pt at large

Bob Edwards: Veteran Interviewer Pitch Perfect with Esperanza Spaulding

“Bob Edwards Weekend” Radio Show

Edwards interviews  people he finds interesting, from newsmakers, historians, and authors to artists, actors, and regular folks too.
A two-part interview with Esperanza Spaulding was aired Friday, September 24, 2010

http://www.bobedwards.info/ftopic1053.html&sid=2f0bb6d0e35c590ff1e55e4e768d197d
part 1
http://www.bobedwards.info/ftopic1054.html&sid=2f0bb6d0e35c590ff1e55e4e768d197d
part 2

This is the way an interview ought to go. Ask questions and listen to the answers - without interrupting the interviewee. It helps to have an interviewee who is self- aware, has a sense of humor, a deep understanding of the technical aspects of her art and can get them across to the ears of a layperson. In this case, I’m talking about Bob Edwards and Esperanza Spaulding.
 
I can't tell you how many times I switch the dial when an interviewer interrupts the interviewee to show how much he/she knows about the subject or diverts the place the interviewee is going to someplace else the interviewer wants to investigate. Not so here.
 
Look, here’s a link to the first part of Bob Edwards’ interview with Esperanza Spaulding, a 25 year-old bassist, composer, and singer. Within that first few minutes, you’ll hear Edwards begin to ask a series of terrific open-ended questions and Spaulding respond with thoughtful, ingenuous, articulate answers.
 
I came across the interview on WGBH-FM as I was in the midst of a homeowner chore. After Spaulding’s delightful burst of infectious laughter while she considered Edwards first question, I turned up the volume. The task could wait. I’d heard of Esperanza Spaulding (who could forget such a name), and knew she was some kind of jazz phenomenon.

Audio clips Edwards played from her recently released album, “Chamber Music Society,” demonstrated Spaulding's mastery of tone and pitch while improvising with her voice alone or with her bass, or with an ensemble. By the time the interview was finished, I realized I’d pay to hear her talk about her craft, let alone play her upright bass and sing.

In her response to Edwards first question on part 2 of the interview, she explains improvisation and harmonics in a way that changed the way I will listen to music. Spaulding has a way of translating her thought processes in a way that resembles improvisation, taking Edwards’s question then answering it with examples and anecdotes that revolve around the core of what he asked.
 
The interview was satisfyingly rounded as Spaulding talked with insight about the way she composes and records music, the ways in which her mother instilled positive energy into their life in a poor, single parent home in Portland, OR, and the many adults who recognized her talent and helped cultivate Spaulding’s innate passion for music.
 
‘When you’re young, it’s easy to take the generosity of others for granted,” she says.

She regrets that by the time she called Hazel DeLorenzo and Dorothy McCormick, two women who ran the Portland, OR, “Chamber Music Society” that found her a violin and gave her free instruction when she was a kid, they had passed away. She did get a letter from Mr. Fred Rogers, to whom she wrote when she was around five years old and saw two actors dress up as an upright bass and play it on his program.
 
If you decide to listen to this interview, pretend that you’re having a cup of coffee or a drink at your favorite bar and happen to sit next to these two people having this conversation. By the time they say goodbye to each other, you’ll want to pick up their tab.

Esperanza Spaulding top photo from her web site, bottom from Sanders Theater site

Bob Edwards photo from his web site

 

Terence Blanchard: Trumpeter and Trio at Scullers Jazz Club

Terence Blanchard

Scullers Jazz Club at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Boston
400 Soldiers Road - Boston, MA 02134
September 25, 2010

Terence Blanchard’s universe revolves around music, culture, and politics. Not with an in your face style, but recognizable through a persistent purposeful set of choices he makes with his projects, career, and where to live - in his case, his hometown of New Orleans.

Blanchard was in Boston to participate in last week’s Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival. As a young man, he played with such greats as Art Blakey, Lionel Hampton, and Ellis Marsalis, Sr. He set out on his own in 1990, has 29 albums to his credit so far and a handful of Grammy Awards.

Terence Blanchard’s trumpet music in his second, sold-out show at Scullers Jazz Club on Saturday night was like the old saying about New England weather. “If you don’t like it, wait a minute.” His sound alternated between lyrical and fusion styles of jazz, sometimes within eight beats.
 
Blanchard’s exquisite, meditative, solo that prefaced his first number was underpinned by his drummer’s soft brushwork and bass player’s spare notes. The lyrical beginning segued into a selection from Blanchard’s recent CD “Choices,” a concept album in which Blanchard inserts political and cultural elements via the spoken word in some selections and fills the rest of the album with gorgeous melodies.

During his first number, Blanchard nudged his foot onto a switch on stage and plugged in a spoken word section by Dr. Cornel West (Princeton professor, author, lecturer, activist, with affinity for progressive politics and jazz) that appears on his most recent album, “Choices”. The snippets from West’s riffs ruminate on personal responsibility and free will.

As in the album, Blanchard played his horn over West’s words with a special amplifier attached to the trumpet's bell that gives his instrument an eerie, almost undersea whale tone. He thundered into an Afro-fusion ending fingering a thousand notes a minute, his drummer, bass, and piano trio hot on his heels to complete his composition, “Wandering Wonder”.
 
A composer, Blanchard has scored over 50 film scores. Scoring Darnell Martin’s “Cadillac Records,” a moving story based on the rise of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess and his stars Muddy Waters, Etta James, and Little Walter, was a chance for Blanchard to put his musical stamp on this film that illuminated the inhospitable cultural milieu that for years thwarted "race music" from entering mainstream radio stations in America.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1042877/
 
Blanchard also scored the haunting music in Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary, “When The Levees Broke,” and the Lee’s just released HBO documentary, “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise.’ Born and raised in New Orleans, he has a feel for the music. In one of the scenes of “If God Is Willing,” the Blanchard is filmed taking his mother on her first heart-rending trip back to her New Orleans home which was ruined by Katrina’s flood waters.

Early in his career, Blanchard (b. 1962) played with Ellis Marsalis Jr., Art Blakey and Lionel Hampton. When he struck out on his own, he developed his own style, which, appropriately, seems to be a gumbo of musical forms that were dominant in each decade since 1960 and reflected in the bands with which he was associated.
 
Blanchard now plays the mentor role with the young men in his trio: 18-year-old Joshua Crumbly on bass, Kendrick Scott on drums, and Cuban-born Fabian Almazan on piano. “Each of these musicians composes, each of them can improvise, they’re artists in their own right,” he said. Each of them wrote sections for his CD “Choices.”
 
I’m not a big fan of fusion jazz or Afro-Fusion jazz. Even when I had no idea where the time signatures were and where the rhythmic patterns were going I could tell the participants did. Blanchard was generous with solo time for each of his band members - they rewarded him, and us - with brilliant, extended improvisation.
 
As Artistic Director of the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz in New Orleans, Blanchard works directly with students in arranging and composing and programming. Maybe most importantly, he’s involved in community outreach programs in New Orleans.
 
Terence Blanchard’s performance was the final event in several days of musical performances in the Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival.

Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival 2010: A Touch of New Orleans in Boston

Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival
Columbus Avenue between Burke Street and Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, MA

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Damn, Boston, who knew you had it in you? The Wild Magnolias and Jonathan Batiste brought out your latent bon temps roulez spirit at the finale of yesterday’s 2010 Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival. 

Thousands of you jammed a six-block section of Columbus Avenue on a  very warm, sunny afternoon in what could have passed as a real New Orleans shindig. Three stages, dozens of performers from noon to 6 PM, street vendors selling all kinds of food - with an emphasis on ribs, pulled pork, and BBQ chicken - and as mixed a crowd as you’d ever find at a Crescent City street fair.

"Jazz is one of America's greatest contributions to world culture. Without the music of New Orleans, there is no Berklee," said festival artistic director Terri Lyne Carrington on the festival's web site. "So we're celebrating our 10th anniversary by giving Beantown a taste of the Big Easy, with New Orleans music on each stage of the outdoor festival, a traditional jazz band marching up and down Columbus Avenue, delicious Southern cuisine, and activities for the whole family."

I wonder if she knew what she would unleash.

I arrived for the festival’s last two acts simultaneously appearing at 4:45 PM, New Orleans-based Jonathan Batiste and The Wild Magnolias.

In the midst of one of The Wild Magnolias traditional songs, there one of you was, with your white parasol bobbing above the crowd, leading a second line march through the crowd and then - hold onto your Mardi Gras beads - right onto the Target Stage - where the whole bunch of you danced and shook your booties without a shred of Boston reserve.

I rubbed my eyes. Beantown out of the closet. All it took was a big helping of The Big Easy and you wolfed it down like biscuits and gravy. All around me, people of all ages and colors feelin’ the music, clapping - on the twos! - and shimmying in very uncharacteristic Boston abandon.

A crack four piece band with two fully masked Mardi Gras Indians will do that to people. Whether they were dishing out Professor Longhair’s “Big Chief”, or “Tipitina” or “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” or playing some other funky grooves, The Wild Magnolias had Boston groovin’ on it all the way. My, my, my…

If you’re familiar with New Orleans music, you recognize the names of Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Fats Domino, Harry Connick, Jr., and family names like Neville and Marsalis -  and Batiste.

Twenty-three year old Jonathan Batiste, who played at the same time on the Berklee Stage, is going to keep the family tradition going for the next generation.  Batiste opened with a brief solo that was a primer for the rollicky New Orleans sound then made a segue into, of all things, a totally re-imagined version of The Star Spangled Banner, which sounded like he was playing with four hands. The trio's upright bass player and drummer, like Batiste, are enormously talented and in their early twenties. If you've ever wondered about the future of jazz, this is a glimpse of what's to come.

Batiste’s playing is playful, soulful, lyrical, with bits of fusion and bebop and latin phrases woven into his themes.

On his MySpace page, Batiste lists his influences as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, New Orleans culture, Miles Davis, Marcus Roberts, Prince, Bill Evans, Marc Cary, Kenny Kirkland, Eric Lewis, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, The Batiste Brothers, Charlie Parker, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, and Michael Jackson. Add a few classical composers he sampled in a rendition of a song written by his late uncle Alvin Batiste, the third song I heard him play.

Anyone who can play a fresh version of The Saint James Infirmary Blues is to be reckoned with. Don’t ask me how, I swear he threw in a quote from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake somewhere in his intro to the song.

By the end of these two performances, the six block stretch in Boston's historic South End felt more like Decatur Street down in New Orleans - full of laid back visitors from out of town, locals from the abutting neighborhoods, and smiles all around.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

This young man is the face of the next generation of New Orleans music. The Jonathan Batiste Trio played at 4:45 PM, same time as The Wild Magnolias over on the Target Stage

Southern foods were in demand all afternoon long

The Wild Magnolias played on the Target Stage at 4:45  PM on a summery, New Orleans kind of Saturday ...
..

and wowed spectators of all ages...

most of whom had never seen fully 'masked' Mardi Gras Indians...

who were backed by a funky four piece band...

Mardi Gras Indians make their own outfits by hand...
 

and had everyone clapping and singing...

and dancing...

and cheering...

and waving handkerchiefs...

and, bless her soul, a young woman with a white parasol...

leading scores of Bostonians, yes, I said Bostonians...

zigging through the crowd and ending up on the bandstand...

in a display of spontaneous second-line dancing that would have been right at home in New Orleans.

David Mamet's "Boston Marriage" at The New Rep Theater

BOSTON MARRIAGE
Play by David Mamet
Directed by: David Zoffoli
Sets, Janie E. Howland. Lights, Deb Sullivan. Costumes, Rafael Jaen. Sound, Joel Abbott.
New Repertory Theatre, Watertown, through Oct. 3.
Tickets: $28-$59. 617-923-8487
www.newrep.org

What on earth do we have here? Is David Mamet channeling his inner George Bernard Shaw? Mamet has concocted a story of two women of a certain age who are involved in a relationship of a certain lesbian nature at the turn of the twentieth century. The dialogue is rife with social commentary and intellectual gymnastics.
 
Anna fills the first five minutes with rapid fire dialogue revealing the details of her new found security while Claire’s been gallivanting about on an unexplained trip.
 
Anna’s found a paramour, a man who, for favors rendered, is furnishing her with a monthly stipend, enough for Anna and Claire to live on, and has bankrolled a makeover of Anna's apartment, which he'll visit for carnal delights. The benefactor has also gifted Anna with a magnificent emerald necklace, “in his family for five generations,” a token that will play a large part in the play’s denouement - and Anna and Claire’s lives.
 
Anna has a knack for declamatory speech with a suggestion of a wink. She enjoys verbal jousting but doesn't take herself all that seriously. Claire has fewer lines in the first act but delivers them with the speed and accuracy of a heat seeking missile.
 
Claire divulges that she’s fallen in love, or at least lust, with a shapely young girl and wants to arrange a tryst with her in Anna’s apartment. Eventually Anna consents, with the proviso she can watch, perhaps even participate.

Keeping up with Anna's galloping dialogue is tiring. Like an owner pops a biscuit into an attentive pet's mouth, Mamet keeps us in the game with a succession of terrific one-liners and scatological zingers.

“Do you believe in God?” Anna says after one of her cerebral speeches.

“I would if you’d shut up,” Claire reposts. That along with an occasional “Kiss my ass,” in the midst of proper Edwardian conversation. And the best riposte from Anna. “One must keep a civil tongue in one's mouth; it need not be one's own.”

Anna and Claire, now looking at their youth in a rear view mirror, and painfully aware of it, have fewer and fewer prospects for acquiring incomes to support their guilded "Boston Marriage." The transition into accepting the advance of age and its effect on their life style, let alone their psyches, underpins much of the play.
 
 The last line in the first act (no spoiler here) is the intriguing axis for the second act to pivot upon.  Let’s just say it has to do with the emerald necklace Anna is wearing and the arrival (unseen) of the object of Claire’s lust.
 
The second act has a “Waiting for Godot” feel to it. Plans are hatched, plans are jettisoned. Letters are sent. Letters are  received. Traction gets slippery.

