Check out this video about my friend Lolita’s quest for her family photographs. (DDFRtv visits Lolita Parker Jr @ Boston from Digital Diaspora Family Reunion on Vimeo.) What the video does not fully explain is that Lolita is herself a professional photographer. Though we’re both from Boston, I met Lolita in Turkey Creek, MS at Derrick [...]
Lolita’s Family Photos
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 05. Feb, 2011 in boston, friends, katrina, louisiana, massachusetts, MS Gulf Coast, nola, photo, photography, race and racism, video
Save the Blacks
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 25. Jan, 2011 in environmental justice, katrina, mississippi, MS Gulf Coast, photo, race and racism, video
This is brilliant coverage of the fight of Turkey Creek, Mississippi African Americans to save their community. Turkey Creek was founded by freed slaves in 1866. Their descendants have been fighting dispossession by developers and environmental racism for years. I interviewed Wyatt Cenac’s guide, Derrick Evans, in January 2006, 6 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated his community with [...]
All We Have (Treme)
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 14. Aug, 2010 in katrina, louisiana, nola, race and racism, video, Weblogs, women and feminism
If you’ve watched the 1st season of Treme then you know: incredible writing and acting in a hard-hitting rendition of post-Katrina life in New Orleans. This edit of clips by here’s luck makes an emotional arc out of the experiences of the main female characters. It is, as here’s luck calls it, a prayer for [...]
Only in Hawaii: Tsunami 2010
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 28. Feb, 2010 in breaking news, civil rights movement, friends, guest post, katrina, marsha joyner, social media
By Marsha Joyner Isn’t technology wonderful! You can see our TV 6,000 miles away. And Facebook brings everyone within a keystroke. Just before the late evening news in Hawaii, my husband Kenneth said, “a tremendous 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile.” “That’s awful,” I responded and went to bed thinking no more of it. Until 5:20am my cell phone rang [...]
4 Years After Hurricane Katrina
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 30. Aug, 2009 in class and poverty, economic policy, environmental justice, human rights, katrina, mississippi, MS Gulf Coast, nola, race and racism
On August 29, 2005, the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Waveland, Mississippi, and the western side of the storm grazed New Orleans. Five months after the storm, I visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast. According to a National Hurricane Center report on Katrina, “in many locations, most of the buildings along the coast were [...]
Gustav
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 30. Aug, 2008 in breaking news, class and poverty, economic policy, katrina, MS Gulf Coast, nola, race and racism
Gustav is now a Category 4 hurricane. HAVANA, Cuba – Gustav has grown to a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds, U.S. forecasters said Saturday, as the storm pummeled a Cuban province, threatened Havana and led to the evacuations of more than 240,000 Cubans. The parallels to Hurricane Katrina three years ago are striking. [...]
When Does the Gulf Coast Recovery Start?
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 09. Jul, 2008 in breaking news, class and poverty, environmental justice, katrina, MS Gulf Coast, race and racism
Things only seem to be getting worse. I just received this email update from the KatrinaRitaVille Express: House republicans moved today to pre-empt lawsuits against manufacturers of FEMA trailers, while whistleblowers from one supplier speak candidly about the dishonest government and company practices they were involved in. Meanwhile, FEMA and local officials in coastal AL, [...]
The Greatest Social Experiment in America
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 30. Mar, 2008 in children, civil rights, economic policy, education, katrina, nola, race and racism
The week before I was going to head to New Orleans for this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference one of my twitter friends who was also going to NTC pointed to Eboo Patel’s Washington Post blog post about post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans. Patel catalogs the devastation pretty well: My friend Alycia drove me through the [...]
Government Homelessness Programs: A MS Gulf Coast Triptych
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 31. Jan, 2008 in breaking news, class and poverty, environmental justice, friends, human rights, katrina, MS Gulf Coast, race and racism, Weblogs
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has approved MS Governor Haley Barbour’s plan to divert $600 of Federal Community Development Block Grant funds from low-income housing recovery to a Port Expansion Plan in Gulfport. In his letter to Gov. Haley Barbour, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said that although he’s concerned about using the housing [...]
What Is This You Bring My America?
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 29. Dec, 2007 in breaking news, civil liberties, civil rights, civil rights movement, human rights, immigrants, katrina, nola, politics, race and racism, torture and detention, Weblogs
Last Sunday, the New York Times reported that among hundreds of recently declassified intelligence documents from the 1950s was a 1950 proposal by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty…. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to [...]
The Worst Environmental Disaster in the United States Since the Exxon Valdez
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 16. Nov, 2007 in breaking news, environmental justice, human rights, katrina, MS Gulf Coast
What’s the headline refer to? Hurricane Katrina’s deforestation of the Gulf Coast, primarily Mississippi. New satellite imaging has revealed that hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in the nation — an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged about 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana. The [...]
No Money for the FEMA Trailer Park Children
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 22. Oct, 2007 in children, class and poverty, human rights, katrina, MS Gulf Coast
By Briley Richmond Ocean Springs, MS Sunday, October 21, 2007 The Mississippi Press A 6-year-old child, Blake Pendergrass, was struck and killed by an automobile in Escatawpa the other day. Escatawpa is about 20 miles from my home in Ocean Springs. I didn’t know him. I would imagine something like that happens somewhere in America [...]
Alphonso Jackson Uses HUD to Destroy Lives and Make Friends Rich
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 05. Oct, 2007 in breaking news, katrina, nola, race and racism
The AP reports: The FBI is examining the ties between Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson’s department as a construction manager in New Orleans, three federal law enforcement officials said Thursday. Jackson’s friend got the job after the HUD secretary asked a staff member to pass along his [...]
Shameless Lying Liars Ready to End Public Housing in NOLA
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 26. Sep, 2007 in breaking news, class and poverty, human rights, katrina, race and racism, women and feminism
Selective involvement of federal government in local affairs at its finest. HUD’s Wrecking Ball Tightening the Noose Around New Orleans By BILL QUIGLEY Odessa Lewis is 62 years old. When I saw her last week, she was crying because she is being evicted. A long-time resident of the Lafitte public housing apartments, since Katrina she [...]
Groups Respond to Proposed Use of MS Low-Income Housing Recovery Funds to Expand Port of Gulfport
by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 25. Sep, 2007 in breaking news, human rights, katrina, MS Gulf Coast, race and racism
I posted previously on MS Governor Haley Barbour’s support for the plan divert federal Community Development Block Grant funds to a port expansion in Gulfport. The following is section III of the comment to the MS Development Authority and HUD, by Gulf Coast and national advocacy groups: MISSISSIPPI HAS FAILED TO ADDRESS THE HOUSING CRISIS [...]
Ben Greenberg's Weblog
Folks I've got them hungry blues
And nothin' in this to lose
People tellin' me to choose
Between dyin' and lyin' and
keep on cryin'
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain't you heard the news
There's another thing to choose
A brand new world
clean and fine
Where nobody's hungry
And there's no color line
A thing like that's worth
anybody dyin'
I ain't got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
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