rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

rootsbag0930: buked and scorned and speaking in tongues: calling the roll

SATURDAY
roadwarrior redux

hello world
on the road and off the grid this week
catch you on the rebound

rdoc

FRIDAY
god told him to: george bush and duplicitous holywars
"george, go and fight those terrorist in afghanistan"   god
"george, go and end tryanny in iraq"     god

in upcoming bbc film about isreali/palestinian struggle
a former palestinain foreign minister nabil shaath
says bush told a palestinian delegation in 2003
that god told him to invade iraq

he says bush told him,

"im driven with a mission from god, god would tell me, george, go and fight those terrorists in afghanistan.  and i did, and then god would tell me, george, go and end the tryanny in iraq.  and i did

and now again, i feel gods words coming to me.  go get the palestinians their state and get the israelis their security, and get peace in the middle east and by god im gonna do it."

this idiot, this out and out idiot
you know he did it, it sounds like him, and without any sense
of the implications other than his faith based reality

folk want to bemoan islams struggle w/fundamentalism but
we are just as enslaved to our own

afflicted w/creationism and duplicitous holywars
(sorry, i meant intelligent design didnt i)

this is an example of what i mean by wandering too far afield
be wary of divine cattlekillings that destroy cultures on your word
when you aspire to the prophetic you got to stay focused
cant let yourself wander into the twilight zone

end up
sending good folk to their death
because god told you to

rdoc

 

THURSDAY
out of the loop

hello, world
i been out of the loop

dug so deep into rest for the weary
i havent seen sunlight these last
couple of  days

i think august wilson dead at 60 shook me
at least he got his work done, im 55 and still
struggling

another writer friend of mine
couple of years younger than i am just
had his second stroke and its like okay
lets find another gear up in here

i can hear that clock ticking

already concerned that most writers do
their best work before they are 40 and
here i am still struggling with my
would be masterpiece

and started working on the hoodoo book
of flowers (and rootwork.com) yesterday, got to try to
maintain momentum on that while im doing rest cause
dont feel like i can wait anymore

rest for the weary and the hoodoo book of flowers
im depending on to manifest my vision for the
generations

my works i consider the seeds of future realities
my ideological orchestrations mere preparation of the ground
game as taught by my mentor
babajohn o killens, the great griot master of brooklyn:

". . our struggle for liberation is a long long distance race, for we are out for nothing short of winning the entire human race and we are up against a formidable foe, and to win this race will require planning, pacing, discipline and stamina, and a belief in our ability to win the long protracted struggle.

Indeed we must construct one hundred year plans.  Two hundred year plans.  We must construct institutions for generations yet unborn."   

so i owe you an apology or something dear surfer
cause im not gon be keeping up with my current events
like i like to in these last 3 months of 2005

rickydoc flowers is on a deadline and i do not miss a deadline
never have and never will - john o and fred hudson taught me
to be religious about my deadlines - but if im deep in the woodshed, so is my
attention, its like im not really in this world right now
im lost in the fantabulous world that im conjuring in my head

finished my forrest research and writing out that scene now
and rereading a book on davidwalker
to awaken my afflicted brethen by peter hinks

cause i got to give davidwalker more play in rest for the weary,
already got some passages on him in there
but its a shame that folk dont know/appreciate
where david walker was coming from

that brother gave his all
i just put in a quote of his for an earlier post:

"Our greatest happiness shall consist of working for the salvation
of our whole body.  When this is accomplished a burst of glory will
shine upon you which will indeed astonish you and the world"

and was once again astonished at how
pertinent his words are to this day

which in itself says a lot, thats what i want
work that will be pertinent to generation after generation

thats my boy, him and gullah jack

what speaks to me about gullah jack
among the listing of slaverytime revolutionaries
was that all the others had been assimilated
and used christian sanctification for struggle

gullah jack was still african oriented
and used afrospiritual sanctification for struggle
(as do i)  which means he was struggling on the level
of the actual vesey revolt and the ideological conflict
of maintaining and evolving our african identity in a
hostile environment

he refused to be assimilated and i like that about him
but davidwalker is my boy - an oldschool ideological orchestrator
with a sophisticated understanding of the politics/pyschology of his day
trying to use the power of the Word to shake the devil out of our souls
and distributing his Work in the south through a guerrilla net work
of black sailors (the net?)

a player - oldschool

what is there for a politically engaged writer not to love
look what he tried to do with the Word and the Work

as part of my urban slaverytime research
i was just last week reading this work by christopher reed
called black chicagos first century

and he said something that really spoke to me

in rest for the weary there are a million characters
specially in the slaverytime section and thats been
bothering me and i figured the critics/readers were going to
eat me alive about that - but the text called for it

at one point im introducing a new character per page
and during the riots im introing maybe 8 new characters per page
and thats really been bothering me as a narrative technician

the great majority of  them are actual historical characters
but obscure regular people, for instance the ones
who testfied to a congressional committee about what happened
to them during the 1866 riots, i often use their lives and their actual voices/words
and was not altogther comfortable with that

but this guy reed talks about how he was researching all these regular
folk for his book and how they were '"destinied for perpetual obscurity"
but that his growing respect for their struggle and sacrifice

'compelled me, in traditional African American religious fervor, literarlly
to 'call the roll' of the previous unknowns. . . i felt an ancestral obligation
to call names'

god that spoke to me
it made my literary soul tingle

ive always felt that way about naming folk in my novels
immortalizing them to the best of my ability

in past works (and in rest) thats been folk that i know in my own time
my friends, my family, my fellow literary/ideological/hoodoo travelers

but now ive named damn near every colored person
in post civil war memphis and chronicled their struggles
in that moment of transformation from slavery to freedom

and ive named or will name all the tribal ancestors that i respect for
the work theyve done, the sacrifices they have made

i have called the roll

rickydoc trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

MONDAY

AUGUST WILSON JUST DIED
MAY HIS WORK SERVE
MANY GENERATIONS

SUNDAY

hoodoo net works

quick props to
some of my hoodoo colleagues
djenra windwalker, snake2G & ibeshe

doing a reading

october 3rd, 7pm
at mo pitkins house of satisfaction
34th ave A between 2nd and 3rd street
in the east village

me and jeffery renard allen
promoting sls kenya dec 2005
2 weeks hanging tough in nairobi & mombasa

god is good

republican talking point: katrina & afroams

apparently karen russell is the daughter of bill russell
and a columnist on the huffington blogs

she did an nice little satire on the republican talking points
for african americans on katrina

but it was the comments that were provocative
in particular one that spoke about the apparent success
of republican outreach to blacks being the result of
the naivete of young blacks who didnt have enuf
historical background to understand the game

whats also interesting is how many whitefolk
basically saying 'get over it'

its an interesting divide that im not sure what to do with

but it does make the farce of reparations all the more
farcical - i dont know what world blackfolk depending on
reparations to save us are living in but it surely isnt this one

ive said it before and i will say it again
self determination yall - we got to quit dreaming
and depending, on pie in the sky

SATURDAY

my daily divinations
as sanctifications

i threw divination this morning
7 cowries and 7 highjohn roots (small enuf to fit the hand)

enjoyed doing it, ive always wanted to be a diviner
and develop a hoodoo divination system/holybook
based on an africanamerican cultural vision

for some reason this morning decided to finally move on that
part of whats kept me from doing it is the learning curve

i assume it will be years before im really good at it
so ima be fumbling and stumbling for awhile, bear with me yall

eventually im going to get the hang of this
and then you gon be seeing
something you aint seen before

its kinda frightening because i dont want to get too spacey
with this and no telling where this is going to take me

as a practicing contemporary hoodooman im always trying
to make sure i dont wander too far afield

the toss this morning was 5:7:
illumination: transformation

which was a 'wow' moment for me because
thats a perfect answer to the question of should
i do this, this longheld aspiration to be a diviner

wish i had some text for it

in future as i get more comfortable w/doing this publically
i will be doing iching/ifa type epigrams to go
with my daily divinations

which will then be segued into text for
the hoodoo book of flowers

but for the moment
its back to rest for the weary

my love to you all

rickydoc trickmaster

delta conjureman
and wouldbe diviner

FRIDAY:
buked and scorned and speaking in tongues

the old rootdoctor feeling a little low
got my feelings hurt

got buked and scorned
called a handkerchiefhead and
a girlie man

got to close my heart on that
wont make that mistake again

instead i will let babagriot david walkers words
speak for themselves, they are as good
now as when he wrote them during the
great gitting up morning:

