Letter From the Editors

Letter from NPN’s new Executive Director, Timolynn Sams

Neighborhood Voices

New Orleans Niche

Racism and Resistance: The Struggle of Free the Jena 6

Combining Theater and History

Transient Blues

Healthcare Failure is InhumaneWasting Wetlands

In the Spotlight

Rebuilding and Revitalizing New Orleans East

New Orleans Stayin’ Local

Fair Grinds: Now More than Ever A Great Good Place

The People in your Neighborhood

Rebuilding Healthy Homes

NoLA Rising

Poetry

Thoughts on Katrina

Dead Souls Walking

Green Orleans

Got Trees? Parkway Partners is giving them away

How to Plant a Tree

Kids Rethink New Orleans

Students Make Schools Smarter

Dear Readers:

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. This is the very phrase that I repeated constantly while temporarily living in Charlotte, NC. Like Dorothy in OZ I knew that my life on the yellow-brick road and the comfort of the ruby red slippers wasn’t the joy of street cars, crawfish, and snowballs. How excited I was June 18th to return to MY beloved city and, to top it all off, enjoy the music and festivities of Audubon Zoo’s Soul Fest.

Two years ago, a twister called Katrina hit New Orleans and tore the band-aid off of an awful wound. The sad truth is that, even before that, New Orleans was not the city it was supposed to be. Whether it was increasing crime, damaged roads or decreasing education, the city was not what the citizens who have lived in it and loved it know that it can be. And now, after the storm, we’re getting stronger and healthier, but I know and you know that we cannot heal without more time, love and attention. It is my hope that through NPN and the Trumpet, we can educate, entertain and give y’all a place to not only click your heels and dream about what New Orleans might have been, but to help New Orleans grow bigger and brighter than those dreams.

There’s no place like home.

Timolynn Sams

Executive Director, Neighborhoods Partnership Network

Uma Nagendra

NPN Emerita

Those of us New Orleanians at out-of-state schools sit in a fairly complicated position. With colleges at the forefront of many volunteering efforts, the name of our hometown has a particular taste for our classmates. For them, it’s a good cause, a spring break trip; it’s a faraway disaster, but it isn’t a home. The New Orleans they want to help doesn’t feel like the New Orleans we knew, making conversations awkward. After participating in numerous promotional events, we get tired of having uncomfortable conversations with our classmates and eventually stop going. The profound difference in perspective creates a rift between the volunteers and the New Orleanians at school evident in public portrayals and advertising for Katrina Relief. For instance — In order to encourage classmates to volunteer or donate, the leaders of the Katrina Relief group posted a series of photos of a devastated New Orleans on the main campus walkway. A classmate of mine from New Orleans reported that she had to avoid that area for an entire week because the pictures incited too much emotion. She had been warned about the photo series, so she knew to avoid that part of campus. As she entered an academic building to attend class, however, she was confronted with a flyer at eye-level on the door depicting the rubble of a house moved off its foundation. The surprise was too much for her. Before the day was over, she had emailed the group’s organizers to petition for less graphic signs.

The difference in point of view here is astounding. The signs and photo series were created to appeal to the vast majority of the school population—liberal-minded young people from anywhere but the south—for whom the shock of seeing broken buildings and flooded streets can be a valuable persuasive force. Caught in the bubble of exams and term papers, few college students would pay attention to New Orleans if it weren’t taped at eye-level to their classroom door. The two or three New Orleanians at school saw the pictures in an entirely different light, however. While the shock factor was important for the rest of the students, we didn’t need to be re-acquainted with the destruction. What was necessary for them was excessive for us.

Though it seems we New Orleanians living in the far off lands of out-of-state college should each be engrossed in our schools’ Katrina activism—we know the place, we have a stake in its future—many of us shy away from the volunteer scene. Why? We don’t disagree with sending people to gut houses and we do want people to pay attention to the city and help our neighbors. I can only speak from my own experience, but it seems that regardless of how much we’d like to contribute while still at school, a significant rift in point of view separates us from working closely with our volunteer classmates. This awkwardness can be conquered with time. In my opinion, the largest obstacle is conflicts in perceptions not of our city but of us as residents, volunteers and students.

