Hurricane Barry to Hit New Orleans Tomorrow

Melinda Palacio

Water that should have receded by July

I rolled into town two weeks ago. The mood was anticlimactic as the thought of celebrating Independence Day seemed an impossible farce given that so many immigrants have reached “the land of the free” only to have their basic human rights waved. While I was in no mood to see fireworks or listen to patriotic music in New Orleans, I huddled with friends, ate barbecue and drank sangria. 

July is supposed to be my month to relax, regroup, and work on things that I’ve put off, such as reworking my website, recording some audio versions of my poems, and writing more of everything fiction, poetry, songs. However, anxiety reigns stronger in July what with the earthquakes in California and the storms in Louisiana. I live in two places with their own impending doom scenarios. 

Cars in the Garden District drove on the neutral ground  to get around flooded streets. 

On Wednesday signs of what is now Hurricane Barry started to slap the city. The first blow was four hours of wild rain that flooded areas that normally do not flood. Everyone is worried about the Mississippi river. All those crooked letters aren’t enough to hold back a rainy spring and water that hasn’t gone down in 185 days. 

Cars and cyclist try to maneuver through Wednesday's flood

Thursday and the search for water and hurricane supplies intensifies.

When we drove in two weeks ago, I took a photo from the freeway of the Atchafalaya basin. The normal view is of tall trees and a swamp. The photo shows the water creeping near the top of those trees. I forgot about the image until I started reading about how Spring rains caused the river to rise. More rains and a hurricane means the already high water could overtop the levees and flood the city; this is the possible one-two punch New Orleans is bracing for. 

View of Atchafalaya Basin from the 10 highway

Thursday, July 11: The calm before the storm.

Earlier this week, one would never have imaged a hurricane was sitting in the gulf. Tuesday was ideal. Friends in town invited me to swim at their hotel. I took my ukulele, swam and sang, and enjoyed a few refreshing hours of a staycation. The pool was a much needed reprieve from the heat. 

Staycation. The calm before the next day's four hour storm.

A refreshing dip in the pool

Last month in California, I had been longing for warmer weather. May and June were cold gloomy months in Santa Barbara. Be careful what you wish for. New Orleans is experiencing a one of its hottest Summers. The effects of climate change are real, especially with this early July hurricane named Barry. With Santa Barbara’s chilly Summer, the heat in New Orleans was more than I bargained for. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a hotter day than last Saturday when I saw the biggest cucaracha on the street imaginable. It was a typical New Orleans bug, the kind that flies and sticks its tongue out at you.  The day was so hot the cucaracha didn’t bother to scurry away and I was too hot to scream or jump.

Today, we sit and hope the levees hold. 

Hot jazz. Hot cubana. Hot art. Hot fighting the heat.

Denver's Five Points Jazz Festival today

Experience the music, culture and roots of Denver's historic Five Points neighborhood at the free 10th Annual Five Points Jazz Festival today, Saturday, May 18. Along Welton St. from 11am to 8pm, six stages present many of Denver's finest jazz musicians. Other events include tennis lessons for kids under 10, food vendors, beer and wine, kid-friendly lectures, art exhibits and more. Click here to see the music lineup!

KUVO Denver 89.3FM station's founder Florence Hernández-Ramos [aka novelist Manuel Ramos' wife] will be recognized for her significant contributions to jazz with a Five Points Jazz Tribute Award. Flo helped to found KUVO and became the first female Hispanic president of a public radio station, holding that position for 23 years. She is now Executive Director of the Latino Public Radio Consortium. Other award recipients will be drummer Nat Yarbrough, posthumously, and vocalist Hazel Miller.

Rebel – 

A Voces on PBS Special

Friday, May 24, 10:00 PM ET

[Rec'd from Kirk Whisler, Hispanic Marketing 101]

Rebel is the story of Loreta Velazquez, Confederate soldier turned Union spy. She was dismissed as a hoax for a hundred and fifty years, but new evidence shows Loreta, a Cuban immigrant from New Orleans, was one of an estimated 1000 secret women soldiers of the American Civil War. Deftly weaving lush dramatized scenes of Loreta's riveting tale, vivid storytelling, archival material, and animation, this is a film about a woman, a myth and the politics of national memory. Who was Loreta Velazquez? Why did she fight? And what made her so dangerous she was erased from history?

Art in Sacramento:

Global warming fight ready for more Latinos

• 1,000,000th public comment opposing the Keystone XL pipeline was submitted to the U.S. State Department. At about the same hour President Obama put out an Earth Day proclamation saying "nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change." Now we see if he means it! If not . . .

