Whole Foods is sponsoring a eco-focused travelling film festival in seventy cities, and New Orleans is one of them! They're showing two films every Monday at the Theatres at Canal Place through the end of April (it started on the 11th). I just read about it on Nola.com, and after checking out the trailers I think I'm going to see these two:
ON COAL RIVER trailer (runtime: 2:36) from On Coal River on Vimeo.
Vanishing of the Bees - Trailer from Bee The Change on Vimeo.
Tickets are on sale online for $10 at on the theatre's website. I'm not sure if they're sold at the door.
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
4.15.2011
10.31.2009
The Talented Tenth
This is an interesting post. When I was at Cornell I heard a lot about the so called "Talented 10th" (and that we, Black students of the Ivy League, were a part of it), but never really knew what it meant or where it came from. Now that I know, I do think that the Talented 10th is failing their communities of origin. So many of my classmates did a little charity work here and there, and moved on to focusing on their education and career tracks. Everyone wants to get theirs, and it seems like no one understands that their singular success means nothing if there's five more little Black girls being born to a life of poverty and abuse back where they came from.
One though that crossed my mind is that for some of these upwardly mobile Blacks their experiences growing up in these neighborhoods that need help desperately were so bad that they can't fathom the idea of going back, even to help the kids who are helpless to the choices that their parents make. They start to see "those people" as the enemy, the reason why Black people always look so bad in the media, the ones who are holding Black people back. They separate themselves further and further away from "them" that they can't even see that they used to be one of "them", back when they didn't have a choice in the matter. Even though they themselves were once a part of this community, they're the "special flower that grew out of the concrete", instead of the lucky kid who was born to a future-thinking parent or was guided by some other caring adult.
Another reason could be the effects of assimilation into American culture. The other ethnic groups that the article mentions as having the village mentality and working to lift others like them up were voluntary immigrants to this country. They came to this country because of it would benefit not only them, but their whole families, and no matter how individualistic American society is, it's not going to change a first generation immigrant's view on how much time, money, and effort they should invest in their lesser well off family members. I think that slavery separated Black people so much from out ancestor's "community values" that we've completely ascribed to the Western idea of individual freedom above all else, which I'm coming to realize is a detrimental belief for a group in the minority to have. We need to be a village, or else we'll always be stuck in these cycles of poverty that dominate poor Black neighborhoods.
If there was a "Talented Tenth", which I'm not sure there is because success in this country tends to be more about who you know than talent anyway, their duty should be to lift up those who are still at the bottom, and the reason that things are the way they are today is because they haven't done this and have abandoned generation after generation of Black children to raise themselves and each other.
I think I"m kind of rambling, I don't have a clear thought on this subject yet, but I'm tired of forwarding and linking other people's words because I'm too tired to write anything original. I've also come to the conclusion that, no matter how spoiled and childish this may sound, I am not made for a 9 to 5 job. The hours don't even need to be shorter, just different. Well, maybe a little shorter.
One though that crossed my mind is that for some of these upwardly mobile Blacks their experiences growing up in these neighborhoods that need help desperately were so bad that they can't fathom the idea of going back, even to help the kids who are helpless to the choices that their parents make. They start to see "those people" as the enemy, the reason why Black people always look so bad in the media, the ones who are holding Black people back. They separate themselves further and further away from "them" that they can't even see that they used to be one of "them", back when they didn't have a choice in the matter. Even though they themselves were once a part of this community, they're the "special flower that grew out of the concrete", instead of the lucky kid who was born to a future-thinking parent or was guided by some other caring adult.
Another reason could be the effects of assimilation into American culture. The other ethnic groups that the article mentions as having the village mentality and working to lift others like them up were voluntary immigrants to this country. They came to this country because of it would benefit not only them, but their whole families, and no matter how individualistic American society is, it's not going to change a first generation immigrant's view on how much time, money, and effort they should invest in their lesser well off family members. I think that slavery separated Black people so much from out ancestor's "community values" that we've completely ascribed to the Western idea of individual freedom above all else, which I'm coming to realize is a detrimental belief for a group in the minority to have. We need to be a village, or else we'll always be stuck in these cycles of poverty that dominate poor Black neighborhoods.
If there was a "Talented Tenth", which I'm not sure there is because success in this country tends to be more about who you know than talent anyway, their duty should be to lift up those who are still at the bottom, and the reason that things are the way they are today is because they haven't done this and have abandoned generation after generation of Black children to raise themselves and each other.
I think I"m kind of rambling, I don't have a clear thought on this subject yet, but I'm tired of forwarding and linking other people's words because I'm too tired to write anything original. I've also come to the conclusion that, no matter how spoiled and childish this may sound, I am not made for a 9 to 5 job. The hours don't even need to be shorter, just different. Well, maybe a little shorter.