I’m privileged to go to a school where Katrina activism is still alive. I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m pretty proud of the winter, spring, and summer break trips, ongoing fundraisers, and informational sessions pulled together by my classmates, many of whom have no connection to New Orleans beyond volunteer work. They’ve worked even harder than I have on rebuilding my own city. In other places, New Orleans never enters the conversation, no one travels to gut houses, and artwork memorializing Katrina is even vandalized.

Being proud of them, however, doesn’t mean I feel comfortable in their programs. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a niche that allows me to both volunteer and maintain my identity as a New Orleanian. I tried it once—during my first winter break, I joined my school’s first Katrina Relief trip. Before the group even came down, I was set apart from the others as a resident and seen as a resource instead of a volunteer. I didn’t fly down with the rest of the group, I slept in my own house instead of a tent, and I drove to the site where they woke up each morning. When we first met up in town, no one in the group had considered that I would actually want to work with them any more than welcoming them to New Orleans. Outside of the city, there’s an overpowering perception of New Orleans residents as either victims or homegrown activists who serve as resources to incoming volunteers. Since the gross majority of winter and spring break volunteer workers are from out-of-state, it often appears being a volunteer means that you are an outsider.

So while my classmates’ identities are solid as outside volunteers, we New Orleanians at school belong to both New Orleans and the rest of America as half-residents and half-outsiders. Although I live in the city too short a time to consider myself a resource to others, I am adamantly opposed to the thought of myself becoming an outsider to the city I’ve lived in my entire life. By associating with the volunteers at school, I feel that I’m aligning myself with the outsiders and losing my already shaky ties to the neighborhood. I could get over feeling awkward with time, but further distancing myself would be stepping too far.

This is my story—to assume it applies to other New Orleanians living away from home would be foolish. The possibility that the blessing of out-of-state volunteers could inadvertently exclude another important group of young willing workers, however, is extremely unfortunate. The situation is, in fact, entirely unnecessary. There’s no need for anyone to assume that New Orleans residents can’t volunteer for someone else’s well-being. Why wouldn’t I want to work? Here in the city, New Orleans residents fill a diverse range of roles, volunteering more hours towards their neighborhoods’ recovery in their everyday existence than a whole team of spring breakers from Massachusetts. I wish the families whose houses I worked on that winter break didn’t have to be surprised to find out I was from New Orleans. If a specific niche doesn’t exist for us, we’ll have to make our own, and make it known that out-of-state New Orleanian students are ready to rebuild.

Uma Nagendra is entering her sophomore year at Swarthmore University where she is studying comparative literature and biology. Uma spent the summer interning at NPN, and her favorite book is The Little Prince.

