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Books by
Barack
Obama
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
/
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the
American Dream
Obama's Greatest Speeches (CD set)
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Remarks at Xavier University New
Orleans
on
the 5th Anniversary of Katrina
By
President Barack Obama
It’s great to be back in New
Orleans, and an honor to be back at Xavier University.
I’m inspired to spend time with folks who have
demonstrated what it means to persevere in the face of
tragedy—and rebuild in the face of ruin. Thank you,
Jade, for your introduction - and congratulations on
being crowned Miss Xavier.
As Jade said, she was a junior at Ben Franklin High
School five years ago when the storm came. After
Katrina, Ben Franklin High was terribly damaged by wind
and water. Millions of dollars were needed to rebuild
the school. Many feared it would take years to reopen—if
it could reopen at all. But then something remarkable
happened. Parents and teachers, students and volunteers
got to work making repairs. Donations came in from
across New Orleans and around the world. And soon,
silent, darkened corridors were bright and filled with
the sounds of young men and women, including Jade,
heading to class again. Jade then committed to Xavier, a
University that likewise refused to succumb to despair.
So Jade, like so many students here, embodies hope—and
that sense of hope in difficult times is what I came to
talk about today.
It has been five years since Katrina ravaged the Gulf
Coast. There is no need to dwell on what you experienced
and what the world witnessed: water pouring through
broken levees; mothers holding their children above the
waterline; people stranded on rooftops begging for help;
bodies lying in the streets of a great American city. It
was a natural disaster but also a manmade catastrophe; a
shameful breakdown in government that left countless
men, women, and children abandoned and alone. Shortly
after the storm, I came down to Houston to spend time
with some of the folks who took shelter there. I’ll
never forget what one woman told me. “We had nothing
before the hurricane,” she said. “Now we got less than
nothing.”
In the years that followed, New Orleans could have
remained a symbol of destruction and decay; of a storm
that came and the inadequate response that followed. It
was not hard to imagine a day when we’d tell our
children of a once vibrant and wonderful city laid low
by indifference and neglect. But that is not what
happened. It’s not what happened at Ben Franklin. It’s
not what happened at Xavier. And that’s not what
happened across New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It is
true that this city has become a symbol. But it’s a
symbol of resilience, of community, of the fundamental
responsibility we have for one another.
We see that at Xavier. Less than a month after the
storm struck, amidst debris and flood-damaged buildings,
President Francis promised that this university would
reopen in a matter of months. Some said he was crazy.
But they didn’t count on what would happen when one
force of nature met another. By January—four months
later—class was in session. Less than a year after the
storm, I had the privilege of delivering a commencement
address to the largest graduating class in Xavier’s
history.
We see that in the efforts of Joycelyn Heintz, who is
here today. Katrina left her house under 14 feet of
water. But after volunteers helped her rebuild, she
joined AmeriCorps to serve the community herself—part of
a wave of AmeriCorps members who have been critical to
the rebirth of this city and the rebuilding of this
region. Today, she manages a local center for mental
health and wellness.
We see the symbol that this city has become in the
St. Bernard Project, whose co-founder Liz McCartney is
with us. This endeavor has drawn volunteers from across
the country to rebuild hundreds of homes throughout St.
Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward.
I saw the sense of purpose people felt after the
storm when I visited Musicians’ Village in the Ninth
Ward back in 2006. Volunteers were not only constructing
houses; they were coming to together to preserve the
culture of music and art that is part of the soul of
this city—and the soul of this country. Today, more than
70 homes are complete, and construction is underway on
the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.
We see the dedication to the community in the efforts
of Xavier graduate Dr. Regina Benjamin, who mortgaged
her home and maxed out her credit cards so she could
reopen her Bayou la Batre clinic to care for victims of
the storm—and who is now our nation’s Surgeon General.
And we see that resilience—that hope—exemplified by
students at Carver High School. They’ve helped raise
more than a million dollars to build a new community
track and football field—their “Field of Dreams”—for the
Ninth Ward.
Because of you—all the advocates and organizers here
today, folks who are leading the way toward a better
future for this city with innovative approaches to fight
poverty, improve health care, reduce crime, and create
opportunities for young people—because of you, New
Orleans is coming back.
Five years ago, many questioned whether people could
ever return to this city. Today, New Orleans is one of
the fastest growing cities in America, with a big surge
in new small businesses. Five years ago, the Saints had
to play every game on the road because of the damage to
the Superdome. Well, two weeks ago, we welcomed the
Saints to the White House as Super Bowl champions. We
marked the occasion with a 30-foot Po’boy made with
shrimp and oysters from the Gulf. There were no
leftovers.
Of course, I don’t have to tell you that there are
still too many vacant and overgrown lots. There are
still too many students attending classes in trailers.
There are still too many people unable to find work. And
there are still too many New Orleanians who have not
been able to come home. So while an incredible amount of
progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I
wanted to come here and tell the people of this city
directly: my administration is going to stand with
you—and fight alongside you—until the job is done.
When I took office, I directed my cabinet to redouble
our efforts, to put an end to the turf wars between
agencies, to cut the red tape and the bureaucracy. I
wanted to make sure that the federal government was a
partner—instead of an obstacle—to the recovery of the
Gulf Coast. And members of my cabinet—including my EPA
administrator, Lisa Jackson, who grew up in
Pontchartrain Park—have come down here dozens of times.
This wasn’t just to make appearances—to just be in a few
photos putting up dry wall. This was so that they could
listen, learn, and make real changes so that government
was actually working for you.
For example, efforts to rebuild schools and
hospitals, to repair damaged roads and bridges, and to
get people back into their homes, were tied up for years
in a tangle of disagreements and Byzantine rules. So
when I took office, working with Senator Mary Landrieu,
we put in place a new way of resolving disputes, so that
funds set aside for rebuilding efforts actually went
toward rebuilding efforts. As a result, more than 170
projects are getting underway, including work on
firehouses, police stations, roads, sewer systems,
health clinics, libraries, and universities.
We’re tackling the corruption and inefficiency that
has long plagued the New Orleans Housing Authority.
We’re helping homeowners rebuild and making it easier
for renters to find affordable options. And we’re
helping people to move out of temporary homes. When I
took office, more than three years after the storm, tens
of thousands of families were still stuck in disaster
housing—with many living in small trailers provided by
FEMA. We were spending huge sums of money on temporary
shelter when we knew it would be better for families,
and less costly for taxpayers, to help people get into
affordable, stable, and more permanent housing. So we’ve
helped make it possible for people to find those homes,
dramatically reducing the number of families in
emergency housing.
On the health care front, as a candidate for
President, I pledged to make sure we were helping New
Orleans recruit doctors and nurses, and rebuild medical
facilities—including a new veterans hospital. Well,
we’ve resolved a long-standing dispute—one that tied up
hundreds of millions of dollars—to fund the replacement
for Charity Hospital. And in June, Veterans Secretary
Ric Shinseki came to New Orleans for the groundbreaking
of that new VA hospital.
In education, we’ve made strides as well. As you know,
schools in New Orleans were falling behind long before
Katrina. But in the years since the storm, a lot of
public schools opened themselves up to innovation and
reform. As a result, we’re actually seeing rising
achievement and New Orleans is fast becoming a model for
the nation. This is yet another sign that you’re not
only rebuilding; you’re rebuilding stronger than before.
Just this Friday, my administration announced a final
agreement on $1. 8 billion dollars for Orleans Parish
schools—money that had been locked up for years—so folks
here could determine how best to restore the school
system.
And in a city that has known too much violence and
too much despair—that has seen too many young people
lost to drugs and criminal activity— we’ve got a
Department of Justice committed to working with New
Orleans to fight the scourge of violent crime, to weed
out corruption in the police force, and to ensure the
criminal justice system works for everyone here. And I
want to thank Mitch Landrieu, your new mayor, for his
commitment to that partnership.
Even as we continue our recovery efforts, we’re also
focusing on preparing for future threats—so that there
is never another disaster like Katrina ever again. The
largest civil works project in American history is
underway to build a fortified levee system. And as I
pledged as a candidate, we’re going to finish this
system by next year, so that this city is protected
against a 100-year storm. Because we should not be
playing Russian roulette every Hurricane season. We’re
also working to restore protective wetlands and natural
barriers that were not only damaged by Katrina but had
been rapidly disappearing for decades.