"Our greatest happiness shall consist of working for the salvation
of our whole body.  When this is accomplished a burst of glory will
shine upon you which will indeed astonish you and the world"

rest for the weary

seems the pilgrimage to johns place
was just what the old conjureman needed

segued into last lap on rest for the weary
without missing a beat and feeling strong w/it too

still got to do the forrest scene, got 2 books to read/skim
researching him has humanized him to me, which was unexpected
but that will just make my fictional efforts to bring him down
more effective

its good to be back on the text
its like i been in the wilderness for 4 years
now im back on solid ground

a trunkload of work to do and i can hear that clock ticking
but its like i been training all my life for this moment
aint nothing stopping this party

(well, except for an act of god maybe, that might do it, depending -
if its just a basic act of god i might keep going but sometimes god
like to remind you who the boss)


rootwork.com

gon work on rootwork.com some this evening maybe
the outdatedness of my site is really starting to bug me
i put an hour in on mojo rising yesterday
i think that i will still let myself do other things this week
while im reworking the structure of rest

katrina update

katrina is still online with me

its awkward moving from a immediate response mode into
a longterm engagement mode
you dont have the fierce attention to give it like you were doing

my numbers been going up daily since katrina
about a month now, im doing something right
i hate to let that go but i got to be strategic in
my attention

speaking of which, rumors, foolishness and conspiracy theories abound
when you aspire to be a player in the game
you have to be ruthlessly focused on whats real and what aint
whats serious and whats a sideshow - these are all sideshows

(in the frontpage link above (foolishness) they tried to recruit debra dickerson
it pleased me to see her put them in her place)

i was not as effective in the initial response as i would
liked to have been, but weaknesses in my operation were
made apparent and i will address them in expectation
of future need

for the moment
im keeping my eye on the housing/living situation for the evacuees

that staying with family, in shelters & other adhoc arrangements is getting tired
and the old rootdoctor detecting a tension in the tribal soul that needs addressing

also got to keep an eye on the bushmen
and basinstreet fatcats lining up at the trough

the rebuilt levees must be tall and strong
send out the spyboys, the chiefs and the tribes

and which way will the creole flow, basinstreet fatcats
licking at the cream
the chief of police has been replaced and
the mayor stands exposed in a frontline
state of things

the bring new orleans back commission
has a 50/50 black/white ratio - one black
activist, co chair barbara major, says all
blacks aint black so 50/50 aint necessarily
equal but it will do for a start

the divination is unclear
it must be tossed again

and have i no time for haiti
again
nor the sudan
again

in a world of crises fatigue
if the rootdoctor will not stand who will

(well, i enjoyed that, found myself trying to put a little divination in the mix
i think im gon play w/that, w/enhancing the hoodoo tonality
go deeper into a prophetic voice - work a little mystery on you)

okay, back to work
duty calls

it was baba john o killens taught me the longgame; it was the great griot master of brooklyn taught me how to be a visionary

hello world

im one tired hoodooman
this post is likely to wander, forgive me

did my brooklyn workshop this weekend
i love the city but lord knows it wears me out

but im pretty overextended right along in here period
ive been working on this historical segment of my novel which was
originally 2 pages and has become a third of the book
and ive been working on it for 4 years now
finally about 8 pages from being done with it

but god im burnt out, i been crunching it now for 6 months with this novel
and i am just totally burnt out on this section, im tired of it

had two scenes to write, one in which othena has a vision
at this husharbor where theyve taken refuge during memphis
riots of 1866 that becomes the holyground park of contemporary
segment

this is a core scene that ive got to get right, and the fear of blowing it
has been frightening me to point of being unable to write it

i figured while i was in brooklyn
i would go by john o killens grave as i sometimes do and write
the scene there, while communing with the master

also happened the night before that i was going thru old files in my newyork spot
and found all these old papers/pictures of john killens,
so im rereading not only old john stuff, but an draft of rest for the weary
when it was titled 'no rest for the weary' from 1992 and its like
well damn, how long have i been working on this book???

so im feeling somewhat fey by the time i get to the evergreen cemetary and i rebuild the little altar ive built there and i notice that some folk have planted flowers and evergreens on other graves, i will do that when i go back down next week

i sit and i think about john o and all he has given me
and im reading some of his work that i found that morning

including a 1973 black scholar article: wanted some long distance runners

john talking about his long distance runner metaphor
hed always say (this before the kenyans), that black trackstars were all flashy sprinters and not longdistance runners:

"I told my publisher that the kicks may very well be in the sprints and the dashes, but it was the last kick in the mile that counted.  And that our struggle for liberation was indeed a long long distance race, for we are out for nothing short of winning the entire human race and we were up against a formidable foe, and to win this race would require planning, pacing, discipline and stamina, and a belief in our ability to win the long protracted struggle.

Indeed we must construct one hundred year plans.  Two hundred year plans.  We must construct institutions for generations yet unborn.  Black people tend to live a hand to mouth existence and our planning for liberation tends to be from hand to mouth.  But hand to mouth planning will not win the human race."

it was deep seeing it written like that and being reminded
just how much of my own vision comes straight out of johns mouth
(one day soon ima break that jok quote down for the 21st century)

im always telling folk it was john o killens who taught me the longgame
it was john o killens taught me how to be a visionary

i translated longdistance runner metaphor into the longgame
i dumped the sports image because sports in spite of being a longdistance
runner in highshool, dont do nothing for me

but the longgame: as a trained ideological orchestrator (my phrase and im rather proud of it, my translation of a phrase used by toni cade bambara at a conference john sponsored at howard, she called black writers 'cultural workers' - i translated that as 'cultural orchestrators')

and as a trained ideological orchestrator, being a 'master of the longgame' moves me

and it was deep seeing it written down like that cause i so often feel like im out here on a limb
and sometimes i question my ideological orchestration strategies that seems so out of tune with current
black thinking like the current focus on reparations, which is a joke as a strategy of longgame empowerment, is this the best we can do for the 21st century, train our generations to be better beggars - folk just dont think like john o taught me - an attempt to manifest longgame - to shape the generations as we would have them be

what john o killens understood about winning the longgame it wont ever be anything like that ever again, and it irks me that john o dont get no play for being the visionary that he was, the prophets curse, time the very thing that sustains them  - and not enuf time has passed to show just how profound he was, just how strong the visionary game can be when its played properly

so anyway im tripping hard there at johns grave and im feeling all the tension i been carrying just floating away and i wrote my scene, raw so its bad, but its the first step and i did it, by god i did it

now all i got left to write in the slaverytime section is the death of nathan bedford forrest

then i can get back to looking at the whole manuscript, the last time i really did anything on entire manuscript was 4 years ago so its going to be heartbreaking when i have to look at that with a 3 month deadline on my sabbatical

ive been doing too much raw manuscript to have a viable draft, so i have to forcemarch through whatever i got and bring it up to date without letting the quality of it deter me, or lack of quality rather, just forcemarch a viable draft of last third of novel in about a month (impossible but when has that ever stopped me from trying), so that i can sit down with the whole novel and my redpen for about two months

that will give me a product, wont be up to stuff yet, basically its too lean, im just forcemarching through and i dont have time to give it the kind of texture i would prefer, i just got to get this story told now, get the storyline down, then i will need another draft for texture (and refining the storyline) and then the last draft is the poetry draft, thats when it becomes fun, you got a good manuscript, if you die tomorrow you got a good manuscript, all you doing that last draft is letting it sing

i call that phase putting the poetry on it and i love it cause the addition or extraction or refining of one word/prhase/passage can add all kinds of levels of complexity to a phrase/passage/novel

so anyway i called ms grace, johns widow, while i was there and she went through some 'arthur who' chastizement so i trotted over after i had done my scene and as always had a wonderful time sitting there with the queenmother - she was always more radical even than john and still a warhorse

i asked her, cause the new rootwork.com, which i will work on updating next semester when ive finished this draft, will have an enhanced audio component, so i asked ms grace if she had some audio tapes of john o, the house was crammed full of the boxes of his papers that they were sending down to emory so im still tripping hard, my mentor been deep on my mind the whole day, and i was looking through folders of his papers and being reminded of incidents and i asked ms grace about the tapes again, cause i wanted to hear his voice, and in the kitchen were shoeboxes of old cassettes, in terrible shape, so im like pushing it, ms grace why dont i take these tapes and digitize them to the computer for you, then i can clean them up - so she let me have one, johns presentation to the 4th national black writers conference, im supposed to bring it back next time, told her i would make cds of whatever i work on, one for her and one for me

