Day 1093: Rising Tide 3 - Dénouement
August 24, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, citizen journalism, new orleans, rising tide conference
Robert Cerasoli attended our pre-party, Lee Zurik was there, we made the Times-Picayune and Clancy DuBos is one of us, one of us.
Follow up posts coming on:
* interconnectedness - why New Orleans and Louisiana are important to the rest of the nation, just as the Dakotas, California and the East Coast should be important to us.
* parallels and dissimilarities with India
* education as a lowered national priority and how that is already coming home to roost
Again, thanks to all of you who made Rising Tide 3 happen. We need to meet more often before next year. Geek dinners, anyone? I’ll bring the Indian food!
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Blogger Award
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, new orleans, rising tide conference
Time for the Ashleys! This is an award for excellence in blogging handed out by the Ashley Morris Memorial Foundation. Glass awards created and crafted by Liprap, not just a blogger but also a glass artiste (I’m impressed!).
And the winner of the first Ashley is the late, great Ashley Morris himself.
The next winner is Matt McBride of Fix The Pumps! Go, Matt!
The final winner is … KAREN GADBOIS!!!
And, with that, we’re done. Off to socialize. This was a great conference and I thank everyone for being here, even virtually!
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Politics Panel
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, crime, government, new orleans
Adrastos moderates a politics panel that includes Greg Peters (*groan* oops, I mean *cheer*), Brian Denzer, Gordon Russell from the Times-Picayune, Ethan Brown and our very own “queen of the universe,” Dangerblond!
Who’s going to / whom do you want to run for Mayor? Boos for Jackie Clarkson and Rob Couhig. Yay for Karen Carter, Mitch Landrieu and our Eli Ackerman.
District Attorney race: Ethan Brown says that the blogosphere the law enforcement establishment in New Orleans (thanks for the correction, Ethan!) has a “zombie narrative” going that New Orleans entertains a very liberal/lax policy when it comes to incarceration. New Orleans has a high incarceration rate for drug-related crimes and Louisiana has a very high number of people in prisons. High rate of 701 releases, yet only 2% of NOPD arrests are for violent crimes. Dangerblond says we need a DA who does not spend the first term preparing for the second term. We need a DA who is not going to prosecute every low-level “jughead” with “resin and a crackpipe.” Any avenue for social restitution for these people is now squandered because now they have a criminal record in their background. Greg Peters wants our new DA to have good managerial skills, not just lawyer finesse. Schroeder reminds us that we don’t have good metrics - “making quantitative records available to the public is important.” violent offenders tend to be repeat offenders and need to be put behind bars, but crack-pipe criminals may be able to go to Drug Court, as proposed by Linda Bizzarro as well as Jason Williams, who is with us at RT3 today.
Jason Williams says we need to prosecute cases using a Quality of Life dynamic. 95% of arrests are small change offenders. “Repeat violent offenders are allowed to go back to the street very quickly. First there are the 701 releases, but the justice system here is ill-equipped to deal with all of the cases.” So violent offenders are thrown back out with the low-risk folks. All was cool until the “Vote For Me” plug at the end - so unnecessary.
2nd District Congressional Race: Adrastos refers to William Jefferson as “a tragic figure, but, man, does he like money.” To help us understand the race better, Brian “The Nerd” Denzer gives us statistics, maps and visual aids. The thrust is that the 2nd District is majority black and this is going to be a major factor in this race. Based on a Southern Media poll, Brian says that Byron Lee, Dollar Bill and Kenya Smith together will garner about 16% of the vote. The poll shows Troy Carter, James Carter and Cedric Richmond going head to head, with Helena Moreno not making it to second primary.
(I don’t know who to vote for. *sigh*)
Gordon Russell is unsure how the voting is going to play out, but agrees that race is a factor. Helena Moreno is the only white candidate and could benefit from white votes in a sea of all black candidates. Greg states that Dollar Bill is not going down because of scandal but because he is no longer adept at bringing home federal money. Dangerblond is on the OPDEC and says James Carter (?) has national appeal and has OPDEC endorsement - yet states that people don’t know whom to believe. (My indecision is vindicated.) Ethan: “I’m from California where no one cares about the garbage contracts … We have a smaller pot of money so everyone is fighting over it.” Brian brings up coastal restoration and the Stafford Act: “They all lack the ability to speak to particular constituencies.”