In Washington, we are restoring competence and
accountability. I’m proud that my FEMA Director, Craig
Fugate, has 25 years of experience in disaster
management in Florida, a state that has known its share
of hurricanes. We’ve put together a group led by
Secretary Donovan and Secretary Napolitano to look at
disaster recovery across the country. We’re improving
coordination on the ground, modernizing emergency
communications, and helping families plan for a crisis.
And we’re putting in place reforms so that never again
in America is someone left behind in a disaster because
they’re living with a disability or they’re elderly or
infirmed.
Finally, even as you’ve been buffeted by Hurricane
Katrina and Hurricane Rita, as well as the broader
recession that has devastated communities across the
country, in recent months the Gulf Coast has seen new
hardship as a result of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil
spill. And just as we have sought to ensure that we are
doing what it takes to recover from Katrina, my
administration has worked hard to match our efforts on
the spill to what you need on the ground.
From the start, I promised you two things. One is
that we would see to it that the leak was stopped. And
it has been. But the second promise I made was that we
would stick with our efforts, and stay on BP, until the
damage to the Gulf and to the lives of the people in
this region was reversed. And this, too, is a promise we
will keep.
That is why we rapidly launched the largest response
to an environmental disaster in American history. This
has included 47,000 people on the ground and 5,700
vessels on the water to contain and clean up the oil.
When I heard that BP was not moving fast enough on
claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a
fund—managed by an independent third party—to help all
those whose lives have been turned upside down by the
spill. And we will continue to rely on sound
science—carefully monitoring waters and coastlines as
well as the health of people along the Gulf—to deal with
any long-term effects of the oil spill. We are going to
stand with you until the oil is cleaned up, the
environment is restored, polluters are held accountable,
communities are made whole, and this region is back on
its feet.
So that is how we are helping this city, this state,
and this region to recover from the worst natural
disaster in our nation’s history. We are cutting through
the tangle of red tape that has impeded rebuilding
efforts for years. We are making government work better
and smarter—in coordination with one of the most
expansive non-profit efforts in American history. And we
are helping state and local leaders to address serious
problems that had been neglected for decades—problems
that existed long before storm came, and have continued
after the waters receded—from the levee system to the
justice system, from the health care system to the
education system.
Together, we are helping to make New Orleans a place
that stands for what we can do in America—not just for
what we can’t do. And ultimately, that must be the
legacy of Katrina: not one of neglect, but of action;
not one of indifference, but of empathy; not of
abandonment, but of a community working together to meet
shared challenges.
The truth is, there are some wounds that do not heal.
There are some losses that cannot be repaid. And for
many who lived through those harrowing days five years
ago, there is a searing memory that time will not erase.
But even amid so much tragedy, we saw the stirrings of a
brighter day. We saw men and women risking their own
safety to save strangers. We saw nurses staying behind
to care for the sick and injured. We saw families coming
home to clean up and rebuild—not just their own homes,
but their neighbors’ as well. We saw music and Mardi
Gras and the vibrancy of this town undiminished. And we
have seen many return to their beloved city with a
newfound sense of obligation to this community.
When I came here four years ago, one thing that I
found striking was all the greenery that had begun to
come back. I was reminded of a passage from the book of
Job. “There is hope for a tree if it be cut down that it
will sprout again, and that its tender branch will not
cease.” The work ahead will not be easy. There will be
setbacks. There will be challenges along the way. But
today, thanks to you and the people of this great city,
New Orleans is blossoming once more.
Thank you
Source:
Obama Mamas
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Steps: Sunni /
sunni patterson we know this place /
"Niggas" don't make it....
Sunni
Patterson on 2cent TV /
Sunni
Patterson Live at The Signature
Sunni
Patterson at the 2010 US Social Forum /
Sunni
Patterson /
Sunni
Patterson What You Fightin For?
More than a poet, more than a singer,
more than an emcee--it's not just what she says, it's how she says it.
Emerging from the musical womb that is New Orleans, artist and visionary
Sunni Patterson combines the heritage and tradition of her Native town with
an enlightened modern worldview to create music and poetry that is timeless
in its groove. Sunni has been a featured performer at the many of Nation's
premier spoken word venues, including HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She has also
had the privilege of speaking at the Panafest in Ghana, West Africa.
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Wild Women Don’t Have the
Blues
By Ida Cox
I hear these women raving 'bout their
monkey men
About their fighting husbands and their
no good friends
These poor women sit around all day and
moan
Wondering why their wandering papas
don't come home
But wild women don't worry, wild women
don't have the blues.
Now when you've got a man, don't ever be
on the square
'Cause if you do he'll have a woman
everywhere
I never was known to treat no one man
right
I keep 'em working hard both day and
night
because wild women don't worry, wild
women don't have no blues.
I've got a disposition and a way of my
own
When my man starts kicking I let him
find another home
I get full of good liquor, walk the
streets all night
Go home and put my man out if he don't
act right
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues
You never get nothing by being an angel
child
You better change your ways and get real
wild
I wanna tell you something, I wouldn't
tell you no lie
Wild women are the only kind that ever
get by
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues.
Born
Ida
Prather,25 February 1896 in Toccoa,
Habersham County, Georgia, United
States. Died 10 November 1967 (aged 71)
Genres Jazz, Blues Instruments Vocalist. |
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Attack On Africans Writing Their Own
History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on
Africans writing and accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A
teacher, psychologist, and historian.
John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
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Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley’s Vision
Directed by
Stephanie Black
In 2005, to
celebrate what would have been Bob Marley’s 60th
birthday, his widow,
Rita Marley, and several of Marley’s offspring
staged a gala concert in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
in celebration of the iconic reggae singer’s
commitment to African unity. In addition to the
concert, a week of Unicef-sponsored workshops,
discussions and debates took place, in which
delegates such as actor and human-rights activist
Danny Glover and controversial Jamaican
politician
Dudley
Thompson contemplated what it means to be an
African descendant outside Africa. Young people from
all over the continent also gathered to discuss
their own roles in Africa’s future.
Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley’s Vision
is
Stephanie Black’s documentary of the event.
Black has already given us the hard-hitting Life and
Debt, which explores the destructive impact of the
IMF and the
World Bank in Jamaica, and H-2 Worker, which
exposed the unbelievably exploitative situation
facing Jamaican sugarcane cutters in Florida. In
Africa Unite, she makes efforts to keep a
political-activist focus intact, which is difficult,
because much of the movie is devoted to bland
concert footage. But the film’s most heartening bits
come in testimony from the young Africans who will
themselves make up Africa’s next generation of
leaders. Also captivating is the sub-plot provided
by Bongo Tawney, a poor, elder Rasta who travels to
Ethiopia for the first time and who is visibly moved
by what he encounters there.
On the downside, the film is generally disjointed.
It is sometimes difficult to get a sense of how the
events unfolded, and of the exact significance of
each segment, as there is so much concert footage
interspersed. The concert footage itself does not
translate particularly well to the small screen; you
probably had to be there to understand the magnitude
of the concert, which lasted 12 hours and drew over
350,000 people. And no disrespect to Marley’s
children, but every time I’ve seen them live, I wish
they would leave their father’s work alone and
concentrate on their own talents. But needless to
say, as this concert was in celebration of Daddy’s
birthday, every one of the Marley boys presents a
classic number from the 70s, and for some reason,
each feels the need to remain on stage for the
entirety of his siblings’ performances, which only
adds to the dragging sense of what features here.
The bonus concert footage fares little better than
that on the main DVD, though a duet by Rita and
Marley’s mother is kind of sweet. In contrast, there
are illuminating, though brief, interviews with Rita
Marley and several of Bob’s sons, giving some
context to the proceedings in terms of their own
views on Africa in general and Ethiopia in
particular. In summary, although it’s hardly
essential viewing overall, Marley fans will probably
find something of interest.
Source:MepPublishers
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Africa Unite
By Bob Marley
Africa, Unite
'Cause we're moving right out of Babylon
And we're going to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before GOD and man, yeah
To see the unification of all Africans,
yeah
As it's been said already let it be
done, yeah
We are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
Africa, unite 'cause the children wanna
come home
Africa, unite 'cause we're moving right
out of Babylon
And we're grooving to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before GOD and man
To see the unification of all Rastaman,
yeah
As it's been said already let it be done
I tell you who we are under the sun
We are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
So, Africa, unite, Africa, unite
Unite for the benefit of your people
Unite for it's later than you think
Unite for the benefit of your children
Unite for it's later than you think
Africa awaits its creators, Africa
awaiting its creators
Africa, you're my forefather cornerstone
Unite for the Africans abroad, unite for
the Africans a yard
Africa, Unite |
The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 29 August 2010
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