10.17.2009
9.27.2009
News Briefs: Target Takes Food Stamps, A SDT Star is Born, 1 Day a Week Trash Pick-up, Sweet Valley High Movie, FEMA Trailer Suit Loss
Target is now accepting food stamps. Finally. You know, seeing as they are Walmart's biggest competitor, you'd think that the second Walmart started accepting food stamps, they would have done the same.
Sidney D. Torres and his business will star in a new reality show on TLC based around SDT, him, and his family. Well, at least TLC does realer reality than, say, VH1.
Stacey Head thinks that twice-a-week trash pick-up is a luxury that New Orleans can't afford. Um, I'm pretty sure that everywhere else that I've lived has had twice-a-week pick-up, and I don't really see how it is a luxury. This city already has a critter problem, and in some neighborhoods it appears that twice-a-week pick-up is not often enough, so I really hope that this is not a suggestion that gains traction. If it were easier (or free) to recycle then yeah; now that I've started recycling I only have to take my trash out once-a-week. But there are people less fortunate than I who can't even afford $10 a month - or have way too many family members to be able to keep their recycling for two weeks at a time.
In movie news that hearkens back my days as an angry teenager (that only read about happy teenagers), Diablo Cody will be adapting the Sweet Valley High book series for the big screen. I'm never a fan of anything that is too popular, so I'm a little annoyed that Ms. Cody is the hip new writer that everyone wants to write or adapt x y and z, but she may be able to take the saccharine out of SVH for today's more cynical audiences. I never made it through the whole series, but I recall my favorite plotline being the evil twins that looked exactly like blond-haired, blue-eyed Elizabeth and Jessica except they had gray eyes and black hair. Yeah, I'd like SVH to be a less "High School Musical", more Heathers.
And the first FEMA trailer lawsuit has been lost. I wonder if it would have been better to choose a case a little more cut and dry. I mean, how do you prove that your kid's asthma got worse due to the trailer, instead of naturally? I know there must be people out there who were perfectly healthy before moving into the FEMA trailers, and got extremely sick afterwards.
Sidney D. Torres and his business will star in a new reality show on TLC based around SDT, him, and his family. Well, at least TLC does realer reality than, say, VH1.
Stacey Head thinks that twice-a-week trash pick-up is a luxury that New Orleans can't afford. Um, I'm pretty sure that everywhere else that I've lived has had twice-a-week pick-up, and I don't really see how it is a luxury. This city already has a critter problem, and in some neighborhoods it appears that twice-a-week pick-up is not often enough, so I really hope that this is not a suggestion that gains traction. If it were easier (or free) to recycle then yeah; now that I've started recycling I only have to take my trash out once-a-week. But there are people less fortunate than I who can't even afford $10 a month - or have way too many family members to be able to keep their recycling for two weeks at a time.
In movie news that hearkens back my days as an angry teenager (that only read about happy teenagers), Diablo Cody will be adapting the Sweet Valley High book series for the big screen. I'm never a fan of anything that is too popular, so I'm a little annoyed that Ms. Cody is the hip new writer that everyone wants to write or adapt x y and z, but she may be able to take the saccharine out of SVH for today's more cynical audiences. I never made it through the whole series, but I recall my favorite plotline being the evil twins that looked exactly like blond-haired, blue-eyed Elizabeth and Jessica except they had gray eyes and black hair. Yeah, I'd like SVH to be a less "High School Musical", more Heathers.
And the first FEMA trailer lawsuit has been lost. I wonder if it would have been better to choose a case a little more cut and dry. I mean, how do you prove that your kid's asthma got worse due to the trailer, instead of naturally? I know there must be people out there who were perfectly healthy before moving into the FEMA trailers, and got extremely sick afterwards.
8.27.2009
ISS - Homeless and struggling in New Orleans
ISS - Homeless and struggling in New Orleans
This article is great. One day about a year and a half ago, so coworkers and I went under the Claiborne bridge and spoke with homeless people there. For those of you who don't know, many of the homeless spoken to in this article may have been some of the hundreds of people who turned the neutral ground under the Claiborne bridge into a tent city after Katrina. Last year around Jazzfest time, I think, was when the city finally chased them away. Some mission was supposed to take them in and UNITY found many of them housing, but I'm sure that people fell through the cracks.
Some of them were people who came to New Orleans after Katrina thinking that they would find work in certain fields, but most of them were people who were born and raised here. The renters told stories of their rents being tripled. The ones who lived in the projects, of course, returned to find their doors and windows covered in steel or their apartments fenced off, kicked out while in exile from the storm. Some were folks who lived with relatives who died or couldn't return, and they didn't have a claim on the house. And a few were homeowners themselves who were so broken by Katrina that they couldn't muster the strength to fight for their homes anymore. Its easy for people to call the homeless lazy, or crazy, but these are people who don't want to acknowledge how fragile the human condition can be, and how one bad event or decision can lead us where we never thought we would be.