The sexual chemistry between Anna and Claire doesn’t make sparks fly, but when they argue and fling scurrilous insults at each other, they’re a matched pair. They have long memories and have the capacity to use them to express their romantic history or fire dishy, no holds barred, broadsides at each other.

Debra Wise as Anna inhabits her role with relish, a mix by turns of the realist, the pragmatist, and the earthy philosopher. She’s a cockeyed optimist, who hasn’t met a problem, a man, or a woman, for that matter, that she can’t manage

Claire (left) and Anna (photo courtesy of Boston Globe)

Jenny Israel has a less satisfactory grip on the character of Claire. She’s smitten with a young woman and undone with the realization that her own youthful days are long behind her. While she gets that across clearly, her romantic connection with her partner Anna just doesn't fire on all cylinders.

Melissa Baroni’s character of Catherine the Scottish maid is the unlikely glue that holds the play together. Catherine’s entries and exits become a running joke. Every time she enters, something unexpected happens. Mamet deftly uses her to move the action along. Very smart, because if not for this zany character, the play would have descended into boredom long before its conclusion.
 
Scenes involving Anna and Catherine often hit your funny bone but “Boston Marriage” doesn’t contain a cohesive enough structure to satisfy. It runs out of gas long before it concludes with a resolution that is not entirely plausible.
 
Does David Mamet’s play not succeed because the humor is too underplayed for a full blown comedy of manners or because the plot is too thin to extend it into a two hour production? Either way, it doesn’t connect solidly with a universal theme. In the end, we may want to care about these women but can only observe from afar.

New Orleans: Katrina Commemoration Ceremony, March, Rally Part 3

5th Annual Katrina Commemoration Ceremony, Second Line March and Rally
August 29, 2010

Part 3: The Rally was organized by the Katrina Commemoration Foundation, The Hip Hop Caucus, and the National Wildlife Federation.

The Katrina Commemoration Foundation invitation

"The Katrina Commemoration Foundation, a local grassroots organization formed to commemorate loved ones lost during the hurricane, holds the march/second-line, beginning 10 a.m. Sun. with a healing ceremony at the corner of Jourdan and North Galvez streets. The healing ceremony is an opportunity for our spiritual community to share words of hope, remembrance and inspiration.The march travels down North Claiborne Avenue to St. Bernard Avenue, followed by a rally, at 1PM at Hunters Field on the corner of St. Bernard and North Claiborne avenues, with local musicians, community speakers and spoken word artists."

Hip Hop Caucus’s invitation

"Join us this August 29, 2010 for the annual Hurricane Katrina Commemoration March and Rally. This event is in honor of family and friends who died, the community that was abandoned by the government for six days, those killed by the military trying to save their families on the Danzinger Bridge, every community affected by Hurricane Katrina and the Great Flood, and to acknowledge the “Right to Return” for all New Orleanians who were displaced."

The rally at Hunter’s Field Park took the energy of the parade and poured it into a roster of activists  and performers who told it like it is. The Katrina Commemoration Foundation states, “We are of the community and from the community. While we organize this march annually, we support the community's hard work for housing justice, education justice, health care justice, law enforcement justice, and environmental justice.”

The emcee on stage was Wild Wayne, a popular New Orleans Q93 FM radio host, who introduced speakers representing three generations of New Orleanians. He got right to it.

Hop Caucus President and CEO, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. was one of the first speakers. He set the tone of the afternoon by outlining the issues of the day. He finished with, “New Orleans is our Birmingham, this is our moment, so we must stand up. If we lose this battle ten years into the 21st century, we won’t only lose New Orleans but we lose humanity, We’ve got to stand up, so New Orleans put your fives in the air now… take that five and make a fist, lemme hear you say power to the people (repeats and audience responds three times). I love you, New Orleans!”

It reminded me of the political rallies I was part of in the 1960s except this time I was one of the few people of color in the audience of a couple hundred people.

Sharon Jasper, Housing Activist and self-described Freedom Fighter, delivered an impassioned speech focused on the city’s lack of response to the housing needs of the black community.

Malcolm Suber of Community United For Change said, “The police are not your friends,” and aggrieved families recounted bad encounters with police. The Danziger Bridge incident on September 4, 2005, in which two unarmed black citizens were shot to death by New Orleans police, still festers.

In between speakers, the local disc jockey introduced the younger generation who performed hip hop, rap, and free verse poetry with a political edge.  Groups  of teenagers with names like Young Sino, Team SNO, Y. Luck, MIA X, Partners in Crime, Mr. Tony, Detroit, Shawt, and Asia Rainey are not household names but they performed with passion and purpose.

Rap and hip hop music have come in for their share of objection for lyrics glorifying sex and violence. These kids showed that the genres can have serious political clout, too - and their elders were listening and nodding their approval.

When Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. exhorts "Power to the People," he is coming from the Martin Luther King, Jr. side of the political spectrum, not the Eldridge Cleaver side.

In their Why We March statement, The Katrina Foundation says, "We march for many reasons. We march to never forget family who died without warning on that Monday. We march to never forget the six days our community was abandoned by the United States government to drown in the aftermath of the Great Flood. We remember the suffering of those left in the sweltering heat without food and water on I10, in Convention Center and under the Causeway.

We march to remember those killed by the police trying to save their families on the Danzinger Bridge, in Algiers and on Poland Avenue.

We march to remember the human cost of the destruction and the reason for the destruction – levee failure. The levees in the lower ninth ward were neglected and the failure of the levees devastated hard working families already struggling with poverty long before the Great Flood. As rebuilding has occurred; the hard work of individuals is not enough without government protection and support.

We march because it is the most peaceful way to acknowledge the complete violence and disrespect for our human rights as American Citizens. We march because New Orleans is our home and no matter how many times our community has been flooded out - we shall not be moved.

This is our home and we love our lives here. We march to ingrain in our community, that while we may want to forget Katrina, we cannot because we believe in a brighter hopeful positive future and we must learn from the past to build for the future."

An extraordinarily wide range of 105 organizations, from non-profits to universities, endorsed the march. Loyola University Professor Bill Quigley's August story in the Huffington Post underlines the rally's contentions.

The Hip Hop Caucus Education Fund's mission is aimed straight at the community's youth. No political movement has a chance unless young people are on board and this rally is meant to counter apathy and fuel activism. Its goal is  “to foster civic engagement among young people of color on issues of social and economic justice, human rights, the environment, and international peace, so they can attain increased opportunities for themselves and their communities. We focus on meeting young people where they are, by linking cultural expression with social and political experience.” 

The Hip Hop Caucus is striving to find solutions to 12 policy issues : Climate Justice and Clean Energy, Criminal Justice, Economic Prosperity, Education, Health Care, Housing, Livability of Cities, Media Reform, Peace and Security, Poverty and Helping Families, Rights for New Americans, Voting Rights and Election Reform. This is a heavyweight group. If it taps successfully into the youth culture here, the prediction in Sam Cook’s song, “Change Gonna Come” will happen in New Orleans.

One of the faces of the future of New Orleans is Sess 4-5,  hip hop artist, entrepreneur, community organizer, and co-founder of the Katrina Commemoration March, Second Line/Rally.

