New Orleans True Video

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New Orleans ~ Post-Katrina Populist Funk
SPECIAL SHOWING: Modern Museum of Art, NYC Documentary Fortnight, February 21, ‘07 at 8PM.

Third World Newsreel is proud to announce that our Katrina Chronicles Series has been invited to MoMA’s prestigious Documentary Fortnight this coming month of February 2007. The Katrina Chronicles Series features short documentaries about the city and people of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
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Katrina Chronicles Series

PEOPLE SAY:
>Disastrous Hurricanes, maritial law & curfews, housing crisis, toxic earth, closed schools and hospitals, abandoned elders, centuries of festering racism, a neo-police state… while the “New” New Orleans struggles to survive and exist outside of the the American illusion of democracy, the most dynamic grass roots efforts in the country claim the streets, deliver food, celebrate, build homes and tell the truth in this visual collage set to the song “People Say” by the legendary Nola band, the funky Meters.

This is no Red Cross special:

Fight For Your Rights & Please Support Self-Determaination and Equality for the Gulf South and all Peoples.

Related Links ::: Common Ground Collective, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition, N.O. H.E.A.T., Resource Action Group, Mary Queen of Vietnam ChurchMississippi Muslim Association, NOAH Coalition, Hip Hop Caucus, People’s Institute for Survival & Beyond

“This insightful video montage embodies the full range of images, sights and emotions which followed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It also depicts the people’s hope, compassion and commitment to the city of New Orleans.
Mary Beth Black, 2005, 5 minutes” ~ Third World Newsreel

N.O. EAST ~ also by M.B.Black
Two months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their homes and communities, residents of New Orleans East are willing to rebuild their neighborhood with the support of city and federal agencies. But there is no water or electricity in New Orleans East and politicians promoting the rebuilding of the city forget to include this poor neighborhood in their grand plans. In this call for help, black and Vietnamese residents voice their concerns while they also try to return back home with the help of grassroots community organizations.
Mary Beth Black, 2005, 10 minutes

Also showing, more videos about post-Katrina New Orleans:

FINDING COMMON GROUND IN NEW ORLEANS
In this short documentary, activist and poet Walidah Imarisha travels to New Orleans and other neighboring towns shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. In her path she encounter grassroots organizations like Common Ground and Soul Patrol that were formed in response to the government’s failure to manage evacuation and relief efforts before, during and after the hurricane. She also finds Camp Amtrak, a makeshift jail and court room at an old bus station where inmates are sentenced to community service. Finally, she meets people in neighboring towns that are still waiting for FEMA to pays them a visit. Through interviews with residents, activists and city officials, Imarisha succinctly captures the pain, loss and hope of the people of New Orleans.
Walidah Imarisha, 2006, 23 minutes

I WON’T DROW IN THAT LEVEE AND YOU AIN’T GOING TO BREAK MY BACK
This short documentary began with an invitation to travel to New Orleans as part of a delegation to investigate what actually happened at the Orleans Parish Prison during and after Hurricane Katrina. What came up was not only a botched and deadly evacuation of the prison, but a broader climate of racial tension and brutality throughout the local and Federal response to the disaster, where the population was divided into survivors and looters along lines of race

Mr. Ollie Jackson, 85 year old New Orleans East Senior Citizen who stayed during hurricanes Katrina and Rita with no government aid for 5 months and counting.
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UPDATE: January 18, 2007
SCREENING at the Modern Museum of Art, NYC Documentary Fortnight February 2007 W/ other New Orleans shorts sponsored by Third World Newsreel

UPDATE: February 1, 2006

Mr. Ollie Jackson is living in the same circumstances in New Orleans East, without electricity and drinking water. His health is worsening and he needs heart medication and medical care. He does not have transportation, a telephone, mail delivery and he cannot read or write. He still needs assistance accessing his benefits and the relief due to him as well as finding safe housing in his community. To provide support for Mr. Ollie, please contact: holographicferriswheel@yahoo.com.

New Orleans East: October & November 2005

New Orleans East is a large part of New Orleans and totally flooded and devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This predominantly African-American and Southeast Asian community to this day remains in the shadows of house-high piles of trash and waste. Utities, including water and electricity, are intermittant - if at all, and residents openly ask for recognition and aid. Some community elders, who stayed since the hurricane, remain without governmental aid, including contact with Red Cross or FEMA. Neighbors and community members are the first responders, with relief support from grass roots organizations and the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, which drew thousands of Versailles community members from Houston and other evacuee areas to its re-opening in October.

