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Rootsblog
-- Katrina Commentary: The
Players & Complexities of The Game
Katrina
& Kalamu Creating Community in
Cyberspace "web
sites have been and will continue to be vital" (Miriam)
To: K. Brisbane
We have a coworker who is from
Gulfport/Biloxi and has just come back from trying to help his
parents see what they had left (they had evacuated to his house
up here in North Mississippi). He said the churches were
the only ones down there helping (the people from our church who
went down had someone originally from down there and they took
back roads to keep from being stopped by the authorities -
sneaked in, you might say). He said they had not seen any
FEMA people til more than a week after, and that the Red Cross
just showed up last Sunday. He said they were passing out
ice and MREs, but the churches were the ones providing help all
along.
It's what I'm hearing from my cousin down there, but I
don't hear from her much because she's staying at someone else's
house in Mobile, AL while she and her husband go back and forth
to Pascagoula trying to work on their house that had 4.5 feet of
water in it during the storm.
I assume you've read the stories about people trying to
walk out of N.O. being turned back by armed deputies? if
not, go to some of these:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9324538/
http://blogs.sohh.com/katrina/archives/2005/09/why_the_hurricane_survivors_co.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article311784.ece
These deputies and their chief need to go to jail. Now.
--Waurene Roberson
*
* * * *
Free
in Tobago
How do we let people know what is really
going on down there? I thought of passing on emails coming
from folk there or who are getting info from family members down
there. Read Waurene's account [above]
K. Brisbane
* * *
* *
Rudy
It's so heartening to know (1) that people
are responding so well to the crisis (2) that the folk are
rising, phoenix-like from the ashes (or, rather, the wading in
the water), and (3) that musicians, artists, and writers are
using their talents to focus attention on the issues. You,
Kalamu, and
others are deep in that water. —Miriam
Rudy and Arthur (Rootsblog),
you and others like you who have web sites have been and will
continue to be vital in the effort of distributing information
and raising awareness. —Miriam
* *
* * *
Web sites have been and will continue to be vital —Miriam
During the evacuation drama, if you recall
several of us set up a kind of clearinghouse—Joyce
King, Herbert Rogers, Arthur Flowers and others—we
all made use of our email address books in passing along and
filtering information and finding out the health of people we
knew and how they could be assisted. So we all discovered that
this tool—email
system—was
not just for personal and business uses, but also a means of
responding to community needs and acting as a community.
Most of these individuals we only know
through cyberspace. Most of us have never touched flesh. Then,
there were also academic listservs and more commercial websites,
as well as bloggers who all came together in relating Katrina information,
and relating to each other. This whole episode in the coming
together of these diverse groups and individuals needs some
reflection and thought on this special phenomenon.
One thing I learned is that I had to better
organize information I was receiving for there was a
ton of it. Of course, I had a couple of people who asked to
be taken off my list. But they were a tiny few. To
manage the material I started using folders and
sub-folders. I also have an email system that can hold 2000mb of
information and here I also use folders and I have a
security system that assures me. I have also started using more
links on ChickenBones: A Journal (www.nathanielturner.com), which is also a
way of organizing information, that is, where websites and blogs
are. I also had to make decisions on what to publish and what to
link, what will have lasting value.
One of the peculiar things about ChickenBones
in relation to other websites is that we have always behaved in
a dynamic manner, unlike the behavior of "journals"
and "magazines" with weekly, monthly routines. If
information is sent us, it might be up an hour later. One
well-known black journal was on vacation during most of the
Katrina coverage. So with its flexibility and dynamism and
collaborative spirit ChickenBones was probably able to
play a greater role than some other independent black websites.
Of course, our non-commercial,
non-institutional character kept us at a distance from
"media objectivity" and "Katrina donation"
efforts as was the case with the more commercial and institution
connected websites. Of course, I think that cultural
consciousness and social and personal commitment played a
role, also, in these matters. Of course, there were black
organizations with websites who did nothing in regard to
the Katrina efforts. Yet some of them worry about
where they appear in google.
As I have stated Kalamu
ya Salaam is my model for black commitment in
cyberspace. He has hosted the listserv e-drum
365 days for seven years. No charge. He used his new
website Breath of Life (www.kalamu.com/bol),
another of his non-commercial efforts, significantly and
strategically, with programmed music to soothe our anguished
souls and inspire our efforts. And he has been planning another
site to deal with video and sound and New Orleans cultural life.
He has been theorizing for years on the use of the internet by
writers, artists, and other cultural workers. So he is the
central example for me and others should pay attention to the
genius of the man “Digital
Technology & Telling Our Story.” I
have been observing his work since 1999.
I think we all need to become more conscious
of the tools and the potential of the tools we have in our
possession. We need to be more conscious and aware of each
other, and patient and tolerant with each other, and willing to
learn from each other, and adopt a spirit of collaboration. We
need to tabulate those listservs, websites, blogs, whether black
white, Asian or, Hispanic, that we are able to work with and use
in our efforts.
The Katrina experience should be viewed as a
wake-up call for blacks in cyberspace. The internet can be used
for more than just selling our wares and other business
enticements, tea room talk, and institutional transmission of
institutional information. I'm an infant, four years in
cyberspace, I know I'm still learning, reflecting, figuring how
I can make best use of our efforts and make it relevant to black
and progressive struggle across the globe.
We know that it's possible to make the
internet a much fuller experience. As TV surpassed radio, the
internet can have the same kind of impact. We are far away from
a text-based internet, we got images and sound now (which can be
experienced in combination), and Kalamu is working on his own
website of image and sound together. With Windows we
can listen to Breath of Life
while at the same time browse ChickenBones. Or listen to
Bob Marley while we read an article on ChickenBones. Or
listen to Big
Chief Monk Boudreaux on the Tipitina's
website.
And there is internet radio, which I doubt
played any significant role at all during this crisis, because
people still ain't hip to it. Times-Picayune discovered
it had more influence online than with its paper copy. People
are learning that there is no conflict between paper publishing
and internet publishing. Academics are also discovering this
fact. Because they publish an article on ChickenBones
that does not stop that same article being published in paper.
So all of us got to regear our thoughts with
regard to the vitality and necessity of creating community in
cyberspace.
As ever and always, Rudy
* * *
* *
Rudy,
Today was Mother's Day (when I go to spend
time with my mother), so I'm just now getting around to my
messages.
If you're an infant, then I'm still in the
womb, but it has just been amazing to me what you guys—you,
Kalamu, Arthur, and others in the network like Herbert and
Sandra—are
doing. I'm not a techie at all, so this whole experience
has been a real revelation to me. Although Herbert had
told me about ChickenBones, I really had not accessed it
or known about Kalamu's or Arthur's work.
In your essay, you have made a very cogent
and insightful assessment of the significance of the
technological tools that are available—and
are yet to come—in
communicating ideas. In fact, I'm going to send your
statement to people I know who are hooked in and on the new
stuff, and I'll print up a copy for one of my radical
/progressive/activist friends who criticizes use of the
technology without understanding its tremendous impact.
Thank you for all that you're doing and
thinking and communicating.
Peace, Miriam
* * *
* *
From Canada
I fully agree Rudolph. I have sent on your emails to
my friends and family across the United States, Canada, Mexico
and Guyana and they in turn have sent your e-mails on to their
contacts. We have a powerful tool of communication at our
disposal and in time we will with effort and continued planning
be able to use it to its fullest potential. Keep up the good
work.
Claire Carew
* * *
* *
I thought that many of you with whom I've
been communicating in the past two weeks would be interested in
reading this assessment of the significance of technology with
respect to the Katrina disaster: in helping to locate
people; getting help to them in the form of jobs and
information, spreading the real truth; negating the lies from
the government and, in some cases, the media; and developing a
discourse around such issues as racism, displacement,
reconstruction, and the environment.
Like me, you all probably felt like stations
on the Underground Railroad, with messages, questions, appeals,
and published articles, coming in right and left, and I thank
you for all your work, which bore tangible results. An
African American lawyer in Tobago has sized up all the
charitable organizations to find out which ones—other
than the Red Cross & Salvation Army—are
really helping on the grassroots letter. Another organized
her friends, bought supplies, and mailed them to Louisiana.
One person has been spirit-led to start a
purple ribbon crosses campaign, which is catching on like
wildfire. Many have written powerful poems and essays
about the tragedy, while others are capturing the voices of the
displaced. A friend who cares about the Cuban people keeps
us abreast of their concern and offers of help. Another
made posters for the demonstration last week and brought along
several of her colleagues. Several searched web sites
looking for those who hadn't been heard from, and many have
helped find temporary or permanent positions for the evacuees.
The main thing is that we're working
together, many of us for the first time, to reach out to those
in need. —Miriam
* * *
* *
Miriam and Claire, peace and
blessings,
thanks for your kind words and efforts. I
took the liberty and posted your comments here on ChickenBones.
Note also that Kalamu is on the case with Breath
of Life. There's a rap tune already out with Kanye West's
comments about George Bush.
It is indeed astounding how far many of us
are in back of the curve with respect to the uses of digital
technology. We have many high schools and teachers who neither
have computers and computer labs and technical staff to maintain
them, to teach the various uses that they can be put to. We have
teachers and professors who boast that they do not use email.
It's a shameful affair. And, of course, these adults do not
trust our students with the technology because we are afraid of
our children--what they might discover about us and what they
might say about us. So we place great restrictions on their use.
So many of our children are poor and thus
have little access to the technology and its educational value.
And, of course, the public libraries are no longer teaching
institutions, and so they are of little help to those students
who drop out, and they are many. Of course, there are some
who are indeed making use of digital technology. Kalamu has been
involved in teaching digital technology to high school
students--writing scripts and making film. His teaching
program is all written out. I've seen some of that work and
it is excellent.
But, of course, it is not just tech knowledge
to which I refer. It is technical knowledge and right purpose
and attitude, as can be understood in Kalamu's WORDS:
A Neo-Griot Manifesto. It is not just technical
knowledge, but an informed approach that will make the
difference. We telling our own story, from our own unique
sensibility, that's the thing we got to get to. And from the
recent fiasco in New Orleans we know how important that
is.
Corporate media produced important material
with their cameras, but their reports and analyses were off the
mark. Our email systems, blogs, and websites changed how
the story was shaped and we discovered quite quickly that
other people from Europe, Asia, and Africa were not looking
on our suffering with the same insensitivity as many of our fellow
countrymen.
So our educators and our schools got to get
hip to what century we in and begin to behave accordingly. Your
words and sentiments, I believe, will go a long way in altering
these regressive attitudes. As you know, it is still a chore to teach
black history in public schools, for fear of offending a
minority of white students. Cable TV and NPR and PBS will
not do the work for us, for here too the messages are
usually shaped by those who are not us, for us, and often fear
us. Academics at colleges and universities have the technology.
But there are only a few that are making full use of it for
their professors or for their students or for the general
community. Again, shameless.
But cyberspace is much more democratic,
cheaper and thus accessible for those who don't have
corporate or foundation backing. Thus there are many more
opportunities and greater possibilities of shaping
our world as we need it to be shaped and when we need it shaped.
These efforts depend on individual initiative, commitment,
and enduring consciousness. What Kalamu, Ethelbert,
Arthur Flowers,
and I do today is only pioneering work. We are still at the
early stages. We still learning the technology and the
technology is improving and we still learning how to work it and
work with each other.
But I am hopeful and expect great things to
happen. As ever and always, Rudy
posted 18 September 2005 |
