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Kezia Vida speaks with Jordan Bantuelle about their new venture, All You Need Institute, an education and community center promoting permaculture education and holistic health and wellness.

http://allyouneedinstitute.com/

https://www.facebook.com/AllYouNeedInstitute/

[wtulnews]

// LISTEN HERE //

There is a new cycle of social movement in Nicaragua called the April Insurrection, or la insurrección de abril. It is the biggest uprising since the civil war ended in 1990. The movement ignited on April 18th, 2018 when Nicaraguans took to the streets to protest a more narrow issue- President Ortega had proposed social security reforms that would raise income and payroll taxes while reducing pension benefits. Demonstrators opposing this change were met with intense violence from authorities, followed by deployment of the Nicaraguan army ordered by President Ortega. The violent response set off a ripple effect, as students and other groups across the country raised voices against governmental repression and censorship of dissent, as well as violations of human rights. I was joined in conversation shortly after the April Insurrection began by WTUL affiliate Alexandra, who has family on the ground in Nicaragua, and Dr. Pamela Neumann, a post doctoral fellow at Tulane University in the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. Dr. Neumann did her P.H.D. in Sociology at the University of Texas in Austin and has a masters in Latin American Studies. She currently does research on gender based violence and feminist activism in Nicaragua. We talked through this social movement- what led up to and where it’s headed- as well as the role of social media and technology in civil unrest and student movements.

Some suggestions on where to learn more/stay updated:

Nicaraguan news site Confidencial 

Follow Frances Robles coverage of the student movement

#SOSNicaragua on social media 

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Kezia speaks with Ellenie Cruz of the NOLA Herb Gathering, coming up on April 15th. A full day of information sharing, classes, and education about local plant medicine practices and how they connect to the culture of people historically from New Orleans.

Event Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1873942782936043/

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2nd-annual-nola-herb-gatheirng-tickets-39488627548?aff=efbeventtix

[wtulnews]

The film chronicles the story of Kevin Hines, who at age 19 attempted to take his life by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. Since then Kevin has been on a mission to use his story to help others find recovery and stay alive, and has become the worlds most prominent suicide prevention speaker and advocate. The film also features some of the world’s leading suicide prevention experts and shines light on people who are using personal experiences with suicide to help others find the hope they need to stay alive. In this episode, we explore the needs of those affected by mental illness and the social and political efforts and action we could take to support this population and our society at large. Suicide: The Ripple Effect will be shown on Thursday, April 19th at 7:30 pm at the AMC Palace 20 in Elmwood, Louisiana. To reserve tickets, visit https://gathr.us/screening/22847. 

For more information on the film even, you can email rippleeffectneworleans@gmail.com and for more information on Healing Minds NOLa, you can visit healingmindsnola.org. 

[wtulnews]

WTUL News and Views speaks with Wendi Moore O'Neal of Jaliyah Consulting, her bi-monthly community sing project, why she does it, what gives her hope, and an outline of some of the most incredible organizing going on in New Orleans today! Truly and uplifting and beautiful conversation for anyone doing work to support the greater community of New Orleans

Check out the upcoming events of the Community Sing, at The People’s Assembly Office, 1418 N Claiborne Ave: Every 1st Sunday, 4pm - 6pm for everyone 

Every 3rd Sunday for POC, 4pm - 6pm, 

And an upcoming **SPECIAL** Community Sing featuring Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell

Sunday April 8th, 4pm - 6pm

SUNO (Dr. Millie Charles Hall) 6400 Press Dr. 

For more info check out: https://jaliyahconsulting.com/

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Fossil Free Fest // Equity, Complicity, Vision to Action

:: LISTEN HERE ::

“This is the transition, and we need to ask ourselves if we are going to move with it or if we are going to stay behind in a past that is really oppressing and repressing all of us.” -Imani Jacqueline Brown

WTUL joined  organizers and artists Imani Jacqueline Brown, Monique Verdin, Jayeesha Dutta, and Katie Mathews to talk about the upcoming Fossil Free Fest. 

Fossil Free Fest- presented by Antenna- is a week-long festival featuring films, art, food, music, and roundtable discussion to provide an intentional public forum to explore the ethics and complexities of funding art and education with fossil fuel money. 

In our conversation, we talk about how this festival (and beyond) is an opportunity for raising collective consciousness, asking what price we pay for pleasure/leisure, honoring the communities we serve, and finding power in our complicity. 

The festival is free and open to the public and will take place April 2nd-April 8th with films, art, music, food, and discussion at The Broad Theater, Joan Mitchell Center, Grow Dat Youth Farm, and Ace Hotel. Find the full schedule and register for events at fossilfreefest.org/schedule/.

[wtulnews]

Kezia of speaks to Natalita & Riley Teahan about their project 6 : an unbirth, a multidimensional show going on this weekend, info below. We talk about healing, collaboration, and what it means to look into the dark/empty space instead of turning away...