Senate Race: Question is “Will Obama at the top of the ticket help or hurt Mary Landrieu’s chance for re-election?” Greg thinks it doesn’t matter because “John Kennedy is as useful as tits on a bishop.” Brian: “It helps because it increases black voter turnout.” Gordon: “It doesn’t matter.” Dangerblond brings up a $50 reward for anyone who can prove a credible story of corruption on the part of Moon Landrieu or anyone in his family. At this conference, Dangerblond raises the reward to $100.
Bobby Jindal:
Me: “Bobby Jindal exorcised me!” Adrastos points out that the exorcism obviously hasn’t taken and introduces me as his friend with lovely eyebrows. “I don’t get them waxed, either.”
Greg: “He’s a hydroponically-grown prototype,” “fake ideologue persona who will do what it takes.”
Brian: “He’s got a long way to go as an elected official.”
Gordon: “His ambition seems to have no limit and he will run for president.”
Dangerblond: “He’s a glib phony.”
Q&A Time a la Oyster:
* Are crime cameras and traffic cameras of any political relevance? Dangerblond says that we as a nation have turned into sheep allowing ourselves to be searched before flights, on trains, etc., so NOLA is not different. Brian wants crime cameras to be taken off streets and placed outside City Hall.
* Gary Wainwright gives a rambler of a sermon. And then asks us to vote for him?!?!
* Jimmy Huck brings up shifting populations and demographics and the Latino vote. Brian is disappointed with Helena Moreno for running as a white candidate and not as an advocate of the growing Latino population. Gordon asks, “If we have more Asian and Latino voters, would we have more sophisticated politics instead of I Look Like You, Vote For Me?” Yes! Adrastos supports immigration and that we have more people identifying as other than White or Black. (Hello! Dedra jokes that they have me lumped in with the Vietnamese.)
* Cynthia wonders how to go about advertising New Orleans as a destination for living. (We need to keep crime down and grow better schools for that.)
* More Latino community discussion. It’s puzzling to me that there are people here named Hernandez and Juarez (historically Spanish folks) who don’t want Hispanic immigrants moving in here or don’t advocate for them.
Ok, I’m done with this panel. Time for the Awards Ceremony.
Loki would like you all to know that HumidCity is temporarily down while they wait for the domain transfer to propagate. The site is currently showing as down, but it will be back up again in just a few days up and running at its new host. 0 comments #
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Journalism Panel
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, citizen journalism, media, new orleans, rising tide conference
Back from a fine J’anita’s lunch of spicy BBQ and a Diet Coke. Thanks, Craig and The Beautiful Kim! Also back from telling a couple of people to stay calm. Me?! What’s the world coming to?
Panelists, from left to right:
· Lee Zurik: WWL-TV investigative reporter
· Kevin Allman: author, journalist, and blogger, frequent guest blogger at Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans
· Eli Ackerman: blogger at We Could Be Famous
· David Winkler-Schmit: journalist and frequent contributor to Gambit Weekly and the Blog of New Orleans
Jeffrey introduces the panelists, reads the following excerpt from David Simon’s Does The News Matter To Anyone Any More? and asks the panelists their opinion of it.
… I understand the economic pressures on newspapers. At this point, along with the rest of the wood-pulp Luddites, I’ve grasped that what was on the Internet wasn’t merely advertising for journalism, but the journalism itself. And though I fled the profession a decade ago for the fleshpots of television, I’ve heard tell of the horrors of department-store consolidation and the decline in advertising, of Craigslist and Google and Yahoo. I understand the vagaries of Wall Street, the fealty to the media-chain stockholders, the primacy of the price-per-share.
What I don’t understand is this: Isn’t the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium — isn’t an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity?
Zurik, Allman and Eli don’t think ads influence them, but Winkler-Schmit admits that it is required to keep his job going, his paper running and television stations on the air.
Kevin Allman wants us to check out Robert Smigel’s scathing animation against NBC’s parent company, General Electric. Here is the VIDEO.
Applause for Zurik’s journalism with reciprocation from Zurik. Zurik lauds the efforts of Karen, Sarah and Eli in getting the story out.
Eli suggests that internet democratizes the news more so than papers. Zurik disagrees and contends that the shrinking newspaper and cutting staff is not a good thing. Internet news and mainstream media news cannot be conflated. Mainstream media cannot do investigative journalism in the same way. Mainstream media, however, “has real power and access, but blogs and MSM can be complementary.”
