200th Anniversary of U.S. Spanish Media

Felicidades a toda la gente que trabajaban al Misisipi

The City of New Orleans will commemorate the 200th Anniversary of “El Misisipi,” the first Spanish-language newspaper in the United States, Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. at the New Orleans Museum of Art at City Park. There also will be an evening reception from 5-7 p.m. at NOMA.

New Orleans was the birthplace of this multilingual publication, which served the area from 1808-10, using the printing press of the Louisiana Gazette. The bicentennial celebration began Sept. 7, the launch of a national call to commemorate this historic time period for Latinos and for Latino news media in this country.

The Times-Picayune

More info at LatiNola (great site name!)

 

Solidarity Building for NOLA Hunger Strikers

The destruction of New Orleans, as we all know, happened in two parts. The first was a natural disaster, unleashed by Hurricane Katrina’s fury. The second was the bungled and, to this day, grossly mismanaged handling of reconstruction.

Way down at the bottom of the junk pile are the everyday workers who, because of their legal limbo, are often forgotten – but as I’ve learned from living and working with those whom society would rather forget or shaft – they have inner-strength that many of us spend a lifetime searching for. XP fills us in:

On May 14, five Indian guest workers launched a water-only hunger strike outside the White House to protest the slave-like conditions that more than 500 Indian welders and pipe fitters have endured while working at the Signal International, a marine oil rig construction company based in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Each workers paid $20,000 to a recruiting agency for the promise of green cards and work-based permanent residency for themselves and their families. Instead they received 10-month temporary H2B guest worker visas and worked under deplorable conditions.

Like many immigrants, they are forced to sell their homes in India or take out loans so they can afford the high fee so they can come here and achieve the “American dream;” but in reality, all they found was the American nightmare.

Solidarity is being built across the world to support the justice of these migrant workers, who were legally working in the U.S. (that’s for the trolls who claim they are only against illeeeegals), but were still without protections to their health and job security. A petition is being circulated via the New Orleans’ Workers Center for Racial Justice that outlines the following points:

• That workers be released from the terror of deportation and granted continued presence as authorized by the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 so they may safely participate in the federal government’s anti-trafficking investigation
• That US Congress hold hearings that focus on the way that US companies, recruiters, and labor brokers have used the H-2B guestworker program as a legally sanctioned vehicle for trafficking and forced labor in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast
• That the Indian government take immediate action to move bilateral discussions between India and US and to ensure the protection of migrant workers arriving in the US from India.


Sign the petition here

When we finally learn the lesson that to fight for the justice of all workers, regardless of status or which piece of earth they were born, is to fight for all of us – then the world will finally progress beyond a narrow-minded view that sees the rich getting richer while the rest of us are left to pick from the scraps.

 

There is No More Patience

“Crappy Anniversary” to quote clammyc.

And right on cue, George the Terrible issues his annual edict to the lowly servants of his empire: Be Patient™

With Democrats pushing for an end to the Iraq war now entering its fifth year, President Bush pleaded for more patience Monday, saying success is possible but “will take months, not days or weeks.”

[snip]

He said his plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and Iraq’s troubled Anbar Province “will need more time to take effect,” especially since fewer than half of the troop reinforcements have yet arrived in the capital. Bush added: “There will be good days and bad days ahead as the security plan unfolds.”

Now, from the archives of this blog:

[Patience] It might be a virtue, but that doesn’t mean it’s an unlimited resource

Appealing for patience, President Bush said Friday that Americans should not be discouraged by setbacks in Iraq and said the nation must realize that it is still at war.

The president said there is a “tendency of folks is to say this really isn’t a war. People kind of want to slip to the comfortable.”

linkage

Now why do I have a rabid case of deja vu? Perhaps because of this, this, this, and this. It’s the same, tired speech that takes no responsibility for mistakes made, it’s “more of the same” as Kerry remarked during the debates last year.

With all the patience George has for Iraq, I bet Iran wishes their whole situation was based on a typo instead of oil and natural gas.

