Hungry Blues

In October, I was in Mississippi again, following leads in my investigation of the 1964 murder of Clifton Walker, a black man from Woodville, MS.

Driving home from the swing shift at the International Paper plant in Natchez, MS, Walker was ambushed by Klansmen, who stopped his car on a deserted road and blew his face off with shotguns in the dark of night. He never made it home to his wife and five children. He was 37 years old.

The Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol and the FBI investigated for nine months and identified numerous suspects—including two who were recommended for arrest—but no one was ever charged.

This post works around the edges of the story to convey a little of what it’s like to conduct a real-time investigation of decades-old events. I’ll be publishing an in-depth article about the case soon.

The Tip

“One of my cousins, who still lives in Woodville, told me Emma’s in Centreville,” came the excited voice over the phone. “She just opened up a club there.”

There are two towns in Wilkinson County, MS—Woodville, which is the county seat, and Centreville, which is 15 miles east of there.

The caller was one of Clifton Walker’s nephews. I had just met and interviewed him for the first time the day before in Louisiana. In 1964 he and his family lived on the same 87 acre family plot of land as Walker and his family.

This was big. 1964 Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol documents said Emma, a black cook at the truck stop where Walker’s murder was allegedly planned, had knowledge crucial to solving the case. I had found subjects in the documents and confirmed others dead, but I had nothing on Emma, past or present.

“Did your cousin say the name of the club or where it is?” I asked Walker’s nephew.

“No,” he replied, “she didn’t mention that.”

Centreville is a small town of 1500 people. Finding a club that just opened up there didn’t seem daunting. The town is 45 miles from the hotel where I was staying in Natchez. I got into my rental car and drove there.

Main Street in Centreville is about eight blocks long. I parked my car near the western end, got out and started walking east. After a few blocks, I passed a small group of young black men near the corner of West Park Street and noticed a little place down that road that looked like a bar. A number of people were standing around outside. Was that Emma’s “club”?

After another block, I came to the Camp Van Dorn World War II Museum—the tall, box shaped, single-story brick building might have once been a bank or post office; the brown paint looked newer than the paint on any of the other buildings. Camp Van Dorn was an army base that operated in Centreville from 1942-1947.

It wouldn’t take long in such a small town for rumors about my work to spread widely. Maybe inside the museum I could get into a conversation that would reveal what I needed to know without asking direct questions about Emma.

The door was locked. The museum closed at 4:00 pm, and it was already after 5:00. I turned around and started walking back in the direction of my car and tried to come up with Plan B. One of the guys from the street corner was now standing across the street from me.

He called out: “What’re you looking for?”

His name was Robert. I had my camera over my shoulder. I said I was from Boston.

“Boston, Massachusetts?” he asked, “where they have whales and shit?”

Robert suggested beers; I assented, thinking we might go to the place on West Park, but he took me down the block to McKey’s Grocery.

“What kind of beer you drink?" he asked. "I drink Bud Light."

“That’s fine. Hey, it’s on me,” I said, giving him a 20, “just give me the change.”

He came back a few minutes later with two 24 oz Bud Light cans.

“Seventeen dollars and three cents. Let me hold some of that for you,” Robert offered. “I’ll take you out to Camp Van Dorn and show you underground bomb bunkers, old torpedos and shit like that. You might take a few pictures of me standing in a cave.“

“Thanks,” I answered. “Maybe if I make it back here, but I need to get back to Natchez soon.”

We walked another block, crossed the street and walked a few feet down West Park and sat down on a stoop in front of an old pair of forest green double-doors.

His friends started coming by.

“This guy is a photographer from Boston,” Robert said.

Robert grabbed one of his buddies and started posing and flashing gang signs.

“Snap me. Don’t forget to snap me.”

One guy pulled off his shirt to show off his tattoos from prison.

“You make sure you take this shit back to Boston, Massachusetts.”

“What kind of white girls you got up there in Boston? They freaky?”

I gestured towards the bar down the block. “How long has this place been around?”

“A long time. Years.”

I snapped more photos of Robert’s friends.

Robert leaned over to me, saying, “They see you sitting here with me, so you’re cool. Why don’t you let me hold that 10 for you?”

It was getting dusky and it was time to go.

At the street corner one of the guys started asking me for $5 for a pack of t-shirts.

I thought about where else I could ask around about Emma's club, but it was definitely time to go.