Now, they’re talking about Bill Moyers’s feelings on the media of the future:
… By 2011, the market analysts tell us, the Internet will surpass newspapers in advertising revenues. With MySpace and Dow Jones controlled by News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft determined to acquire Yahoo!, and with advertisers already telling some bloggers, “Your content is unacceptable,” we could potentially lose what’s now considered an unstoppable long tail of content offering abundant, new, credible and sustainable sources of news and information.
So, what will happen to news in the future, as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely and as content programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package?
Allman says, “There’s nothing progressive about Arianna Huffington [who wants to pay bloggers nothing to write at her space]. She is turning into the faux-progressive equivalent of Drudge.” Read Kevin Allman’s posts tagged “Write for free!” to get the back story on why he is not happy with Huffington. Eli says it’s too early to say if the whole internet is going to be corporatized, but there are no Democratic candidates promoting net neutrality.
Now Jeff asks, “What is ultimately the quality of content when you’ve cut the budget to that degree?” He had something else to ask but had a brain fart so Kevin is giving us a story about Sam Zell. When asked if a paper should have advertising containing adult content, Zell is said to have stated to a number of employees, “What kind of man doesn’t want to look at pussy?” Very derogatory, very whorish on his own part. Winkler-Schmit says people like Zell want to “make sausage” and don’t care about content. Zurik comes back that it’s better to invest in quality journalism because publishing crap is ultimately not worth it. Eli says, “The cream of the crop rises to the top.”
Winkler-Schmit brings up how the NOAH story was broken. Zurik is upset that the biggest consumer reaction actually came from Nagin’s dismissive response to media questioning. He does not like that “the sex appeal of this story” comes from Nagin.
Forgot everything said in the last few minutes once Zurik said, “I read your blogs. My eyebrows are real! I don’t get them waxed!” Room almost explodes in laughter.
Q&A time. BTW, Sophmom’s blog is back up and she is liveblogging, so if you want to read another perspective on the Journalism panel, go to DotCalm.
Mark LaFlaur asks a great question: How do we take all these instances of internet/citizen journalism and have them rise to the top? How do we increase visibility? This is a question I brought up towards the end of my civic activism panel last year. Eli talks about Daily Kos diary and TPM Diary.
Varg brings up how one can’t be taken seriously when leaving anonymous comments. Much derision for the unmoderated, bigoted cesspool that is the Comments section of NOLA.com blog posts. Read my post on mainstream media blogs for context. Eli says, “If you’re too racist for talk radio, you turn to the NOLA.com comments section.”
Adrastos tells Zurik that the bloggers are going to start a band called “Lee Zurik’s Eyebrows.”
Clancy DuBos, “reborn as a blogger,” reiterates Simon’s question, “Does anyone give a shit about real news any more?” The panel says that people generally tune out when the news is too heavy. Allman says, “What people want are hard local complicated news and Saints football.”
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Education Panel
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, education, new orleans, rising tide conference
Panelists, from L-R:
* Clifton Harris - concerned parent and blogger
* Dedra Johnson – professor and blogger, author of Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow
* Leigh Dingerson - Education team leader of the Center for Community Change, editor and contributor to Keeping The Promise?: The Debate Over Charter Schools
* Christian Roselund - UTNO Communications, blogging at Dirty South Bureau
* Jeffrey Berman - teacher, Booker T. Washington High School and Schwarz Alternative School.
Links at the RT schedule page. Coozan Pat moderates.
Look, I don’t pretend to know anything about the intricacies of the educational system in New Orleans. Neither do I have children nor does the history and complexity of the system make sense to a five-year veteran of this city like me. What I know, is like Christian Roselund says, the system is thoroughly Balkanized and that I am on the side of concerned parents like Cliff Harris who live here and want to do good by their children in getting them quality educations without taking out a second mortgage and selling organs. New Orleans cannot afford more poorly-educated children, especially during its recovery. From Cliff’s blog:
… I am going to be representing those parents that are confused, concerned, angry, frustrated and hoping they made the right decision when it comes to where their child is going. I’m going to represent the hard working people who don’t want to have three jobs, or lie about their situation in order to be in a better situation. I’m going to represent three generations and the parent of a fourth generation of family to go to public schools in the city. That is important because there is no way anyone can reform the system and ignore the last 40 years.