Show: https://www.facebook.com/events/844172162422127/

Natalita: https://www.natalitamusic.com/

Riley Teahan: 

[wtulnews]

Kezia Vida of WTUL News and Views spoke with Brotha Shack and Mama Fiyah about the True Love Movement and their upcoming festival, Womanifest 9, coming up on March 3rd in New Orleans. Speaking about the importance of celebrating and supporting black women, what healing means, and the role of non-black people in the movement.

http://www.truelovemovement.com/womanifest

https://www.facebook.com/events/313349219070128/

[wtulnews]

This is the first part of four videos from the statewide seminar titled: "Implementing Assisted Outpatient Treatment in Louisiana" that was held on Friday, February 23, 2018 at the Bishop Robert E. Tracy Center Ballroom in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "AOT is a practice of delivering outpatient treatment under court order to adults with severe mental illness who meet specific criteria, such as a prior history of repeated hospitalizations or arrest. By mid-2016, 46 states and the District of Columbia had AOT laws on the books. But, within those states, AOT is still not the routine and universally available practice it ought to be." http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/implementing-treatment-laws Part 1 includes introductory remarks by Janet Hays, President, Healing Minds NOLA and Dr. Jan Kasofsky PhD, Executive Director of Capital Area Human Services as well as a word from Lisa Gardner of CommCare - a platinum sponsor. Topic: "Identifying Concerns" Treatment Advocacy Center Policy Director, Brian Stettin, then spoke on AOT: What is it and why do we need it?

[wtulnews]

Adolph Reed, Jr. on Black Politics in New Orleans and Beyond (sites of resistance closing ceremony)

::CLICK HERE TO LISTEN::

On February 5th, 2018, writer and scholar Adolph Reed, Jr. gave a public lecture on Black Politics in New Orleans and Beyond to close out Sites of Resistance: An Exhibit Exploring the Geographies + Histories of Social Change in New Orleans.

Adolph Reed Jr. is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania after having previously been on the faculty at Yale, the New School, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Northwestern. A native New Orleanian, his distinguished career has included more than 7 books, countless articles and regular columns in magazines like the Nation, the Progressive, and the Village Voice.

“Sites of Resistance (open to the public in the Albert and Tina Small Center from September 12th, 2017 to February 5th, 2018) was built to reframe a dominant narrative that has obscured New Orleans’ historical role as a site of intense organizing, legal strategy, labor struggle, and civil rights activism. By elevating lineages and spaces of dissent and marginalized stories of inter-racial collaboration, as well as histories of direct conflict and challenge in contested spaces, its intention was to reconnect its audience with the possibilities for making change that have been erased from our civic framework.”

Sites of Resistance and the associated discussion + presentation series were curated by Public Programs Manager, Sue Mobley. 

[wtulnews]

Kezia Vida speaks with Donna Costello and Maritza Mercado-Narcisse about the upcoming Definitive Figures Festival in New Orleans which focuses on individual and partner performances based on the experiences of women are female-identified people.

https://definitivefigures.wordpress.com/

Get Tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/definitive-figures-16084811000

[wtulnews]

Paper Monuments : History Unbound

::LISTEN HERE::

On December 10th, 2017, Paper Monuments hosted History Unbound at the New Orleans Public Library, where folks could stop in on a Saturday afternoon to learn some fascinating New Orleans history and answer Paper Monument’s overarching question: What is an appropriate monument to the city of New Orleans today? 

Records from Ellis Marsallis’ personal collection spun on the record player. Colored pencils and collaging materials lined long tables. Public Proposal forms were placed at each seat so that attendees could share their ideas for what and where monuments in New Orleans should be.

Paper Monument posters -featuring people like Dorothy Mae Taylor and stories like the funeral of André Calloux, the sit-in at McCrory’s, and the enslaved people’s uprising of 1811- were available for the looking and the taking. Artists Henry Lipkis and Langston Allston stood outside their box truck gallery parked and pulled open on Loyola Ave., depicting imagery from the myth of Bras-Coupé. 

To round out the afternoon, two young scholars of Homar Plessy Community School shared poems from their work with Big Class’ writing program. You can find their poems in print in the book Courageous, Eccentric, Diverse: New Monuments for New Orleans. 

Finally, I followed up with Paper Monument team member and lead graph designer Shoshana Gordon to talk about their open call #3 for poster designs. Although the open call is now closed, keep an eye out for Paper monument’s free newspaper to stay afloat all things Paper Monuments. 

[wtulnews]

Unrig the System Summit: make political corruption illegal with represent.us

::LISTEN HERE:

Represent.us wants to fix corruption in the political system and they have a long-term and solution-oriented plan to do so. 

From February 2nd through February 4th, represent.us is hosting its first Unrig the System Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana to bring together policy wonks, journalists, entertainers, politicians, activists, organizers, academics, and concerned citizens across partisan and ideological lines to work through concrete solutions with a goal of making political corruption illegal in the U.S. political system. 