• Students at Rhode Island School of Design, occupying their president’s office last week to demand divestment, lowered a banner out the window: “We May Be Art Students, But We Can Still do the Math.”

• Mayors announce commitment to fossil fuel divestment

11 cities committed to divestment, to keep city funds out of fossil fuel stocks and push their employee pensions to divest from polluting corporations. Cities extend from tiny Bayfield, Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to international icons, like the City of San Francisco, where Supervisors voted unanimously to push the city’s retirement fund to divest $583 million from fossil fuels.

In Ithaca, NY, Mayor Myrick, one of the country's youngest mayors committed to divestment after high school students asked him to protect their shared future.

Since last fall, this divestment campaign has spread to over 300 colleges and universities. Now, there are over 100 petitions on the GoFossilFree.org website targeting cities, states and religious institutions. Sign a petition, here.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping end apartheid in South Africa, said:

“The divestment movement played a key role in helping liberate South Africa. The corporations understood the logics of money even when they weren’t swayed by the dictates of morality. Climate change is a deeply moral issue too, of course...Once again, we can join together as a world and put pressure where it counts.”

Chief Theresa

From 350.org: In June, Fearless Summer protests will take place at mining and drilling sites around the country. In Canada, First Nations peoples connected to the Idle No More movement are hatching plans for Sovereignty Summer to coordinate nonviolent direct actions on Indigenous lands in the midst of fierce anti-extraction battles.

As the planet lurches past 400 parts per million concentrations of CO2, the moment has come. The following phase of the fight is called Summer Heat.

During the final weeks of July, from the Pacific Northwest to the coast of Maine, from the Keystone pipeline route to the White House, to the Utah desert where they’re getting ready for the first tar sands mine in the US, there's one essential message: it’s time to stand up – peacefully but firmly — to the industry that is wrecking our future. Click here for more info: joinsummerheat.org/map

Summer Heat will be a powerful focus for thousands to show the courage needed to lower the temperature, before your home is demolished by the next Hurricane Sandy or an oil pipeline bursts in your backyard.

This summer can be an historic show of solidarity not just with the Americans who suffer most from fossil fuels, but with people across the planet whose lives are at risk as the world warms.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Young Chicano writer not burned out by Global Heating

On August 29, 1970 in East Los Angeles, the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War staged a march and rally that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators, most of whom were Chicanos. Prior to that, the anti-war movement had been largely an Anglo student led struggle. The Chicano Moratorium changed that and eventually helped end an unjust war killing brown and black boys at higher statistical rates than Anglo kids. Some of the older Chicano writers of today were a part of that effort and many of their stories still need to be told.

Denver last week

In the last months, my wife and I have participated in actions to the stop the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline that will transport tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast. The dirty oil will worsen Global Heating, multiply incidents of pollution and make more of the environment toxic to all forms of life.

At a demonstration a week ago at Sen. Michael Bennet's office in Denver, I wasn't surprised to see very few Chicanos in the crowd. It was déjà-vu, pre-Chicano Moratorium, all over again.

When this primarily Anglo movement finally links up to the Chicanos and mexicanos, it will become as powerful as demonstrated in the votes for Obama in the last election. To do that, they will need to cross the ethnic fence, produce written and oral material in Spanish readable by la gente, among many other things. The time will come.

In the meantime, there is at least one Colorado Spanish-surnamed kid involved in leading this movement. His talk at the rally was inspirational, at least for this old Chicano. It gave me hope that even though few old Chicanos are involved yet, this one young man put himself forward to say some things. That he'd been studying to become a writer, but was considering dropping out of college, seemed too ironical to be ignored by a Chicano literary website, like La Bloga.

If you think the XL Pipeline will somehow be good for or Canadians or humans in general, you can read passages that I excerpted below and go to the sources to read the entire pieces.

Words from a young Chicano:

"We are here to mourn our future, but I am also here to mourn for the people already impacted by climate change and the fossil fuel industry. I am mourning for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation where industry has stolen land in order to extract the tar sands, and where people are getting more and more sick. I am mourning for the community of Manchester, the Valero refinery in Houston, where childhood cancer rates are ten times higher than the state average.

"People talk about how bad things are going to be in thirty or forty years for the privileged, but they often ignore how bad things already are for the marginalized communities.

"I keep hearing from people that my generation--I'm 22--doesn't care or that we are too complacent. I've been thinking a lot about that, and the real reason we may seem disenfranchised is because it's your job, as the past generation, to convince us to buy what you're selling. And you've failed.