        Aaron Viles

                   Gulf Restoration Network      

Crime, schools, healthcare, levees, insurance, corruption.  Crescent city citizens have a lot to worry about as we go through our daily lives; at least if we care about the sustainability of the city we love.  It’s enough to send you into the nearest bar or realtor’s office.  As we labor through the sweet spot of hurricane season, let me underscore one more worry that may have slipped your mind:  our coast. Yeah, you know we are losing our coastal wetlands and you may even know that we lose a football field’s worth every 45 minutes.  You know wetlands are the reason we’ve got famous seafood.  Did you know we can blame the Corps of Engineers and the oil companies for the loss of the wetlands?  Yeah, I thought so.  How about this, did you know we lost 217 square miles of wetlands due to the overactive hurricane season of 2005?  And that’s about half of what scientists had predicted, before August 2005, would take place over a 50-year period from 2000 to 2050, even though they had factored storms into their model?  And how about that every three-four miles of healthy wetlands that a storm travels over knocks down storm surge by a foot? Add all those factoids together, and that’s some bad math for New Orleans and Louisiana’s coastal communities. At my organization, the Gulf Restoration Network, we have a saying: “Protect our wetlands, protect ourselves.” Unfortunately, protecting and restoring these wetlands is a job that’s beyond gutting houses and putting up sheetrock.  A few church groups from the Midwest aren’t really going to be able to make a dent in this one.  We need to put the Mississippi River, and its fresh water and sediment, to work.  We need the river to sustain and rebuild our coast.  That’s big engineering. That’s big expense. That’s the federal government and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (gulp). Louisiana coastal experts and the Corps have developed and are further developing the plans to sustain the coast.  But plans are cheap – it’s the actual projects and engineering that run to $50 billion.  About two billion dollars in projects would be authorized by the current Water Resources Development Act (WRDA, say “WurDuh” if you want to sound like a D.C. insider).  The problem dear reader, is that in a “Hail Mary” to recapture the right, President Bush has threatened to veto WRDA, citing its expense.  He says pork, we say future of our region. Of course he also once said he would “do whatever it takes” to make New Orleans and South Louisiana rise again.We’re faced with a significant political challenge that despite hard work and the best of intentions (let alone federally marked cash in the freezer, a phone number on the DC Madame’s speed dial, and a staggering road home shortfall) Louisiana’s congressional delegation won’t be able to tackle on their own.  We need help from elsewhere.  We need your friends and family who think you’re crazy for living here (but clamoring for your guest room during Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest) to clue in their members of Congress and remind the President of his pledge.  Head on over to our website, www.healthygulf.org, and help us Flood Washington, not our coast.  Now’s the time to act, as Congress is just getting back from their August recess and will either pass WRDA in the Senate and work to override the President’s veto, or will add bright red exclamation points to a big worry on the Crescent City’s ever-longer list. Aaron Viles is the campaign director of the Gulf Restoration Network, a New Orleans-based network of groups and individuals dedicated to protecting and restoring the valuable natural resources of the Gulf of Mexico.  