Westley Bayas III- a New Orleans born and based civic and community consultant- joined WTUL in the studio to talk about why working to reform democracy matters (especially here at home in Louisiana); the local represent.us chapters across the nation that are fighting corruption in real-time through local and state initiatives; and how you can be part of the solution. 

Registration is still open for students and locals in New Orleans. To learn more about represent.us and sign up for the Unrig the System Summit, you can go to represent.us and unrigsummit.com. 

Students can register with the promo code suss218 for $20 and locals can register with the promo code nola218 for $50. The summit will take place at Tulane University’s Lavin-Bernick Center from February 2nd-February 4th. Topics for the action-packed summit include the future of: money in politics, gerrymandering, Citizen's United, voting reform, transparency, and more. 

[wtulnews]

WTUL News and Views spoke to Monique Verdin about the upcoming Fossil Free Fest in New Orleans the first week of April, which is currently calling for solutions for the environmental crisis facing the Gulf South. She also spoke to us about her current photo exhibition in Prospect 4 that includes photographs from the past 20 years of her family, members of the Houma nation living in the bayous of Southern Louisiana.

http://www.fossilfreefest.org/

http://www.moniquemverdin.com/

You can check out Monique on the 31st at the Freeman Auditorium on Tulane’s campus. 

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In a battle between the forces of repression and the forces of resilience, a swat team raided the Mutual Aid Disaster Relief base of operations in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico in the early hours before dawn of October 16th, 2017. Citing absurd and patently false contentions such as “kidnapping” “bombs” and “guns” and after aggressively questioning relief workers about their political affiliations, they were forced out of the hub at gunpoint and the threat of arrest. Despite the efforts of the state to intimidate us into paralysis and passivity, and running on no sleep, we decided the best way to cope and to fight back against the repression was to be back in the streets, contributing to people’s survival and self-determination by continuing to acquire needed resources and hand them over to the people. Watch video coverage of the incident here.

For more coverage of the raid, check out WMNF’s coverage here. And local news wtsp here.

Other recent media coverage of mutual aid disaster relief can be accessed here: Scalawag Magazine: Imagining another world in post-Irma Florida KBOO: Mutual Aid Disaster Relief: Houston, Mexico and Puerto Rico Barricade News: Volunteer Disaster Responders Fundraise For Puerto Rico Wildhunt: Column: California Wildfires Sputnik News Imagine a Puerto Rico Recovery Designed by Puerto Ricans

Past media coverage of mutual aid disaster relief efforts, can be found on our website: https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/media/

After distributing more than 120,000 pounds of food, water, water purification tablets, batteries, and other much needed supplies to the people in the heretofore “inaccessible” mountain terrain of Puerto Rico, our initial teams of relief workers have made it home. The supplies and people-connections we established were turned over to grassroots Puerto Rican organizers to continue the work. Another medical team and a sustainable and autonomous infrastructure team will be arriving in Puerto Rico in November. If you are interested in joining it, fill out this volunteer form.

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In late July of 2016, we covered City Council’s proposed shut-down of more than half of French Quarter LGBTQ and Strip Clubs. Today we return to this conversation, covering the new federal policies emboldening the sensationalist “broken woman” rhetoric as seen in discussions of Bourbon Street and “trafficking.” 

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act and Abolish Human Trafficking Act were both passed by the U.S. Senate on September 11 of this year. While the bills’ upsides are few, their major impact in broad bureaucracy-building power and their impositions on civil liberties. Read more here and here.

[wtulnews]

Stories at the Crossroads: Who Built This City?

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What is an appropriate monument to our city today? This is a question that guides the work of Paper Monuments: a project described as a series of opportunities, events, and interventions designed to elevate the voices of the people of New Orleans, as a critical process to creating symbols of our city that represent our collective vision, and to honor the erased histories of the people, events, movements, and places that have made up the past 300 years as we look to the future. Through public pedagogy and participatory design, Paper Monuments is working to expand our collective understanding of New Orleans. On September 25th, 2017, community gathered together at the corner of Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Parkway for a Paper Monuments event called Stories at the Crossroads. The concrete base where the Jefferson Davis monument once stood transformed into a stage- rather, into a stoop- where storytellers, writers, poets, and historians voiced their own answers to the question rooting the Paper Monuments project: what is an appropriate monument to our city today? Mr. John Hankins, Director of the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild, answered the question with one of his own: who built our city- and even more- who built the monuments to our city? Amidst details on ironwork and ornamental plastering, Mr. Hankins lays out the story of Philip Reid, a masterful craftsman born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina who worked on the Andrew Jackson bronze monument in Jackson square and the Statue of Freedom at the top of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C. An appropriate monument to the city, then, is one that honors those who really built it.

Stay engaged with the Paper Monuments project on their Facebook page

Learn more about their work from their website

Join in the conversation by giving your own answer to their question: What would be an appropriate monument to our city today?