeowner Assistance (RHP) were already evident.

Their mission is to make the RHP much faster, fairer, more transparent, and more sensitive to the needs of the homeowner applicants. In addition, they want to make sure that the property acquired by the Road Home Corporation is used to the best benefit of RHP applicants. For advocacy of improvements of the RHP, join Friends of CHAT (FoCHAT). There is no fee and there are no duties to join FoCHAT.

Find out more at chat.thinknola.com.

 

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Recipe from February 15 edition should read:

Mardi Gras Punch (Yield: 8-10 cups)

4 shakes or 1 tsp rosewater or orange flower water
1/2 (64-ounce) bottle red fruit punch or 1 (6 ounce can concentrate, thawed)
1 (6-ounce) can frozen limeade or lemonade concentrate, thawed
1 (6-ounce) can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
1 2/3 cups New Orleans light rum
1 2/3 cups New Orleans dark rum
1/3 cup Myers Rum

Garnish with dried pineapple and mango topped with cherries, lime and lemon wedges.

Stir together all ingredients. Serve in chilled Tom Collins glasses over crushed ice.

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A Marriage of Old and New. How New Orleans Can Save the Planet

 

By Will Bradshaw

GreenCoast Enterprises

The 2005 hurricane season was a clarion call for innovation in the building industry, an industry that traditionally lags others in innovative capacity. Buildings are the only major industrial product that we expect to fail on first-use. We don’t accept it when an airplane doesn’t fly because its wing was not properly installed. We do not receive a punch list of everything wrong with our new car. A 70% building failure rate and the complete devastation of a major American metropolis in the face of a Category-3 hurricane is not acceptable. But in this failure and tragedy, there is also a tremendous opportunity.

As sea levels rise, much of the world will face the challenges that New Orleans faces now, and this city and region can pioneer better strategies for dealing with the threats from rising water and stronger and more frequent storms.

The high-performance building movement, sometimes referred to as the green building movement, presents a number of options that can improve storm survivability while also improving health, particularly for children and elderly people with respiratory problems, decreasing energy bills, and increasing comfort inside buildings. Simple, cost-effective methods can be used to reach these goals, and a large body of research has been developed to show how better buildings can also be made affordable.

In 2005, a team of experts completed a report entitled “The Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing.” This seminal study highlights 16 projects built around the country, and analyzes the financial impacts of making a better building on developers, building owners, and residents. The overwhelming conclusion of the report, available on-line at www.newecology.org, was that residents always do better when we construct better buildings.

But what does a better building look like in New Orleans?

This is a critical question on a number of levels. First, until high-performance building advocates produce an easy to use step-by-step guide of what materials and systems people should choose, how much those materials will cost, where people can get them, and who will install them, we are not doing our job as advocates

Second, preservation of the historic building stock is important to preserve cultural heritage. As a result, high-performance building in New Orleans must seek to rehabilitate structures as well as constructing new buildings with better technologies. Third, much of the research and technology development on high-performance building has come out of totally different climate zones, and many strategies are not appropriate here.

As one example, putting insulation in an old New Orleans house can be disastrous unless proper flashing and ventilation is incorporated. Without such protections, the insulation will absorb moisture that used to evaporate out of the wall and cause the wall to rot.

Finally, and most importantly, a better building in New Orleans is not terribly dissimilar from the buildings built here for generations. Old houses are raised, sometimes a full story, to allow water to pass underneath. They also include ceiling fans, high ceilings, front porches, transoms, whole-house fans, and other features which allow air flow to pass through a building and for warm air to rise to the areas where people are not. When one combines these culturally and climactically appropriate design ideas with simple innovations in technology: radiant barriers that reflect heat from the sun and lower attic and roof temperatures, impervious roofing felt that will keep water out of your house, even when the shingles blow off, we arrive at a much higher-performance building.

By putting together the best of the old and the best of the new, New Orleans can develop a set of building options that not only help people rebuild in their own
communities, but transform the city into a world-leader for building solutions that solve the challenges we all face from global climate change.

Will Bradshaw is a new resident of New Orleans and his business, GreenCoast Enterprises, is part of a network of local experts that can support homeowners and developers in making decisions about how to rebuild. He is also a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying urban economics and sustainable community development.

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Carrollton/Hollygrove ACORN members are rallying at the Monticello Canal noon, Saturday, June 30 to demand fair flood protection.

The city has no plans to protect the area from flooding for the next five years. Neighbors are demanding immediate action to keep the neighborhood safe from flooding.

Any questions can be directed to Carrollton/Hollygrove ACORN representative, Ben at (504) 943-0044 ext 162.

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Eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina, housing indicators are mixed, and economic indicators may be showing the first signs of increasing employment, but infrastructure indicators remain stalled.

With waterways and drainage arteries still clogged with hurricane debris from St. Bernard to St. Tammany, and police and firemen still working out of FEMA trailers, the lack of progress on such critical projects leaves the New Orleans area vulnerable as hurricane season approaches. Officials must take quick action to eliminate excessive red tape to ensure the flow of stalled federal recovery dollars to the Gulf Coast.

 

Proportion of State-licensed Hospitals in Operation, by Parish

Source: Louisiana Hospital Association, individual hospitals in Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard parishes.
Notes: The state-licensed hospitals number includes not only hospitals providing acute care, but also psychiatric, long-term disability, and rehabilitation facilities. Numbers were revised to monthly counts in January 2007.

 

 

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By Rogers Youngblood

Fyre Youth Squad

Members of the Fyre Youth Squad at a recent march to protest the high stakes requirements of LEAP. The march took them from the bayou at Orleans Ave. to the courthouse where they held a press conference and rally.

The Fyre Youth Squad is an organization formed by inner city youth with the goal of creating a fair and just educational system. The Fyre Youth Squad (FYS) consists of young people from all over the city of New Orleans ranging from age 14 - 22. The Fyre Youth Squad was formed because a lot of our young people wanted to effect change, not only in their individual schools, but in the whole public school system.

The school system is in desperate need of change and the Fyre Youth Squad is in a great position to be the front runners for this new-age movement of youths speaking on behalf of their personal experiences at school. With the help of some adult supporters the FYS has got a lot of balls rolling.

The Fyre Youth Squad has organized several rallies, youth forums, protests and also a march against the high stakes requirement of the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP). The Fyre Youth Squad feels that one test should not determine whether a student passes or graduates.

The LEAP test is an exam that is totally unfair to our youths. Statistically and apparently the LEAP test has forced thousands of our precious students to drop out and find other things to do with their time. The majority of that time is wasted on negative activities leading to the penitentiary or the cemetery. There are already enough struggles in a day in the life of these adolescents without the added pressures of a standardized test. In 2003-2004, 15,000 high school students dropped out before the worst experience of most of their lives, Hurricane Katrina. These outrageous numbers are easily overlooked by school officials and are not being taken into consideration for the planning process for the next school year.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is only a phrase to most young adults, and a joke to some, because in these schools most are not only left behind, but left at home watching their friends graduate. So, ask yourselves, “ Is this fair?” No, it is not fair, but this is reality for these students. This is where the Fyre Youth Squad comes in. We have decided enough is enough and it is time for a change. FYS continues to look for ways they can get involved and change this failing academic system.

For more information:

www.myspace.com/1fyreyouth 504.615.5497

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