Jordan Flaherty

Left Turn Magazine

Almost a year ago, in the small northern Louisiana town of Jena, a group of white students hung three nooses from a tree in front of Jena High School.  This set into motion a season of racial tension and incidents that have culminated in six Black youths facing a lifetime in jail for a schoolyard fight. The story that has unfolded since then is one of racism and injustice, but also of resistance and solidarity, as people from around the world have joined together with the families of the accused, lending legal and financial support, adding political pressure, and joining demonstrations and marches. The nooses were hung after a Black student asked permission to sit under a tree that had been reserved by tradition for white students only.  In response to the three nooses, nearly every Black student in the school stood under the tree in a spontaneous and powerful act of nonviolent protest.  The town’s district attorney quickly arrived, flanked by police officers, and told the Black students to stop making such a big deal over the nooses, which School Superintendent Roy Breithaupt labeled a “harmless prank.”  The school assembly, like the schoolyard where all of this had begun, was divided by race, with the Black students on one side and the white students on the other.  Directing his remarks to the Black students, District Attorney Reed Walters said, “I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of a pen.” The white students who confessed to hanging the nooses received no meaningful punishment. Nor did the white students who months later beat up a Black student at a school party, nor did the white former student who threatened two Black students with a shotgun.  But, after these incidents, when Black students got into a fight with a white student, six Black youths were charged with attempted murder, and now face a lifetime in prison.  The Black students may not have been involved in the fight, but they were known to be organizers of the protest under the tree. The white student was briefly hospitalized, but had no major injuries and was socializing with friends at a school ring ceremony the evening of the fight. The Black students were arrested immediately after the fight, in December of last year.  School officials and police officials took statements from at least 44 witnesses to the fight.  The statements do not paint a clear picture of who was involved.  Statements from white students refer to “Black boys”, but many testimonies are unclear as to the identities of who was involved.  Some of the arrested youths are not implicated in the fight by any of the witnesses. Despite this, when seventeen-year-old Mychal Bell, the first youth to go to trial, refused to take a deal in exchange for testifying against his friends, he was quickly convicted by an all-white jury. Bell’s public defender Blane Williams, visibly angry at Bell and his parents because the youth did not take the deal, called no witnesses and gave no meaningful defense.  This attorney’s behavior gives a vivid example of our nation’s broken and underfunded public defender system.  Some have called Jena a throwback to the past, but in fact Jena presents a clear vision of the current state of our criminal justice system. In Paris Texas, a white teenager burns down her family’s home and receives probation. A black one, sixteen-year-old Shaquanda Cotton, shoves a hall monitor and gets seven years in prison. Genarlow Wilson, in Atlanta, is sentenced to ten years in prison for participating in consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year-old when he was seventeen.  Like these and many other cases, the case in Jena is textbook proof that there are still two systems of justice functioning in this country:  One for Black people, and one for white. No serious observer can doubt that the students of Jena would never have faced charges if a Black student had been beaten instead of a white student.  The unpunished incidents in the days and months leading up to the fight clearly demonstrate this.Local Resistance
Immediately after the arrests, parents of the accused began organizing.  Their call, “Free the Jena Six,” was initially heard by activists from other parts of Louisiana, such as the Lafayette public access TV show, “Community Defender,” which was the first media from outside their immediate area to give coverage of the case.  Noncorporate and grassroots media has been vital in spreading word of the case, beginning with blogs and YouTube videos, which then led to high profile stories on “Democracy Now” and in “The Final Call.” Lasalle parish, where Jena is located, is 85% white.  The town is still mostly segregated  - white and Black parts of town are separated by an invisible line.  Lasalle is also one of Louisiana’s most wealthy parishes, with small oil rigs in many back yards contributing to area wealth.  The parish is a major contributor to Republican politicians, and former klansman and Louisiana gubernatorial candidate David Duke received a solid majority of local votes.  Jena was also the former site of a notoriously brutal youth prison, which was closed after years of lawsuits and negative media exposure.  The prison is now scheduled to be reopened as a private prison for the growth business of immigrant detentions. Three hundred supporters, most from the immediate region, but some from as far away as California, Chicago and New York, descended on Jena on July 31 to protest District Attorney Reed Walters’ conduct and call for dismissal of all charges.  The largest groups included Millions More Movement delegations from Houston, Monroe and Shreveport and nearly fifty members of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children from Lake Charles and New Orleans.  Other delegations from across Louisiana included members of INCITE Women of Color Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Common Ground and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.  The demonstration marched through downtown Jena - reported to be the biggest civil rights march the town of 2,500 residents had ever seen - and delivered a petition with 43,000 signatures to the district attorney’s office. In the two weeks since the demonstration, more major allies have begun to come on board.  The Congressional Black Caucus, representing 43 members, including Senator Barack Obama, issued a statement calling for charges to be dropped, while the city of Cambridge Massachusetts passed a resolution in support of the families of the Jena Six. Al Sharpton and other national leaders have visited Jena, while Jesse Jackson has called members of the state legislative Black caucus on their behalf. ColorOfChange.org, which has coordinated much of the outside support, has gathered 60,000 signatures on a petition to Louisiana Governor Blanco, calling for her to pardon the accused, and investigate District Attorney Reed Walters. Blanco, a Democratic governor elected with the overwhelming support of Black Louisiana residents, responded with a condescending statement, tersely informing petitioners, “The State Constitution provides for three branches of state government - Legislative, Executive, and Judicial - and the Constitution prohibits anyone in one branch from exercising the powers of anyone in another branch.”  This is the same governor who, as Katrina approached, urged gulf coast residents to “pray the hurricane down” to a level two.  When New Orleans was flooded and people were trapped in the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, she informed the nation that she was sending in National Guard troops, and “They have M-16s and they’re locked and loaded.  These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.”  More recently, Blanco created a program to bring federal money to homeowners rebuilding after Katrina – the “Road Home” – that has been a dismal failure on every level. Mychal Bell’s sentencing is currently scheduled for September 20th.  The families are planning another demonstration for that date, and also have assembled a legal team for Bell and the other youths.  National allies such as Southern Poverty Law Center and NAACP joined initial supporters such as Friends of Justice (from Tulia, Texas) and ACLU of Louisiana.  Legal expenses for the youths could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, and funding is still needed.  Except for Mychal Bell, who has a bail hearing scheduled for September 4, all of the youths are out on bail. The case of the Jena Six has served as a wake-up call on the state of US justice.  It shows vividly the racial bias still inherent to our system.  But it has also shown that this group of families refuses to be silent in the face of injustice, and that hundreds of thousands of other people around the world have chosen to stand with them, to say that we are drawing the line in Jena Louisiana.  Jordan Flaherty is a New Orleans-based journalist and an editor of Left Turn Magazine.  His May 9, 2007 article from Jena was one of the first to bring the case to a national audience.  Please see www.leftturn.org for more coverage of the Jena case. 