This video documents some of these voices and the relief efforts of Resource Action Group

Related Links ::: Resource Action Group

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 31 MB 18 minutes

This piece, entitled “Si Se Puede!” or “Yes, We Can!”, beckons to the call of migrant workers to come together and unite as a community to fight for justice and self-determination in Post-Katrina New Orleans. The piece is put together from footage shot by New Orleans resident, community member and videographer Mary Beth Black, and chronicles some recent events and developments relating to immigrant worker rights along the Gulf Coast.

The government’s decision to open up rebuilding to private contractors has had serious implications for poor workers. In the wake of Katrina, unprecedented numbers of migrant workers of various races came to New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast from all parts of the USA, Latin America and South America, hoping to find decent work, pay, and accommodation through the reconstruction effort, and have instead found themselves in shockingly exploitative situations. Ensnared between laws that benefit contractors and leave them with no rights, and the financial need that brought them to the Gulf Coast in the first place, many of these workers are forced to live and work in circumstances that are unhygienic and dangerous, and more often than not, are cheated of their fair wages.

This piece, which we hope to continue as a series in the future, addressing upcoming issues, includes footage from the historic May 1 Immigrant Labor Rights Rally in New Orleans, interviews with workers, and the Indigenous Labor Rally in Lee Circle, which saw indigenous peace runners unite in solidarity with the fight of migrant workers.

Related Links ::: National Immigration Law Center, New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance

Bayou Sauvage Tour + City Hall Rally
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Stop the Illegal Dumping in New Orleans East!

We are one big inter-connected tidal pool of humanity floating on a gorgeous and endangered wetlands. This is a VIDEO tour of the Bayou Sauvage and Chef Mentuer Landfill Site for the new illegal dump for millions of tons of hurricane debris plus views of the May 10 rally against the landfill at City Hall.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the region is left with literally millions of tons of debris to collect and dispose of as an essential part of the recovery process. New Orleans Mayor Nagin, who is up for re-election on May 22, claimed “emergency powers” and circumvented public hearing processes and safety standards to designate and begin dumping debris in New Orleans East - not 20 yards from the Bayou Sauvage wetlands and a mile from a community of thousands of predominantly Vietnamese and African-American families.

Not only is New Orleans East a profound and unique multi-generational community that spans time and geography from New Orleans back to 3 villages in Vietnam, but it is also bordered by the nation’s largest urban wildlife refuge, the Bayou Sauvage, and home to many endangered species as well as alligators, turtles, egrets, nutria and other swamp critters.

Despite massive flooding and lack of government support, the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East has accomplished profound recovery and rebuilding on their own initiative, organized largely through the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, to account for the welfare of community members, gut and rebuild homes, and host many volunteers who have come to the region and need support for their work.

The Vietnamese community in New Orleans East is leading the fight against this landfill which Mayor Nagin approved by sideswiping law that demands community hearings before a landfill can be built. On May 10th, members of the Versaille Community and the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, together with the Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and also representatives of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network gathered together at City Hall and demanded that Mayor Nagin hear their protest. A 3 day moratorium was put on the dumping (to be lifted on Monday) until, Mayor Nagin said, he could “prove… that it is safe”.

The landfill is designated to be 100 acres, 30 feet deep and another 80 feet high. See the video tour of the Bayou Sauvage and the Chef Menteur Landfill site with Father Dung Nguyen and feel for yourself the unique and interconnected landscape that is threatened by the city of New Orleans’s illegal dumping.

For more info about the New Orleans East community after Hurricane Katrina, scroll down to story and view video.
For more info about the Landfill, see the story posted by Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East:::>>>
Related Links ::: FACTS ABOUT THE LANDFILL, Mary Queen of Vietnam Church

keywords: New Orleans East, landfill, Hurricane Debris, Katrina, environmental racism, Vietnamese community, wetlands, Bayou Sauvage, Illegal Dumping, Toxic Waste

What You Need To Know About Your Government in Times of Crisis

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 61 mgs 15 minutes
Here’s a Big Phat Version 121 mgs
Here’s a Crappy Bandwidth Challenged Version 5 mgs RealPlayerThis video started out as a simple little “let’s show this guy’s story” kinda piece and turned into a scathing expose of what people can expect from government endorsed relief efforts in time of crisis. Arrested for art, threatened with arrest for helping people, spending all your own money to help others because Red Cross was Not Allowed, lying to retain rights that are inalienable to Free People, government corruption and inexplainable lack of competence from those who are suppose to be helping the survivors. Please stop giving your “cash contributions” to organizations that will waste your money. Donate to grass roots relief efforts where the money will be used to help people.