"At my age it is hard to see the power structures fail and become completely obsolete, but that is the case. There is no progress within the current system. The future you have left for us is a miserable one, so I don't want to see you act happy about that. I am tired of reading reports, and scientific studies that tell me this planet may not be hospitable for me by the age of retirement. And it will be even worse for my children, and the future generations.

"That is why I am here fighting, alongside many others my own age, and younger and older. Fighting to change things, fighting to change the flawed system that I was born into, and fighting for the future." - Mark C.

Some older people took offense at some of his words that day. I wasn't one of them because taking personal offense at the truth seems petty, ignoring the decimated forest for the one tree you planted.

I was there and can attest that this young man's words had much more emotion in them that the text indicates. I detected frustration and spirit, anger and love, youthful angst and intelligent insight. It moved me at least to post this with the intention of spreading the word to stop this degradation of people, countries and planet. Below you'll see that ethnic minorities already suffer greatly, yes, Chicanos too.

People of color paying for extraction

"The Canadian oil company Transcanada will be cleared to transport bitumen, or tar sands oil, from Canada to the Gulf Coast for sale on the open market following refinement. This process is said by locals who live near refineries in Texas to be poisoning the environment of especially low-income communities of color.

"Sylvia McAdam of the Idle No More Movement of Canada told The Nation Report today that the water around Fort McMurray at the source of tar sands extraction is not only no longer fit to drink, but that 'indigenous people are not hunting around that area anymore'. She went on to say that locals can no longer use their local water to even bathe."

Go here to read the entire piece.

Native Americans and their caribou in the crosshairs

"The cultural heritage, land, ecosystems and human health of First Nation communities including the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Fort McMurray First Nation, Fort McKay Cree Nation, Beaver Lake Cree First Nation Chipewyan Prairie First Nation, and the Metis, are being sacrificed for oil money in what has been termed a “slow industrial genocide'.

"Infrastructure projects linked to the tar sands expansion, such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline, threaten First Nation communities in British Columbia, Canada and American Indian communities throughout the United States. Community resistance is growing and Indigenous peoples throughout North America have mounted substantive challenges to tar sands expansion.

"Stories of cancer epidemics in the community of Fort Chipewyan, massive wildlife losses related to toxic contamination, environmental degradation and increased vocal resistance from impacted communities have shattered the ‘everything is fine’ myth propagated by the Canadian and Alberta governments. The Athabasca delta has been completely altered from a pristine boreal forest, clean rivers and lakes to a devastated ecosystem of deforestation, open pit mines and watershed where fish regularly exhibit tumors and birds landing on contaminated tailings ponds die instantly.

"Each barrel of oil produced from tar sands requires 2 to 6 barrels of water.

In 2007, Alberta's government approved the withdrawal of 119.5 BILLON gallons of water for tar sands extraction. 82% of this water comes from the Athabasca River. Toxic wastewater is discharged in holding or tailing ponds that leak 11 million liters of toxic waste per day into the Athabasca and seep into the ground water. This water flows northward (downstream) further into Indigenous territories. Since this toxic waste has been flowing into the river and seeping into the groundwater - rare and virulent cancers have affected many of the Indigenous Community members- and fish and game have been found with physical abnormalities and deformations and tumors in fish.

"In 2006, unexpectedly high rate of rare cancers were reported in the community of Fort Chipewyan. In 2008, Alberta Health confirmed a 30% rise in the number of cancers between 1995 -2006. However, the study lacks appropriate data and is considered a conservative estimate by many residents.

"Caribou populations have been severely impacted by tar sands extraction. The Beaver Lake Cree First Nation has experienced a 74% decline of the Cold Lake herd since 1998 and a 71% decline of the Athabasca River herd since 1996. Today, just 175–275 caribou remain. By 2025, the total population is expected to be less than 50 and locally extinct by 2040."

Go here to read the full article.

Bus Trip - CO to KXL Hearing in Nebraska

Our government is holding only one open hearing about the construction of this pipeline. In Nebraska, where attendance would obviously be limited. Buses from other states will head there with people willing to go. Check here for Colorado info.

If this pipeline is stopped, a major contributor

to Global Heating will never happen.

If it is constructed, plan on Global Heating accelerating.

Es todo,

RudyG

Writing Opp. Fracking and heating Aztlán. Chavez.

