Jamie Johnson, a heir to the
Johnson & Johnson fortune, uses his family connections to gain a critical insider’s perspective and remarkable unguarded interviews of those who hold 50% of America’s wealth in two self-made documentaries: The One Percent (parts
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and
8) and
Born Rich, along with a
Vanity Fair blog. From the other side:
Elizabeth Warren, The Woman Who Knew Too Much.
[more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Oct 16, 2011 -
60 comments
FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate has what he describes as a "Waffle House" theory of emergency management to assess how bad a situation is after a disaster. "If the Waffle House is open and serving food and has got a full menu, then it's green," he said during an interview inside a FEMA mobile home parked outside a fire station in Joplin. "If the Waffle House is open but has a limited menu, it's yellow, and if the Waffle House isn't open, that's red." -
FEMA Gets its Groove Back
posted by Slap*Happy
on May 27, 2011 -
93 comments
A federal justice report on policing in New Orleans since 2009 presents damning evidence of brutality, cop misconduct and systemic abuse of black citizens post-Katrina. The city’s jails are not far behind.
No limits to the law in NoLa
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Apr 25, 2011 -
111 comments
"It was always about the intersection of creativity and chaos." So said Kirsha Kaechele, described at Wikipedia as an "American contemporary art curator, artist, and practitioner of sustainable architecture," of the avant-garde
Life is Art Foundation/KKProjects art happening that she carried out via Katrina flooding-devastated homes in the St. Roch area of New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward. These homes now lie in ruins, as they did before. She owes back taxes on the homes, and city has placed tax liens worth $28,000 on two of them. While she can afford the back taxes, she says, the liens are beyond her means. A medicinal marijuana farm created to fund Life is Art failed to make enough money to fund the projects. In any case, she has spent the past five months in Tasmania with her boyfriend, professional gambler and art curator
David Walsh, where he has established something called the
Museum of New and Old Art. (Pause.) I believe that connects all the most relevant dots as succinctly as possible.
[more inside]
posted by raysmj
on Apr 4, 2011 -
23 comments
2008's "
Glory at Sea"
[.mov] [vimeo] [youtube] is an extaordinary 25-minute short film in which
a group of mourners and a man spat from the depths of Hades build a boat from the debris of New Orleans to rescue their lost loved ones trapped beneath the sea.
[more inside]
posted by churl
on Feb 17, 2010 -
13 comments
Was it triage or murder? A disturbing NY Times story about the choices made by certain medical staff at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. Long and not easy reading.
posted by anigbrowl
on Aug 28, 2009 -
81 comments
A native of Barcelona, Spain,
Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu moved to New York in 2002 to pursue a career in photography. Adriana has been capturing the lives of young Puerto Rican women and their families in Spanish Harlem, NYC. There is a hardness that characterizes
Life on the Block.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 11, 2009 -
6 comments
The Isleños are
said to be a dying traditional American subculture.
Descendants of Canary Island immigrants of Louisiana, the name Isleños was given to them to distinguish them from Spanish mainlanders, known as "peninsulares." But in Louisiana, the name evolved from a category to an identity
. For a long time they were one of those rare subcultures that found a way to maintain a living tradition as the world around them modernised by carving out a livelihood as crabbers and 'shrimpers'.
Then Katrina hit and the wetlands, which were central to the Isleños identity, essentially dissapeared. Despite the blow to their economy, they still
have their songs and
annual fiestas, evidence of a strong culture which binds their community together, and their
rebuilding following Katrina demonstrated how strong that sense of identity and culture can be. So perhaps the Isleños shouldn't be written off just yet, then. After all, as Isleño Irvan Perez says, "
This is home. Where else would we go?"
posted by Effigy2000
on Dec 7, 2008 -
7 comments
A.D. (After The Deluge) is a serialized webcomic about what it was like in the days leading up to, during & immediately after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. The story is true, all dialogue taken from direct quotes. An ongoing project with updates monthly (scheduled to run from Dec 06 - Dec 07), the most recent chapter takes place right at the end of the storm, prior to the collapse of the levees, but to get the full effect,
read from the very beginning. For those who want to know more about the project, there's an
FAQ.
posted by jonson
on Sep 5, 2007 -
20 comments
Last Chance. "It took the Mississippi River 6,000 years to build the Louisiana coast. It took man (and natural disasters) 75 years to destroy it. Experts agree we have 10 years to act before the problem is too big to solve."
[Via First Draft.]
posted by homunculus
on Mar 5, 2007 -
19 comments
Katrina: Money for Nothing? The United States received hundreds of millions in foreign aid last year, after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. But what happened to the money?
posted by js003
on Aug 30, 2006 -
28 comments
Oops: Impostor scams Louisiana officials Burned by the yes men. A prankster poses as a HUD honcho and promises NOT to destroy perfectly good housing projects slated for demolition. later, the prankster explained:
The New Orleans projects are sturdily constructed brick buildings that, nevertheless, are slated for demolition, he said.
"Basically, the real reason, of course, is they want to develop New Orleans into something pleasing to tourists -- even more pleasing."
Video
here. Wikipedia has
info on more of their exploits. My favorite was the
bhopal fiasco.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht
on Aug 29, 2006 -
19 comments
Wizbang sez that the levy in New Orleans that broke during Katrina was going to break even without a hurricane, and that the Corps of Engineers knew it and suppressed evidence of it until just recently.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste
on Aug 28, 2006 -
72 comments
Stress building in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina anniversary could spark more problems Like many other New Orleanians nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina, John McCusker was experiencing the
overwhelming
stress of rebuilding his life. McCusker, a
photographer who was part of The Times-Picayune's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning staff(reg. required, but worth it. Trust me.), was seen driving wildly through the city Tuesday, attracting the attention of police. He
eventually
was arrested, but not before he was subdued with a Taser and an officer fired twice at his vehicle. During the melee,
he begged police to kill him. For some, it's still
Katrina every day.
posted by ColdChef
on Aug 10, 2006 -
141 comments
Flash flood! A New Orleans Times Picayune flash animation of exactly how, and where, and when the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Here's the
accompanying article. Even as a local, I had no idea how weak the levee systems were. And apparently
still are. Here's some
more info from a
local grassroots group fighting for better levee protection.
posted by ab3
on May 18, 2006 -
18 comments
Nueva Orleans Before Katrina, Hispanics accounted for 3 percent of New Orleans’ population, with just 1,900 Mexicans showing up in the 2004 Census. No one knows for certain how many new ones have arrived, but estimates put the number between 10,000 and 50,000.
posted by ColdChef
on May 9, 2006 -
105 comments
