Funeral

Saturday morning I got up at 7:30 to get to a funeral for 9am. It was for a friend's older brother, Timothy Willie Russell. He was 32 and a father of 2. Later that morning another funeral was being held for their cousin who was killed at the same time. They were shot to death in a car in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood of Holy Cross about 10 days ago, late at night during a tremendous thunderstorm.
This was the first time that someone close enough to me to feel had been affected by a murder. And I did feel it. I was like a water faucet during the funeral, gushing tears on and off.
It was also the first time that I'd attended a funeral with such a packed house, or for such a young person, and I'd never seen young Black men in too-big pants crying and holding their loved ones like I saw at this funeral.
But this scene is all-too common in this city. Young Black men in particular are killed regularly. Since the start of the year, the police have killed 3. And then there are the shootings that aren't done by the police.
What was interesting to me was the fact that nothing changed about my feelings for the city. I just thought that this has to stop, and I should probably do something. It's a complex problem because certainly the lack of jobs that will support a family plays a part in this, just as, I suspect, all the untreated post-traumatic stress related to Katrina does, too. On top of that, there are plenty of guns around.
Is this happening in other cities around the country? Are the young being culled, leaving just an older generation?

Happy Mardi Gras!

It's Mardi Gras season, so it's hard to get much done around here right now. Most people are working on their costumes for the big day or hanging out with friends diving for beads at parades. It's amazing to me what a family and community-oriented event Mardi Gras is. Before living here, I thought that Mardi Gras was that gross thing of drunks and women flashing their breasts on Bourbon Street. That happens, too, trust me, but only on Bourbon Street. The parades that roll down St. Charles Avenue and along Canal Street are attended by families and children of all ages.
One of the devices I particularly like are wide viewing ladders that people set up so that the kids can sit above the crowd and see the floats --- and be strategically positioned to catch "throws." These ladders are generally about 3 feet wide, and they have a board across the top (between side railings) for sitting. The structures are positioned along the neutral ground, and they're an excellent tool for parade watching.
Yesterday, my friend Liz Lew and I went to see the NOMTOC parade, New Orleans Most Talked About Club, in Algiers. It was fun, although truly long and slow. We were fortunate to have a rooftop spot, so we had a pretty good view of all the bands and floats, but the power lines did deflect a large number of the beads and other throws hurled our way.
It started to rain during the parade, so we moved inside. At a certain point, since Liz wanted to get a printer cartridge, and I wanted to go to another friend's pre-parade brunch, we headed off on our bikes for the ferry. The rain, however, hadn't actually stopped.
So, we got to the ferry and hid under the walkway until it arrived. Unfortunately, at the same time, the rain grew more intense, turning the Mississippi River into a mist-covered, swirling expanse with more droplet-induced freckles than a tub in a shower.
When we reached the other side, I gave up on the idea of going to Liz's to do some porch sitting and have dinner, and I decided to strike out for home.
My glasses, which were covered with rain drops, were not particularly helpful, and the fact that the streets were flooded was also not encouraging. A clanging noise frightened me as a I approached St. Peters from Canal Street. It was a manhole cover that had come out of its rim and was bouncing up and down as water gushed out from the sewer. This was the first time I saw one of these on the way home, but not the last. This scary thing, however, was juxtaposed with the brassy call of a marching band that continued to wind it's way along Canal Street, in spite of the torrential rain.
Although the rain was pretty warm, I thought about what it must be like to go through a hurricane. No fun. I pedaled along at a pretty steady pace, but the water on the edge of the street would come up to the middle of my tire. Clearly the road sloped down from the middle, so I tried to stay as close to the high part as possible while leaving room for the cars that were also trying to get through.
One advantage to being on a bike in this, I have to say, was the knowledge that the water wasn't going to flood my engine.
Oh, I should mention that the garlands of Mardi Gras beads that I had collected at NOMTOC added an oddly cute clinking sound to this whole scene.
While I did manage to stay up long enough to peel off the beads and water-logged clothes to take a hot shower, I did completely crash into a long, afternoon nap, which, I guess, is part of what this whole Mardi Gras thing is supposed to be about.

A Prolific Time

Over the past two weeks, I've had 3 different pieces aired on different radio programs. The first was on WWOZ, a community station dedicated to New Orleans music and culture. This evening a story of mine will air on the local NPR affiliate, WWNO. And FSRN led with a piece that I did on Monday. Unfortunately, two out of three of these stories focus on the impact of the oil spill that is already hitting the Louisiana coast.