so i leave but i had to go back to the grave cause i left a gourd on the altar that i hadnt taken the insides out, im leaving it there over the winter in hopes that it drys out well and i can use it to make a new sacred rattle for performances - so i had to go back to get it and im listening to john o presentation in the car and im in a different dimension now - i mean the only reason im in town is to do the newren workshop, (and it was deep as they generally are) which is me trying to maintain john o legacy and pass on what he passed on to me

and im at this crossroads moment with my novel, and the harlem writers guild recently put out an anthology in which i, an ex executive director, and my whole generation, were excommunicated, (ms grace didnt even know there was one out, they didnt give her one, ill take one down with me when i go to the city next week  - doing a reading monday oct 3rd 7pm at mo pitkins house of satisfaction 34 avenue A between 2nd and 3rd streets for the summer literary seminar kenya folk, a two week literary seminar in december, nairobi and mombasa - me, jeff allen, danny senza, other writers including a slew of kenyan writers i met last time who are so cool, folk like binya and tony and yvonne, they got a literary movement going on that reminded me of the harlem renaissance and the newrenaissance years of the 70s/80s - we gon have a good time - go check it out and if you sign up tell them i sent you so they invite me back again)

so anyway im back in the city of the dead and im tripping hard now about my novel, my training, my life as a writer, my mentor and his legacy as manifested through me - wouldbe literary great and master of the longgame

i sit there at the grave a little while longer, call the queenmother and ask her if i can get another tape, i had seen one of him giving a presentation on harriet tubman, john used to call her saint harriet of the eastern shore, so i go back over there, hang out with her and barbara, listen to some more tapes, and finally get out of there (w/2 tapes) and on the road back to syracuse, much later than i meant to

got in late last night, just woke up and gon spend the day, hope i got the energy, typing in the last couple of weeks worth of redpen and raw manuscript

then im going to take a week off, got some books on forrest that i want to read/skim and im going to try to do a roughdraft of that segment then ima put the novel down for about a week and work on another project, putting mojo rising online (an attempt at a hoodoo sacred text/memoir that didnt go anywhere w/public and now its outdated but im thinking i will put it online and update it as i go along in life - it will be a living sacredtext/memoir and reflect ideas that i have about how intellectuals have to rethink their relationship with their work for the net, i want to disseminate it more than i want to make money off it - ima put all my nonfiction online)

so ima take me a week off Rest For The Weary before my last lap of this marathon run cause its showtime now, and cause my weariness has begun to reflect itself in the text, im just barely writing enough to move on, the fun and the challenge of it is gone

i want to take off now, the inputting will take a day but thats just investment of x hours, no real thinking, and i will see how i feel, if i feel as whipped as i do today i will do the forrest when i get back in a refreshed week but it will be much stronger to finish that last lap - then when i pick it up next week, all im thinking about is the entire manuscript, if you leave an unfinished tag like this you cant move forward,

i can tell when im in danger of woodshed collapse, like mozart in amadeus im capable of working myself to death - but i got to do forrest, will have to accept weakness in the manuscript most likely, a roughdraft is all i got in me, if that

im really wandering arent i, this is not a discplined post, im just so tired, im weary in my bones, i was tired before i got on the road, im whipped now, i been woodshedding in the zone for about 6 months now and im just a shell of a man, but i can do this, one more scene arthur, you can do it, then ima take a week off, work on some of my online projects which are so out of date and full of unfinished pages its not funny, and ima lay around the house reading scifi, and listening to the collected works of randy crawford, thats what ima do

some rest for the weary thats what ima do
and if bonnie gives me that look i might even paint the living room 
like i been swearing i would

ima outta here

i really enjoyed communing yesterday w/baba john o killens
the great griot master of brooklyn

in the mystical traditions there is that called the secret teachings which can only be learned by time spent with the master and exposure to the model of the life the master lives

in the 13 years that i followed john o killens from school to school john o not only taught me how to write he taught me how to be a writer

it was john o killens taught me the longgame, it was
john o killens taught me how to be a visionary

the 1st line of my last two books and every book
henceforth is a griotic formula - starting a Work by
declaring who you are and who you were trained by:

i am flowers of the delta clan flowers
and the line of o killens

i am hoodoo, i am griot, i am a man of power

in spirit and struggle
rickydoc trickmaster

hoodooman

katrina commentary: acorn report of mortgage disparities for katrina victim

KATRINA CALL TO ACTION

following is a list of policies from group called the
african american coalition disaster relif call to action

headlined apparently by black congresswoman, stephanie tubbs
they recently met at howard to come up with 8 areas of concern:

i thought these were pertinent, particularly since i never
would have thought about these issues, my mind doesnt work that way

but in particular pertinent in light of the report from acorn
that africanamericans being victimized by mortgage lenders
who are apparently automatically giving the prime mortgage lenders
up to 3 months grace on payments and credit reports

but only giving their subprime lenders, 48% of black mortgages
only 1 months grace and that only if they call and ask for it

acorn has called for parity on the grace periods for katrina victims
across the board

"The communities that suffered the most from Katrina and the ineffective government response are now receiving inferior and disparate treatment from our nation's financial system," said ACORN President Maude Hurd. "Equal treatment and a chance to get back on their feet is not too much to ask for the homeowners in our communities. Those that have more expensive loans to start with should certainly get the same consideration as other borrowers."

this group foresaw problems of this sort
i did not

1. ENSURING AFFECTED FAMILIES' IMMEDIATE AND LONG-TERM RIGHT OF RETURN TO GULF   COAST REGION

- Provide temporary housing at all assets available to federal government,   including currently closed military bases in Gulf Coast region.
  - Provide economic incentives for families to return to Gulf Coast region.

2. REBUILDING AND RECONNECTING FAMILIES AND CHILDREN

  - Establish Family Reconstruction Fund (estimated $100 billion for providing   unemployment assistance, job training, school placement, assistance reuniting   families, etc).

3. ENSURING THAT LOCAL RESIDENTS HAVE FIRST CHOICE AT RECONSTRUCTION JOBS AND   CONTRACTS

- Establish Gulf Coast Region Reconstruction Fund (rebuilding homes, businesses,   etc).
  - Establish timeline to rebuild colleges and universities, including Historically   Black Colleges and Universities (Xavier University, Dillard University, Southern   University in New Orleans, Jackson State University).
  - Set 50 percent residency target goal for all contracts. - Set 40 percent minority   vendor target for all reconstruction.
  - Place moratorium on all contracts until civil rights provisions can be reinstituted   (Davis-Bacon Requirements).

4. PROVIDING PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH ASSISTANCE

  - Order the admittance of minority community-based counselors in facilities   with evacuees nationwide.
  - Provide health benefits to all affected citizens for a period no less than   24 months.

5. PROVIDING LEGAL, ECONOMIC AND VOTING PROTECTIONS

  - Direct Justice Department to immediately review individual cases of arrested   and detained individuals.
  - Ensure evacuees immediate ability to vote in state and local elections, including   February 2006 election.
  - Ensure home owners the right of first refusal to reclaim property.
  - Freeze all foreclosure proceedings against property in affected areas for   a minimum of 12 months.
  - Build in legal protections against predatory lenders.
  - Institute a prohibition of collections and deficiency judgments on real and   personal properties.
  - Institute a prohibition on negative credit reporting or the omission of negative   events from credit scores when the incidents were a result of Katrina.
  - Institute a voluntary waiver of late fees or interest on loans made to people   in Katrina affected areas, for a period of at least three months.
 
  6. MONITORING FEMA, AMERICAN RED CROSS, AND SALVATION ARMY DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES   

  - Establish a diverse commission to monitor the equitable distribution of relief   resources provided by FEMA, American Red Cross, and Salvation Army as well as   the equitable reconstruction of the affected Gulf Coast areas.
 
  7. SECURING THE ENVIRONMENT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

  - Develop action plan to secure wetlands in coastal areas of US.
  - Stop rollback/waivers of environmental laws.