 Ted Hornick

               NPN             

 This month sees the Jefferson Performing Arts Society and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center uniting to present “The Origin of Life on Earth,” a combination of dancers, choral singers and vocalists exploring the Yoruba culture of West Africa and the impressions it has left on New Orleans.  According to JPAS’ Director of Cultural Crossroads and Stage Without a Theater, Karel Sloane-Boekbinder, JPAS and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center pride themselves on being “the only organizations in our community that . . . [offer] . . . school students and the general public the opportunity to learn about the Yoruba/New Orleans connection.”  The show is the story of Orunmilla, the god of divination, and Obatala, the creator of earth and humankind in Yoruba tradition.  It details how earth and early people were created in Yoruba myth.  It is the hope of the organizations behind the show that their work may prompt a deeper respect and understanding for Yoruba influences in not only contemporary New Orleans, but all of Mississippi Delta culture.“The Origin of Life on Earth” is only one part of the larger collaborative agenda of JPAS and Ashé.  Other elements of the partnership, known as “We-a-Flow:  Discovering the Past, Refining the Future,” include three workshops on joining the arts with academic subjects to help students understand the effects Yoruba people have had on New Orleans, as well as student-made responses to the show.  These pieces, taking the form of visual arts or performances, will be displayed with the students’ artistic statements in a public exhibit at the Ashé Center on October 5th.  The show is an original adaptation from the children’s book of the same name, written by David Anderson and illustrated by Kathleen Atkins Wilson.  The text is a winner of both the 1992 African Studies Association Award for Outstanding Children’s Book about African Culture and the 1993 Coretta Scott King for Illustration.  Show director Dollie Rivas has helped the show grow from a youth ensemble to a larger collaborative and choreographed effort.  “The Origin of Life on Earth” is on display for students September 20th and 21st at 9:45 a.m.  The public performance is September 23rd at 2:00 p.m.  The show will be performed at the Jefferson Performing Arts Society in Metairie.  Curious theatergoers can visit http://www.jpas.org for more information on the performance, including fully illustrated study guides for this and past shows.  “The Origin of Life on Earth” is made possible by a grant from the Louisiana State Arts Council through the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Shana L. Dukes

