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"Put 'Coming Together', Ya Heard Me?"

Drawing by Christopher Cardinale, Upper 9th Ward of , January 2006 Animals Are Always Making Music 149

Notes from New Orleans 2006-2010

The notes in this section are particular to their time and place, New Orleans over a span of five years, 2006 through 2010, but the positive news that they have to tell applies across our planet in the 21st century, I think. The essential story these notes have to tell is: People are ready to help one another. People all over the Earth are already acting with great energy and sacrifice to help one another. People are steadily doing great things apart from Municipal, State and National Governments. Most of the recovery in New Orleans since infrastructure's failures flooded the city in 2005, post-, has been done through the hard work and stalwart commitment of residents and volunteers, combined with contributions from supporters outside this city. Their number amounts to hundreds of thousands in five years. People-power provided basic needs first after the levees- failure flooding of Orleans and Saint Bernard Parishes. Water, food, shelter, clothing, health-care and legal advice. Next came efforts to remediate and restore housing. Next came projects for structures that might be sustainable in southeast 's more and more threatened environment. Accompanying every step was focus on the people and cultures that specially enrich New Orleans and southeast Louisiana A new model for the 21st century needed multiracial roots. And always the mix has been the same: residents, volunteers, and donors, come together in New Orleans for this place at the heart of the Americas. The efforts of people apart from Government in New Orleans over the past five years offer proofs of what's still and ever more possible. We have the past, the present, and the tools for an encompassing new freedom. 150 Animals Are Always Making Music

'In March alone, Common Ground had 2800 people gutting and cleaning houses citywide.' New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 1, 2006

The organization known as Common Ground and formally identified as the Common Ground Collective or Common Ground Relief organized more than ten thousand volunteers in New Orleans between September 2005 and December 2006. Begun with $50 in 's kitchen on the Friday after the post-Katrina flooding--that $50 the sum of funds held by Malik, his partner Sharon Johnson, and Scott Crow of Texas--"Common Ground" grew to serve the most hard- hit parts of New Orleans during the new organization's first few months. Dozens and then hundreds of activists from outside the city joined residents. In September, during the weeks-long swelter between Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the early volunteers of Common Ground provided water and ice. Across a city whose major streets under water, they provided food, clothing, and shelter as far as they could reach. They slept out in tents and waited for the single bathroom in Malik's house. Over the next few months, as electricity and running were still missing in New Orleans' poorest Wards, Common Ground volunteers set up Clinics and more centers for providing food, water, shelter and clothing in those Wards. They worked 18+ hours a day for weeks straight .They also stopped with their bodies the demolition of houses and churches and schools and hence communities in the Lower 9th Ward. By January 2006, Common Ground had working: a 'House of Excellence' for legal aid and computer-use in the 8th Ward: gardens and soil-remediation programs in several Wards: a center for house-gutting crews in the Upper 9th Ward: a radio-station: a lending-library: two Clinics: and the protectively occupied 'Little Blue House' in the Lower 9th Ward. I got to New Orleans from California on January 11. Animals Are Always Making Music 151

In February 2006 housing for Common Ground volunteers opened at the Catholic Church's Saint Mary's of the Angels School in the Upper 9th Ward, nearby location of the former Desire housing-project. In March, during weeks of colleges' Spring break, Common Ground lodged and fed busload after busload of volunteers at Saint Mary's and at the Art Egg building in New Orleans' Gert Town neighborhood. What got done that month made for a poster:

2854 Volunteers from 220 Colleges and 50 States and 8 Nations remediated ("gutted") 232 houses, four Schools, and one Church of New Orleans over a period of 30 days.

