A Conference on the Future of New Orleans
In just a few hours, we will be hosting you at the Bridge Lounge, complete with FREE beer, and unleashing your blogging presence on the Internet.
Big, big thanks go to Tim of Tim’s Nameless for supplying the brew and to the Bridge Lounge for letting us do our thing in their private room.
Come and join us!
Get your adventuresome self over to the Bridge Lounge anyway, even if you haven’t preregistered…because it is a FREE event, at the very least. And it involves beer!
Rising Tide 5, a new media conference on the future of New Orleans, has announced its 2010 date. The conference will be held on Saturday, August 28, 2010.
Planning has begun for speakers, panels and the annual Friday night reception. Next year, we will also re-introduce our community service opportunity to commemorate the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the devastating floods that occurred after the failure of the federally designed and built levees.
All are welcome to participate in the planning of Rising Tide by becoming a member of the committee, submitting suggestions, donating or sponsoring a panel or event.
Please become involved by e-mailing me at kimmarshall@risingtidenola.com, or by replying to this post.
Thursday, November 12, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, Rising Tide is getting its first beginning blogging class on at the Bridge Lounge, located at 1201 Magazine Street. A few us will be showing longtime readers and commenters how we ended up doing this thing and how you can, too, ’cause there are some astute people out there that we know have a lot to say, but might find the details daunting. We will be there to answer all your questions and to set you up right then and there with your own blog. Laptops are welcome. Registration is free.
You read that right. It is free.
Mark your calendars, let us know if you will be attending in the comments to this post, and ask us anything you want to know in the comments as well – we will cover it at the Bridge Lounge on November 12.
Keep an eye on the Rising Tide blog for further information.
Big, BIG thanks to Greg Peters for moving us over to WordPress and taking on some webmaestro duties for all of us RT yahoos.
Many thanks to Crystal Kile at the Newcomb Center for Research on Women’s New Media Lab (@Sophielab on twitter) for shooting and sharing the following video of Mr. Shearer. It’s not the whole thing, but its a solid 26 minutes of horrible facts and biting wit.
As she puts it, “In his address, Shearer reflects on the mediated, politicized aftermath of Katrina from his perspective as a New Orleans-identified blogger, thinker, entertainer, and professional human being.”
Harry Shearer: Comments at Rising Tide IV in New Orleans (22 Aug 2009) from Crystal Kile on Vimeo.
Rising Tide Nola
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29
Sorry, folks, had to stop the updates because I ended up moderating the health care panel. A spot-on account of what wasn’t discussed on that panel can be found here. A sampling:
And here is where I am embarrassed. My one note, the one thing I most wanted to discuss, maybe even the most important thing to discuss within the context of health and New Orleans, did not get mentioned. I didn’t know where to put it in without sounding like the crazy loon in the armchair throwing off the conversation… so I waited for a question from the audience that would let me bring it up. Unfortunately, it didn’t come. So I didn’t say anything about the issue of race and class… and neither did anybody else.
Which is a shame because we cannot consider the scope of health challenges of any kind within our city — access, stress, mental health, behavioral concerns, nutrition, whatever health issue one can think of — without discussing race and class. Race and class shape any health experience irregardless of the location. But in New Orleans, it is a paramount issue. For one, before 2005, New Orleans was the only city in the country that had a defined two-tier system with separate and (un)equal medical facilities for the haves and have-nots. What has not returned post-Flood are those services for the have-nots. So what isn’t being said is that the reason these services aren’t here, or are being taken away, is because they are for a population that many do not want here in the first place. The rest of us work away at putting money and resources into community clinics (whose funding is not indefinite) and outreach and signing individuals up for public services — but how effective can we be in the long run if we never take a step back and look at the big picture?
Some other accounts can be found at Maitri’s here. It was much, much more than nola.com did: according to the local paper, the story was all Harry Shearer and nothing else.
Coozan Pat chimes in, awaiting accounts from other bloggers.
As does Adrastos. The man has now immortalized Diaper Dave Vitter as “the Keith Richards of Louisiana politics”. NOLA-Dishu adds some visual zing to the “Alien” comparison Clancy Dubos threw out there concerning Vitter during the politics panel.
The recipient of the fourth Ashley Morris Award had this to say, but he/she couldn’t say it in person. Jacques Morial filled in quite well for Dambala:
What I would like to tell the people in this room is that you are all special. You all share a collective love for this city and are using your blogs and activism to shape a better vision of New Orleans. While we all may not agree on everything, we all….most certainly…..care. We care enough to pay attention….and that means everything to the health of a community.
We all know that traditional mainstream media resources are facing some serious challenges with the advent of the internet and quite often blogs are portrayed as the nemesis to quality journalism. I don’t believe this is true. Blogs are just another tool for the 4th estate to perform it’s job. In a way, I think the internet is the ultimate evolution of the 4th estate. All of you…particularly you….New Orleans bloggers…have proven that in the years following Katrina. Nowhere have bloggers made such an impact as they have here in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
And for that matter, I think the MSM, investigative journalists in this city are head and shoulders above the national pack. I am personally not worried for their future as some….as I have faith that quality and integrity is always in demand regardless of the medium or technology used to relay the message. I hope our blogs continue to serve them in the future. After all…we’re on the same team.
It was an honor to craft the Ashley for Ashe Dambala.
Yashir koach, D, and FYYFF!
Rising Tide Nola
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29
“Welcome to the politics death panel!”
Introductions of Clancy Dubos, John Slade, Lamar White, Jr., and Ethan Brown.
Talk about the Jeffersons, Mose and Dollar Bill.
Clancy: “conviction of Mose was in some ways more important than the conviction of Bill.” Mose was the muscle, Bill the brains.
John Slade: “not the worst thing that has happened to us by far”. Disturbed by nola.com commenters and callers to his show on WBOK who are rejoicing to the point of exclusion of the crooked pol in Mandeville. “You can’t cherry-pick black people.”
Lamar White: tragedy to the Jefferson family. And it’s sad how Democrats statewide didn’t step in when all this was happening, how passive they were.
Slade: “LSU will be insufferable. ‘We’re better than Harvard, we’re better than Harvard.’ ” (Bill’s alma mater)
Brown: Hopefully, the convictions will get people running for office to work for the common good.
Clancy fills us in on some speculation of what will happen with Renee Gill-Pratt, another Jefferson crony.
The mayoral election: will we elect someone completely unlike Nagin and follow a trend from past mayoral elections?
Clancy: “mayor’s race like a football season, we won’t get really engaged until about the eighth game. There’s several people we are against, but nobody we are really for.”
Slade: “Anybody that says we need to run City Hall like a business, don’t listen to them, go the other way.” Nobody ever confabs with folks such as the mom and pop stores, with people like Leah Chase. “I’m scared to be excited, ’cause I was excited for Nagin” and look how that turned out. “Nobody has the killer instinct.” WE will have to ask the ugly questions, since the candidates aren’t going after each other.
White: Get someone who will restore integrity to the office. prefers Carl Weathers as a candidate at this point.
Brown: Baffled by the mayor’s race – mayor with lower ratings than Dick Cheney, loads of issues to run on – but where is the political instinct. Mixed feelings about Cannizzarro, but what he said recently about the justice system here and how critical he was about it was spot on.
Slade: “You like what Cannizzarro said? I guess somebody has to.”
Moves on to Charity Hospital…
Are Jindal’s presidential ambitions good, bad or will have no affect on the state of Louisiana?
Clancy: They’re bad, very bad. What is good for the country is almost diametrically opposed to what is good for Louisiana.
Slade: Had Blanco run again, he would have voted for Jindal right off – can’t forgive Blanco for what happened during the storm and the flood. Jindal will probably be reelected however, because North Louisiana hates New Orleans. To Obama: bypass Baton Rouge with recovery funds and give it directly to New Orleans.
White: Blanco against Jindal – “would have voted again for her a thousand times over”. Recounts Jindal’s checkered political past and his ineffective leadership.
Slade: The women went for her, but Blanco did not do them any favors in terms of jobs.
Brown: “All about working against your interests.” Jindal’s higher aspirations, as well as Palin’s, have borne that out.
Slade: “None of us work at a chicken factory, so we are really screwed.”
Adrastos on Vitter: “The Keith Richards of Louisiana politics”
Clancy: Vitter is the Alien in “Alien”: he will do anything to survive in politics.
Slade: “I’m voting for Stormy Daniels.” As long as those pols are gonna toe the conservative line, they will be forgiven by their party faithful.
White: Stormy Daniels’ campaign shows the state’s Dem party is not organized enough to take the Vitter seat seriously. There are Democratic mayors in many small towns across Louisiana that could benefit from a more organized party.