I’ve always hated public education in the United States because the quality of education is generally low and the system attracts bad teachers. This is not an excuse to kill public education or let it fester. Dedra Johnson says, “The prevailing notion is that public schools are bad because they are public, that private education is good because it’s private and that the privatization of schools will get rid of a union that removes bad teachers.” Dedra continues that this is just an excuse to foist conservative, anti-union ideals on the nation.
Leigh brings the problem home for me: “What New Orleanians lost after Katrina in terms of schools is the right to make their own decisions. This is now a market system explicitly. It changes the paradigm … it is now less about community and more about a consumer-based, individual escape model. What’s been lost is the sense of public education as a community institution. It is now endemic across the country, these market-based reforms.”
Cliff counters that members of his community are suspicious of the continuation of the public schools. “We don’t want to have anything with the RSD schools. I went there and was an honors student and when I got to UNO, I hadn’t seen half the stuff up there … I don’t want to go to the same schools, I don’t want the same education … A large part of the population doesn’t care [whether kids are educated well or not].”
Jeff comes back that “only in New Orleans is public education a bad word” and he wants to get rid of that. (Not true, really, this a prevalent opinion all across America and the world.) Cliff comes back that there is distrust, anger, bitterness that has lasted for forty years and was exacerbated after the storm, and what he wants is better schooling for his daughter.
Christian slams RSD’s actions after the storm, including dismantling a program that promoted arts and music for “kids from the ghetto.” Tiny word to the wise: A neighborhood is not a “ghetto.”
Leigh and Dedra (and everyone else on the panel) argue that the school board should not be dismantled. Leigh mentions promoting an order that was rescinded by the governor - I’m unaware of what’s going on there, so help me out with explanations and links. Cliff brings up the example of Ellenese Brooks-Sims and the usefulness of a school board that steals and lives on patronage. He asks, “Why isn’t there a sub-board under the board that is different from the status quo, which is bad?” New Orleanians with kids agree more with Cliff than with the reinstatement of a school board; they are not in the minority.
Closing remarks - can’t quite concentrate because a mosquito just bit my left arm and it hurts like a MF. Patrick asks each panelist their key to changing the system. Jeff beseeches parents for total involvement - he sees a handful of parents at meetings, but wants to see more involvement from parents and the community. Cliff says, “The only thing that sets me apart from my friends who are incarcerated or deceased are my parents. Those parents are isolated - they won’t know that we had a conference here today, what’s going on in the Times Picayune. Go to these parents and ask what we can do to help … Until, as a city, we get to the point of thinking as a whole.”
Patrick has all parents of kids in the New Orleans school system stand up for a round of applause. Hats off to the teachers, too, I say. Q&A time, and I smell J’anita’s BBQ back there.
“More so than test scores, we need to socialize these kids. What’s the point of high test scores when they’re kicking in your door?”
Comment on woeful lack of adult education programs in New Orleans. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for a mother who reads at a fourth-grade education. What the bloggers can do is ask yourself about adult education in your neighborhood, write about it and talk to your politicians about it. Adult education gets forgotten, they keep running to me at the library and I’m strapped.”
I close out the Q&A session with a comment to Jeff Berman, “Public education is not just a bad word in NOLA. It is all over this nation and the world considers American education, in general, woefully inadequate. Education has to become a national priority, New Orleans is just the tip of the iceberg.” Jeff agrees, but states that he grew up in California and that the system here is especially disturbing. I get it, but this only adds fuel to my argument that education going to hell in New Orleans follows the downward spiral of American education in the past half century.
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - John Barry Keynote
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, new orleans, rising tide conference
This post will be updated until the end of the keynote speech.
Oyster is introducing John Barry, the author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood Of 1927 And How It Changed America. It is no surprise that Barry is on almost every board regarding flood control in Louisiana and up in Washington. On top of it, he has been a football coach including at the college level. Barry is up.
“What this country needs to know about this is the geological facts … The pricetag for Category 5 storm protection is a hundred billion dollars. If people know the facts, we will get the money is.” Asks us to refer to What You Need to Know About Katrina– and Don’t– Why It Makes Economic Sense to Protect and Rebuild New Orleans at his website.