8. DEVELOP COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY TO ADDRESS POVERTY CRISIS IN AMERICA

katrina commentary: running up the flag: they done took my blues and gone

hello world

i been in the woodshed
crunching rest for the weary
a never ending battle it seems

but let me so some katrina update
as i see it

first, tried to run up the flag on the hoodoo lists
about katrina, new orleans and the delta

i still see a role for afrospiritual practitioners
in this struggle

no response except on one
which became a passionate discussion
on race but not in a useful manner

mostly whitefolk saying dont blame me
and asking what this got to do with us

imagine, a hoodoo list asking what the
destruction of one of the afrospiritual centers
of the world has to do with us

they just wanted to stay in their little witchy bubble
and trade their little slaverytime recipes

while i began ranting about how the point of
hoodoo is to protect your community
not how many recipes do you know

and finally had to just chill, it was a waste
of time and energy
wasting my time on somebody calls himself vlad (as in the impaler)
talking about dont be a hater

life can be so amusing sometime

instead of a discussion on neworleans
and what hoodoo can do

it became a melee of defensive whitefolk
and exasperated blackfolk trying to explain why this
is important to us

which is what happens when we dont
have our own space

where we dont have to constantly explain and defend our need
to discuss issues that vitally concern us

to think this is where they want to take my tradition

make it useless as the cultural instrument of empowerment
and resistance that its historically been
and turn it into a kumbaya campfire

and when i object to stripping hoodoo
of all its deeper meaning
they call me a racist - party pooper

i have tried to 'generalize' hoodoo by defining
its destinical obligations as a responsibility for all humanity
and all god creatures, great and small

instead of my original definition as responsibilty
for the destiny of the blackrace only

but they want hoodoo to be strictly giftbook magic
happily trading slaverytime magical recipes
in a witchy witchy bubble of feel good wicca

o my lord
they have taken my blues and gone
they have taken my blues and gone

when i raise the flag in those kind of forums
its more to help me identify who is ready
to salute it - i will take it from there

a luta continua

okay, an update of the katrina players

bush got out there trying to protect his rep
and made all these promises about sparing no cost
to rebuild neworleans and the delta

firstoff, weve heard all that before, think no child left behind
a lot of big words but no finance

thats going to be the scenario here
they will pay the initial costs, because the spotlight is on them
and its a political matter, which are the only kind that really move them

but once the spotlight dims, we will find that a lot of that was rhetoric
mostly because his base is going to object strenuously

they dont mind spending on taxcuts and cutting estate taxes
but deficit spending to rebuild neworleans and make the delta whole
o no, we couldnt possibly bust the deficit in this matter

so basically we can expect a bunch of backtracking on this

the question becomes what are they going to do
and thats problematic too

they have decided to experiment with the delta
going to run every necon theory of development that they can come up with
they gon try to treat my people like the treated the iraqis

they have already exempted companies from wage and affirmative action laws
talking about giving the students vouchers they can use in priivate schools
i was reading where they have just passed a tax cut for the evacuees
what good is a taxcut for poor people who probably dont make enuf to pay taxes

i was reading where a guy in tennesse said, why should my taxes be sent
to rebuild neworleans and it is so indicative of the kind of public they have bred

each man for himself
(and maybe the women)

bush is basically hoping this will blow over
him and bruh rove praying for that storm
to hit texas, so they can respond and show america
that they ready now

ive been thinking hard on what their moves will be
cause we just cant sneer at them and leave it at that

that aint struggle, struggle is trying to determine just what are they going to do
utilize what we can of it and finesse the rest

so i got to get a better idea of exactly what strategies are they going to try to use
to rebuild the delta so i can be in a better position to finesse them

at lot we are just not going to be able to stop
enterprise zones and the like, so the question is how best to finesse

also im noticing the use of this guy, bishops tj jakes
how bush has called him in to run interference for him
be his blackface so to speak

thats so sad

okay, anything else, probably should but im feeling
the need to get to work on rest

a section (just a section mind you) that i been working
on for some 4 years now is finally moving towards closure
and im eager to get back on the whole manuscript

when i finally pulled out of all that to do on the hoodoo list
it was with the statement that i had so much work to do

i keep saying im going to show the world what hoodoo can do
in this situation, but im not sure myself what hoodoo can do

if we were already the power i wish we were
the power that im trying to forge
basically a secret society kind of power encased
in a web of pushbutton power that gives spiritual and strategic
guidance to our players

(which is what i try to do now, just that folk dont listen to me
part of my lifegoal is to be a model of the hoodoos of the future
i will with my life show just what it is that a hoodoo prophet do
and hopefully future generations will trust the hoodoos of the future
to give them good spiritual and stategic advice - because of the geas of rickydoc
i am what you might call a sacrifice)

if hoodoo was trusted as a font of spiritual and strategic advice
contemporary shamans and witchdoctors protecting the tribe
then we could make some moves
have some true influence

but im having to construct that scenario from scratch damn near
and it might be something that i can only lay the seeds on in my lifetime

i have tried to organize a hoodoo based secret society but its
in its embryonic stages and not functional as yet

and all my personal conjure powers are more longgame powers than short
magic (and fiction) is a dicey power and you got to know what its good for and what it aint

this weblog is an attempt to manifest shortgame power
and its been functional but not to my satisfaction

i guess the first step is to keep trying to build it and my mailing list
into an alternative newsource/reality - but everything is so frustratingly step by step,
so damned incremental
but i guess thats the nature of the beast

im wandering now, got to go, that novel is calling me
will clean this up over the next couple of days

in love and peace
in spirit and struggle

rickydoc flowers
delta conjureman

katrina commentary:more horrible than truth: news reports: by davidcarr of nytimes regarding lurid rumors of rape murder and mayhem: urban myths, media lies and fox news

im glad to see this article
i knew all along that most of those lurid rumors
about rape murder and mayhem were just that

brooks piece storm before the storm
spoke on how rumors of that sort attended
most disasters of this magnitude

and since folk knew the historical precedent
i didnt understand why they were believing that trash

im sure there was some hoodlum activity
but nothing like the rumormill was generating
a rumor mill apparently fed by fox news,
which loves to dump on blackpeople

the real tragedy was that this criminalized all the evacuees
and led to situations like when that town closed the bridge
on folk trying to make it to safety - man that was cold

and it made housing the evacuees that much harder
who wanted to let potential rape murder and mayhem
into their homes - i surely wouldnt have

the real tragedy though was how many blackfolk were willing to believe it
believe and perpetuate it - the local leadership was bad enuf but when
randall robinson bemoaned acts of cannibalism it was like give me a break
we know how media like fox news likes to do us and still let them do it

i kept telling folk to listen to all that flimflam with a grain of salt and am very gratified
to see my reservations justified

i can only hope that the retraction of those rumors is as widespread
as their dissemination

------------------------------------------

 

More Horrible Than Truth: News Reports
david carr, newyorktimes, 9/19/05

First, anyone with any knowledge of the events in New Orleans knows that terrible things with non-natural causes occurred: there were assaults, shots fired at a rescue helicopter and, given the state of the city's police department, many other crimes that probably went unreported.

But many instances in the lurid libretto of widespread murder, carjacking, rape, and assaults that filled the airwaves and newspapers have yet to be established or proved, as far as anyone can determine. And many of the urban legends that sprang up - the systematic rape of children, the slitting of a 7-year-old's throat - so far seem to be just that. The fact that some of these rumors were repeated by overwhelmed local officials does not completely get the news media off the hook. A survey of news reports in the LexisNexis database shows that on Sept. 1, the news media's narrative of the hurricane shifted.

The Fox News anchor, John Gibson, helped set the scene: "All kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews. Thousands of police and National Guard troops are on the scene trying to get the situation under control. Thousands more on the way. So heads up, looters." A reporter, David Lee Miller, responded: "Hi, John. As you so rightly point out, there are so many murders taking place. There are rapes, other violent crimes taking place in New Orleans." After the interview, Mr. Gibson did acknowledge that "we have yet to confirm a lot of that."

Later that night on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson grabbed the flaming baton and ran with it. "People are being raped," he said in a conversation with the Rev. Al Sharpton. "People are being murdered. People are being shot. Police officers being shot."

Some journalists did find sources. About 10 p.m. that same evening, Greta Van Susteren of Fox interviewed Dr. Charles Burnell, an emergency room physician who was providing medical care in the Superdome.

"Well, we had several murders. We had three murders last night. We had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before I think there were three or four murders. There were half a dozen rapes that night," he told Ms. Van Susteren. (Dr. Burnell did not return several calls asking for comment.) On the same day, The New York Times referred to two rapes at the Superdome, quoting a woman by name who said she was a witness.

It is a fact that many died at the convention center and Superdome (7 and 10 respectively, according to the most recent reports from the coroner), but according to a Sept. 15 report in The Chicago Tribune, it was mostly from neglect rather than overt violence. According to the Tribune article, which quoted Capt. Jeffery Winn, the head of the city's SWAT team, one person at the convention center died from multiple stab wounds and one National Guardsman was shot in the leg.

On Sept. 8, Lt. Dave Banelli, head of the sex crimes unit, told a CNN correspondent, Drew Griffin, that his division had reports of two attempted rapes at the Superdome. The caveat here is that rape is a notoriously underreported crime, perhaps more so under the chaotic circumstances.