Broadmoor Poet/Writer 

These days, I get a cold and I panic. I worry about where I will go to the doctor. I worry about how I will be treated. I wonder how long I will have to wait in an overcrowded room for my name to be called.  I wonder if I called my doctor’s office today for an appointment, when would I actually be scheduled to see a medical professional? What’s the backlog? Three weeks? Two months? Should I try the emergency room in the meantime or ignore the extra cost of treating my cold there? When will we, as a city and as a country, make a decision to address our healthcare crisis?It is no secret that New Orleans is still losing doctors and nurses at an alarming rate. We hear about the problem over and over again, but what is the solution? At this rate, it looks as if our medical insurances are failing us. We pay into programs that do not pay back when it comes to collective health. Time and time again, patients are stunned to find that healthcare packages do not cover the most basic doctor’s visits or hospital procedures. Nevertheless, many continue to dole out hard earned dollars on a monthly basis for the illusion of protection through insurance. What are we doing with our money? With our health?The healthcare crisis in our community does not hurt only the uninsured. How many times have I heard complaints from the insured, from doctors, or least valid of all, from the insurance company reps themselves who argue that uninsured patients drive up the cost of healthcare for everyone? We have come to a crisis point and blaming the indigent or the uninsured of our city and country does not get us anywhere but further behind. As we continue to do so, our system will remain an unaccountable failing one, with more sick people on the streets trying in vain to revive a once healthy community.     We talk about crime in New Orleans. For weeks our city has held special sessions to discuss solutions to the crime problem. Legislators and public officials must ask, “Where is our system failing us?” Isn’t it time we do the same with our healthcare? Does access to affordable and thorough healthcare help to alleviate the crime problem?  One could undoubtedly argue that it does.     So as we continue to help our city become a newer version of its pre-K self, I move to make healthcare for everyone a top priority. We know the problems. It is time to discuss realistic and workable solutions for all of us - healthcare professionals, the insured, and the uninsured alike. 

 

Camille Mata

Environmental Justice Coordinator Mary Queen of Viet Nam

Community Development Corporation 

On Monday August 20th at 10:00 a.m., approximately 150 residents of New Orleans East gathered in front of the Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church, directly across from the FEMA trailers, to protest the Department of Waste Management’s method of closing the Chef Menteur Landfill by leaving debris and toxic matter in the cell rather than clearing it out as mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Waving signs and chanting over a loud speaker, the community rallied to save the area encompassing the Landfill.The campaign to protect and preserve the ecology in the area now known as the “Chef Menteur Landfill” is at least one year old.  It follows the city council’s directive to nullify Mayor Nagin’s Executive Order to temporarily create a landfill in the wake of Katrina that facilitated the collection and transportation of debris created in the storm’s aftermath.  New Orleans is in the process of re-building however, and after prolonged community pressure from East New Orleans residents to shut down the Chef Menteur Landfill, they are now demanding that the area be returned to pre-landfill conditions.The landfill campaign is merely one of many projects that the Mary Queen of Viet Nam Community Development Corporation (CDC) is pursuing.  Formed after Hurricane Katrina, the group fulfills needs brought to the surface by the Vietnamese-American community, who have been settling in New Orleans East since 1975.  Its overarching goal is to improve the quality of life for residents of New Orleans East by meeting job demands, housing needs, and fulfilling the desire for a better educational system.  Dan Than (pronounced “zun tun,” meaning “to commit to something”) Fellows, hired and sent by the National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA) in Iowa, enhance the manpower of the CDC.  These Fellows help to empower and build on the capacity of Vietnamese American communities in the Gulf Coast.The CDC has committed to undertaking six simultaneous projects: an urban farm, a senior housing center, environmental justice, a charter school, business revitalization and language access.  These projects improve the aesthetics, vitality and ecology of East New Orleans by combining campaigns centered on recycling, landfill remediation, urban farming and the infrastructural facade of Versailles Viet Village and Village de L’Est.  The urban revitalization project addresses the need for job creation and livelihood development, and the three civic projects respond to the requests for better schools, an affordable senior residential center, and language access to facilitate living in New Orleans.The CDC works very closely with the Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church, as the latter is the glue that holds the community together and keeps the people energized about involvement.  The CDC’s campaigns are relayed through Church pastors and support community cohesion.  They are further backed by partner organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), All Congregations Together (ACT) and the Vietnamese Americans Young Leaders Association (VAYLA).  These collaborations keeps the CDC’s programs rooted to other residents in New Orleans and strengthen their vision. 