Barely out of his twenties, he spoke with a sense of purpose and optimism at the morning healing ceremony. He led the late morning's Second Line Parade, bull horn in hand, leading a chorus of “You don’t want to go to war... with New Orleans…give us our homes, and we'll be all right...” to the beat of the brass band.

On stage, he stood right behind New Orleans disk jockey Wild Wayne, helping introduce each of the young groups of performers. Sess 4-5 is the perfect blend of a motivated, pragmatic, warrior, in the best sense, of a community in need of a galvanizing figure who inspires his peers and reignites the social and political aspirations of his elders.

If anyone has the horsepower to bring power to the people, it's organizers like Sess 4-5 and Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. of The Hip Hop Caucus. The Huffington Post named Yearwood as a 2010 Game Changer in Green.

One of the Katrina Commemoration Foundation's web pages proclaims,"We plan to continue the march forever. We march to ingrain in our community, that while we may want to forget Katrina, we cannot because we believe in a brighter hopeful positive future and we must learn from the past to build for the future."

That is a good thing for New Orleans.

The Hot 8 Brass Band finishes and set the stage for the rally...

 

while people wait in the rain...

Being Louisiana, there will be food, lots of it...

 

Spoken word artist Sunni Patterson...

 

and Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. exhort the crowd...

 

to be politically aware and active

Sharon Jasper, Housing Activist from "G Block St. Bernard," describes housing inequalities...

 

young artists sing...

 

and rap with politically edged songs...

and rain doesn't dampen the spirits...

 

of speakers...

while activists from National Wildlife Federation distribute literature about wetlands and the oil spill (two items on the Hip Hop Caucus agenda)...

 

and other agencies...

 

including the "Save Charity Hospital" advocates, ask people to join the cause or sign petitions...

 

while some kids just relax...but soon it will be their turn to join the action.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

New Orleans: Katrina Commemoration Second Line Parade Videos

5th Annual Katrina Commemoration Ceremony, Second Line March and Rally
August 29, 2010

Since the first time I read about New Orleans' Second Line Parades on Deborah Cotton's posts and videos on the "Best of New Orleans Blog," I've been dying to march in one. I finally got my chance the day after I attended the Rising Tide 5 New Media Conference on August 28, 2010.

I was so excited that I announced the wrong date on each of these three youtube videos (taken with my little Canon camera). The date of this Second Line Parade was August 29, 2010.

I goofed on the streets as well on the first two videos, announcing that I was on North Claiborne when in fact I was on St. Claude Avenue.


Parade on St. Claude Avenue 2

Parade on St. Bernard 


What is a "Second Line Parade"?

Second line is a tradition in brass band parades in New Orleans, Louisiana. The "main line" is the main section of the parade, or the members of the actual club with the parading permit; those who follow the band just to enjoy the music are called the "second line." The second line's style of traditional dance, in which participants walk and sometimes twirl a parasol or handkerchief in the air, is called "second lining." It has been called "the quintessential New Orleans art form — a jazz funeral without a body."

New Orleans: Katrina Commemoration Ceremony, March, Rally Part 2

5th Annual Katrina Commemoration Foundation Ceremony, Second Line Parade and Rally
August 29, 2010

Part 2: The Second Line Parade/March.

Most second line parades are the exclamation mark to a funeral, social occasion, or cultural event. This second line parade was a comma in a three part event that aimed to harness the feelings of grief, loss, and displacement caused by the storm into a positive force for political change.

Once you get in range of a second line march and parade, the world collapses into a rhythmic here and now experience that seizes your entire nervous system. Before you know it, you’re walking to the beat of the Hot 8 Brass Band. Next thing you know, the person shouting responses to the band’s choruses is you. Not long after that, your body insists on rat a tat tat, shimmy-shamming down the street.

The woman pushing the stroller in front of you has a maternity march going on that would make Richard Simmons gasp. Marchers are wildly different in age, class, race, and mobility. In spirit, they’re an ad hoc nation.

Spectators on porches are waving and swaying, cameras flashing. People lining the sidewalk on one side and grassy neutral ground on the other are whooping it up and making video clips. Every single person is in their own little brass band powered universe tuned into the same station, the experience is at once personal expression and group identification. People make eye contact, fist bump, high five, or just plain smile at each other. The music reaches some part of the universal self that no other medium can plumb.

I don’t think anyone gave a second thought to the intermittent showers on this overcast August  hot-house day. Most people couldn’t tell whether their soaked clothes were from falling rain or rolling sweat. And no one cared a jot. I’d wanted to get myself into a second line march for two years. Way before the march had turned down St. Bernard Avenue and reached its destination Hunter Field I was soaked and dialed in to the joyous energy. 

But this energy was in service to a cause. As Sess 4-5, young co-founder of the Katrina Commemoration Foundation, said as the parade halted for a moment on St. Claude Avenue, "We're not here to just have fun, we're out here to honor the people that passed in the storm." video clip of second line parade and beginning of rally.

I didn’t realize it, but the most powerful part of the march was about to unfold.

Photos and videos below by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Only a freight train, certainly not tiny little rain drops, could slow down this parade.

 

Q93 FM has this covered...

Sess 4-5 sings to the crowd..."You don't wanna go to war...with New Orleans...

"We're not here to just have fun, we're out here to honor the people that passed in the storm."

 

Names of those from the Lower Ninth Ward who died in the storm were read aloud in the healing ceremony and memorialized in the second line parade...
  

Camille was a lady, Katrina was a bitch...

A New Orleans brass band gets everybody off the ground...

and thirsty...

 

Mommas march...
 

and if there's a will, there's a way...

' 

down St.Claude to St. Bernard...

while the band keeps pouring it on after 2.5 miles...

 

and people follow...
 

heading under the I-10  overpass ahead...
 

taking millions of pictures...

all the way to Hunter's Field Park.

New Orleans: Katrina Commemoration Ceremony, March, Rally Part 1

5th Annual Katrina Commemoration March, Second Line Parade, and Rally
August 29, 2010

Part 1
New Orleans wears its demons around its neck like Mardi Gras beads. The brass band music of the social aid and pleasure clubs is one way to shrug off the demons, but layered between the silvery peals of the horns, snappy roll of snare drums and second line dancing is often the perception held by many African-Americans marching that they’re still second class citizens in their own city.

5th Annual Katrina Commemoration March, Second Line Parade, and Rally on Sunday, August 29, was a prime example.

The day before, Saturday, August 28, dozens of softer-edged Katrina anniversary events were held in the Greater New Orleans area. Slidell, LA dedicated a memorial sculpture, “Fleur de Triomphe,” to stand by the city’s 9/11 Memorial. St. Bernard Memorial Funeral Home created a “Hurricane Katrina Casket” into which people could place notes and letters about their memories and loved ones lost in the storm. A St. Bernard Parish Recovery Tour looked toward the future and visited several completion construction projects. On Sunday, several faith-based ceremonies were held all over the city to remember those who were lost and the first responders who came to help.