Common Ground 'Coordinators' at Saint Mary's and elsewhere worked 18+ hours a day for weeks straight. I and many more marveled at them. We marveled at other accomplishments of volunteers (visiting and resident) that Spring. Unsanctioned work by "Common Grounders" helped to re- open the Martin Luther King, Jr. School in the Lower 9th Ward. Occupation by "Common Grounders" helped to keep open the St. Augustine Catholic Church of New Orleans, the United States' oldest African-American Catholic parish, in the Treme neighborhood. In early March 2006. while I was with a Common Ground delegation to Venezuela, ABC News' --Nightline-- ran a story about Common Ground that said about the organization: "A very remarkable group of Americans who just might save New Orleans." 152 Animals Are Always Making Music

Pages of Seth Tobocman's Battle of the Lower 9 published in the After the Flood 'sine that Seth edited for the Common Ground Collective and World War III Illustrated, September 2006

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154 Animals Are Always Making Music

Donors to Common Ground in 2005-2006 included well- known artists and activists who lent their names--Dave Chappelle, Ben Cohen, Damian, Julian and Stephen Marley, Michael Moore, Bonnie Raitt, Anita and Gordon Roddick, Patti Smith, Cindy Sheehan, Built to Spill, Rancid, Sufjan Stevens, Steel Pulse, Veterans for Peace--and several who wished to be anonymous. Other artists worked in the field with Common Ground. Francesco Di Santis drew three to five portraits of survivors of the flood and volunteers to Common Ground, recording their statements, every day for nearly one year, from Fall 2005 onward (Check out http://postkatrinaportraits.org/ for Francesco's book.) Christopher Cardinale, Mac McGill, and Seth Tobocman came from New York City in 2006, gutted houses, and contributed drawings.

In May 2006 Common Ground began to shift some resources and offices to the 13.2-acre Woodlands Apartment complex in Algiers on the West Bank of New Orleans. The "Woodlands project" meant to make a base, deepen roots, and expand connections with those who were native and long-deprived in the city. Opened in the late 1960s and once a luxurious enclave for tenants such as players, the Woodlands had become a recipient of U.S. Housing and Urban Development funding. It had grown even more neglected by its management after the 2005 flood. Less than 20% of the Woodlands' 361 apartments were occupied when we came to it in May 2006. Elevators no longer worked. Rats ran in waist-high grass. Gunfights over Crack-dealing popped off in the late night between the complex's three-story blocks. Trash heaped and stank on parking-lots beneath tenants' balconies because the apartment-complex's owner, Woodlands Development, LLC, hadn't paid bills. Animals Are Always Making Music 155

The finances of Woodlands Development, LLC were source of wonder and suspicion. Between July 2001 and April 2005 Woodlands Development, LLC accumulated a total debt of more than $5 million to their mortgage-holder, Am-South Bank. During that same span Woodlands Development, LLC reaped more than $1 million per year in profits from rentals at the complex and subsidizations from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Somehow profits had produced borrowings in almost equal measure--a seeming double-dip for Woodlands Development, LLC and its principals, who included former Tulane fullback Anthony Reginelli and current Orleans Parish School Board member Woody Koppel.

Common Ground's accomplishments at the Woodlands between May and October 2006 included: •Setting of rents at pre-Katrina levels •Employment of more than forty residents in rehabilitation of the complex, many of these new employees ex-offenders or otherwise at-risk •Rehabilitation of more than 100 apartments. •A day-care center and alternative school •A satellite of the bicycle-shop RUBARB (Rusted Up Beyond All Recognition Bicycles) that was flourishing across the street from Saint Mary's in the Upper 9th Ward •Beginnings of a partnership between Invest Construction and Rebuild Green to employ 'previously low- income men and women' in the creation of low-cost, energy- efficient, elevated housing across New Orleans.' 156 Animals Are Always Making Music

The Woodlands was lost between September and December 2006. The Woodlands Development, LLC repeatedly reneged on an agreement to sell the property to Common Ground despite huge improvements to the property under the CGC's management and substantial additions to our $5.5-million offer for purchase. Details of how our Woodlands base was lost, 'Facts of the Contested Sale', done to introduce a law-suit, follow as a cautionary guide for others. Residents of the Woodlands suffered most from the broken promises and insincere negotiations that you'll see detailed in the 'Facts', as these poor people lost jobs as well as their homes in November and December. Five years later, the onc-time base for Common Ground and residents' work and hopes is back to less than 25% occupancy of its apartments. Articles reporting on the succession of sorry events, including New Orleans Police Officers' assistance in a theft of property from Common Ground offices, remain up on the Internet. http://fluxrostrum.blogspot.com/2006/11/police-involved- in-illegal-seizure-of.html http://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/27/ hundreds_face_eviction_in_new_orleans http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/ is_20070104/ai_n17109994/ Animals Are Always Making Music 157