The journalists who dwelled on some of the more improbable stories out of New Orleans might be held to account, except that they eventually received confirmation from both the mayor and the police chief.

Appearing on "Oprah" on Sept. 6, Chief Eddie Compass said of the Superdome: "We had little babies in there, some of the little babies getting raped." Mayor C. Ray Nagin concurred: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

But the night before, Chief Compass had told The Guardian, "We don't have any substantiated rapes. We will investigate if they come forward." Many of the more toxic rumors seem to have come from evacuees, half-crazed with fear sitting through night after night in the dark. Victims, officials and reporters all took one of the most horrific events in American history and made it worse than it actually was.

Although I was not in New Orleans, I was at the World Trade Center towers site the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. People had seen unimaginable things, but a small percentage, many still covered in ash, told me tales that were worse than what actually happened. Mothers throwing babies out of the towers, men getting in fights on the ledges, human heads getting blown out of the buildings, all of which took place so high up in the air that it was hard to distinguish the falling humans from the falling wreckage.

"There is a timeless primordial appeal of the story of a city in chaos and people running loose," said Carl Smith, a professor of English and American studies at Northwestern University and the author of "Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief." He says that urban chaos narratives offered "the fulfillment of some timely ideas and prejudices about the current social order."

In New Orleans, the misinformation extracted a terrible toll in another way. An international press eager to jump on American pathology played the unfounded reports for all they were worth, with hundreds of news outlets regurgitating tales of lawlessness. "They're Going to Kill or Rape Us, Get Us Out" read the headline in The Daily Star, a British tabloid. "Tourist Tells of Murder and Rape," was one headline in The Australian. "Snipers Shoot at Hospitals. Evacuees Raped, Beaten," The Ottawa Citizen reported.

"I think that citizens of New Orleans have been stigmatized in a way that is going to make it difficult to be accepted wherever they go," said Jonathan Simon, who teaches criminal law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Howard Witt, the Southwest bureau chief of The Chicago Tribune, wrote early on that much of what he had been told, even by public officials, did not check out. And he found himself inundated by rumors.

"The Web and talk radio fueled these rumors in the days following the storm, and the evacuees themselves contributed to the misinformation because they were so scared," he said by telephone from Baton Rouge, La. With the grid down and accurate information at a premium, a game of toxic telephone supplanted logic.

"I talked to a friend and, after the flood, they heard on the radio that a gang of 400 armed black looters were coming over the bridge to Hanrahan, where he lived," said Ken Bode, a professor of journalism at DePauw University and a former correspondent for NBC. "He and his neighbors were sitting in the street with guns and they decided to load up all they could and caravan out. He said the looters never got there because the National Guard turned them back."

There was no band of looters coming their way, but other things that sound too horrible to be true did happen. The widely reported and seemingly fantastical story about a man shooting at a rescue helicopter was confirmed. And the police in Gretna, La., did in fact turn back hundreds of fleeing refugees on the Crescent City Connector.

On Sept. 15, The Chicago Tribune had an extensive report detailing how thugs took some measure of control over people and supplies at the convention center. The Washington Post published a vivid article on the same day detailing how grave the situation in the convention center became, but again, the issue of whether people were murdered was left open.

And yes, true story, a Louisiana congressman under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation hitched a ride on a National Guard truck to his flood-damaged home to pick up, among other things, a box of documents. A rescue helicopter was diverted from picking up survivors after the truck became stuck.

Even now, the real, actual events in New Orleans in the past three weeks surpass the imagination. Who needs urban myths when the reality was so brutal?

 

bottletrees in the backyard and hoodoo commentary by melvin gibbs

i didnt even ask melvin gibbs if i could post this
extract from a post he made on the hoodoo way list

this one had so much food for afrospiritual thought in it
i was eager to share it with you

one of the things in it that spoke to me was
how it speaks to folk like me who arent interested in atr
iniatory traditions because im too busy being a hoodooman

i have always believed that you are stronger if you are true
to yourself, true to your culture deep down in your soul

folk who struggling to think like yoruba, fon or congo,
who judge each other by how much of the language they can
use and how well they adapt yoruba, etc culture to
the afroamerican experience, all thats cool for them that
its cool for

but then they get the yoruba folk lording it over them
judging when and when they not 'authentic'

dont get me wrong, its made for some strong transatlantic
connection, but then its made for some anamolies too
like that preoccupation with blood sacrifice, that might
work fine in cultures that kill their own food
but here it becomes a problem

no, im looking for my spiritual power in my own cultural roots

hoodoo goes back in my family tree on my northcarolina side
of the family, my mama used to lament "half my family gives consultations
and the other half wont make a move without one"

medical doctors on the delta side
hoodoo doctors on the north carolina side

but we didnt really listen to our hoodoo family folk
considered them country cousins
our baptist upbringing more tolerated than listened to them
and my mama was not altogether comfortable with it when i
decided to take up the family business

but that was when hoodoo, like the blues, was almost
abandoned by us as a cultural instrument

so we lost a little something in the translation from
one generation to the other
but my generation of hoodoo have gone back
to the tradition and starting to put some new licks on it

it was clear to me early in my practive that the conventional
understanding of hoodoo wasnt going to work in the 21st century
so i started trying to update hoodoo principles early in the game

which means that a lot of my conventional knowledge has holes
in it, which is unfortunate, but hoodoo learning is a lifetime thing
so im filling in the holes as i go along

but what im really struggling with is how to manifest
an enlightened and empowered hoodoo built for the
21st century sensibility

in a hoodoo world thats still hungup on doing what we
did 100 years ago, and any other riff on hoodoo, including
yours truly, dismissed as unauthentic (dont get me started)

specially now when im supposed to be working,
ive put up two posts today
its noveltime, then i will work on cleaning up
my mailing list this evening

in spirit and struggle
rickydoc flowers

ps: ima go ask melvins permisssion now

pps: i have 2 bottles trees out back, im not quite
sure what im supposed to do with them
but i have enjoyed experimenting

--------------------------

excerpts from a the hoodoo way post by melvin gibbs

It took me going to Brazil to appreciate the Black Church. After going to a few festas ( parties - the word the use for Candomble services ) watching the Granmas dance and thinking to myself "this looks like church down South" and after seeing what was to me a shocking lack of political power by Afro-Brazilians and the extreme antagonism between the Pentacostals and Candomble followers and after explaining to people over and over again that in the U.S. the Black church IS the Candomble the power and wisdom of the spiritual decisions the African-American ancestors made started to sink in. I think sometimes we get caught up in thinking that their decisions were forced and consequently fail to  reflect on the fact that their decisions were calculated. For me it's key to research and reflect to determine what  philosophies grounded their thought processes to be able to know what they really did , not just what we think they did or have been told they did.

I think that the ancestors fully expected that in the future their descendants would be able to tune themselves to their frequency, to  be able to tap into their wavelength the same way they did in relation to THEIR ancestors, and they'd be able to tell or show us what we need to know and give us what we need to have to complete what seems to us today to be a puzzle. The fact that we havent yet or find it difficult to do is our problem, self- created in only the past generation or two, not theirs.

The fact that we think of bottle trees and yard shows as folkoric artworks nowadays doesnt mean that you still couldn't do serious work with them if you wanted to. All you’d have to do is crack the code (or create a new one) and give the work a power supply. Look at what you did r k with the mixing bowl without having anything but intution to guide you. I’d venture to say the power that fueled that intuition has existed in your family for generations. It’s only recently that your family , like mine, stopped calling on it.

The fact that we stopped understanding the Bible the way they did and started reading it is our fault, not theirs. If we understood it the way they did we’d know why Elder Mason, the founder of the Church of God in Christ used to keep roots on his desk and stare at them while preaching for inspiration.

I think that those of us who haven’t as of yet been fortunate enough to find a fit within other existing ATR’s or their New World adaptations haven’t been able to do so because our responsibility is to do our part to repair to the African-American ancestral tradition and we are supposed to supply a different, additional set of tools to the problem than has been the case. The fact that no one knows or can find where the most famous Dr. Buzzard was buried suggests to me that his bones have been taken. That would point to there being African-American “Paleros”. Why else would his bones get taken but for purposes of “work”? Getting someone to admit to it would be a whole nother issue though.

What about all the improperly buried, wrongly killed and even lynched souls who’d be willing to help us for their own karmic benefit? Who’s gonna uplift them? Some new tools need to be added to the arsenal.