I heard them calling out as I walked back to the car. I didn’t turn around. I got into the car and drove down a side street to weave my way back to Highway 24.

I called Walker’s nephew from the car and told him I didn’t find Emma’s place.

The Source

In the morning, I drove to the Natchez Coffee House, got some breakfast, used the wifi and sorted through some of my photographs. At around 11:00 am, I went out to my car to call the Woodville cousin who was the source of the information that Emma had a club. Her mother, now deceased, was another of Clifton Walker’s sisters. All of Walker’s 10 siblings are dead.

“Why did he go and run his mouth off like that without knowing the facts?”

She was exasperated.

“Emma opened a new club there. But it was twenty-five years ago,” she said. “I was a little girl when I heard it. I went to Centreville with my mother. Emma walked past us in the store we were shopping in. Mama said, ‘if it wasn’t for that woman, my brother would still be alive.’”

“Is Emma still there? Is she alive?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

It was a 25-year-old tip.

Return to Centreville

I decided to visit the office of Centreville Chief of Police Jimmy Ray Reese.

“It was over him either using the white restrooms or drinking out of the white water fountain” at International Paper, Chief Reese told me.

Reese said he knew all about the Walker case. He said a number of things I hadn't heard others say before.

“Back in those days they had the signs, you know. He'd been told don't do one or the other. And apparently he did and he was found shot with buckshot. Something like 250 holes were found in his car. I think a tree might have been cut across the road and he might have gotten out to check on the tree and they shot him.”

I told him about Emma.

“Yeah I know her,” he said.

“She still around?” I asked.

“Yup," he replied, "I talked to Emma last week. She was involved?”

It was no longer dated hearsay. Emma was alive.

“She’s mentioned in the documents as having knowledge,” I explained, trying to not speak too excitedly.

“I’ve been in law enforcement in this town 33 years, 34 years in January. She’s been here ever since then,” Reese said. “She ran a big night club. I know her quite well, and we always got along good.”

“When she ran that juke, I was the deputy and we had a lot dealings,” Reese continued. “A lot of them at these jukes don’t like to tell you who was fighting, but she’d always point em out to me and have em arrested and try to stop things. She tried to run a pretty good place. She had a lot of pull back in them days.”

I finally met Emma the next morning. She was 81 years old, tall, even as she bent to use her cane. She had small, braided pigtails pinned tightly behind her ears. She was getting over the flu and was wearing a white, terrycloth robe. Her recollections comported with details in the 1964 Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol documents.

"They come down there and they questioned me," she said. "They knocked on the door, I answered the door and they just pushed the door on over."

After the murder she was living in Louisiana.

"They brought me big pictures. He was laying there with blood, he was full of blood and I didn't look at them cause it was horrible."

She clearly had not forgotten it.

Did she have information crucial to my investigation? She sure didn't think so, but that remains to be seen.

(Cross-posted on The Civil Rights Cold Case Project blog.)

X-rays reveal that two bullets were not removed from James Chaney's body during the autopsy after he, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered by a gang of Klansmen in Neshoba County, MS, June 21 1964. James Chaney's brother Ben has told the Clarion Ledger's Jerry Mitchell that the Chaney family will allow the body to be exhumed to allow investigators to try matching the bullets to a murder weapon.

Exhuming James Chaney's body could help identify others involved in the Ku Klux Klan's 1964 killings of Chaney and two other civil rights workers, a world-renowned forensic pathologist says.

That's because X-rays show two bullets were never removed from Chaney, said Dr. Michael Baden of New York City. "They're still in his body, and they could be matched to the weapons that did it."

The FBI contacted Baden last week about his findings.

Chaney's brother, Ben, said he and his family support an exhumation. "If they (FBI agents) want to take the bullets from my brother, we'll do that," he said. "Whatever they need."

This evidence first came to light in 2005, when Baden and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne were studying the X-rays and other evidence for the 2005 prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen---the Klansman who was convicted that year on manslaughter charges for his role in orchestrating the killings of the three civil rights workers.

After the defense agreed to the facts, prosecutors didn't call the two forensic pathologists as witnesses.

Baden said he decided to request the exhumation after hearing the FBI was now reinvestigating the trio's killings.

No murder weapons were ever found in the trio's killings, but former inmate Larry Ellis, who had a prison cell next to Killen in 2007, recently told FBI agents that Killen talked of a murder weapon being buried on his property. Killen, who was a part-time preacher, lived in Union.