This article is great. One day about a year and a half ago, so coworkers and I went under the Claiborne bridge and spoke with homeless people there. For those of you who don't know, many of the homeless spoken to in this article may have been some of the hundreds of people who turned the neutral ground under the Claiborne bridge into a tent city after Katrina. Last year around Jazzfest time, I think, was when the city finally chased them away. Some mission was supposed to take them in and UNITY found many of them housing, but I'm sure that people fell through the cracks.
Some of them were people who came to New Orleans after Katrina thinking that they would find work in certain fields, but most of them were people who were born and raised here. The renters told stories of their rents being tripled. The ones who lived in the projects, of course, returned to find their doors and windows covered in steel or their apartments fenced off, kicked out while in exile from the storm. Some were folks who lived with relatives who died or couldn't return, and they didn't have a claim on the house. And a few were homeowners themselves who were so broken by Katrina that they couldn't muster the strength to fight for their homes anymore. Its easy for people to call the homeless lazy, or crazy, but these are people who don't want to acknowledge how fragile the human condition can be, and how one bad event or decision can lead us where we never thought we would be.
8.25.2009
News Briefs: CNN Special, Classism in Housing, Katrina Books, Charity Mess Continues, Pot is Safer, 1614 Esplanade, Katrina and the Prez, Mayoral Warchests,1B1NO, Sex from the Inside
CNN To Air Katrina Anniversary Specials: CNN will air special segments focusing on rebuilding efforts in New Orleans this week.
Jarvis DeBarry on class-based discrimination in the rental market in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
A few books on Katrina and her aftermath, New Orleans, or the South in general.
More info on the LSU Complex vs. Charity Hospital battle. The revised plans are just wasteful. There's half the number of buildings than was first proposed. They want to pave people's homes over for parking and trees?
Pot is better, but you already knew that, didn't you?
Articles about President Obama and his promises to rebuild New Orleans, and the new New Orleans.
So far Murray leads with the most money raised for his mayoral race. James Perry has raised the second highest amount of people who've declared candidacy, but Badon hasn't reported his winnings yet.
One Book, One New Orleans has chosen Gumbo Tales as it's book this year.
A friend of mine made a website for the co-op that he lives in. These artist types, so creative.
Aaaaand, an MRI of a couple having sex.
I gotta say, I'm probably going to have the image in my head of him poking her insides around for a while. Is the vaginal canal shorter than I imagined, or was he just really big? Does this mean that when people have sex while pregnant, the penis really is poking the baby in the head (through the uterine wall)? Ack! Also, how much did the couple get paid to do this?
Jarvis DeBarry on class-based discrimination in the rental market in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
A few books on Katrina and her aftermath, New Orleans, or the South in general.
More info on the LSU Complex vs. Charity Hospital battle. The revised plans are just wasteful. There's half the number of buildings than was first proposed. They want to pave people's homes over for parking and trees?
Pot is better, but you already knew that, didn't you?
Articles about President Obama and his promises to rebuild New Orleans, and the new New Orleans.
So far Murray leads with the most money raised for his mayoral race. James Perry has raised the second highest amount of people who've declared candidacy, but Badon hasn't reported his winnings yet.
One Book, One New Orleans has chosen Gumbo Tales as it's book this year.
A friend of mine made a website for the co-op that he lives in. These artist types, so creative.
Aaaaand, an MRI of a couple having sex.
I gotta say, I'm probably going to have the image in my head of him poking her insides around for a while. Is the vaginal canal shorter than I imagined, or was he just really big? Does this mean that when people have sex while pregnant, the penis really is poking the baby in the head (through the uterine wall)? Ack! Also, how much did the couple get paid to do this?
2 Articles by Tim Wise on the Healthcare Debate and Socialism
Red-Baiting and Racism: Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman and Sick Heil: Racial Paranoia, White Victimology and the Hitlerizing of Obama. Who is this wonderful man, and why am I just discovering him?
ETA: Oooh, here's video of him making a speech. I can't help but love that he talks like a Black Baptist preacher. And he's dead right about the relationship between St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward, except that they're not even separated by a canal - just the Parish line.
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ETA: Oooh, here's video of him making a speech. I can't help but love that he talks like a Black Baptist preacher. And he's dead right about the relationship between St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward, except that they're not even separated by a canal - just the Parish line.
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6.15.2009
From Contexts.org: Poverty, Self-Denial, And New Nikes
I think that this is something that middle and upper class people will never be able to understand until they live it. I now understand why my mother always insisted on wasting money on furniture. Read Poverty, Self-Denial, And New Nikes
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