ESSENTIAL FACTS REGARDING THE CONTESTED SALE OF THE WOODLANDS APARTMENT COMPLEX

*The Woodlands Apartment complex is of 361 potentially rentable units on 13.2 acres on the West Bank of New Orleans (the Algiers district).

*In December 2000 the Woodlands Development group, a Limited Liability Corporation, bought the Woodlands Apartment complex for $925,000 with $400,000 of that amount paid as down-payment.

*On May 10, 2006 the Managing Partner of Woodlands Development, LLC, Anthony J. Reginelli, suggested to Malik Rahim, co-founder of the Common Ground Collective, a non-profit corporation registered in the State of Louisiana since October 2005, that the CGC purchase the Woodlands Apartment complex if a then existing Agreement to Purchase the property should fail to reach actual sale.

*In May 2006 Mr. Reginelli and Mr. Rahim agreed that Common Ground Collective would take over management of the complex--then reduced to less than 20% occupancy after 91% occupancy in 2004--as a step toward possible purchase. The CGC immediately began to employ hundreds of volunteers and dozens of paid staff in rehabilitating the property. As a further measure of his good faith in the agreement with Mr. Reginelli and as a form of 'earnest money', Mr. Rahim paid bills due by Woodlands Development, LLC on the property that exceeded $15,000.

*Over the next five months--between June and October 2006--the CGC removed mounds of trash more than ten feet high, cut fields of grass more than three feet high, and 158 Animals Are Always Making Music

remediated more than 100 units at the Woodlands Apartments complex. Its total expenditure in labor and materials for its rehabilitation exceeded $700,000, as detailed in the July 9, 2006 Invoice to Woodlands Development that became a Lien against the property (filed by Chaffe McCall, LLP, in the Parish of Orleans on August 14, 2006, #30289) and in the attached Custom Summary Report.

*On the afternoon of June 15, 2006 Mr. Reginelli called Mr. Rahim while Mr. Rahim was in a conference-room at Chaffe, McCall, LLP with CGC associate Don Paul. Mr. Reginelli told Mr. Rahim that the the Agreement to Purchase the Woodlands Apartments in place in May 2006 ended, as the prospective buyer had failed to receive Tax Credits from the State of Louisiana, and the way was thus open for the Common Ground Collective to buy the Woodlands.

*Mr. Rahim immediately increased his efforts to secure and guarantee financing to fulfill the $5.5-million offer that he'd made to Mr. Reginelli in May 2006. He had by June 20, 2006 at least two sources of funding for the project and $5.5 million sale-price.

*Over the next 17 days, however, Mr. Reginelli repeatedly cancelled or missed appointments with Mr. Rahim at which they were to conclude an Agreement to Purchase.

*The CGC engaged attorney Ted George of Chaffe McCall, LLP to communicate with Mr. Reginelli and Woodlands Development, LLC. In mid-August 2006 Mr. Reginelli and Woodlands Development, LLC attorney Richard Tomeny met with Mr. Rahim, Mr. George and CGC Chief Financial Coordinator Will Speaker. In this meeting Mr. Reginelli acknowledged that CGC's management and rehabiltation of the property were meant to be preparatory to CGC's Animals Are Always Making Music 159

purchase of the property and that the issuance of leases by the CGC to all tenants was an intrinsic part of said management. He also acknowledged that Mr. Rahim had made repeated attempts to conclude an Agreement to Purchase the property. The main sticking-point that emerged in this meeting was Mr. Rahim's insistence that site-control of the property be part of CGC's Agreement to Purchase and Mr. Reginelli's rejection of this condition. Nevertheless, in an effort to advance negotiations, the CGC gave Mr. Reginelli a incomplete Agreement to Purchase at this meeting and asked him to fill in the open spaces.

