Good Work

Hi Rudy,

It's great that you and ChickenBones are supporting efforts to help the victims. We in the school system are developing a plan. ChickenBones continues to do well. That's great.

Be blessed, 

Yvonne 

YTvonne@aol.com

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Creating Community 

I have to admit that I am grieving, Rudy.

Got to find a way to make a meaningful contribution. I'm cleaning out my clothes closet and gathering up other supplies. The whole scene has put my mother back in bed. She's 87. She lives with me and we used to live in New Orleans.  The racism in the reporting is so deep.

Your friend, Joyce

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CLA and Aid to Katrina Victims

Miriam and all my dear friends,

I am going to start a clothes drive.  Many are without clothes, shoes, etc. until they can get settled.  We have a faculty member here from New Orleans who has lost her home.  Her mother is in a hospital along with her sister and can't evacuate.  I will work with all to help in any way I can.  Has anyone heard from Karen, Jerry, Bernardo and others?  Dellita, how is your family?

Caroll

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Katrina Victims/Talent/Skills DataBank

Dear Caroll, Dellita, and James,

I am writing to you because you are friends and colleagues, as well as present or former officers of CLA to see if there's something that we can do to help our colleagues at Dillard, Xavier, and Southern Universities who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina.  I have been thinking about friends like Karen Becnel Moore, Elizabeth Brown Guillory, and Jerry Ward, who are long-time members of CLA, and about other college professors, artists, and scholars from New Orleans.  You will remember that this group hosted the 2001 CLA convention in New Orleans.

Yesterday I received an indirect communication from a noted writer who was forced to relocate to Houston, where he has no home or job.  I learned today of another professor who was staying in a Houston hotel for $79, but had to move to an army facility where he pays $19.  The plight of students and faculty from these historically-Black colleges is desperate, and we should try to help.  We can do three things: 

1.  LOCATE - We can tap into the networks of these professors--their friends, colleagues, and families--to get their phone numbers, addresses, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, anything that might help us to reach them.

2. CONTACT - We can send messages to them to find out how they are, where they're located, and what we can do to help.

3. ASSIST - We can use our contacts at schools, colleges, universities, libraries, churches, and other institutions to open up opportunities for lectures, readings, consultantships, editing jobs, part-time teaching, etc.

The devastation of the hurricane is overwhelming, but if each of us does ONE positive thing, it will help to ease the burden.

Can someone volunteer to look through the list of members in a recent issue of CLAJ to obtain names & addresses of those located in the Gulf Coast area. (My CLAJs are in Memphis)  Could you send me those names on an e-mail attachment.

Once we have a list, could you, James, as Treasurer, provide us with any e-mail addresses that you have for those members?

In the meantime, will you forward this message to other CLA members whom you know.

Most important:  Will you talk to your dept. chair, dean, or provost about inviting one of these professors to come to your college/university--with an honorarium & travel expenses.

Finally, we can contribute to one of the organizations that have established relief funds to help these colleges: The United Negro College Fund (www.uncf.org), the National Association of Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (www.nafeo.org), and HBCUconnect.com, the largest online destination for HBCU students & alumni, at www.hbcuconnect.com.

In peace,

Miriam 

MiriamDecWillis@cs.com

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Miriam, peace and blessings,

I think your approach is sound. If we can set up a talent, skills, data bank of all these professors and writers and musicians and other articulate people from New Orleans and environs, whatever programs or conferences that occur within the next year would have a means of contacting them, helping them, and inviting them to speak, to perform, or give papers or reports as a means of putting money in their pockets and pulling their lives back together.

If we can get these people on their feet they will be better able to help others in the region. Of course, we at ChickenBones: A Journal will do whatever we can to make that databank available to organizations and groups who are preparing programs. 

As ever and always, Rudy

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Rudy,

I agree with you, I think what Miriam has done is very good. Herbert hbrogers_98@yahoo.com

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That's a GREAT idea, Rudy.  If you can use ChickenBones: A Journal as a data bank, I'll feed you all the info that I can get.  I haven't visited the site in ages, but will do so now.  Herbert said that you have a lot of info about K. on the site.

Miriam

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Yes, Rudy this is in the direction and more functional and real then donating to the goddamn Red Cross. I want to help and be useful, not throw away money and energy into phony organizations. I am waiting to hear back from Kalamu about wiring him some cash.

Keep me posted as I want to help our brothers and sisters. It's really strange writing this from another country.

Dennis

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Don't forget your museum people. In fact, my wife, Rhonda Miller was teaching at Dillard and running a program at the Louisiana Children's Museum.  There is a lot of displaced talent out here.  I'm glad that I've got a third floor storage in New Orleans so that some of my artwork might have survived.