I do find it somewhat ironic that some Paleros think they can put one  dead man (albeit backed my a force of nature and the Palo ancestors) against the millions the U.S. government has killed and win. Maybe it worked in the war for Cuban independence but the U.S.A. is a whole nother level.

Another issue requiring a different mode of thought is the fact that the U.S. now has people coming in from Africa of their own free will and staying, which creates a new type of energy our ancestors would want us to harmonize lovingly and for the benefit of our futures, as well as dealing with the hard work of healing the wounds of the Middle Passage and colonialism. This "gathering of the tribes" creates a meeting place which allows us to re-harmonize without mediation the system the African-American ancestors created with the systems they used to create it.

peace
mg

katrina commentary: racial tension mars initial discussions on rebuilding neworleans: no shit sherlock

rudys network sent this out
ive really envied the way hes worked it
the way he publically responds to emails in a manner
designed to build community

been thinking about how i could follow suit
im much more of a solitary worker
think what i might do is start by cutting down
my mailing list,

right now my mailing list is so big its unweildy
takes too long to send out a mailing
because roadrunner has a limit of 1000 a day
and it takes me days to get a mailing out
and by the time its out the post is oldnews

ima break that down to folk who really want
to stay on it, folk i know and folk who respond
to a 'im trimming this list down post'
anybody who wants to stay on it will have to tell me so

this article is interesting, says some things

one, that notorious wall street journal article
about basinstreet fatcats planning a themepark neworleans
exposed too much and put a lot of folk on guard

two, brother nagin seems to be holding relatively firm
(notice all the qualifiers, time will tell, but right now
that brother is not on the frontline, he is the frontline

gone pray to the gods of neworleans
to give him strength, honor, fortitude, slickness and
a consciousness of his historical role

apparently up to this point in his political career
he been something of a tool for the basinstreet fatcats

but this tragedy will make heroes
of fools and fools of heroes

hanginthere brother
may the gods be good to you
as long as you coming correct

may the gods be good to us all

rickydoc flowers

----------------------------------------------------

Rebuilding plans confront turf wars, political strife

Racial tension mars initial discussions
By Robert Travis Scott Times-Picayune Capital bureau, 9/18/05

BATON ROUGE - Twelve days after Hurricane Katrina, as the worst of the storm's physical perils subsided, about 60 business people and public officials from New Orleans gathered in Dallas with Mayor Ray Nagin to discuss the future of the city.

The room full of "type A" personalities, as one participant described them, showered advice on the mayor. But it was New Orleans-born trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, one of several people participating by phone, who passionately made the point that seemed to resonate most with the group: New Orleans must rebuild its cultural, as well as its economic, strength.

For a city suffering an almost total exodus of residents and standing on the precipice of historic change in its population size and demographic makeup, the challenge of Marsalis' message struck deeply, according to people who attended the Dallas meeting Sept. 10.

One huge concern is the potential loss of a disproportionately large number of African-Americans whose neighborhoods endured some of the most damaging flood waters and whose low incomes hinder their return.

Reaching agreement on how to rebuild New Orleans won't be easy. Nagin's effort already has run up against a Louisiana political environment rife with historical divisions and turf wars. The city's initiative also will face a headstrong wave of federal aid and free-market forces that will play a role in making or breaking a new grand plan, whatever it turns out to be.

"We can talk in the abstract about what a rebuilt New Orleans would look like," said Jim Schwab, senior research associate with the American Planning Association. "In the end that is not going to matter nearly as much, I hope, as what the people of the region themselves decide they want."

And while critics from across the political spectrum darkly warn about the dangers of "social engineering" as a strategy for rebuilding the region, costs, safety issues and what insurance companies are willing to underwrite may be the determining factor in many decisions.

Urban planners who have studied the history of communities struck by disaster recommend they begin by building a consensus about what they want to preserve and create, Schwab said. But Katrina makes that job especially difficult.

"Every time you've done it before, you still had people in the community," Schwab said.

In Dallas alone, as the mayor's group met, thousands of evacuated citizens from New Orleans filled shelters and hotels, including about 2,000 people being placed there in federally subsidized housing. Nagin was in Dallas primarily to rent a place for his family and to settle his children into school until they can re-enroll in a New Orleans school.

Marsalis and others participating in the Dallas meeting predicted that if the diverse peoples of New Orleans do not return, its distinctive neighborhoods, musical inspirations and culinary traditions probably won't, either.


Confusion, hard feelings


The Dallas meeting was an early lesson in the difficulties facing those who seek a consensus on a plan for the future. It quickly ignited a controversy and led to miscommunication and hard feelings among some political leaders.

One of its organizers was Nagin's Regional Transportation Authority chief, Jimmy Reiss, a white businessman who was quoted that week in the Wall Street Journal saying that some people who want to rebuild the city foresee a town with a new demographic of fewer poor people. To some in the city, the story painted an impression of an elitist cadre of white New Orleans leaders callous to the plight of the city's poor.

"It was an extremely unfortunate article," said Bill Hines, a lawyer and leader of the economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc. who attended the Dallas meeting.

The story enraged a number of black state lawmakers and New Orleans City Council members, including Council President Oliver Thomas, state Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, and Sen. Diana Bajoie, both D-New Orleans, who confronted Nagin in a public meeting Sept. 12 at the state Capitol. They expressed concern that Nagin and the Dallas group of mostly white businessmen were coordinating a recovery program assuming that a large portion of poor African-Americans would be discouraged from returning to the city.

As the legislative hearing room gained the air of a formal inquiry, Nagin responded sharply that he had no such intention and said he had made that point clear at the Dallas gathering.

"So don't worry about this city being hijacked by a small group of people who are trying to take us backward," said Nagin, who is black.

Reiss, contacted at his home in Aspen, Colo., would not comment. In a letter to The Times Picayune, he said, "there was no selfish politics, no parochial goals" at the Dallas meeting. "We all shared the same objective: Make New Orleans a prosperous city that provided jobs and a high quality of life for all of its citizens, and preserving the diverse cultural and ethnic heritage that makes us special."

Some of those who joined the Dallas meeting, which lasted several hours, said it was positive and unified, and that Nagin persuasively articulated his dream for a prosperous city. In addition to Marsalis, there were other African-Americans who participated, including Entergy New Orleans chief Dan Packer, who is the board chairman of the Louis Armstrong International Airport, businessman David White and state Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero.

Still, the event fed Nagin's reputation as an aloof leader indebted to the white business establishment that helped elect him. Nagin himself is a businessman with no prior experience in elected office. Few have forgotten that Nagin, a Democrat, endorsed conservative Republican Bobby Jindal in the 2003 governor's race over Kathleen Blanco, the Democrat who won. His relations with Blanco - and hence relations between New Orleans and state government - have been cool ever since.

He also has strained relations with council members and the black legislative delegation from New Orleans, many of whom feel shut out by his administration, especially in this time of crisis. Those same people were unaware of the Dallas meeting until it was over.

"You don't need to fight these battles by yourself," Thomas told Nagin at the Capitol hearing.

"You may have done it that way in the past," state Rep. Karen Carter, D-New Orleans, told Nagin. "But you don't have to do it that way in the future."

Nagin explained that he had been dealing with urgent and stressful conditions hampered by dysfunctional communication systems. He made his mea culpa and announced he would appoint a racially balanced task force dedicated to planning the city's revival. He was adamant that New Orleanians, not state or federal officials, will determine the new plan for New Orleans.


Limited local leadership


Bernie Pinsonat, a consultant with Southern Media & Opinion Research in Baton Rouge, said the public perceives the Katrina political landscape as devoid of outstanding leadership from the president on down.

"Louisiana produced no Giuliani figures for the rest of the country," Pinsonat said, referring to former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's much-lauded handling of the 2001 terrorist attacks on his city.

Leadership is critical to the recovery process, and Nagin seems determined to emerge as the one setting the agenda for the future.

But the city has long been limited in determining its own affairs and revenue base. For example, state commissions own the Superdome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and the Legislature ultimately decides how much room tax New Orleans hotels will charge to pay for the buildings. The state, represented by the governor, is the primary negotiator in deals with the New Orleans Saints. Local sales and property taxes are capped by state law.

The city's public housing authority, which has temporarily moved to Houston, is under the control of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development because of past financial problems. Financing for future public housing projects will depend largely on the impetus of the federal agency.

Last week, the state Bond Commission, acting on a request that preceded Katrina, approved a federally backed $49 million financing package to continue a redevelopment program for three of the city's major public housing developments, one of which was severely flooded. It won't matter if people don't come back to occupy the apartments; the federal financing is not based on occupancy.