If a gun was recovered, it still could be tested to see if it fired the fatal bullets into Chaney, Baden said. "And there might still be DNA and fingerprints on the weapon."...

According to a confession by Horace Doyle Barnette, Klansman Alton Wayne Roberts grabbed Schwerner, 24, and shot him once, then grabbed Goodman, 20, and shot him once. Jordan then joined Roberts - and perhaps others - in shooting Chaney, 21, to death.

Ballistics confirmed that bullets removed from all three bodies came from two different .38-caliber pistols.

Why weren't the pathologists called to the stand in 2005? Roberts is dead but, as noted in the article sidebar, four suspects are still living:

• Olen Burrage of Philadelphia
• Pete Harris of Meridian
• former Philadelphia police officer Richard Willis of Noxapater
• Jimmie Snowden of Hickory

In 2005, there were as many as 9 other living suspects. Not knowing all that was involved in accomplishing a successful prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen, I allow there may have been reason to limit testimony once the defense agreed to the facts in the case. But without more information important questions linger, pointing to possible cover-ups.

Ben Chaney has said that when pursuing the indictment of Edgar Ray Killen in 2005,

the District Attorney did not vigorously in the grand jury proceedings pursue the indictments against ... the remaining people that participated in this crime.

After the Killen trial the prosecutors misrepresented crucial facts in the case. Prosecutors ambitious to right four decades of denied justice should have viewed the trial as an important discovery tool for bringing new evidence to light. Instead, new evidence has remained hidden four and a half years while suspects have been dying off.

Justice and the truth require swift, efficient and determined action. When it comes to these decades old cold cases, there is no time for selective disclosures of evidence.The Justice Department and the state of Mississippi must pursue this evidence without delay.

One of the themes of this blog is the pressing need to look not only at who pulled the trigger in decades old Civil Rights Era murders but also to look more broadly at how institutions, people in positions of power and others in the broader society enabled or encouraged the countless crimes against African Americans and their allies.

Jerry Mitchell's journalism does both.

In the video above, Jerry discusses with Stephen Colbert some of the murderers his reporting has helped to put away. In their discussion, Jerry also touches on the corruption that he exposed in the handling of the two 1964 Byron De La Beckwith trials that ended in mistrials. Jerry  exposed that the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was aiding Beckwith's defense while the state was prosecuting him. The Sovereignty Commission was the spy agency established by the Mississippi State Legislature in 1956 to monitor and oppose civil rights activity. The Commission's files were declassified in 1998 and are available online.

This week Jerry has published a remarkable article adding substantial new evidence that former US Senator James O. Eastland (D-MS) had strong ties with the Ku Klux Klan and played a significant role in helping Klansmen escape convictions for their alleged roles in the Neshoba County murders of the three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

Informants told the FBI that Eastland met with Klan leaders and courted the Klan's vote in his 1966 re-election race. The senator also talked with suspects in the Neshoba County case, including then-Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and defense lawyers, getting updates on the case.

In 1965, U.S. District Judge Harold Cox of Jackson - whose appointment to the bench Eastland engineered - threw out the indictments of all the suspects, except Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Price.

An FBI memo said Eastland, who was a college buddy of Cox, "has been taking credit for the federal government dropping charges against those indicted in the Neshoba County slayings."

According to the FBI, Rainey penned a letter saying, "I know for a fact that James O. Eastland helped prevent the trial of 16 other men."

On March 28, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the indictments.

A "prominent local Klansman" in Meridian told the FBI that Eastland had appeared at a rally in Forest and invited Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers to speak with him: "Eastland stated that he would help the 17 defendants in the Neshoba County case and that he has been 'pulling strings for them.'"

Jerry's article also discusses soon to be published writings and statements by Killen, as well as other evidence, elaborating on the Klansman's alleged ties to his US Senator.

Eastland grew up in Hillsboro and was buried in Eastern Cemetery in Forest.

Killen, who grew up in neighboring south Neshoba County, said he developed a relationship with Eastland after becoming friends with Leander Perez, an arch-segregationist in Louisiana.

Documents from the Eastland papers at the University of Mississippi show Eastland and Perez shared information on purported communists.

Ellis told the FBI that Killen said his work for Eastland was "to stop the communist Jews or their soldiers."

(Read the rest.)

The Speech from Document Films on Vimeo.

On the night of Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress – a rarity for any sitting president – we dragged an old tv into the waiting room to show the assembled patients and staff Obama’s speech and get their reactions. Here Robert Taylor and Sheon Slaughter, both uninsured, offered their thoughts. Highland Hospital volunteer Lucy Ogbu and Certified Nurse Assistant Amy Johnson also discuss the implications of the speech.

Highland Hospital is in Oakland, CA. For more information---and for many more video clips from the hospital---check out The Waiting Room.

Aunt Esther at age 96

Last winter I drove to Providence, RI full of trepidation and sadness. My incredible Aunt Esther, my maternal grandfather's sister, had pneumonia. I was going to see her to make sure I had the chance to say goodbye.

To everyone's, including her own, surprise, she pulled through. "I saw the pearly gates---and they shut!" she said to us bemusedly. Thus we were able to have the pleasure of gathering together in Providence this summer to celebrate her 99th birthday and the start of her 100th year.

And thus WRNI had the opportunity to take an audio snapshot of my sage, spunky and inspirational great aunt. You can listen to it right here.

Standard Podcast [ 5:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

www.markmulcahy.com

I'm a huge fan of Mark Mulcahy's music, and I'd like to help make sure that he can keep producing it. Now you can get a great collection of Mark Mulcahy covers by an incredible range of artists and support the continuation of his musical projects while he also raises his twin toddlers solo, following the unexpected death of his wife.

Connecticut has produced musicians more famous than Mark Mulcahy, but few who have been more influential.

Just how influential is evident on "Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy" (Shout Factory), a CD and digital collection of songs by the singer, songwriter and one-time leader of the New Haven band Miracle Legion. After Miracle Legion, he fronted Polaris, which wrote the theme for the Nickelodeon show "The Adventures of Pete and Pete."

The 41-song collection (21 on a CD, an additional 20 available online only) features covers of Mulcahy and Miracle Legion songs performed by artists that include R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, the Pixies' Frank Black, Fountains of Wayne's Chris Collingwood, Dinosaur Jr. and the National.

It's a loving tribute, to be sure, but not to Mulcahy. Rather, "Ciao My Shining Star" is a remembrance of his wife, Melissa Rich, who died unexpectedly a year ago, leaving Mulcahy to raise their 2-year-old twin daughters."

Purchase and support the work of Mark Mulcahy:

• iTunes
• Amazon

Listen to tracks and learn more:

• MySpace
• Sterogum
• Pitchfork
• Icon vs. Icon

Past Hungry Blues blog post on Mark Mulcahy (mini concert review):

• Don't Talk Crazy

Many thanks to Pam Spaulding for capturing John Lewis' speech at Equality Alabama's gala a couple of weekends ago. John Lewis is an American hero and a powerful speaker; it is fantastic to hear him speaking so strongly on this issue and declaring himself an ally to the GLBT community.

John Lewis took batons to the head, was beaten to unconsciousness multiple times for equality -- courage and moral conviction that [Bishop Harry] Jackson and his fellow charlatans of bigotry are bereft of.

Rep. Lewis spoke eloquently about the simplicity of the government staying out of the lives of gay and lesbian couples -- there is no need to "save" marriage from two people who simply want to love one another and be legally affirmed in the same way that heterosexual couples are when they marry.

But perhaps the most powerful message was to those in the LGBT community who are waiting for equality to come to them -- Lewis charged us to seize the moment, do not accept being told to wait your turn, to demand your rights through your representative, and most of all take personal responsibility -- the message we all heard was loud and clear.

(Read the rest of Pam's post on Lewis' appearance at the Equality Alabama gala.)

Congratulations to Jerry Mitchell!

Jerry Mitchell at the Crimes of the Civil Rights Era conference, Northeastern University Law School, April 28, 2007

A papermaker dedicated to preserving traditional Western and Japanese techniques; a scientist developing theories of global climate change; and a journalist who helps uncover details of unsolved murders from the civil rights era are among the 24 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards,” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation....

Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter at The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss., who focuses on cold-case murders from the civil rights era, said he would use the money to help write a book on the subject. “I never in all my life expected this,” Mr. Mitchell, 50, said of his award.

I have been following Jerry's work almost as long as I've had this blog and more recently have had the honor and pleasure of getting to know him professionally. Here's a bit more about him for those unfamiliar:

He has been called "a loose cannon," "a pain in the ass" and "a white traitor." Whatever he's been called, Jerry Mitchell has never given up in his quest to bring unpunished killers to justice, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's Simon Wiesenthal."