*Mr. Rahim met privately with Mr. Reginelli and improved CGC's offer by volunteering to pay the Woodlands Development, LLC monthly mortgage-note of about $35K.

*During the span of months July to October 2006, Woodlands Development, LLC violated its agreement with Common Ground Collective for first (and when fulfilled, exclusive) right to purchase the property, an agreement evidenced by multiple material acts of improvement to the property, by encouraging offers from 1) J.T. Mitchell Construction Services Group and 2) Johnson Property Group.

*Sale of the Woodlands Apartment complex--where the Common Ground Collective's program of training, education, emplyment and remediation have done incalculable good for the community in the past five months-- to the Johnson Property Group is thus contested. 160 Animals Are Always Making Music

Drawing by Mac McGill for Rebuild Green poster and T-shirt Animals Are Always Making Music 161

Rebulld Green was another earnest effort in New Orleans. Rebuild Green began deconstruction and renovation of houses in the Upper 9th Ward, near the Saint Mary's volunteer-center. during the latter half of 2006, when I was also Director of Operations for Common Ground. Rebuild Green made many mistakes. That is, I made many mistakes. My bids for jobs were insanely low, as I wanted to keep costs light for residents still struggling with physical and psychological blows. Thus Rebuild Green did renovation of two houses on Congress Street for $20 per- square-foot, about 200% less than the norm in early-2007 New Orleans. My ignorance about construction was close and fatal company with idealism toward human beings and addiction, as I had to let go a majority from crews in early 2007 because they were hooked on Crack or alcohol. Progress nevertheless went forward. Pistols were threatened or waved but work got done. One grand solution appeared to be housing made of Structural Concrete Integrated Panels (SCIPS housing). Rebuild Green undertook partnership with M-2 Construction and its local manager, Tony Fernandez, a Puerto Rican who seemed comparably a-brim with optimism. We would build a SCIPS house for Robert and Elaine Legier at 2521 Piety Street. It would be built from panels of recycled styrofoam and wire-mesh, 4' by 8' or cut to fit, and these panels would be reinforced by concrete sprayed to thickness of 1 1/2" each side of exterior and interior walls. We would have a house built to withstand 225-mile-per-hour winds and 10-foot-high floods, a house like the hundreds shown in M-2's global catalogue, and we would have equipment and personnel from M-2, including the company's top engineer, an Argentine, on site to help us, Tony assured Bob Legier and me. We'd build a model for sustainable housing in New Orleans! Work proceeded during the first few months despite delays in driving piles and setting the house's foundation. Erection of 162 Animals Are Always Making Music the styrofoam-and-mesh panels went especially fast, as can be seen in an episode of the Canadian TV program --Ed's TV--, hosted by singer-songwriter Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies (http://www.puppetgov.com/2009/03/12/rebuild- greennew-orleans-you-shall-know-us-by-our-pink-studs/ ) By mid-June 2007, however, help from M-2 Louisiana was gone. No equipment, no engineer, and no personnel were to be had from that foundering company! Work was left to three: O. C. Draughn and Stanley Covington, both former inmates at Angola and former maintenance-men at the Woodlands, and me. With shovels, wheelbarrows, trowels, and spout-guns we labored into August to "shoot" and throw and finish concrete on ground-floor walls of the "strong house" (volunteer Jaime Hazard's name for it). Monday through Friday, sweat soaked our T-shirts. I'd never worked so much at physical and mental labor over weeks. 17 days in a row were over 100• in the heat-index. Progress nevertheless went from walls to ceilings and back to walls. In early August the second-floor slab was poured. Other good things happened during the first half of 2007. The idea of Adopt-a-House, Adopt-a-Block, and Adopt-a- Well partnerships arose from a meeting in the month of March between Sakura Kone and me and electricians from Baltimore, Maryland. The idea was and is: Parties who want to help recovery in New Orleans can "adopt" a house--or even a block of houses if their or their organization's means allow--and by their funding of the adopted property create a living, person-to- person connection. 'The basic thought is to use person-to- person aid or investment to provide means ...', said Rebuild Green's 2nd-anniversary Update, September 2, 2007. The Adopt-a-House concept was taken up by Make It Right for its area of new housing in the Lower 9th Ward later in 2007 (http://lastheplace.com/2007/12/17/make-it- right-brad-pitts-effort-to-help-the-residents-of-new-orleans/) and also by New Orleans' Preservation Resource Center and Operation Comeback. Animals Are Always Making Music 163

