The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank uses electronic media to collect, preserve and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The University of New Orleans and George Mason’s Center for History and New Media created and maintain this online database in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and other institutions.
Click here for more: The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
“We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the levees.
Please everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.”
The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents said local officials had known for years that the levees were unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours passed before rescue workers showed up.
“The people responsible for this should be brought here and have a bullet put in their head.” Said a parent holding a photo of his 16 year old daughter.
New Orleans?
Actually, China. I substituted the word “levees” for “schools.”
This came from the front page of today’s New York Times. The topic is the anger of Chinese citizens against the government for knowingly allowing unsafe infrastructure that resulting in the death of thousands of people.
“Bullet in the head” for the people responsible? Rough justice in old China.
And imagine. They had to wait two whole hours for relief workers to show up.
This is not to minimize the horror and tragedy of what happened in China - and Burma. It is meant to show that even in countries overtly ruled by gun thugs, people have retained their common sense and sense of outrage, something apparently lost in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
Citizens take up burden of storm relief
“Andrew Jack reports from the capital on how help from individuals for the victims is in sharp contrast to the response from the ruling regime.
…Ordinary citizens are taking up the task of providing relief to the regions worst effected by the storm.
Resigned to the government’s inability to safeguard it’s own citizens, a disparate network of individuals, businesses, and religious groups are braving their own hardships to organize convoys of supplies, food and medicine to send to the delta.
…Private relief appeared to outnumber official aid operations.”
New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?
Yes.
But this happens to be a description that appeared in today’s’ Financial Times of the current state of affairs in Burma, a bottom-of-the-economic-barrel Third World country run by a group of power mad psychopaths.
What’s Washington’s excuse?
It’s a mystery - to the Times-Picayune at least - why police harassment of backstreet culture in New Orleans continues, and who is behind it and why.
First, in every city that I know, the mayor runs the police because it’s the mayor who appoints the police chief. One word from the mayor and the word would trickle down: leave the Indians and second lines alone, or if there is a reason for communicating, do it with the same respect you’d afford people attending the opera or symphony.
Treme seems to be the battleground now. It must have to do with real estate and the desire of the city to “gentrify” north of Rampart. Why they think it’s necessary to kill the culture of the Treme in the process - one of the most culturally significant places in North America (and the world) - is another great American mystery.
Destroy what’s great to replace it with…what exactly?
On my last night in New Orleans I went to see Indians ‘a comin’
I didn’t post this earlier because I learned later that night after also seeing Papa Mali that my mom had passed away.
Dorothy McCarthy - (October 1, 1923 - May 1, 2008)
Interestingly enough, my mom didn’t like New Orleans I had learned a few months earlier, but then again she never had a chance to really get to know it. She was in and out in just a few days and only saw the business district and just dipped into the Quarter.
The first time I visited New Orleans in 1990, I didn’t think much of it either. Like my mom, I was just there for a few days (I was on my way somewhere else) and had no idea how to get “into” the city.
I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about sharing New Orleans now. To know New Orleans is to love it and more needs to be done to let people know about the wonders here.
For example, of my four most hard-core jazz fan friends (and two of these guys are as seriously hard-core as any on earth with record collections in the thousands) none of them has ever been to New Orleans! There must be millions of people like this.
Anyway, off to Tipitina’s…
A good article about the challenges facing the Indians
“NoLa Rising is a post-Katrina art campaign encouraging people in all faubourgs of Greater New Orleans to publicly display works of art, regardless of how simple or untutored it may seem to be, for the purpose of rebuilding and restoring the human spirit in our city.
NOLA is a unique and beautiful city that has historically embraced the spirit of personal freedom that supports the growth of the artist, musician and writer … the goal of the NoLa Rising Project is to showcase that spirit.”
The $50,000 fine against ReX, turned into a few hundred bucks, but he has to desist from decorating the city with art.
Here’s the word:
Remaining NoLA Rising Street Signs
Since I have been forced to agree to court order about me personally not putting up signs within the City of New Orleans, the remaining balance of NoLA Rising signs, whether made by me or at N.R. paint parties is being brought to XO Studios for dispersement to those who will enjoy them.
XO STUDIOS
2833 Dauphine (in the Marigny at the corner of Press Street)
NOLA IS RISING Y’ALL AND WE ARE ALL A PART OF IT!
I’ve been working on a script for a new video call “Exposing the Katrina Myth.”
So many myths, so little time…
Seriously though, it only boils down to five big ones. One of them is that New Orleans is somehow in the “wrong” place and should be “moved.”
Only in George Bush’s Amerika, could idiocy that profound make it to the airwaves, but is did and a lot of people believe it.
Well, when they’re moving New Orleans, maybe they could get a package deal on moving New York City (EVERY subway and tunnel is below sea level), London and the entire country of Holland.
London is in quite a pickle, but they’re actually doing something about it. Compare their 21st century flood country to the crap the Army Corps and its band of crooked contractors throws up.
Cellist Helen Gillet - a New Orleanian by way of Belgium, Singapore, Japan and Chicago - was a renter in pre-Katrina times.
She came home in October 2005 to a roofless apartment inhabited by wildlife.
Now she is a home owner through the Habitat for Humanity Musician’s Village program.
Click here for more about Helen Gillet
Helen Sings with Vavavoom
This is the second in a series of “finished” video pieces.
The first was about the birth of a new parade, the St. Claude Easter Parade sponsored by the Goodchildren Carnival Club.
http://foodmusicjustice.com/2008/04/29/easter-parade-new-orleans/
This one features Carol Kolinchak, an attorney who has successfully fought official New Orleans on behalf of Indian tribes and Second Line parades. It was filmed at this year’s Super Sunday.
Enjoy!
Incompetence and fraud on the part of the US Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors are the reason for 95% of the damage to New Orleans after Katrina.
So far the Corps has evaded any financial liability because of a legislative loophole that exempts them from any damage caused by their flood control projects.
But guess what?
Join us and every time we have a new article or video about New Orleans, we'll let you know.
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