Since 1989, the 47-year-old investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., has unearthed documents, cajoled suspects and witnesses, and quietly pursued evidence in the nation's notorious killings from the civil rights era.

His work so far has helped put four Klansmen behind bars: Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers for ordering the fatal firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer in 1966, Bobby Cherry for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls and, most recently, Edgar Ray Killen, for helping orchestrate the June 21, 1964, killings of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

So far in 2006, Mitchell has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the winner of the George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, the winner of the Vernon Jarrett Award for Investigative Reporting and the Tom Renner Award for Crime Reporting from Investigative Reporters and Editors. Last November, Mitchell became youngest recipient ever of Columbia University's John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism for his 17 years of pursuing justice.

David Halberstam said in helping bestow the Chancellor award, "Mitchell pursued these stories after most people believed they belonged to history, and not to journalism. But they did belong to journalism, because the truth had never been told and justice had never been done."

In 1989, Mitchell was a court reporter for The Clarion-Ledger when the film Mississippi Burning inspired him to look into old civil rights cases that many thought had long since turned cold. Through dogged reporting, which cut across the grain of his paper and many of its readers, he investigated leads long ignored or overlooked.

For example, Mitchell's diligent attention to detail unraveled the alibi of Cherry, who claimed he was watching wrestling on television when the bomb was planted inside the Birmingham church. Mitchell had the newspaper's librarian check the TV schedule in the old issues of the Birmingham News. There was no wrestling program on at the time.

His work inspired others. Since 1989, authorities in Mississippi and six other states have reexamined 29 killings from the civil rights era and made 27 arrests, leading to 22 convictions.

"It is fair to say that without Mitchell's dogged and often courageous reporting ... many murders from the civil rights era would have remained unvindicated, locked forever in the vaults of regional amnesia," wrote Tribune syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker.

(Read more.)

You can't grow up in in the home of a political radical from the 1950s and 60s without hearing Peter, Paul and Mary. I'm very sad to hear of the death of Mary Travis. She raised the roof for freedom and justice her whole career. If there's a heavenly place where great spirits celebrate together Mary is surely whooping it up with them now.

• NY Times Obit
• Bio of Mary Travis from peterpaulandmary.com
• Statements from Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey

Have you called Congress to say you support health care reform that includes a public option?

Even if you have, call again.

202-224-3121

Grand Casino, Biloxi, MS, five months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Mississippi.

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 completely destroyed, leaving few structures within which to identify still-water marks." The center's researchers estimate that the hurricane produced a storm surge as high as 27 feet in some locations.

It was dumbfounding to drive along the coast in Biloxi and find the Grand Casino on the north side of Highway 90. Before Katrina, the casino was on a barge, docked off the beach, south of the highway. The storm surge lifted the casino barge out of the water, over the beach and over the highway. If you stand at the western end of the barge and look east, you can see the yellow and blue neon sign, a half mile down the road, where the barge originally sat. The same thing happened to two other casino barges—the President Casino in Biloxi, which landed on top of a Holiday Inn, and the Gulfport Grand Casino....

The national media have covered the near-total destruction of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Driving along Beach Boulevard in the two towns, I saw a few people who had returned and were living in trailers on their plots of land, but practically everything was deserted. All that remained were the merest remnants of homes and the things that had been inside them....

In each place I visited along the western half of Mississippi's Gulf Coast, the look of the destruction was a little different, but it was consistently total. And surprisingly, the destruction in the coastal areas of Pascagoula, at the eastern end of the state, is comparable. I remembered George W. Bush's promise to rebuild another "fantastic house" for Trent Lott on the Pascagoula beachfront. I did not know that 95% of the city's residential areas went underwater or that 65% of the city's homes remain uninhabitable. Northrop Grumman Ship Systems' facility in Pascagoula, which before Katrina employed 19,800 people, was all but obliterated.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out the entire Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The scale of the destruction is difficult to comprehend. All along the coast—mile after mile—just about anything that was there is now gone.

But this is only part of the story. According to the National Hurricane Center, the surge "penetrated at least six miles inland in many portions of coastal Mississippi and up to 12 miles inland along bays and rivers. The surge crossed Interstate 10 in many locations." Interstate 10 runs east-west, four miles or more north of coastal Highway 90.