Rachel Leigh Mays Staylocal.org

   Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, Mid-City’s fair trade coffeehouse and community center, has avenged Katrina on its own terms and with the gentle principles that guide it. Owners Robert and Elizabeth Thompson can reel off countless stories of what they consider their real success long before the Ponce de Leon establishment was officially reopened in June of this year.As two of the few people who returned to the city immediately after the storm, the Thompsons recall the dark and still calm-after-the-storm days as those that mean the most to them. Upon returning to the Big Easy from Houston in the fall of 2005, the Thompsons found their former haven transformed into what it seemed would be a never-ending nightmare of reconstruction and starting over.It wasn’t long however, before the waterlogged space once again began to form the backdrop for one story after another of goodwill and generosity.  Robert gave up on keeping a list of all of the people who volunteered their services from carpentry to clean-up crews after it surpassed four typed pages of names.As Robert recounts, the first few months were intense as Fair Grinds was the only place “open” in Mid-City. The National Guard would visit and bring food, while a few FEMA contractors brought in a BBQ kit to serve up New Orleans-style BBQ for up to fifty lonely and abandoned people.Since Fair Grinds had an electric water heater, people also came to the coffeehouse for their hot showers - not to mention free coffee and wi-fi. They also received milk and sugar donations from Verizon and Bell South volunteers. As everyone was on a waiting list for a refrigerator and Fair Grinds has an ice-machine, Robert and Elizabeth also gave out bags of ice.For the Thompsons, Katrina was a lesson in humility.  Robert still tears up when he recalls an elderly Italian lady he had always seen pushing her little European-style cart to and from the corner grocery store, unwilling to relinquish her independence and self-reliance to old age. She stayed during the entire storm. He recognized her when she came to him one day begging for ice.  She was so fiercely independent that she insisted that Fair Grinds take her two dollars.“Taking her two dollars was a matter of respect for her self-reliance,” says Robert.  “She was an icon of survivability, but ultimately when it came down to the magnitude of the situation, we had to learn the art of graciously accepting the help of others.”Fair Grinds served as a referral for people seeking help of many sorts, leading FEMA to designate the coffeehouse-gone-grassroots community center as a daily drop-off for food and otherwise unavailable supplies. Scads of donated goods arrived at the coffeehouse daily.   Word got out that people could come to Fair Grinds for just about everything: food, water, clothes, shelter and support.Aware of fragile mental conditions, the Thompsons wasted no time in setting up AA and NA meetings and Holistic healing counseling in the community room upstairs.  Musicians began frequenting Fair Grinds to fill the silent nights and provide therapeutic tunes for the many seeking solace and smiles in the turbulent aftermath.One evening, Loyola professor, uptown resident and singer/songwriter Mark Fernandez arrived with guitar in hand and asked if he could play “until things got better.” Mark played through the desolate days to lift spirits and heal through his music. The musicians he brought with him continue to play there today and include Tom Maron, a singer/songwriter with styles ranging from Celtic, country, eclectic fiddle, guitar, harmonica and toe-tapping jigs - accompanied by a singing dog.According to Robert and Elizabeth, the real success after the storm was in the relationships born and a flux of a thousand friends maintaining mental health, creating a nexus for people to come meet, rehabilitate, network, and simply be with people. The idea of reopening only seemed important upon seeing the renovation and thus feeling obligated to get the business off the ground as a show of thanks for the level of community participation that brought everyone so far.Through hell and high water, Fair Grinds has remained true to its vision, to borrow sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s term, of creating a “great good place” that “allows people to relax and unwind, encourage sociability instead of isolation, and make life more colorful and enriched.”  Today, Fair Grinds has a revolving door of loyal customers and newcomers alike who can’t help but want to be regulars. Lawrence Gobble, one of the fortunate few who has worked at Fair Grinds since Katrina, stated, “I love working here; the people are always different, always changing and always the same.”Fair Grinds  is located at 3133 Ponce de Leon, New Orleans, LA  It is open from  6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Call (504)-913-9072 or e-mail info@fairgrinds.com for more information. Stay Local! is a city-wide initiative for creating a strong economy based on locally owned and operated businesses in New Orleans. They encourage consumers to shop locally and help independent businesses operate more effectively.  