Sunday, one of my neighbors had a dog shaving party. She put posters up all over the neighborhood, and, like a good reporter, I went all the way around the corner to see what was going on. The clippers were buzzing away and there were several buckets full of fur and hair around. It was a really local effort to do something about what is happening on the coast, a catastrophe that is ongoing and that most of us here have no sense of power over.

Yesterday, as I came out of a house where I had been doing a census interview, it smelled like diesel. The neighborhoods where I live -- and where I'm doing census work -- are called the Bywater and the Marigny. The are some of the oldest communities in the city, and they face the Mississippi River. Or at least they face the levee which stands about 8 concrete feet high on the top of a little ridge. We're not particularly close to the Gulf, but it's not the first time people in New Orleans have reported smelling the fumes from the spill.

One good thing is that yesterday Obama proposed increases to the 2010 and 2011 budgets in a range of areas that will have to deal with the spill and its aftermath: the EPA, Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and others. What really needs to happen is a war on erosion. I have to admit, though, that seeing people like Patti, my neighbor, doing what they can to make a difference is heartening. Sometimes I get stuck criticizing and not doing enough to create something different. This is especially easy to do as a journalist. Thanks, Patti. The future is in OUR hands.

Thoughts on Development

This morning I had a conversation with one of my roommates about the refusal to change that one encounters in Louisiana. What I realize is that this place is different from most of the rest of the country. It has its own culture. And, having done my training in development, I was clearly reminded of the usual development paradigm in which some relatively well-off person from the West arrives with a plan to solve local problems. The genocide in Rwanda is one result of this kind of approach. The riots in Kenya in late 2007/early 2008 were a legacy of British colonial rule, which passed power on to an anointed "independent" leader of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.
Down here, people talk about carpetbaggers. I have found this term, applied to me, offensive. But thinking about the conversation this morning, I can see a similar dynamic.
At the same time, the truth is that this place is incredibly corrupt. The Danziger Bridge cover-up scandal that was revealed in the national press last week is not unusual in this part of the woods. What is unusual is that the federal government has gotten involved and is actually doing something to bring justice. Yet, on the other hand, the federal government (HUD) also approved Louisiana's plan to distribute grant money to homeowners for rebuilding post-Katrina in a way that fundamentally discriminated against African-Americans. So having the feds involved doesn't seem to guarantee anything.
Yesterday I found out a job that an acquaintance had told me about will only be open to candidates who were referred by the local arts council. It was another moment of seeing how this city works for those who are part of the inside, and I am definitely not (yet). Even though these things make me angry when I experience them on my own skin, this morning's conversation was helpful to making me see that New Orleans is like the developing world, and, as such, or just like any place else, arriving with all the answers doesn't mean that people are going to want what you're selling.

Human Rights Review Story from New Orleans

http://www.fsrn.org/audio/us-reviews-human-rights-record-new-orleans/6134

From one low-lying, flood-prone city to another

I spent the last couple weeks of December with my Dad in Mestre, which is technically part of Venice, Italy. As I boarded my plane, the symmetry of leaving one city in danger of disappearing under water for another one in the same situation wasn´t lost on me.
Although I lived in Italy for 7 years in my 20s, I was struck by how many people were looking at me on the street. There are a few possible explanations for this: 1) my stunning good looks, 2) my lime-colored jacket, which stood out amongst all the conservative navy blue, gray and black coats, or 3) my typically American fashion which combines sneakers with everything, regardless of how poorly matched. It also occurred to me that I could just no longer be used to the kind of eye contact and checking out that goes on in a Latin country.
Venice had its most significant snow fall in probably 20 years while I was there, so I got to experience a winter wonderland, even if it wasn´t the typical setting for that. Now that I´m back here in New Orleans, we are getting the coldest weather the area has had for 14 years, and I´m thinking about all the hats, mittens and long underwear that I foolishly left in storage in New York. Oh well.
January 6th was the Epiphany, or, as people here call it, 12th night. The first Mardi Gras parade was held by the Krewe St. Joan of Arc. It was fun with people carrying candles in a parade and a couple of women dressed in medieval garb on horseback. The woman in the photo on the left is wearing a hat that says: heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater.
Let´s just say that I can see how people could get hooked on this place.