Spring of 2007, Rebuild Green introduced earth-energy systems to residents of the Upper 9th Ward as a possibility for low-cost air-conditioning and heating. Earth-energy systems draw from the earth's nearly constant temperature of 74• F. at a depth around 200 feet, using water circulated through ground-loops of polyvinyl-chloride tubing that flow to a standard HVAC unit for the building to be cooled or heated. Southern Louisiana is well-suited for such energy-saving systems; the U.S. Army estimates savings of more thant $3 million per year from its 1997 installation of earth-energy systems for 4003 units of housing at Fort Polk (http:// robertsgeo.com/html/military.html ). After work on "the strong house" and on weekends I went door-to-door in the Upper 9 between Galvez and Florida streets, sometimes accompanied by Sakura Kone, with information on savings to households eligible to instaill earth-energy systems. Over $80K could be saved over a 30-year-period by each house that used earth-energy. 43 residences signed up for more information about the prospective benefit. In April 2007 the architectural firm Perkins + Will had its annual "retreat" in New Orleans. A Charrette by teams of Perkins + Will architects focused on Rebuild Green's imagining of a Danny Barker Place in the 7th Ward. The Danny Barker Place was/is to hold: the 400-seat Paul Barbarin Music Hall, the Valmore Victor Music Academy, a School of Trades, 18 residential units, a pool, library, coffee-shop, and the Sustainable Building Center. It could employ over one thousand people of New Orleans in installation of earth-energy systems during its first year alone. Half a continent away from New Orleans, on April 14, 2007 the 23 members of 'San Diego Citizen's Grand Jury on the Crimes of September 11, 2001 in New York City' named 16 individuals for further investigation on the Charge of 'Conspiracy to Commit Mass Murder.' I was Chief Prosecutor for this theatrical proceeding that included Jim Hoffman as 164 Animals Are Always Making Music

Chief Investigator and Richard Gage, Ted Muga, and Kevin Ryan as Witnesses. Connections between deceits and abuses that led to the 9/11-triggered 'War on Terror' and deceits and abuses that led to days and then years of unnecessary suffering for residents of New Orleans had long been clear to many observers. Connections were clear to us from September 2005 onward Both 'events' meant to condition the United States' and the world's peoples toward acceptance of fraudulent pretexts for death, destruction and repression. On the last Saturday night of June 2007 a young Black man with a pistol attempted to kidnap me beside the campus (on Plum near Broadway), but abandoned the attempt after I twice refused to get into the trunk of his car. After striking me on the back of the head with his pistol, he said as we approached the rear of his compact car: "Get in the trunk." I said: "No. I'm not getting into the trunk." "Get in the fucking trunk!" "No! You can have my wallet, but I'm not getting in the trunk!" Two years after the post-Hurricane Katrina failure of levees and the more deadly failure of responsible U.S. Government agencies, New Orleans remained a place of desperation for its its poor, its obstructed, and its deprived.