One senator on the commission questioned whether the panel was moving too fast considering the many unknowns about New Orleans' public housing scene. But the commission decided it was better to have the money in the pipeline than to derail the projects while waiting for a grand new plan for public housing.

The federal government has its own recovery agenda, announced by Bush last week, and it plans to contribute billions of dollars. There has been much talk about the possible appointment of a federal tsar for the recovery effort.

Federal Emergency Management Agency money for the city will pass through state agencies. It remains to be seen whether state or federal authorities will interfere or attempt to dictate the city's plan.

The state at times has been possessive of the city's revenue. For example, the state is the main tax collector for Harrah's New Orleans Casino downtown. Blanco has refused to release millions of dollars of Harrah's tax money that was supposed to be passed on to the city, and pleas from city officials and lawmakers have not convinced her to let it go.

Blanco wrote President Bush this week requesting that federal dollars cover 100 percent of the cost for Katrina recovery, and lawmakers at the state Capitol last week were nearly universal in their expectation that federal money would take care of New Orleans, leaving state budgets to continue providing the same services and projects elsewhere in Louisiana.

Whitney National Bank President King Milling, who participated in the Dallas meeting, said that despite all the obstacles, he is hopeful consensus can be formed on a recovery plan.

"We can create a better community in the long run with the same sensibilities and culture," said Milling, who is white.

Late last week, Nagin spent considerable time building political allies and staking out a national media presence to put a confident face on the daunting recovery effort. Now out of crisis mode, he can spend more time on the future.

"We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild the greatest city in the world," Nagin said. "It's been a wild ride, and we're getting ready to get on another wild ride."

katrina commentary: rudy lewis and the black net work: a luta continua

 

Rudy and Arthur, 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 

---------------------------

miriam sent this to me and rudy and some other folk
i thanked her, means a lot coming from somebody
i respect when it comes to commitment as i do miriam willis

thats one of my hometown elders
in the struggle

been interesting too how the black net came into its own
with katrina, networks that we had for the kind of personal
academic and artistic uses were suddenly turned into
instrument and we arent quite sure how the best use
of those instruments plays out because this is all
brand new territory for us, but what was wonderful
was that we had them in existence and under pressure
they just morphed on their own into insturments by
which we could forge alternative newsources and
alternative realities.

my numbers have been going up every day since
katrina so i know im doing something right though
lord knows im not quite sure what it is
or how its going to play out

i only know that im going to stay on it
im going to try to be creative and consistent
and sincere with it, try to live up to the responsibility
of it, of being a voice and a forum of our struggle

okay, ima let rudy speak on it, hes far more eloquent
than i am when it comes to self analysis of the web as instrument

i would like to say that i have been very proud of being
part of this network including rudy and miriam and kalamu
and such webworkers,

we have really missed the black commentator and look
forward to when glen and the commentary crew come back
online

somebody suggested us becoming a more formal network
and im all down for that, folk like black commentator, chickenbones
promotheus 6 and even sincere conservative black networks like
the bookeristas, if we were all able to coordinate our diverse activities
it would manifest a power like nothing we can at this point imagine

wish i had time to follow thru, maybe one day
im out of here, i got to get some novelwork done

all my love to you all
rickydoc flowers

---------------------------

During the evacuation drams, 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 people who asked 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 (extra cost) 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 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 music to soothe 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 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. It 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 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.

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

katrina commentary: memphis brooding on the bluff: guardian at the gate

hello world

dont know what got into me yesterday
must have been my stars or something
cause i was huffing and puffing yesterday
today im just tired

and wondering boy why did you do that
now you got to back all that hufty pufty up

today its strictly novelday
will do some blogging later when ive clocked
sufficient a novelday

but i was back there working and im thinking
partly i made that claim cause its strategic
a rally to me kind of thing

and partly because of a conversation i had w/papa ce
a couple of days ago

also im trying to show the hoodoo world
what real hoodoo is about

its about destinic responsibilities and obligations
why else the point of power
not all those witchy witch games they be playing

ima show them what a 21st century hoodoo do

and ima show the atr community what hoodoo do too
what they should be doing in terms of taking care of their communities
if the voodoo folk were coming correct haiti wouldnt be in the shape it is today

and im not interested in hearing how powerful african traditional religion really is

the fundamental judgement of a spiritual system
is what kind of lives are their people living

and blackfolk in africa, haiti, the delta, everywhere you got blackfolk
they living stunted little ridiculous lives, they on the bottom of every social system
you find them in - everywhere in the world - everywhere aint nobodys fault but ours

we just weak, we been so weak im not gon argue with folk who claim otherwise
ima have to show them how its done - show them the true nature of power

thats always been part of the hoodoo worldview
in the old days we were responsible for the welfare
of your little community, plantation, neighborhood, whatever

in todays world that definition of community
encompasses the planet

the cutting edge of hoodoo
is a sense of responsibility for the destiny of all humanity
not happily trading a bunch of slaverytime magical recipes

i remember the industrys response to mojo rising
they said art we love your new book but we gon take out everything
"uncomfortable" all that history and politics and that mystical stuff

we just gon leave in the newage magical stuff and make it a "gift book"

sounds like an insult but they were friends of mine
trying to figure out how to hook art up and sell a lot of his books
the industry had visions of making me a hoodoo guru
a deeper shade of depak chopra, i had visions of milllion dollar checks
floating thru my head

but they were going to turn my sacred text into a gift book
instead of me defining hoodoo as a true power they were trying to define me
and hoodoo as spiritual pop - gift book hoodoo

thats what folk be practicing these days - giftbook hoodoo
gon give those folk a lesson in the cutting edge
while i do what a hoodoo man spose to do - protect the tribe

like davidwalker, natturner, gullahjack and boukmandutty before me

and i was thinking, cause im back there working on my novel
which of course is a delta novel, mythologizing memphis

and im thinking that part of my sense of responsibility is because
i come out of memphis black bougie circles
that consider taking care of the race part of our point and purpose
for being - and in particular the delta culture that bred us

im what they used to call a raceman
like my mama and my daddy was before me

im thinking part of my sense of responsibility comes from
being trained by baba john o killens, the great griot master of brooklyn
babajohn taught me how to be a visionary - a master of the longgame

im thinking that part of my sense of responsibility is because
memphis stands at the mouth of the delta

and everybody there at some point in their family tree
is from the rural lands around memphis, we are the first step of delta
integration with the rest of the world, the first stop on the line north

during the civil war memphis was called the city of sanctuary
already more legend than city, it was captured early in the war
and all the slaves knew if they made it to memphis they would be free

and finally memphis sits on the bluff, the highground
the floods dont touch us, the hurricanes are only storms
by the time they get to memphis

memphis has always felt like a delta citidel, indestructible
brooding on the bluff and watching from the highground

the guardian at the gate

on the rivercity league:
neworleans, memphis and st louis

of course one day the new madrid fault will take us down too
but hey thats life

bush and the rightwing on the otherhand are death
bush and the rightwing have decided to run some of their
neocon social theories on the delta
that aint gon happen

they not gon treat my people like they treated the iraqis
tuskegee experiments on the social side

bush came out there yesterday and he said all the right words

been there done that
watch what they say and not what they do

the trick is clear
they think they gon run their little neocon theories on delta blackfolk

the article attached below tells what happened to the poor/blackfolk of punta gorda florida
hurricane charlie got them and they still in their little emergency camps a year later
while the whitefolk tearing down their riverside housing projects and turning them
into money making eminent domains

i probably need to stop saying 'the whitefolk' cause it aint all the whitefolk
lot of progressive whitefolk in the delta and we need to maintain common cause with them
aint nothing gon work without common cause - absolutely nothing
we all in this together

its the whitefolk trying to push blackfolk out im talking about
trying to keep them weak and subordinated
the same ones who did it during reconstruction, who did it again w/the sharecropping system
and trying to do it again now, the once upon a dixiecrats now turned republicans

the ones who just refuse to accept that they lost the civilwar
the folk who want to live slavemaster fat off the fruit of our labor
and subjection - shame on you
maybe thats what i should call them, the dixiecrats

apparently the dixiecrats think . . ..

okay okay, im really not supposed to be doing this
im supposed to be working on my novel
ima let this go, clean it up this evening maybe
depending on how much novelwork i get done today . . .

but i like that image,  gon play with that in rest for the weary
memphis, brooding on the bluff

the guardian at the gate

-----------------------------

FEMA's City of Anxiety in Florida

Many Hurricane Charley Victims Still Unsure of Next Step

By Marc Kaufman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A01

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. -- "Someone killed my dog," sputtered Royaltee Forman, still livid two weeks later.

"They just threw him out the window and hung him with his own leash," he said, convinced that someone broke into his home while he was out. "I mean, what kind of place has this become?"

Forman's place is FEMA City, a dusty, baking, treeless collection of almost 500 trailers that was set up by the federal emergency agency last fall to house more than 1,500 people made homeless by Hurricane Charley, one of the most destructive storms in recent Florida history. The free shelter was welcomed by thankful survivors back then; almost a year later, most are still there -- angry, frustrated, depressed and increasingly desperate.

"FEMA City is now a socioeconomic time bomb just waiting to blow up," said Bob Hebert, director of recovery for Charlotte County, where most FEMA City residents used to live. "You throw together all these very different people under already tremendous stress, and bad things will happen. And this is the really difficult part: In our county, there's no other place for many of them to go."

As government efforts move forward to relocate and house some of the 1 million people displaced by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast -- including plans to collect as many as 300,000 trailers and mobile homes for them -- officials here say their experience offers some harsh and sobering lessons about the difficulties ahead.

Most troubling, they said, is that while the badly damaged town of Punta Gorda is beginning to rebuild and even substantially upgrade one year after the storm, many of the area's most vulnerable people are being left badly behind.

The hurricane began that slide, destroying hundreds of modest homes and apartments along both sides of the Peace River as it enters Charlotte Harbor, and almost all of Punta Gorda's public housing. Then as the apartments were slowly restored -- a process made more costly and time-consuming because of a shortage of contractors and workers -- landlords found that they could substantially increase their rents in the very tight market.

As a result, the low-income working people most likely to have been displaced by the hurricane are now most likely to be displaced by the recovery, too.

The unhappy consequence is that FEMA City's population has barely declined -- its trailers are occupied by 1,500 check-out clerks, nurse's aides, aluminum siding hangers, landscapers and more than a few people too old, too sick or too upset to work. A not-insignificant number of illegal immigrants and ex-convicts live there as well.

To the county's surprise, Hebert said, finding solutions to their ever-increasing problems is now the biggest and most frustrating part of the entire hurricane recovery effort.

"Having lived through the last year here, this is my advice to New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast towns: Don't make big camps with thousands of people, because it doesn't work," Hebert said. "It takes a bad situation and, for many people, actually makes it worse."

Hebert was referring to the growing family problems, vandalism and criminal activity at the site, but even more to the deadline looming over FEMA City. By regulation, federal emergency shelter only lasts 18 months after a disaster is declared, and in Charlotte County the emergency period will end on Feb. 13. By then, everyone is supposed to be out of the trailers

FEMA City is about 10 miles from Punta Gorda, its rows of white trailers covering 64 acres between the county jail and Interstate 75. The trailers are rent-free, but evacuees must pay for utilities.

The contrast to Punta Gorda, a damaged but pretty waterfront town with many historic homes, is extreme. About 100 miles south of Tampa Bay, Punta Gorda is the only incorporated city in Charlotte County (population 140,000). It was a sleepy place by South Florida standards until Charley came in and performed its version of urban renewal.

"You almost hate to say this because of the difficulties so many people have had, but Charley tore down some buildings that needed to come down and cleared areas for much higher kinds of uses," said City Manager Howard Kunik.

An old, damaged Holiday Inn on the town's waterfront, for instance, has been demolished and will be replaced with an $80 million condominium-hotel complex, and other upscale projects are moving forward. Many residents are excited by the changes, but others -- especially the poor and some in Punta's Gorda's long-standing African American neighborhood -- worry they will be permanently priced out of their old home town.

Those fears were stoked last month when the city made clear that it plans to tear down a public housing complex on the waterfront to make way for much higher-income people.

"That land was just too valuable to have poor people on it," said community leader Isaac Thomas. He said that the local government is trying to help him and other black leaders save some of the modest but historic homes in the African-American East End, but that "it's a really uphill fight."

This uneven recovery started on a far more promising note. The Federal Emergency Management Agency got generally high marks for its response to Hurricane Charley -- and three other Florida hurricanes last fall -- and that included the quick construction of the trailer city.

Tons of gravel, sand and crushed shells were trucked in to build up a low-lying meadow, and electrical and sewer lines were quickly laid. Officials say that last Christmas season, many homes were cheerfully lighted, and a sense of relief and thanks prevailed.

Today, that cheer is gone. That gritty soil makes the south Florida sun even hotter, and few people venture outside except to go to their cars. There are no trees, no shrubs, and only two small playgrounds for several hundred children.

Teenagers have been especially hard-hit -- drug use, vandalism, break-ins and fights are widespread. Young people regularly call FEMA City a prison.

The troubles got so bad in the spring that the entire camp was fenced in, a county police substation was set up, and armed security guards were stationed at the one point where residents were allowed to enter and exit. Even with that, the number of calls to the county sheriff's office was at an all-time high last month -- 257 calls that resulted in 78 police reports, many of them involving domestic violence, fights, juvenile delinquency and vandalism. In January, there were just 154 calls and 40 official actions.

Some of the vandalism has proven costly. Even after the expanded police deployment, FEMA officials said they had to spend almost $20,000 recently to cover switches on the street lights because young people were so frequently turning them off.

FEMA site manager Larson acknowledged the problems, but he said they should not overshadow the successes.

Providing shelter for so many people is a mammoth and expensive undertaking, he said, and many families have used the time to save money to pay the three-months' rent usually required upfront by landlords. In the past two weeks, he added, FEMA City has experienced its first population decline since opening in November.

"We know the rental market is very tough out there, but we expect our tenants to make at least three calls a month about new housing, and some are succeeding," he said.

But many are not. FEMA reports that one year after the four Florida storms, it is still providing 7,640 mobile homes or trailers for displaced people, 1,056 of them in Charlotte County. Both statewide and in Charlotte, that means almost half of the people who needed temporary FEMA shelter after the storms still rely on it.

Melissa Frey, who posts grocery prices at a local Winn-Dixie market, is one of them, and she watched with dread from her FEMA City doorway last week as another mobile home was hauled away. She said she has been looking for an apartment for herself and her 2-year-old daughter, with no luck. The stress of the hurricane and the aftermath led to a split with her husband and the loss of his income, and so she barely has enough money to cover expenses without paying rent.

"This is no way to live, and I just wish I could move out," she said. She lives a stone's throw from the main security post, but she still regularly finds her tires flattened by nails that she blames on vandals. "But I'm really worried about what's coming in February, and so are many other people here."

Others are angry.

"Basically, Charlotte County would be happy to see us all go," said Forman, the resident whose dog was strangled. "They think they don't need us, and they really don't want us." Adding to his embitterment, the police ruled that the dog had thrown itself out the window, a conclusion his neighbors greeted with disbelief.

With the constant troubles at FEMA City and the increased tensions throughout the county caused by its housing crisis, Charlotte County Sheriff's Office spokesman Bob Carpenter said his department has had a real education since Charley. It's hard-won knowledge, he said, that they will share with Hancock County, Miss., one of the hardest-hit areas of the Gulf Coast.

"We're sending some officers over there," he said. "We know what's going to happen, while they don't have a clue."

katrina commentary: the wrath of flowers: this will not fly, i will not have it

i suspect folk might be wondering
why the old rootdoctor is in such bull throated roar
on katrina aftermath

what you got to understand is that I am a delta conjuror
a delta hoodooman

a delta shaman

thats my ground, thats my people
that’s being hammered

in my most mythic sense of self

im just another tribal witchdoctor trying to
help the tribe get through another winter

and by god and all that holy
they will not starve on my shift

thats my job
to take care of them people
thats my tribe

i was born to take care of them
and aint nobody hammering my people down
not while im standing

a flood and a storm, okay, we can handle that
thats part of living in the delta

but it sound like the whitefolk trying to push us
back into slaverydays

you think we dont see this trick coming

oh hell no

its like they trying to reverse 40 years of struggle
since the civilrights movement

may not look like progress to you but we
worked hard to get to where we are

there wont be any 'white/colored only' signs up but we will
be subordinated to them again, 21^st century style

oh hell no

you want to fuck with my people
you got to come thru me

thats what im telling the bush administration
and the rightwing, you aint gon fuck with my people
with your little bullshit ideas designed to demean
blackfolk and poorfolk of any stripe

you dont fuck with the delta
you dont fuck with the black holyground
unless you want the wrath of flowers
on your ass

thats what im saying

my resistance in this matter
will be implacable

rickydoc flowers
delta hoodooman