Brown: Vitter is a true political animal, who will keep “banging away” at the things he espouses, and we haven’t found a way to counter that.
Adrastos: Joe Cao: “might” support the president, but then he votes the other way. But is Cao an endangered species or a hardy survivor?
Slade: Had Cao on his show: went from having a shy voice to parroting talking points. Abortion is beside the point, people have to have health care. “He chose to be a freaky-deaky Republican in an oddball district – a one-term wonder.”
White: Election had to be delayed, Cao was a fluke in the election, Will definitely be an engangered species.
Rising Tide Nola
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29
It’s Harry Shearer!
When he’s away…is loving New Orleans just a romantic notion? Fuck no!
“We have lost the media battle regarding the story of what has happened to us.” He has spent a lot of time and energy restating the facts over and over again.
The media’s “main bias is towards laziness”.
“If they could get Geraldo Rivera in here why couldn’t they get food and water?”
The media never got to Lakeview, or St Bernard, or any place that wasn’t close to an off ramp on the interstate. They follow a predetermined “template” in reporting on stories such as Katrina and the Federal Flood that is still dictating what the rest of the country thinks about New Orleans.
As bloggers, we have to write what we do because nobody else is going to.
Keep stating the factual context of 8-29-05 and after.
Daily pressure is shared by bloggers and journalists for news, news, news all the time. BUT, in his position blogging for HuffPo, he feels he has the time to keep the facts ever-present and not just publish something because it makes a good story, whether it is true or not.
Protection of sources is always a complicated relationship, as sources have an agenda as well in feeding information.
On the suggestion from HuffPo commenters that Shearer take his beef about New Orleans direct to Obama, he put on his best Edward Burns and talked of “placing a nuclear plant in every city”.
He tried to get in touch through friends, nothing happened, then was contacted by a David Washington and laid out why he had problems with the Corps’ protection of the city. Washington connected him to a Corps’ PR person. The PR person connected him to Janet Woodcaye “Gulf Coast Recovery Czar”: no power in the job, and it expires in a month. Shearer put her in touch with a fellow who has great ideas about how to live with water instead of being at war with it. It was all he could do. That marked the end of his adventure with “the inside game”, which he will be posting about as soon as he can.
The man of many talents and voices is still keeping the light on on what happened and is still happening here. What’s important is not just to tell what happened and what is happening, but WHY IT MATTERS.
Rising Tide Nola
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29
9:55 AM – Rising Tide has begun, with a bombastic intro by our emcee, George”Loki” Williams.
9:56 AM – Mark Folse introduces Susan Tucker, Bruce Raeburn, and Edward Butler, the panelists who will discuss New Orleans culture four years after the storm. The “three legs of New Orleans culture” are duly represented: food, music, and parading.
According to a recent L.A. Times article, about 60% of the population has returned, but there are fewer music gigs and the gigs that there are available are paying less, according to Raeburn. The economic viability of the musicians here is in greater question than ever before.
Caught between trying to sustain a culture in parading and dressing as an Indian with few financial resources and no support from the city and between the hardships of day-to-day living here is the current state of those in the parading culture, says Edward Butler.
Skyrocketing costs of living in New Orleans are eating into the survival of the parading clubs.
Ashley Morris’ calling out of the tone-deafness of the Musicians’ Village comes up in this context.
Cuisine needs discourse, Susan Tucker says. Obituaries she reads tell some stories: One tells of a deceased’s recipes as”My Cookbook of Immeasurable Pleasures”, hinting at “an accessible longing” through preparation of food. Another obituary mentioning a musician’s studies of many religions stated he didn’t eat pork unless it was on a muffuletta.”
To see that the public schools have not embraced the music…to come home to find that the police department has changed the rules (clubs down to 39 from 50+)…when you centralize the residents in one place, you aren’t passing on the street music, Butler says.
“The Porch is a direct part of the community dying.”, a response to what is happening when the young pick up guns and have children when they are children.
In getting rid of the projects, the musicians were got rid of as well.
Tucker: Know what your neighbor cooks, find out what people are putting in their bodies and how to share it.
Raeburn: the neighborhoods will take care of themselves if they are given the resources to continue what they do, and to pass on the culture through the schools. “Reinforcing without controlling” should be the norm.
Tucker: blogging can certainly get a little beyond the one-dimensionality of cookbooks: can tell you about how well recipes worked out, share variations, tell everyone which restaurants are good and how expensive they are.
More after our 5 minute break….
Rising Tide Nola
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29