Trainer Penny Johnson conducts a Rebuild Healthy Houses workshop on July 14th.
Photo by Crystal Celestine.Kathleen Canedo
Marketing Director at
Consolidated Safety Services, Inc.

Almost 600 people have participated in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Rebuild Healthy Homes program since it was introduced to New Orleans in late April. This free training program was developed to instruct homeowners, contractors and volunteers in the New Orleans area how to safely rehabilitate properties damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The workshops help ensure that workers protect themselves from potentially hazardous materials and situations and are designed to significantly reduce the number of work-related injuries and illnesses. “As we work to help families rebuild their homes, we want to make certain that everyone rebuilds in the safest way possible so nobody gets hurt,” says HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. “This free training program will offer step-by-step instructions to rehabilitate homes safely so homeowners and other volunteers can protect themselves as they rebuild their lives.”With a goal of training several thousand participants, HUD Rebuild Healthy Homes workshops are available throughout the city to anyone who is rehabilitating or renovating a hurricane-damaged home. Teaching people to properly protect themselves while helping to rebuild New Orleans is especially helpful now that New Orleans is entering another hurricane season. “We have over 25 local trainers who are part of this program that would be thrilled to present the workshop to your community group, organization, PTA meeting, group of neighbors or business – anywhere you know there is a group of people who can benefit from learning how to safely and properly rehabilitate hurricane-damaged homes – we’ll bring the training to them,” says Crystal Celestine, Site Manager for the Rebuild Healthy Homes program. Celestine owns three properties in New Orleans that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina, so she has first-hand knowledge of just how beneficial these workshops are.Local Trainer, Erika Wimby May, has been with the Rebuild Healthy Homes program since it began and has conducted a number of workshops. “These workshops are great because they are interactive,” May says, “This is not a lecture or a seminar – but a dynamic session that includes activities and an open dialogue. Participants really enjoy the demonstrations and appreciate having a venue where they can talk about their problems with renovations. People need someone to talk to who has been through the same challenges and the participants really benefit from and like the training.”Those who participate in the training receive step-by-step instructions demonstrating safe and proper mold and lead-based paint removal; safe work habits that can prevent accidents such as heat exhaustion, electric shock, and carbon monoxide poisoning; and practical tips to identify and avoid fraudulent contractors. This guide is written in both English and Spanish and features detailed illustrations that make it simple for those rehabilitating homes to follow along as they work. HUD met with many New Orleans homeowners to determine how best to support their rebuilding efforts and developed this training program to address the high priority issues that came from these conversations. Homeowners who have returned to New Orleans cited many different reasons as to why they have not yet begun to rehabilitate their homes: some people may not have the resources to hire someone to do the work, some may be waiting for volunteers or laborers to begin work on their property, and some may want to do the work themselves, but do not know how to start the process or do it safely. The training also helps homeowners comply with local requirements as they remediate their homes. This timely training program addresses all of the most significant safety issues confronting anyone rehabilitating hurricane-damaged homes. In addition, it empowers homeowners to accelerate the rebuilding process by providing them with information on the steps needed to get started or to hire a credible contractor. The workshops increase safety awareness and help prevent illnesses—including lead poisoning, respiratory ailments, and allergic reactions—as well as accidents and injuries that can occur when rehabilitation is done without proper safety.“I found the workshop to be very educational for the homeowner who is choosing to tackle the task of preparing a house for remodeling,” said Jed Fisher, a New-Orleans area contractor with KatFish Home Improvements LLC. Fisher attended a workshop conducted by Trainer Penny Johnson on July 14th. “Not only does this workshop stress the safety aspects of how to prepare for such an undertaking, it also provides the basic knowledge of what to look for regarding structural, electrical, plumbing and mechanical (HVAC and gas) hazards that might be present in a hurricane-damaged home. This workshop also gives the homeowner important information that could help them from being taken advantage of by dishonest contractors. I recommend this workshop to every homeowner in New Orleans who is going through this challenging process.”HUD works to increase homeownership, support community development and improve access to affordable housing free from discrimination.