Last night I returned from a one week trip to New Orleans. I traveled down there as part of a grant obtained by ITP to work with Xavier University and community groups in the area. Our goal was two-fold. First, we wanted to be able, through workshops taught at the Xavier Art Department in their new digital lab, to teach as many Xavier students as possible about video and audio capture, editing, compression and upload. Our other goal was to teach the students about blogging and set-up websites for the various community groups that were working with students from the university so that their goals, projects and information could be available in an online forum. In preparation for the trip, Shawn Van Every created a multi-user wordpress platform that would make it very easy for members of these various organizations to create their own blog, podcast their video and audio material and update information regarding their projects and progress. A good portion of time was spent teaching about the platform and blogging in general and attempting to document and organize previous documentation of the various projects the groups had already conducted or were conducting during the week we were there. This multi-user platform can be found here.
Personally, I worked closely with two of the community groups, The Porch and the Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's association. The Porch is a group working within the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood significantly destroyed by the storm. Through community projects and theater workshops they are attempting to facilitate re-development of their neighborhood and help the children within the neighborhood to deal with the effects and aftermath of the storm. Megan MacMurray and I attended one of their theater workshops where they use a particular kind of theater to encourage the children to deal with their experiences through story telling and expressive movement.
The Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's Association is an organization founded by local 9th Ward resident Linda Jackson, who also co-founded NENA, the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association. Linda lost her home and dry cleaning/laundry business in the storm. Her primary goal with the Homeowner's Association is to prevent the residents of the Lower 9th Ward, the hardest hit neighborhood in New Orleans, from losing their land to investors and to facilitate the return of senior citizens and other residents to the Lower 9th Ward by constructing temporary residences and paying off the property taxes for residents who want to return home but don't have the means to prevent their land from being seized. Megan MacMurray and I are currently attempting to install a donate button within the Homeowner's Association blog so that visitors to the site can donate money to the cause through paypal. We are also researching the best ways to get the message out about the association's goals and needs through communication with several well known organizations and video blogs.
I also participated in teaching during my stay, mostly focused on the power of mobile media and technology but I also explained and taught about the blogging platform. I also worked with Xavier student Ashley Thomas on the Voices of New Orleans circle. We discussed how the circle could be of use and Ashley came up with several pertinent areas of discussion that she felt could encourage conversation. The three that are now present within the circle are the Road Home project, crime and discussion from teenagers. Ashley also re-recorded the introduction to the production and is going to pass cards around her neighborhood. Ashley also works at a local New Orleans radio station which has a relationship with the mayor. Once the circle is populated she hopes to present the project to the mayor so that he can listen to the concerns within the community.
The trip to New Orleans was an amazing and emotionally draining experience. I had not expected to be so affected by the city, both positively and negatively. The condition of the city in general and the Lower 9th Ward in particular is reprehensible. And the lack of adequate assistance, funding and nationwide attention is criminal. It is both an artifact of a corrupt and inept city government and lack of a responsible federal response. The saddest part is, and I had no expected to feel this way, New Orleans is truly and completely the epitome of a real American city. The soul that is present, even today as half the city still stands in ruins, is palpable. It is place that feels more untouched by commercialism then almost any large city I have ever been to. And yet the very undercurrent of deep rooted cultural experience which makes New Orleans an essential historical aspect of this country are in trouble. The city is barely functioning and its people, which make it the place that it is, are either dispersed with little hope of being able to return, or just barely getting by. It is unacceptable to me that in a country where we have enough money to rage meaningless wars thousands of miles away, we don not have the means or the sense of responsibility to help our own people. This is not simply concerning the response after the storm, or lack thereof, but the current level of interest in reviving the city and assisting those who do not have the means to help themselves. Words cannot even explain the sense of urgency, sadness and struggle that I saw when I was there. Yet despite this, the people I met, like Linda Jackson, most of whom are homeless, living in trailers outside their broken homes or just barely able to get by, are determined to do everything they can. They are fighting, working long hours and exhausted. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of every decent human being in this country to recognize what has happened and what continues to happen in New Orleans. And I firmly believe that it is also all of our responsibility to help if we can.
I don't know what the solution is to this complex and difficult situation. My personal goal is to get as much attention for the situation as possible; to reopen the national conversation, to get people with influence angry and to continue to maintain the relationships that I personally developed within the city. I plan to return to New Orleans after graduation to assist in whatever way possible. This is my blog within the ny2no platform that I am currently constructing to more accurately depict my experience while in New Orleans. More updates to come as they become available.