Related Links ::: Toxic Art, l’art noir new orleans, Get Your Act On!, Karmagrrrl, David Leeson, Storm Chaser Video, Remote Area Medical, DONATE HERE

Common Ground Volunteers Gut Newest Free Clinic in the 9th Ward
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Please Support Free Health Clinics in New Orleans
& the development of a Women’s Health Center

With the closing of New Orleans famous public Charity Hospital and numerous small neighborhood clinics and public health care facilities, and with the displacement of thousands of workers who made city health services run on a day to day, bedpan to bedpan basis, many of the residents who found their way back to post-Hurricane New Orleans also found themselves without access to any health care whatsoever; in particular, services for women, like battered women’s shelters, birthcontrol, abortion access and prenatal care are inaccessible to many. However, Common Ground Free Clinics are growing in a local and national combined effort of volunteerism to serve the under and unserved residents whose health needs have increased while services have disappeared.

“After Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the humanitarian disaster followed exacerbated by existing poverty, racism and the scandalous emergency response and relief operations. Malik Rahima and Sharon Johnson - community activists in Algiers put a call out for a progressive response and for emergency medics to run a first aid station and help develop a permanent health clinic.” (commongroundrelief.org) And so began Common Ground’s Free Health Clinic in the space of a donated mosque in the Algiers neighborhood of Orleans Parish, just across the river from downtown New Orleans.

This week (and ongoing), teams of volunteers from around the country converge to gut a donated house in the flood-devastated 9th Ward area of New Orleans and build another free clinic while simultaneously, the city of New Orleans responds to the devastion by claiming eminent domain over thousands of homes in the Lower 9th Ward and prepares to bulldoze these homes without proper notification or participation from residents. Hundreds of volunteers from around the country and from within the local community have come together in New Orleans to spend time gutting and building clinics from the ground up, serving patients and organizing to make these clinics happen.

Here is an update on the common ground free clinics with Ellen Catalinotto, volunteer nurse mid-wife at the Algiers Health Clinic. A special needs request to build the Women’s Health Centers is included. For extensive information regarding donating resources, volunteering and credentialling, and for more about the context and history of the clinic and common ground relief, please go to: http://www.commongroundrelief.org/2005/10/info_for_volunteers_at_common.html

Women’s Center Needs Request:
-gynocological exam tables
-autoclaves
-teaching and educational aids for breast exams, gyn, pregnancy, abortion etc.
-medication samples
-bcps, iuds, cervical caps, diaphragms
-lights
-basic examining room equipment
-safe place for battered and at risk women
-monetary donations
-microscope & lab equipment for testing
-pregnancy tests, pap tests, std tests
-speculums and other gyn instruments
-volunteer staff

www.commongroundrelief.org
contact: healthalgiers@yahoo.com
(504)717-6561
P.O. Box 741801
New Orleans, LA 70174-1801

Related Links ::: Common Ground Collective

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 93 mgs 28 minutes
Here’s a Big Phat Version 191 mgs

The Rainbow Emergency Management Assembly gathered in Waveland Missahippie within days of the hurricane disaster, to feed people. They have receieved nothing but love and support from FEMA, Red Cross, numerous Church groups and Hancock County. It is said that before Katrina hippies would refer to Mississippi as MissAHippie because a hippie could easily go “missing” in Mississippi. Now Missahippie has a whole new meaning. The story of Waveland is that of people putting aside petty differences to do what’s right and needed by our community of man.

This feabile attempt to tell an amazing tale of cross cultural volunteerism features: Vermin Supreme, Dirty Momma, Heather Bee, Pete Jones, Ben Cauldwell, Doc Stone, Organic Valley, the residents of Waveland Mississippi … and Flower

The New Waveland Cafe is now closed. The parade was the official end of the facility, which was disbanded because the community now has several restraunts and stores open. A splinter group is setting up in St Bernard Parish.
More to come about Emergency Communities …

Related Links ::: R.E.M.A., Rainbows and Believers

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Here’s a Big Phat Version 161 mgs

During the week of Thanksgiving hundreds of people from all walks of life came to New Orleans and volunteered with the Common Ground Collective to help those in need in what ever way they could.

I worked on this video overview of the work of the Common Ground Collective along with several other volunteers.

WHO IS COMMON GROUND:
Common Ground Collective is a local, community-run organization
offering assistance, mutual aid and support to New Orleans
communities that have been historically neglected and underserved.

Common Ground’s teams of volunteers include: medical and health
providers, aid workers, community organizers, legal representatives
and people from all over with broad skills from all walks of life.

VISION:
Our work aims to give hope and stability to communities by: working
with them, providing materials, money, information and people working
together in rebuilding their lives in just and sustainable ways.

Our work within the collective and in community aims to be
non-oppressive and respectful to people historically marginalized in
society.

Related Info ::: Common Ground Collective, Volunteer: 504-218-6613, Contribute: 504-913-5635