This morning, the Isaiah Fund, the interreligious, permanent disaster recovery loan fund that Jewish Funds for Justice hosts and manages, received a $100,000 Technical Assistance grant from the U.S. Department of Treasury's Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund.
Jeffrey Dekro, President of the Isaiah Fund, received the award from CDFI Fund Director Donna Gambrel, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Congressman José Serrano, and U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios (Dekro pictured below with Serrano, Velazquez, and Gambrel).
How long is five years? Not long enough for the Gulf Coast's full recovery from Hurricane Katrina. The five-year anniverary is just ten days away. In this moving article in Zeek, JFSJ's Jeremy Burton shares his reflections about the disaster's impact and some suggestions about what we can do -- as individuals and a community -- to help heal the Gulf Coast regioin in a post-BP world.
I met Robert Green, a resident of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, this June. He lives just blocks from a levee where, on August 29th, 2005, a barge flowed through the break and came to a halt just behind his home. His mother and his 5-year-old granddaughter died in that flood.
I sometimes lead groups of Jewish volunteers to perform community service in neighborhoods still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. That’s how I met Mr. Green. When my group was visiting his block, he came out to talk with us and noticed my kippah. He told us how pleased he was to see a Jewish group and about how a Solomon Schechter class from New Jersey had cleared out the debris on his property and prepared it to be rebuilt.
In front of his house, near where we were standing, was a memorial marker and flagpole honoring the women his family lost during Katrina. We had noticed stones at the base of the marker, just like you would see at a Jewish cemetery. He told us that the Schechter kids had explained the Jewish tradition of placing stones to honor the dead and asked if they might honor his family in this way. A new tradition was born in the community, and we too placed stones on Mr. Green’s memorial.
What Mr. Green really wanted to talk about, however, was his new house, built on his old property with help from the Make It Right Foundation. He brought us inside, to show us the ways in which his house was built for a sustainable future: elevated above the flood line, it features solar water heating, low-wattage lighting systems, and temperature-regulating windows.
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Mr. Green’s passionate interest in sustainability might at first seemed out of place in a neighborhood in which many homes remain unbuilt, and many families are still unhoused. As we listened to Robert Green talk about his community, however, his passion for sustainability brought home to us what many Americans recently learned as a result of the BP oil spill – the damage that 100 years of short-sighted business decisions have had on the Louisiana bayous.
The decisions made by our nation decades ago to foster oil and shipping industries are all too tragically coming back to haunt us and pull our economy down now. A country hungry for the fuel to drive our economic growth in the past century allowed drilling, first in the bayous – cutting through these wetlands to pipe oil out – and then off the coast on the deep horizon of the continental shelf. A nation eager to export the grains of the Great Plains sent the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge canals from New Orleans to the sea, most infamously the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet , to shorten the route to open water and cut hours off the journey to market.
Five years after Katrina and 4 months after BP, all is not well in the Big Easy. A recent Kaiser Foundation report is being hailed by the Times-Picayune as evidence that the city is moving in the right direction, but Lance Hill from the Southern Institute for Education and Research sees a darker picture in the data. He writes:
Some of the responses were broken out by race and they provide some useful insights into the difference of opinions between black and white storm victims and the different ways they continue to experience the impact of the storm.
The ongoing campaign to move the 2011 Baseball All-Star game out of Arizona came to DC this past weekend, with the Arizona Diamondbacks visiting the Nats.
Great post by David Zirin over at the Nation describing the demonstration this sunday, the 17th overall at a baseball venue this season.
Sign the petition telling commissioner Bud Selig to move the game.
As we near the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, check out this sampling of photographs by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama. Some photos were taken immediately following the hurricane, and others depict life since the storm.
While some photographs serve as a clear reminder of the horrors of the days right after the storm, there is remarkable imagery in the photos that depict conditions in the years since Katrina.
The full collection of photographs, titled "Coming Back: New Orleans Resurgent," will be published by Umbrage Collections on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
After the success of Haik U Glenn Beck, which raised awareness around the outrageous claims of Glenn Beck, Jewish Funds for Justice decided to up the ante.
You've probably noticed that Beck isn't the only Tea Party leader who makes ridiculous claims; he's not the only one who misrepresents his opponents to score political points. So we have to ask: do you think you can tell the difference between a real, ridiculous statement from a Tea Party leader and one that some random person made up?
We're betting you can't. Today, Scapequote.com launches. At the site, you'll be presented with four quotes, only one of which is real. Pick the right one, and you move up the leaderboard. Pick the wrong one, and the person who made the quote up gets a point. You can submit your own quote, too. (Pretty much anything including the words "socialism" and "birth certificate" will seem believable.)
Let us know what you think. We're excited about using this site as a fun way to raise awareness around a real issue. And stay tuned for further announcements about our efforts to increase awareness about the Tea Party.
Jordan Buckley works with Interfaith Action of SW Florida in Immokalee, Florida. He recently shared this eye-opening article he wrote with me about the intersections of marketing, modern day slavery, and where we buy our groceries. The article is below...
Supermarkets Ignore Slavery In Florida Tomato Supply
An intriguing ad just appeared in the Immokalee Bulletin, local paper of the four-traffic-light-long agricultural community in south Florida.
In it Publix, the dominant supermarket of the southeastern United States and Florida’s largest private company, boasts of EarthSmart flowers that “you’ll feel as good about what they stand for as you will their beauty.” According to the ad, the bouquets are cultivated in a “socially responsible working environment.”
Check out this video of Tracy Kuhns, a member of the Gulf Coast Fellowship's 1st cohort, and organizer/leader of Louisiana Bayoukeepers. Filmed this June, she talks of the struggles that shrimpers and other residents of Louisiana's coastal communities - out of work, losing their businesses, environmental and personal health impacts - are dealing with after the BP spill.
With props to the Gulf Coast Fund (our partners and collaborators in creating the Fellowship) who filmed this as part of the Bridge the Gulf Project a storytelling initiative promoting cultural survival, environmental justice, and sustainable development in Gulf Coast communities.