It should also be noted that the Patience Meme was trotted out during another dark bleat of incompetence on the record of this government: Hurricane Katrina

“Certainly there are some people out there that are frustrated and in need of assistance,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We’ve got to continue working to get them assistance as quickly as we can.”

“There is some level of patience that obviously is going to be required during this time,” he said, “but we are urging everyone to move forward as quickly as they can to get people the help they need.”

How’s that working out?

Are we going to have to wait another year until the political will boils every Congresscritter out of the Sopa de Poder cooking on the stove? Clearly this current batch of ingredients has lost any ability to satiate my appetite for Peas Peace.

In fact, let’s fire the chef too.

 

Reclaiming New Orleans

Highlighted on Mardi Gras as a reminder that the injustice continues

On Saturday, February 10, six residents of the C.J. Peete Public Housing Complex reclaimed their apartments against the will of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO). In a scene more fitting for a block party than a protest, tenants danced, laughed and chatted with their old neighbors, while children played and sang. Residents sang “I don’t know what you been told, but these projects are livable!”and boogied on their ballon and ribbon decorated porch to the Hot 8 brass band.

“I’m home,” declared Dianne Allen, one of the residents moving back in, “I’m home at last.” Allen has lived at C.J. Peete since she was a baby, raised 3 daughters and 2 grandchildren there and beamed with pleasure as she swept her steps. When asked about HANO’s plans to demolish, Allen pointed out that no public housing residents have been legally evicted yet. “When I left for the hurricane my rent was paid” she said, “I still had a lease, and today I still have a lease…a valid lease.”

Having been barred from their homes for over 17 months, the Peete residents decided to return to their apartments in the face of possible arrest, the threat of terminated housing assistance, and HANO’s plans to demolish the complex. “Since they don’t want to do nothing to fix up the units, we’re going to fix them up ourselves” said Allen ‘Lenny’ Harris, resident of C.J. Peete for 52 years. The tenants have generators and supplies to keep them going and plan to clean out dozens more apartments.

linkage

These people are reclaiming their homes after nearly a year and a half of b.s. bureaucracy at all levels of government. The Red Tape Brigade obviously doesn’t understand what it means to lose everything, and the anguish caused by having to wait on the foot-draggers to start a new chapter of a life interrupted by tragedy.

This campaign has come about from true grassroots organizing. Good on these NOLA residents for telling the Housing Authority where to go and how to do it.

Instead of going out and getting drunk tonight for Fat Tuesday, how about throwing some coinage into the coffers of the ongoing hurricane relief campaigns? I’ve got my eye on the NOLA Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund and Direct Relief Int’l.

 

New Orleans Levy System Still Crumbling

Citizen journalism being done by blogger mcbrid35

On Dec. 30th, 2006, New Orleans experienced a relatively slow, steady rain most of the day and evening. Near the end of that storm, as the rain was pumped out along the London Avenue canal (site of two breaches in Katrina), the water rose above a depth in the canal called the Safe Water Level. In the London Avenue canal, that depth is a mere four feet above sea level (Lake Pontchartrain – at the end of the canal – is at sea level). That level is dictated by the extreme weakness of a stretch of unbreached canal wall just south of Mirabeau Avenue. In practical terms, this means that the water in the canal is not even allowed to touch the walls that top the levees. For most of the canal’s length, the tops of the levees (i.e. the bases of the walls) are above four feet. The tops of the walls are over 14 feet above sea level.

So when the water rose above four feet, the local drainage agency, the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, called the Corps, who dispatched their pumping guru to the pumping station (station 3) that drains the water into the London Avenue canal. He agreed that the water depth, which can now be seen by virtue of a new set of level sensors installed along the canal, was unacceptably high and that something needed to be done.

There is only one thing that can be done to drop the water level in the canal in a situation like this: cut back on the amount of water going into the canal. So that’s what was done. There are five pumps in station 3, and one of them, a 1000 cfs pump representing almost a quarter of the station’s capacity, was shut off. It was kept off for a half hour until the water in the canal dropped to an acceptable level. This reperesented water not being drained from the streets of New Orleans during that time. Fortunately, the rain had mostly let up by that time and there was no serious flooding. But the worst was yet to come…

continued

Much more over at Fix the pumps.