To my mind, the most ambitious and politically conscious event was Sunday’s Katrina Commemoration Foundation March/Second Line and Rally, co sponsored by the Katrina Commemoration Foundation, The Hip Hop Caucus, and the National Wildlife Federation. Video clip here.

The three part event began with a healing ceremony at Jourdan Road and North Galvez at the levee breach in the Lower 9th Ward in which the names of people who died in the flood were read aloud. The ceremony was followed by a jaunty 3 mile Second Line Parade and climaxed with a good old fashioned activist rally at Hunter’s Field Park at the corner of North Claiborne and St. Bernard Avenue.

The Hunter’s Field Park program of singers, spoken word artists, rappers, dancers, gospel choirs, and community activists was pointedly political, a rallying cry for the African American community to push for equality in housing, medical care, education, and treatment by police. It pulled no punches.

New Orleans: Charter Schools And Recovery Part 4

KIPP McDonogh15 School for the Creative Arts  Part 4

I was in New Orleans to attend the 5th annual Rising Tide New Media Conference centered on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Two days before the conference began on Saturday, August 28, the serendipitous time and place I decided to have my afternoon coffee led to the following story about the recovery of the New Orleans public schools. 

Education in America is tricky enough, let alone trying to put together a functional school system after a Category 5 hurricane floods 80% of your city, demolishes entire neighborhoods, and displaces families who've been rooted here for generations. And right on the front lines of New Orleans' recovery plan are public schools and the students and parents they serve. The stakes are high: issues of race, class, economic and political status are all in play, Whether it succeeds will be biggest test of resilience - and shared sense of destiny - that New Orleans has ever faced.

I had more questions after parachuting into KIPP McDonogh15 School for the Creative Arts on Friday. 

My first Google search revealed that  a massive educational reform movement was underway before Katrina became a game changer.

In 2003 the Louisiana Department of Education created The Recovery School District (RSD), a special state district dedicated to turning under-performing schools into successful schools. Orleans Parish was a major part of this district. Without this in place, it's doubtful New Orleans schools would have a fighting chance to survive, let alone recover, after the storm.

According to the April 29, 2010 Times-Picayune report, "All told, the Recovery School District plans to have 47 charter schools next school year, and no more than 23 traditional schools, compared with 37 charters and 33 traditional programs this year. The Orleans Parish School Board will continue to operate 12 charters and four traditional schools. Charters are publicly funded, but run by nonprofit boards."

Googling to find information about the mass firings of teachers in Orleans Parish right after Katrina, I come upon a story in Democracy Now, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Partial quote below:

"Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, the Louisiana state legislature voted to take over most of New Orleans’ public schools and effectively fire the 7,500 teachers and employees who work in them. The city schools are now part of the state-run recovery school district and control of many of schools is being given to private charter organizations."

One year later in 2007, Democracy Now reported 

"While many in New Orleans have waited two years for recovery, the restructuring of its schools seemed to happen overnight. Not long after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans two years ago, the Louisiana legislature cleared the way for the state to assume control of 107 out of 128 schools in the Orleans district. Immediately, the state began converting many of its newly acquired schools to charter schools–publicly funded schools run by for-profit or nonprofit groups that operate by a "charter," or contract. One result is that the number of unionized teachers dropped from about 4700 to 500."

The top fold headline on the Times Picayune of August 26 reads, "Katrina rewrites the book on education in New Orleans"

Several points in the story detail some of the enormous challenges facing the Orleans Parish schools:

• New Orleans is the first city in the USA to have majority charter schools.
• Many low-income students arrive at school three, four, five grade levels behind.
• Popular charter schools fill up quickly (by lottery), leaving kids of less-savvy parents, and kids with special needs with fewer choices of schools.
• Many schools are still in deplorable shape. A recently announced FEMA grant of $1.8 will give 85 schools a full renovation or a rebuilt school. This will take time.
• Some parents feel charter schools have left them out of organizational process - the fault line here is usually racial, more black parents than white parents feeling left out of the process.
• Regardless of the lottery system, some charter schools have been accused of picking more promising students, avoiding special needs students.

Data from Tulane’s Cowen Institute for Public Education is scary but going in the right direction. It shows that test scores are improving, a fact that can be attributed to the emergence of charter schools, their governance, and compacts with parents who send their children to them. These statistics underline the awful shape public schools were in before Katrina, 2005 and underscore the very long road ahead.

An April 18, 2010 story in The New Republic reports similar findings.

pt’s take

From my 34 years of experience as a public school teacher, I know that one teacher can have a lasting impact on a student, regardless of the student’s social circumstances. Teaching is one of the most demanding jobs on earth. Just knowing subject matter is the tip of the iceberg. In my case, learning how to connect with kids, manage them, motivate them, make them allies in the pursuit of progress, took years to develop. I had veteran mentors and colleagues like myself who were learning as we went along. We learned from our mistakes and built on our successes. We had frequent meetings to learn about "best practices" and were expected to include them in our teaching styles.

As developing teachers, our  progress was uneven and incremental. We spent hours talking about our successes and failures. We knew we entered the field to make a difference, even though we went through dark days when evidence of that was scant. Holding on to that belief was a life ring that kept us from burning out.

Transforming a group of twenty some-odd children from a number into a community of learners who develop a sense of togetherness who understand the struggle and  joy of learning is as consuming a task as any million dollar CEO will ever have. Whether the often underpaid, inexperienced, well-intentioned young charter school teachers can survive for the long haul is an unknown quantity.

Charter schools are using a data-driven business model in which continually failing schools will not be re-contracted. You can have the best data in the galaxy but without a knowledgeable, trained teachers, who know how to use it and how to manage kids, schools will not improve.

The Friday "circle meetings" at the KIPP McDonogh 15 School for the Creative Arts are an important building block to meld data with experience. KIPP's Professional Development Plan will be a key in training and retaining teachers.

Five years out from Katrina, restoring housing and neighborhoods, improving access to hospitals and medical care, restoring a sense of the “just” in the justice system are works in progress. None of those are more important to New Orleans's future than parents and teachers vigorously supporting the fledgling new education system.

Education is low-profile extraordinarily high-value work upon which every resource must be brought to bear  - because if they aren't, the good times will simply cease to roll in New Orleans .

For up to date information about charter schools:
http://topics.nola.com/tag/new-orleans-charter-schools/index.html

 To read a review of Jay Matthews' book about the founders of the KIPP program:
http://kellylowenstein.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/jay-mathews-tribute-to-kipp-founders-mike-feinberg-and-dave-levin/

New Orleans: Charter Schools and Recovery Part 3

I was in New Orleans to attend the 5th annual Rising Tide New Media Conference centered on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Two days before the conference began on Saturday, August 28, the serendipitous time and place I decided to have my afternoon coffee led to the following story about the recovery of the New Orleans public schools. 

So...here I am today about to take Mr. Brad Burgle's invitation to visit the KIPP McDonogh 15  School for the Creative Arts during school hours to get a sense of a charter school in action. Here's the way it worked out.

 

KIPP McDonogh Part3

KIPP McDonogh 15 School For The Creative Arts
721 St. Philip Street
New Orleans, LA 70116
August 27, 2010


When I arrive at 3 pm Friday afternoon, two uniformed security guards at the entrance to the school parking lot are standing with a woman wearing a purple polo shirt with the KIPP McDonogh label stenciled on it.

“I’m April Griffith, the Business Operations Manager of the school. How can I help you?”

She sees the disappointment on my face when she informs me school is closed, that kids leave school at 2:30 on Friday afternoons, and teachers are all in meetings  - and offers to take me on a tour. It’s the end of the week. I’m sure she’s logged way more than 50 hours here. And here she is offering this retired teacher a chunk of time she probably doesn’t have.

During the tour, Ms. Griffith skillfully manages to answer my questions while managing a few minor discipline matters, and connecting with custodians and the school secretary.

What is your school year?
“July 25 through May 28.”

Do kids flunk out of this school?
“Parents school staff and students sign a pledge to abide by the principles of the KIPP.
Once a student is accepted, we do everything we can to keep them in the program - outreach, mediation, counseling - whatever it takes."

What if kids don’t comply with a part of the pledge?
“If a student doesn’t bring homework in on time, they’re sent to detention at end of day to finish it.”

How are parents involved?
“They have to agree to the KIPP model for their kids to be accepted. That means having their kids arrive for school on time and with homework completed. It means they have to let us know if their child will be absent and that they will read information we send home to them. Parents are also involved as homeroom parents, and help put on holiday concerts and Black History Month concerts and programs.  ”

What’s going on this afternoon after the students are dismissed at 2:30 pm?
“The upper and lower school teachers participate in professional development meetings. They begin with a ‘circle meeting’ in which they talk about what’s gone on in their classrooms during the week.”

Miss Griffith brings me to the door of the upper school meeting run by a one of the head teachers. The tone is lively and light. It feels like the whole young staff is taking a deep appreciative breath that one of the first weeks of school has ended and that they’re still intact.

These meetings are great community building opportunities for a young and often inexperienced staff.

“I’m really glad to know that,” a young woman in the meeting says after a colleague shares an anecdote about a student. “I thought he was only mad at art and with me. Now I know he’s just angry, period.” The room fills with laughter. Meetings like this are necessary tools for venting and sharing.

The teacher goes on to share how she worked out an incident with the boy who’d gotten physical with a classmate.
“What are you going to do when a kid accidentally bumps into you again? I bumped him and he mumbled something. I told him I couldn’t hear what he said.So I bumped him again. He said ‘It’s OK.’”

Getting the boy who’s never had alternatives to fists in this situation to verbalize  just three words is a small step forward. The young teacher modeled a behavior she wants to reinforce. She will build on that for the rest of the year. It won’t appear as a statistic in her performance evaluation but giving him an alternative way of acting might save his life some day.

These young teachers are working their ways through the hardest part of teaching, behavior management, and they can use all the support they can get as they learn to manage and teach at the same time. They’re all in this together. Moment like this solidify the sense of community they all need to survive and then thrive.

These teachers are at the beginning of what will be a career for some or a stepping-stone to another profession for others. One trait they have in common: they want to be here and they want to make a difference.
Miss Griffith is a role model herself.

“Can we start this again?” Miss Griffin says when students use “Huh” or “Yeah” during conversations with her. A moment of re-calibration flashes over a kid’s face.

“Excuse me?” or “Yes” restarts the dialogue.

At end of tour, Miss Griffith takes me to the doorway of a  room full of primary grade teachers engaged in their Friday Professional Development meeting.

“We’re refining the way we assess student’s work,” principal Kyle Shaffer says as he steps out the door to talk to me.

‘During the final years of my teaching career in Brookline, we developed assessment tools so we could grade and assess student work in a manner that mirrors the way students are assessed in MCAS tests in my Massachusetts school,” I said.

“I’m very interested in assessment - next time you come back, I’d like to talk about that,” he says.

An hour after I finished writing the first draft of this story, I picked up Friday morning’s edition of The Times-Picayune. The top fold story headline read, “Katrina rewrites the book on education in New Orleans.” A three-page story documented the rebuilding of the school system. Race and class disparities have not disappeared, not all parents are satisfied the new schools are addressing the old problems.

The KIPP school’s partnership between parents, teachers, and students puts learning first. The “Commitment to Excellence” they all agree to and sign puts into writing a compact that is inferred but not insisted upon in public schools. Whether it makes a difference will be revealed in the years ahead.

I know that today’s venture into the KIPP McDonogh School 15 is like using one grain of sand to extrapolate what the entire beach looks like…but that one grain is a good start.

New Orleans: Charter Schools and Recovery Part 4

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Middle School Administrative Assistant Ms. Quien Nicholas knows the names of every kid who passes her desk strategically placed in the hallway.
 
 

 Cafeteria and performance space on the ground level.

School entrance on St. Peter Street.

Parking lot/playground across the street from Community Coffee, where I first saw the sea of purple shirted kids leave the building at 5 pm. The shirt color designates whether student is pre Kindergarten/Kindergarten, or Primary Grade 1-4, or middle school, Grade 5-8.

New Orleans: Charter Schools and Recovery Part 2

KIPP McDonogh 15 School for the Creative Arts is one of the 37 charter schools operating in New Orleans Parish this year (along with 33 traditional school programs).

What are KIPP  Charter Schools all about? Their mission statement sounds like the ideal of an educational system. From their web site, this is what I read.

The KIPP Commitment to Excellence partnership listed below is a plainly written document that asks much of teachers, parents, and students. Like a three legged stool, if one leg fails, the stool will  topple.

What would I see tomorrow, Friday, August 27, 2010?

About KIPP

Who We Are

KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in under-served communities for success in college and in life.

KIPP is a national network of 99 KIPP public schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia enrolling more than 26,000 students. The majority of KIPP schools are middle schools that serve fifth through eighth-grade students. The remaining schools include high schools and pre-kindergarten/elementary schools.

Over 90 percent of KIPP students are African American or Hispanic/Latino, and more than 80 percent of KIPP students are eligible for the federal free or reduced-price meals program. KIPP schools enroll all interested students, space permitting, regardless of prior academic record, conduct or socioeconomic background.

What We Do
KIPP builds a partnership among parents, students, and teachers that puts learning first. By providing outstanding educators, more time in school learning, and a strong culture of achievement, KIPP is helping all students climb the mountain to and through college.

Why It Matters
Every day, KIPP students across the nation are proving that demographics do not define destiny. Over 80 percent of our students are from low-income families and eligible for the federal free or reduced-price meals program, and 95 percent are African American or Latino. Nationally, more than 90 percent of KIPP middle school students have gone on to college-preparatory high schools, and over 85 percent of KIPP alumni have gone on to college.

KIPP Schools
There are 60 KIPP middle schools (grades 5-8), 24 elementary schools (grades Pre-K-4), and 15 high schools (grades 9-12). Students are accepted regardless of prior academic record, conduct or socioeconomic background.

Five Pillars

KIPP schools share a core set of operating principles known as the Five Pillars:

High Expectations.KIPP schools have clearly defined and measurable high expectations for academic achievement and conduct that make no excuses based on the students' backgrounds. Students, parents, teachers, and staff create and reinforce a culture of achievement and support through a range of formal and informal rewards and consequences for academic performance and behavior.

Choice & Commitment. Students, their parents, and the faculty of each KIPP school choose to participate in the program. No one is assigned or forced to attend a KIPP school. Everyone must make and uphold a commitment to the school and to each other to put in the time and effort required to achieve success.

More Time. KIPP schools know that there are no shortcuts when it comes to success in academics and life. With an extended school day, week, and year, students have more time in the classroom to acquire the academic knowledge and skills that will prepare them for competitive high schools and colleges, as well as more opportunities to engage in diverse extracurricular experiences.

Power to Lead. The principals of KIPP schools are effective academic and organizational leaders who understand that great schools require great school leaders. They have control over their school budget and personnel. They are free to swiftly move dollars or make staffing changes, allowing them maximum effectiveness in helping students learn.

Focus on Results. KIPP schools relentlessly focus on high student performance on standardized tests and other objective measures. Just as there are no shortcuts, there are no excuses. Students are expected to achieve a level of academic performance that will enable them to succeed at the nation's best high schools and colleges.

Commitment to Excellence - A partnership between teachers, parents, and students

KIPP is a partnership among parents, students, and teachers that puts learning first. All three parties sign a learning pledge called the "Commitment to Excellence," which ensures that each will do whatever it takes to help the student learn. This is the bedrock on which the entire foundation rests. If one part fails, the structure collapses.

For a complete version, go to Commitment to Excellence.

Teacher's Commitment
•    We will always teach in the best way we know how and we will do whatever it takes for our students to learn.
•    We will always make ourselves available to students and parents, and address any concerns they might have.
•    We will always protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the classroom.

Parents'/Guardians' Commitment
•    We will make sure our child arrives at KIPP every day by 7:25 a.m. (Monday-Friday) or boards a KIPP bus at the scheduled time.
•    We will always help our child in the best way we know how and we will do whatever it takes for him/her to learn. This also means that we will check our child's homework every night, let him/her call the teacher if there is a problem with the homework, and try to read with him/her every night.
•    We will always make ourselves available to our children and the school, and address any concerns they might have. This also means that if our child is going to miss school, we will notify the teacher as soon as possible, and we will carefully read any and all papers that the school sends home to us.

Student's Commitment
•    I will always work, think, and behave in the best way I know how, and I will do whatever it takes for me and my fellow students to learn. This also means that I will complete all my homework every night, I will call my teachers if I have a problem with the homework or a problem with coming to school, and I will raise my hand and ask questions in class if I do not understand something.
•    I will always behave so as to protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the classroom. This also means that I will always listen to all my KIPP teammates and give everyone my respect.
•    I am responsible for my own behavior, and I will follow the teachers' directions.

New Orleans: Charter Schools and Recovery Part 3

New Orleans: Charter Schools And Recovery Part 1

 I was in New Orleans to attend the 5th annual Rising Tide New Media Conference centered on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Two days before the conference began on Saturday, August 28, the serendipitous time and place I decided to have my afternoon coffee led to the following stories about the recovery of the New Orleans public schools. 

In the course of the next few days, I learned about the abysmal pre-2005 reputation and condition of New Orleans’ public schools, the emergence of charter schools in New Orleans as part of the Louisiana Recovery School District Plan, the slowly rising test scores since charter schools were contracted to operate, and a difference of opinion amongst some parents about the loss of neighborhood schools.

Having taught fourth grade for 34 years in an “urban/suburban” public school system in Brookline, MA, I had little practical knowledge about charter schools.

Writing this story introduced me to the charter school movement, presented a chance to talk with the staff of one charter school in the heart of the French Quarter, and get a sense that recovery of the Orleans Parish schools is an enormous task.

KIPP McDonogh 15 School For The Creative Arts
721 St. Philip Street
New Orleans, LA 70116
August 26, 2010


Katrina savaged New Orleans. It salvaged the New Orleans Parish School System.

Thursday afternoon I was sipping my afternoon coffee at the Community Coffee store on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter when I looked out the window and saw a sea of kids in purple polo shirts swarming out of the red brick building across the street.

This looked like a bunch of school kids - but 5:00 pm? And on August 26? Coffee in hand, I ambled across the street and struck up a conversation with a young man who seemed to be monitoring the beehive. Naturally, I asked questions.

Here on the upcoming fifth anniversary of Katrina, Brad Burgle, a fifth grade math teacher filled me in on one of the few silver linings from the 2005 lashing the storm administered to the city."This is the KIPP McDonogh 15 School For The Creative Arts," he informed me.

“New Orleans public schools were terrible. The state fired every teacher in Orleans Parish after Katrina. Then they began to re-hire for charter schools,” he said. “The system was corrupt. Several school board members were put in jail.” Corrupt indeed.

On June 20, 2006, New Orleans began from the ground up, converted public schools and opened the door wide to charter schools. “This used to be a neighborhood public school,” he said. “It’s now a charter school open to every kid in Orleans Parish.”

As kids waited for an adult to take them home, part of the structure here, Brad kept a vigilant watch and described his school. This is a K-8 school divided into a lower school K-4 and an upper school 5-8 with a principal for each. The staff’s makeup is nearly evenly distributed between men, women, and race.

“KIPP stands for the Knowledge Is Power Program. Eighty percent of kids who attend a KIPP school for four years enroll in college. Before that the rate was 12% in Orleans Parish.”

Stunning.

So was the length of the school day and the way students connect with teachers.

“Students arrive at 7:30 am and leave at 5 pm.  Teachers must be here half hours before the kids arrive and after they leave. Students have our cell phone numbers and can call us after school. I told them they can call me until 9 pm.”

The next statement was no surprise. “There’s a pretty high teacher burnout rate.”

Brad fielded questions from students as we talked and kept a watchful eye on the proceedings. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow and take a tour?”

I was curious. I intended to return. But first, I did some homework.

SEE New Orleans: Charter Schools And Recovery Part 2

 

5th Annual Rising Tide New Media Convention, New Orleans

5th annual Rising Tide New Media Conference
at The Howlin’ Wolf, 907 South Peters St., in New Orleans.
Saturday, August 28, 2010, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m
Topics included recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

Rising Tide 5 organizer Kim Marshall opened the conference at the advertised time of 9:30 AM.

First Panel Group, Public Safety:

Moderator: Peter Scharf, Professor of Public Health at Tulane University

Panel:New Orleans Chief of Police Ronal Serpas ; The Vera Institute for Justice New Orleans Director Jon Wool;  Safe Streets New Orleans Executive Director Allen James ; Independent Police Monitor of the city of New Orleans Susan Hutson.

Hutson, Serpas, Wool, James, Scharf

Professor Scharf pushed the Public Safety Panel with probing questions about improving effectiveness and fairness of law enforcement, deactivating racial tensions, and involving the public in police programs. First, he asked the panelists to introduce themselves.

Allen James: Safe Streets, New Orleans Executive Director said that his group advocates for civilian oversight of police. "In New Orleans, law enforcement is experienced differently by different classes of people, it is not equally dispensed and it does not respect the rights and needs of all citizens," James said. He said the mission of Safe Streets is to level out treatment for all with a special emphasis on youth justice. Jones has 20 years experience in New York and New Jersey, has been Executive Director of several programs specializing in teen pregnancy prevention and violence prevention.

Jon Wool: The Vera Institute for Justice, Director of New Orleans office

“While Allen operates from bottom up, I operate from top down,” Wool said. The Vera Institute for Justice was active in creating 1961 National Bail Reform Act signed into law by Lyndon Johnson in 1966. Wool works with criminal justice leaders to identify issues that need to be changed, and builds collaboration between agencies . The Vera Institute for Justice has been involved in criminal and juvenile justice reform since 2007.

NOPD Chief Ronal Serpas

"I was an 11th grade dropout," Chief Serpas began in his introduction. "I was born and raised in New Orleans." Since then, he finished his education and  worked in New Orleans police department for 21 years from 1980-2001, the latter part as second in command to then Chief Richard Pennington. Serpas has a wife and family, left the NOPD nine years ago, has been a chief since then, most recently named chief in 2004 in Nashville, TN. He said one of his challenges is working with Gen X and Gen Y.

He instituted, and has already embarked on, a 65 point plan for community policing and transparency. He intends to improve the dismal record of police effectiveness. Serpas is compiling a database that will help him identify employees at risk. He’s certain that New Orleans citizens will see change and be able to track it on the internet. “It’s a new day,” he said.

The new chief talks with an exceptional grasp of facts and the big picture into which they fit. People hope he’s right.

Susan Hutson, Independent Police Monitor of the city of New Orleans

Susan Hutson said she graduated from Tulane Law School, has been a defense attorney and prosecutor in Texas and was an assistant Monitor of Police in Austin. She was working as an assistant inspector general while overseeing the Los Angeles Police Department. 

Hutson made it clear she is works outside the police department, is a fact finder, is not afraid to take different stance than the NOPD if she thinks the facts warrant it. “We will take complaints, make recommendations to the chief, and install a mediation program.”

 

Scharf began by asking the panel to comment on the infamous Danziger Bridge incident, which he described as “a heart attack to New Orleans.”  in which police shot and killed two unarmed black civilians. This one widely publicized incident has been a symbol of police brutality and their seeming insulation from prosecution for misdeeds. Most of the panel's time was spent on discussing the incident, its aftermath, the recent indictments, and the affect on the New Orleans Police Department.

Charges against the police officers in the Danziger Bridge shootings have been in litigation for five years. Last month, on July 13, six officers were indicted or participation in the shootings and subsequent cover up that included fabricated witness statements, falsified reports and planted a gun in an attempt to make it appear the shootings were justified.

“It was a catastrophe not to be repeated,” Ms. Hutson said.

“The Justice Report (the indictment) read like a disgusting novel. It was an insult to the community and to the officers we buried who worked selflessly during the storm,” Sepas said. "In 1999, people did individual things,  Now we have a system wide failure." He outlined his plan going forward.

“I’m a data driven guy, I learned how to collect and use data from the University of New Orleans.” Serpas cited statistics of calls regarding assault,  fire alarms, accidents, and murders. “We spend ten times more on fire alarms than on serious crime,” Serpas said.  He urged citizens to appeal to their senators to call for the first presidential commission on law enforcement since LBJ was in power.

Allen James said 
The Glover case, in which a black man was killed by police and whose body was recovered from a burned out car, is not an anomaly. The incident happened in the aftermath of the storm. "It was repressed for five years and if not for the efforts of his family may never have been prosecuted. The force resists change. Why didn’t good officers blow the whistle? People are offended that the matter is boiled down to dollars in NOPD jail cells," Jones said.

Scharf: “Sue, how do you change police culture?”

Hutson:”There’s so much scrutiny, everything has to be documented and there are consequences if an officer doesn’t document. People have felt disrespected. Now we have a systematic way to work. I want officers to do their jobs in an ethical, constitutional, and professional manner.”.

Chief Serpas made his position clear. “If you  lie , you die. If you produce a false report, you are terminated, no second chance. If you tell this police department a lie about anything, you will be terminated. If you allow a false or inaccurate report to be created under your name, you will be terminated." 

Serpas was quick to acknowledge it wasn't likely to be popular with some of the rank and file. "If anyone cannot embrace these needed changes, we will replace them with dedicated police professionals who will. If you fail to cooperate with an internal investigation, you will be charged. Professional cops embrace this. “

Alan James: says Safe Streets supports Susan’s job, asks people to use the system, use to commend officers as well as complain.  "The gun culture , the 17th century mentality of needing to defend honor and respect, leads to gun violence. Poor people are struggling, they don’t have a way to figure how to respond to violence, in cases of people who kill each other, know each other. There are 12 times more murders in New Orleans than in New York City, three times more than Newark, NJ."

In response to Scharf’s and Jones’s questions, Serpas says that crimes will be correctly identified. In the past, felonies were allegedly reported as misdemeanors or underreported in order to improve statistics. Serpas’s “You lie, you die,” order will be tested. If the New Orleans Police Department is to redeem its reputation, Serpas will have to make good on his promises and be sure every citizen in New Orleans is aware of it.

Jon Wool talked about the high rate of incarceration, predominantly black  males, in the USA, its cost to states and to the culture.

Wool and James feel that the current plan to erect a new, high capacity jail in New Orleans is wrong-headed. They both point to the fact that the jails are funded through a ‘per diem’ structure, which is actually an incentive to fill the jails to keep funding their operations.

Allen James said that that trend will continue until the conditions that create it, joblessness and poor education, are fixed.

Serpas answers a question after the panel has concluded

pt’s take
It is clear that change is in the air. Chief Serpas is goal oriented, data-driven, and exudes a sense of command and confidence. The 65 point plan he’s put in place involves citizen’s input. He acknowledges the current reputation of the NOPD as corrupt and is intent on rooting out bad cops. His plan is embraced by recently elected New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, whose speech on Sunday, August 30, at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts was a call to arms to every NOLA citizen..

Serpas’s model is sound but unless he can get help from the community, he’ll just be stemming the tide. Jones is correct. Without a much more effective safety net of social services and youth programs, containing youth crime will be like collecting water with a sieve.

It takes time for social programs and personnel to get traction in the community. Serpas’s first order of business should be to identify and connect with adults, parents and teachers who are working to give young kids a reason to join society, find jobs, and be part of the solution.

During the break, I told Alan James that Serpas’s data gathering wouldn’t help unless the community was involved in some pro-active way and asked what kind of community services were at hand.

“We live in an era that within 48 hours everyone in the country can be using the same catch phrase. But here at ground level in New Orleans there are hardly any social workers - in NY and NJ you can’t turn around without bumping into one. There is not much of a safety net here. The American Friends have great programs about conflict resolution in New York and New Jersey. No such programs are in place here,” he said.

It is not an overstatement to say that New Orleans's future as a viable city will be determined in the next five years. The people on this panel will have impact only if they are joined in number and commitment by a community that grasps their input is involved, their treatment fair, and their youth served in pro-active programs and better education.