Barry is now talking about the geology of this area and I am starting to tremble and sweat in glee. “The Gulf of Mexico once went all the way to Rush Limbaugh’s doorstep in Cape Girardeau, Missouri … When I think of the Mississippi River, I don’t think of a line from Minnesota to here. I think of a cone that [encompasses land from] New York to the Continental Divide. Taos, New Mexico is as much the source of the river as Minnesota.”
Now talking about the importance of the port of New Orleans. “The port of Tulsa cannot use the port of Houston. The port of Pittsburgh cannot use the port of Houston … will lose its ability to export nationally and internationally.”
“Most of the sediment in the Mississippi River comes out of the Missouri River. Half of the sediment we’ve lost is sitting behind dams in [the Dakotas]. We don’t get a damned bit of benefit from the dams in North and South Dakota.” I”d argue that the products of farming in the Dakotas is a benefit to the entire nation.
Saltwater intrusion created by canals, which the Army contends helped them gain significant advantages in World War 2 and by oil industry pipelines. “Those canals and pipelines are like taking an icepick to the ice … accelerated erosion of the land.”
Q&A Time:
Ray wants to know what the river will look like if we let it migrate like it should and does in geological time, and if the port will move to Morgan City. “Atchafalaya will become the main stream of the river but to prevent that the ACoE built the Old River control structure. The bed of the river is well below sea level and the river is 100 to 200 feet deep in places.” Talking about Baton Rouge - still don’t have an answer for where the river would be. “Almost came close to going down the Old River back in 1973. Some big event will take out the old control structure.” But, confident that oil and gas and other commerce will keep the river in its course.
KC King (I believe) wants Barry to speak about mitigating risk through elevating housing. Barry speaks about risk communication, telling the trust and community resilience. “The problem isn’t sea level, it’s proper flood protection.” (BTW, for those you who want to know, LIDAR is Light Detection and Ranging.)
Mark Folse wants to know if there were any lessons learned from 1927. Barry contends that back in 1928, they did once a map of the United States drainage basin was shown to Congress and the extent and importance of the problem became widely known. “The political problem is more difficult and complicated than the the technical problem.” The future: “Any levee system built will only encourage more development behind it.”
Mark LaFlaur wants to know how the sediment behind dams up north would be used here before it is flushed off the Continental Shelf. Barry suggest chopping off the mouth of the river (??) 30-40 miles upstream to possibly act as a catchment basin for the sediment(?) Gotta quiz him more about this because this has serious geological ramifications.
Christian Roselund wants Barry to comment on the flood of 1927 inducing the voting into office of white populist politicians by poor Southern whites. Barry wants us to read on his views in his older books - the rise of Newt Gingrich and the Republican political machine.
Alan Gutierrez asks, “Are we really up against the messages that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt? And what is the simple message to go against it?” Barry says this is a classic example of what we can’t afford not to do. We lose ports if we don’t save New Orleans. “Those farmers in the Midwest (hey!) cannot ship grain to the world markets. Steel cannot make it out if the port of New Orleans disappears. The infrastructure for the oil industry disappears.”
Time to wrap this up and on to the Education Panel. See next post. Thanks, John Barry! *APPLAUSE*
Day 1091: The Night Before Rising Tide
August 22, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, blogistas, federal flood, katrina, new orleans, rising tide conference
Although I want to shut it off and fall asleep on my keyboard, Rebirth Brass Band’s upbeat ”Four Leaf Clover” is playing in the background. I am exhausted from this week, but it’s time to gear up for this weekend’s Rising Tide conference. Go over to VirgoTex’s and read why what happened here three years ago still is a “Now! Now! Now!” wake-up call for America. Virgo is an American outside of New Orleans who gets it. That it’s never too late to turn our faces back towards the problems of this nation and face them head on, do the needful and become a superpower again, in the truest sense of the word. That it’s never too late to save ourselves. That it’s never too late to be real Americans.
Older Posts »… To most people going about their lives, sitting in front of their televisions, worrying about their own stuff, the disaster was over after a few weeks, when the water finally went down, when the news cameras left. In New Orleans, Katrina is still right now. Even after the changes that three years have brought, right now is a disaster. Entire communities disappeared. Families torn apart, spread all over the country. Schools, housing, crime, corruption, failure of government. The levees. The f-ing levees, inadequate before, being rebuilt at great cost, still inadequate.
There is much to do now, and when tomorrow and next month, and next year are now, in New Orleans there will still be much to do, and there will still be people in New Orleans doing it. Mostly all by themselves.