Conjunto Writing Opportunity

News from San Anto Guadalupe Center

Camaradas de Conjunto: We're looking for literature on Conjunto Music for publication in the 32nd Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio 2013 program magazine. Any literature, including poems, short stories, interviews, scholarly articles, etc., as long as it deals with some aspect of conjunto music, of any length, will be accepted for review and possible publication through March 31, 2013. Conjunto is that original American musical ensemble and style of music which was created by the Texas-Mexicans and which utilizes the button accordion and bajo sexto as its principal instruments.. E-mail the literature to Juan Tejeda no later than early April. There's a relatively short turnaround so I appreciate spreading the palabra. Hope to see you here in May. Gracias, Juan Tejeda  (juantejeda@sbcglobal.net).

The 32nd Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio 2013 will take place May 15–16 at the Guadalupe Theater, 1301 Guadalupe Street and May 17–19 at Rosedale Park, 303 Dartmouth. The festival will feature a Seniors Conjunto Dance; inductions into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame; workshops on the button accordion and bajo sexto; a New Directions concert; and three days and over 36 of the very best bands in conjunto music at Rosedale Park that includes special tributes, plus food and beverage booths, accordion raffle, student recital and more.

For more information, call (210) 271-3151, or visit www.guadalupeculturalarts.org. The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1980 to preserve, promote and develop the arts of the Chicano/Latino/Native American peoples for all ages and backgrounds through public and educational programming in six disciplines: dance, literature, media arts, theater arts, visual arts and music.

Fracking Update for Aztlán and beyond

As an author I want my works read for centuries to come. Making certain there will be young readers around to enjoy the works is a simple matter of self-interest. That's not the only reason Global Heating and combatting fracking extraction matters, but it's one reason I feel it should be of interest to La Bloga readers.

If you're in Arizona, your might get the worst of Global Heating that fracking will exacerbate, at least, in terms of heat. Go here to read about getting rid of your estufa because you'll be able to fry your eggs on the sidewalk, as long as you like to add a lot of sand to your revueltos. Very soon.

If you think the jobs that come with fracking might benefit you or the economy, read about the advantages of being a fracking worker: My winter as a frack rat

If you're not sure whether fracking is going to be operating under your barrio or suburb, go here to read about how you'll be able to hear and feel it. And how your wells and walls may suffer just from the search for fracking sites, something you have a right to have a say-so about.

Throughout Aztlán and beyond, if you were hoping Obama would stop the Keystone XL Pipeline, go here to read about how your Congressional legislators are attempting to push approval of the pipeline past Obama.

If you want to do something about fracking in other parts of Atlán, go here.

Next is info about a Colorado action this coming Monday:

There will be an amendment to the budget bill next week that would force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.  Most worrying, Senators’ (Mark Udall and Michael Bennet) staff say they are “undecided” on whether to stop the pipeline.

350 Colorado and our friends from across the state have written a letter to our Senators explaining why they need to stop the pipeline, and we hope you will add your name before we deliver it to their offices on Monday.

Please co-sign the letter to let our Senators know that you want them to reject any attempt to push forward the pipeline. Click here to read and add your name.

After you sign, please share it with friends and colleagues -- the more signers, the stronger our message will be.

If you're in the Denver area, join us this Monday, March 18th, for a letter delivery event to the Senators’ offices. We meet at 11:45 in Downtown Denver  to send a message in person. At this critical moment, it's important we show there are lots of us who expect nothing less than for them to reject this pipeline outright.

Details:

WHAT: No KXL letter delivery to Senators Bennet and Udall

WHEN: 11:45 AM, Monday March 18th. (we should wrap up by 2 PM)

WHERE: Meet at Senator Bennet's office, 1127 Sherman Street, Suite 150, Denver CO

Más sobre el sudamericano Chavez

Excerpts from an article by Bill Fletcher

"It was clear Chavez had phenomenal support among the poorer and the darker parts of the Venezuelan population while the opposition looked like it could have walked in from Madrid. With the combination of the social movements plus President Chavez’s support, race came to be openly discussed in Venezuela and actual steps were taken to address a very different form of white supremacy than the version with which we are familiar here in North America.

"The Bolivarian process, which is far from over, has suggested multiple levels of struggle but in every case drawing upon mass action and mass involvement.  This goes beyond huge demonstrations—as important as they may be—but more in the direction of encouraging alternative institutions as well as revitalized (or in some cases new) social movements.

"Upon the discovery of his cancer, he apologized for not having taken sufficient care of himself. I was struck by this comment for two reasons. The first was the admission that he had not been on top of his health and that he was prepared to take responsibility for that. The second reason implicit in his comment:  that it is a duty to pay attention to one’s health, to live for the struggle (as opposed to living to struggle). Neither can one so underrate one’s own role that we think that as individuals we do not matter."

Go here to read his entire article. 

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum, and the author of “They’re Bankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG