Hurricane Katrina Relief: Author Tayari Jones' book offer

Author Tayari Jones' book offer for donors to Hurricane Katrina relief--

From the blog of the author of LEAVING ATLANTA and THE UNTELLING

If you make a donation to help with Hurricane Katrina Relief, I'll send you a signed hardcover copy of one my books-- Leaving Atlanta or The Untelling.

If you donate through Network For Good, they will give you a nice email receipt that you can forward to me (and use for your taxes.) If you already have Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, I'd be glad to sign the book for a friend and mail it directly to that person.

I've been asked to clarify the procedure:

1.You go to www.networkforgood.com and make a donation to Katrina relief

2.Then, they will send you a receipt via email. (Don't you love technology!)

3.You forward the receipt to me and tell me who to sign and send the book to! Here's my email: info@tayarijones.com

4. Quick as a bunny, I'll get your book in the mail!

Maybe Kanye Was Right

While Kanye West waits for condemnation from conservatives and others for his recent comments on live TV, here's a first-hand account of conditions in one of the refugee camps.

(VIA dante woo's blog)

Notes From Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2, 2005

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me “as someone who’s been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don’t want to be here at night.”

There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.

To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New Orleans itself. For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.

It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.

It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don’t need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.

There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.

The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child’s education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.

Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods left most at risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this disaster is shaped by race.

Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to “Pray the hurricane down” to a level two. Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane, we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.

While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.

No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a “looter,” but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.

Images of New Orleans’ hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus on “welfare queens” and “super-predators” obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.

City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week’s events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders. The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.

In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a “New Deal” for the city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be “rebuilt and revitalized” to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.

Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.

Now that the money is flowing in, and the world’s eyes are focused on Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.

Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He is not planning on moving out of New Orleans.

Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources, organizations and institutions that will need your support in the coming months.

Social Justice:
jjpl.org
iftheycanlearn.org
nolaps.org
thepeoplesinstitute.org
criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home

Cultural Resources:
backstreetculturalmuseum.com
ashecac.org
198.66.50.128/gallery
nolahumanrights.org
freewebs.com/ironrail
girlgangproductions.com

Current Info and Resources:
neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html

'Nuff Said!

(VIA Cecily & thanks to Last Plane to Jakarta)

The Big Poopy-Pants Threat

Because he made me do it (and it may save me from bitch-smacking yelling at some of my temps):

7 things I plan to do before I die
1) Write a big literary novel.
2) Complete a series of mysteries with a gay lead character/couple.
3) Write a play.
4) Return to Senegal (and other African nations).
5) Brazil during Carnival.
6) Adopt some kids.
7) Be worry-free days on end.

7 things I can do
1) Edit on the fly.
2) Make my youngest nephew laugh with just a look.
3) Make my hubby laugh with just a look.
4) Procrastinate.
5) Make a better cheesecake than Junior's.
6) Worry to the point of near-teariness.
7) Laugh at myself.

7 things I cannot do
1) Dance.
2) Sing well.
3) Use a map.
4) Use most tools.
5) Talk in front of a large crowd (of strangers).
6) Hold a grudge.
7) Drive (but I'm from Brooklyn, so who cares!!).

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex/ another person
1) A friendly face.
2) Soulful eyes.
3) Beautiful hands.
4) Confidence.
5) Wordliness.
6) A playful nature.
7) Musical ability.

7 things that I say most often
1) Hey Baby!
2) What!?
3) Yo cupcake!
4) Papi!
5) Hey Shorty.
6) Hey Sweetheart.
7) Waddup Papo?

7 celebrity crushes
1) Seth Gilliam
2) Larenz Tate
3) Margeret Cho
4) Morris Chestnut
5) Denzil Washington
6) Grace Jones
7) Leonardo Lam

7 people I want to do this:
*** Anyone interested

***Lately, I've been flacking on others request to participate with memes, so...

Darrell Diggins Needs Your Help

Darrell Diggins recently lost his home and nearly all of his possessions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He needs your help.

You can donate to him directly via PayPal (note: you do not have to have a PayPal account) either on his blog or using the following link:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=pralineboy%40yahoo%2ecom&item_name=Darrell%20Diggins&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0¤cy_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

I'm sure any little bit will be greatly appreciated.

"Apple Video iPod" Offered As Prize

No comment. Just this: this wouldn't be the first time partners slipped up and gave away details of a still-to-come Apple product.

VIA iPod Observer

Cable Trade Group Offers "Apple Video iPod" as Prize

Consumers for Cable Choice, a cable advocacy trade group, is giving away an "Apple Video iPod" as part of a promotional contest, even though Apple has no such iPod in its lineup. The contest asks people to "Create a video explaining how one could use true broadband (interactive video) in new, creative and un-thought-of ways," and the winning entry will be given this unannounced Video iPod on November 9th.

Apple is notoriously close-lipped about unannounced products, but there has been increasing speculation about a possible video-enabled iPod in recent weeks from mainstream media outlets and financial analysts alike. The announcement of media event for Wednesday, September 7th has added to this speculation, though most speculation has been centered around the notion that the event will focus on the long-awaited iTunes cell phone from Motorola.

Thanks to our friends at The Unofficial Apple Weblog for the heads up on this development.

Open House New York 2005

Interested parties contact me; I'm sure I'll be at a couple places here in Brooklyn:

openhousenewyork celebrates New York City's architecture and inspires civic pride through an annual program of public access to significant buildings and sites in all five boroughs.

our mission:
- Promote a greater appreciation of New York City's built environment;
- Broaden public awareness by exposing diverse audiences to distinctive examples of architecture, engineering and design;
- Educate and inspire discussion of issues of excellence in design, planning and preservation;
- Showcase outstanding new work as well as buildings and structures of historic merit.

FACTs About Free Annual Credit Reports

I meant to post this about September 1st when the law went into effect. Guess better late than never. Use the law wisely: request a free report from each nationwide consumer reporting company months apart. That way, you can correct/dispute/update any mistake — and potentially never pay for another credit report.

Your Access to Free Credit Reports

[ ... ] Here are the details about your rights under the FCRA and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act, which established the free annual credit report program.

A Warning About "Imposter" Websites

Only one website is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law — annualcreditreport.com. Other websites that claim to offer "free credit reports," "free credit scores," or "free credit monitoring" are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the "free" product comes with strings attached. For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly "free" service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don't cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card.

Some "imposter" sites use terms like "free report" in their names; others have URLs that purposely misspell annualcreditreport.com in the hope that you will mistype the name of the official site. Some of these "imposter" sites direct you to other sites that try to sell you something or collect your personal information.

annualcreditreport.com and the nationwide consumer reporting companies will not send you an email asking for your personal information. If you get an email, see a pop-up ad, or get a phone call from someone claiming to be from annualcreditreport.com or any of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies, do not reply or click on any link in the message. It's probably a scam. Forward any such email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov.

Bruce Nugent Online!!

Thomas H. Wirth, the driving force behind keeping Richard Bruce Nugent name and legacy in the public eye, debuts a website dedicated to the legendary writer:

Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987) — writer, painter, illustrator, and popular bohemian personality — lived at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Protégé of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for thirty years as the only African American writer willing clearly to indicate his homosexuality in print.

Fall Get-Together

Greetings All,

I'll be enjoying dinner and drinks at Bogota on Sunday, October 2nd. I'll be there shortly after the restaurant opens at 5pm. You don't have to RSVP (it would be nice to know who's coming though). Just show up and look for me in a colorful or tropical shirt. It would be great to finally meet some of you face-to-face and to have different sets of friends do the same.

Bogota finally has a sign out front and continues to get great press. I don't have a stake in the biz, just love good great food and a terrific atmosphere.

Peace & Blessings,

ronn

PS-Check out Open House New York 2005. The actual program listings will be posted Sept. 21st and it's happening the weekend (October 8th & 9th) following our get-together.

Open House New York: Sun, Oct 9th

Meet me in Brooklyn!

openhousenewyork - Brooklyn

12 Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights
Sat:11:00am
Sun:11:30am (I'm definitely attending this tour)
tours: Sat at 11am & Sun at 11:30am; reserve in advance: 718.501.6234, max 25 at a time
architect: McKim, Mead & White, 1897-1924, Polshek Partnership Architects, 2004
services: access for wheelchairs, restrooms available, food/beverages, bookshop/gift shop, parking

subway: 2, 3 to Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
bus: B41, B43, B45, B69, B71
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Boondocks: Wed, Sept. 28th

Har!

Two Saturdays: Uhuru-Wazobia/LGBT Africans

FYI

Tomorrow, Saturday, October 1st

Uhuru-Wazobia/LGBT Africans With The Audre Lorde Project
Present A Mini Festival For the Immigrant Rights Working Group

Date: Saturday October 1st 2005
Time: 1:00PM – 6:00PM
Location: 85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217-1607
Entranc: Free
• Dance performances and Readings
• Film Screenings,
• African Vendors
• Panel discussion with presenters and performers.

For more information visit www.voicesabroad.org or call (917) 656-5383

And next Saturday, October 8th

Uhuru-Wazobia/LGBT Africans With African Services Committee Present a Fall Party

For more information visit www.voicesabroad.org
or call (917) 656-5383