Chuck

chazze13@yahoo.com

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Katrina Networking

Dear Rudy,

Brenda Marie Osbey has a long note on Ethelbert's blog http://www.eethelbertmiller1.blogspot.com/ for 9-1-05 that may be of use in some way.

Jeannette

lcswpoet@yahoo.com

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Clearinghouse of Information

Dear Arthur,

I was happy to hear that the Flowers have found refuge in the city and are managing to survive the crisis.

I'm trying to do what I can here and in Memphis to help because the N. O. crisis is just devastating;  as someone commented the destruction is of "biblical proportions":  it's this country's tsunami and New Orleans in the new Pompeii.

I'll keep you posted.

Peace,
Miriam

MiriamDecWillis@cs.com

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miriam, my url, its http://rootsblog.typepad.com/rootsblog trying to set it up as a clearing house of information on katrina, i already have a post of yours on it
please keep me informed of anything you think i need to know to be effective

be well
arf
flowers@rootwork.com

New Orleans Floods: The Historical Record

this is a selection from nytimes columnist david brooks column. in it it talks about the social impacts of previous natural disasters in neworleans and elsewhere

arf
flowers@rootwork.com

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Then in 1927, the great Mississippi flood rumbled down upon New Orleans. As Barry writes in his account, "Rising Tide," the disaster ripped the veil off the genteel, feudal relations between whites and blacks, and revealed the festering iniquities. Blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the waters rose. A steamer, the Capitol, played "Bye Bye Blackbird" as it sailed away. The racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move north.

Civic leaders intentionally flooded poor and middle-class areas to ease the water's pressure on the city, and then reneged on promises to compensate those whose homes were destroyed. That helped fuel the populist anger that led to Huey Long's success. Across the country people demanded that the federal government get involved in disaster relief, helping to set the stage for the New Deal. The local civic elite turned insular and reactionary, and New Orleans never really recovered its preflood vibrancy.

We'd like to think that the stories of hurricanes and floods are always stories of people rallying together to give aid and comfort. And, indeed, each of America's great floods has prompted a popular response both generous and inspiring. But floods are also civic examinations. Amid all the stories that recur with every disaster - tales of sudden death and miraculous survival, the displacement and the disease - there is also the testing.

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

--selection from nytimes  

New Orleans & Black Relief

I was about to email you Kalamu my good friend today, I knew you would find someway of communicating.

I am not sure if we can do anything here in the UK. But I am seeking permission to reproduce your message in BAA newsletter

Until I hear from you  may the gods keep you and Nia safe.

With love

SuAndi

baa@blackartists.org.uk

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Rudy,

I would like to pull off something, but not in a group, because it will become more problematic for me and especially if money is involved.  I wouldn't be able to pull anything off now until January or February at the latest.

The way we work at Pratt, we must advertise in the "Compass" which has deadlines. I am going to have to sell the idea to the powers to be.  I think I maybe able to sell the idea with possibly the help of Reggie

Harris, who works here at Pratt and is also a poet. If I can get a date and an acceptable fee for him, perhaps these other people and/or organizations can have him do programs while here in the area.

But if I try to coordinate an event with others, I do not believe Pratt will be very helpful.

Just thought I would mention this to you.

As ever,

Herbert

hbrogers_98@yahoo.com

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August 31, 2005

Kalamu Needs Your Help (work)

Hello Rudy,

I see you are a strong brother unfazed by the hardships that we as a people must endure at times in our lives.

Stay Strong and proactive!

Ukali  LJRedd52@aol.com

PS My heart goes out to my people in New Orleans!! If there was an evacuation order where were the buses for the Blacks and the poor who had no cars or other means to evacuate. We ask the question but we know the answer just by  looking at what is going on in New Orleans!!! Therte were no buses for the Black and the poor!!! http://www.geocities.com/journeytothemotherland/index.html

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After thinking about Kalamu’s situation and those of others affected by the storm in NOLA like Vera of Community Bookstore, etc., I’ve come up with an idea that may work.  We need to reach out in our networks and find out who needs support and we might best use the Internet to enable the support. 

Each person will have a different way in which they will accept support. Kalamu has stated that he needs work.  If he could send me a short piece on each of his services along with related fees, I could pass that information on to my networks.  

Also, he might want to reach out to E. Ethelbert Miller, Director of the African-American Resource Center at Howard University and a poet.  He has significant connections within educational institutional networks.  He can be reached at:

Mailing Address:

MSC 590 106 Washington, DC 20059

Telephone:
(202) 806-7242 or (202) 806-7686 (Work)
(202) 291-1560 (Home)
( 202)  494-5171 (Cell)
(202) 291-1566 (Fax)

Email:
emiller698@aol.com

Vernard 

nsagi@connectdc.com

posted 1 September 2005  

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updated 19 October 2007