Gayle Tart's brother Sam and his son John died in Pass Christian during the hurricane, on John's second birthday. Tart explained that father and son had drowned inside their own home.

"Water never came down there [before Katrina]. That's across the track. [With Katrina] that water came in and that water went out, and the velocity was unbelievable," Tart said. "The first boundary was the beach and the next boundary was the highway. The day after the storm, you saw neither—no beach and no highway."

When I wrote this for Dollars & Sense Magazine in 2006, I focused on the housing crisis faced by Katrina survivors in Mississippi. Today, at the fourth anniversary of the storm, the housing crisis rages on, thanks to government inaction and skewed priorites.

Small rental and workforce housing progress has fallen dramatically short of State predictions, and so Mississippi has asked HUD for additional funds to temporarily subsidize lower-income residents in market rate rentals....

• Mississippi has allocated just over half its funds on housing, and has lowered its commitment to housing by over $800 million in the past 2 years. Louisiana has allocated over 85 percent to housing programs and increased its commitment over the same period.
• Mississippi has spent just under half its funds, while Louisiana has spent almost 68 percent of its funds, widening its lead over Mississippi.
• Mississippi diverted $600 million from its housing program to a port expansion, while Louisiana intends to reinvest $600 million in unused Road Home funds for housing assistance for low-income residents.
• Mississippi took longer to spend less later for low-income residents than for wealthier residents.

But the housing crisis was just one part of the ongoing disaster. Katrina has also been a cultural and ecological disaster of epic proportions.

A family photo rests on the foundation slab of a home obliterated by Hurricane Katrina in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

I emphasize Mississippi in this blog post because I know that nearly all of the fourth anniversary coverage of the ongoing Katrina aftermath, will focus myopically on New Orleans. The situation in New Orleans is still dire. The housing crisis is dire. But there will not be an adequate recovery until the interconnectedness of regions and issues becomes a fundamental insight that drives policy.

While poor and minority survivors and activists will agree (if anyone asks them) that they face multiple, interconnected disasters in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, this basic local insight goes largely unrecognized. Government failure is certainly most responsible for a "recovery" that has been arbitrary, resource-driven, and slow rather than holistic, need-driven, or effective. But no one, progressives as a group included, has adequately depicted, let alone offset, that failure. Narrowly focused aid has often segregated otherwise related issues, making one or another worse and masking the lack of an overall plan. Residents of the region feel tremendous gratitude to the tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of volunteers whose countless hours of labor, along with their financial contributions, are primarily responsible for what rebuilding has occurred. However, this individual good will is no substitute for the kind of comprehensive, coordinated, and sustained response that is needed from government at all levels.

Unfortunately, no thoughtful and coordinated response will occur without a compelling grassroots push for community visibility, multi-issue awareness, and broad social justice for Gulf Coast survivors. Our region today remains in a cultural, environmental, economic, and human rights crisis no less severe than its more frequently discussed housing crunch and extending far beyond the parishes of its famed city, New Orleans. The media, policymakers, academicians, and private funding groups repeatedly fail to recognize regional connectivity or to challenge the basic invisibility of the Gulf Coast's multiply wounded communities and ecosystems—together, its very soul. [P]iecemeal analyses and responses ... are moving social justice and equitable recovery nowhere fast.

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act, still needing co-sponsors in the House, is a step in the right direction:

a hybrid model to partner directly with communities in planning, overseeing and administering recovery projects to assist the survivors of these disasters, provide communities with tools to build resilience against the impact of future disasters and revitalize the region economically.  The bill would create a minimum of 100,000 prevailing wage jobs and training opportunities for local and displaced workers on projects reinvesting in infrastructure and restoring the coastal environment utilizing emerging green building techniques and technologies.  This program would empower residents to realize their right to return with dignity and create stronger, safer, and more equitable communities.

Ask your Representative to co-sponsor this important legislation.

Carland Baker, Sr. on the site of his former townhouse, Longwood Apartments, 2012 2nd St, Long Beach, MS.

More reading and resources

• Marian Wright Edelman, Katrina's Children---Still Struggling
• Jeffrey Buchanan, Four Years Later, Let's End the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille
• The STEPS Coalition, Hurricane Katrina: Has Mississippi Fallen Further Behind?
• Institute for Southern Studies, SPECIAL REPORT: How is Obama doing on Gulf Coast recovery?
• Institute for Southern Studies, Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
• Children's Defense Fund, What It Takes to Rebuild a Village after a Disaster
• The KatrinaRitaVille Express
• Advocates for Environmental Human Rights
  
• Mississippi Center for Justice
• The Gulf Coast Fund

This video is from a film by my friend Pete Nicks, who is the guy with the camera in my banner image, above. The film, The Waiting Room, is a timely documentary about our health care system, as seen at The Alameda County Medical Center in Oakland, CA.

THE WAITING ROOM will follow three people waiting in their own way: Wright Lassiter, the hospital’s CEO, who is struggling to run an under-funded public hospital while waiting for the health care system to change, Lydia Vasquez, a young uninsured woman waiting for the birth of her first child, and Kevin Washington, a young uninsured man who has slipped through the cracks, waiting for a miracle after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. These narratives will be punctuated by content interstitials culled from the social media space, both user-generated and produced: videos submitted online, blog posts cinematically dramatized, conversations between patients and policy makers in Washington, DC, photos and stories from the front lines of the hospital waiting room.

It's not just a film; it's a project. Read the rest to find out more about it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 18, 2009
Contact: Linda Pinkow, (617) 447-2177, ext 204, linda@dollarsandsense.org

New Anthology Explores the State of Labor

Real World Labor
Edited by Immanuel Ness, Amy Offner, Chris Sturr, and the Dollars & Sense Collective

In this time of rapid economic change, the power of organized labor seems to be in decline. But new organizing strategies are emerging to challenge corporate power and the globalization of capital. Real World Labor examines the most pressing issues facing workers today: fundamental changes in the nature of work and wages; new legal impediments to union organizing; the persistence of racial and gender discrimination; migrant workers’ struggle for dignity; militarism and its harmful effects on the working class; union responses to the global financial meltdown; and new forms of rank-and-file organizing and resistance.

Real World Labor provides up-to-date, accessible, and penetrating analysis of the most significant theoretical, historical, and practical issues confronting labor unions and workers on a national and global level. This collection includes 70 authoritative essays by leading writers and scholars of the labor movement, drawn from the pages of Dollars & Sense magazine, Working USA, and Labor Notes.

Real World Labor is an antidote to the misinformation, false arguments, and faulty analysis so common in the mainstream media and among orthodox economists. An excellent classroom resource.

— MICHAEL YATES
associate editor of Monthly Review,
author of Why Unions Matter

For any labor studies course, Real World Labor is the most comprehensive and accessible book available today. Written by authoritative scholars of the labor movement in the United States and worldwide, no book compares to this work in its breadth of coverage and scope of analysis. This is the only collection that provides an in-depth overview of labor issues in an accessible manner to anyone interested in understanding the most significant issues facing workers and the contemporary labor movement. I highly recommend this book to all!

— THOMAS J. KRIGER
Provost, National Labor College

Real World Labor, like decades of Dollars & Sense books, is bound to be a great guide to labor issues, with a wide range of perspectives for both union members and students.

— LARRY COHEN
President, Communications Workers of America

Order an exam copy (pdf's as well as hard copies are available), and browse our catalog of economics books at www.dollarsandsense.org, or call (617) 447-2177.

Real World Labor
Edited by Immanuel Ness, Amy Offner, Chris Sturr, and the Dollars & Sense Collective
ISBN: 978-1-878585-55-4
Publication date: August 2009
Pages: 330
Price: $34.95
Contributors include: David Bacon, Kim Bobo, Heather Bouchey, Roger Bybee, Aviva Chomsky, Steve Early, Bill Fletcher Jr., Staughton Lynd, Arthur MacEwan, John Miller, Immanuel Ness, Thomas Palley, Frances Fox Piven, Robert Pollin, Paddy Quick, Peter Rachleff, Alejandro Reuss, Jane Slaughter, Lucien Van Der Walt, and others.

Contents:
Chapter 1 - Labor Law, Policy, and Regulation
Chapter 2 - Wages and the Labor Market
Chapter 3 - Employment and Unemployment
Chapter 4 - International Labor Movements
Chapter 5 - Discrimination by Race and Gender
Chapter 6 - Immigration and Migration
Chapter 7 - Unions and Organizing Strategy
Chapter 8 - Competing Forms of Management
Chapter 9 - Labor, Globalization, and Trade
Chapter 10 - Labor and Economic Crisis
Chapter 11 - Labor and Militarism

Read more about Real World Labor at www.dollarsandsense.org.

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