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(Part of an informational sheet that brought 41 households to sign up with interest in earth-energy systems for their houses in New Orleans' Upper 9th Ward, Summer 2007)

EARTH-ENERGY SYSTEMS CAN SAVE HOME-OWNERS IN LOUISIANA MORE THAN $80,000 PER HOME OVER A 30-YEAR SPAN At the present time, the U.S. Army is saving $3.3 million- per-year from earth-energy stems that have replaced 4003 heat-and-air-conditioning units at the Fort Polk Training Center in Leesville, Louisiana. Likewise, home-owners in southern Louisiana can gain huge savings, month afer month, year afer year, for decades, due to installation of earth-energy systems for their homes COSTS & SAVINGS CONVENTIONAL HOME EARTH-ENERGY HOME Square-footage 1400 1400

INSTALLATION COSTS for Air-conditioning and Heating HVAC: $4000 HVAC + EARTH-ENERGY: $8,800

MONTHLY COSTS (30-year Mortgage at 8% Fixed Rate with 100% financing for each Home) Estimated Insurance $400 $300 Estimated Utilities' billing (Gas, Electricity, A/C, Heating) $205 $82

ANNUAL COSTS $7,260 $4,584 ($2616 saving)

30-YEAR COSTS $217,800 $137,520 ($80,280 saving) 166 Animals Are Always Making Music

(Part of a pitch to the general public for person-to-person i nvestment with New Orleans' natives in saving and transforming their homes.)

THE ADOPT-A-WELL / ADOPT-A-BLOCK PROGRAM OF INSTALLING EARTH-ENERGY SYSTEMS FOR HOMES IN NEW ORLEANS' UPPER 9TH WARD LETS YOU INVEST WITH PEOPLE THERE IN OUR COLLECTIVE FUTURE

What: Help with installation of fuel-saving earth-energy systems for homes in New Orleans' flood-damaged Upper 9th Ward and earn, if you choose, $18,000 over the next 20 years from residents' reduced utility-bills. How: Contribute to the initial cost of installing Rebuild Green's earth-energy systems Why: The Upper 9th Ward was hit by surges of water six to fifteen feet high in the flooding that struck New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Houses sat without funding for repairs over many months afterward. Now, day by day and block by block, neighborhoods are rebuilding. Less than 20% of New Orleans' residents, however, have received any money from promised Federal aid for their losses. And: New Orleans should be a model for the rebuilding of cities struck by catastrophes that owe to climate-change. New Orleans' reconstruction should be made as strong, as sustainable, and as "green" as possible. And: We all need to reduce our dependence on fossil-fuels. Who: You and one or more of dozens of Upper 9th Ward families will be partners. These residents have responded to a Rebuild Green survey and expressed their desire to have an earth-energy system provide them with natural, year-round means for air-conditioning or heating.... The Whole Deal: Person-to-person aid is the wave that will answer Governments' failings in the 21st century. Be part of it. Animals Are Always Making Music 167

The Danny Barker Place and the Sustainable Building Center

Here's a rendering done by the New York City office of Perkins + Will in May 2007, following sharettes that involved all offices of the firm, introduced by Chris Borrman and Jean Mah. Principal in the rendering by the New York City Office of Perkins + Will was Anthony Fieldman. 168 Animals Are Always Making Music Animals Are Always Making Music 169

HOW IT ALL GOES TOGETHER: The Danny Barker Place, The Sustainable Building Center, and Earth-Energy Systems for residents of New Orleans

Each of the above-named projects (The Danny Barker Place, The Sustainable Building Center, and Earth-Energy Systems for residents of New Orleans) can work independently. Each, however, would benefit from partnership with the other projects. The Danny Barker Place is meant to combine culture and commerce in New Orleans' 7th Ward. Its Performance Hall, Music Academy, and School of Trades will sit nearby a Library, a Swimming Pool, 18 condominiums, and 12 retail-shops on the Place. The Sustainable Building Center is meant to be home for companies that rebuild New Orleans with an eye to climate- change in the 21st century. The SBC is to be the main economic engine for the Danny Barker Place. Its companies are to employ existing and returning communities in New Orleans. Its companies are to also bring renewable energy and recycled materials to new construction in the city. The installation of Earth-Energy Systems can reduce utility-bills by 70% to 80% for homes and businesses in New Orleans. Louisiana's moist earth is perfect for E. E. S.; the U. S. Army estimates savings of $3.3 million per year from the 4000 E.E.S. units it installed at Fort Polk in 1997. Rebuild Green's Adopt-a-Well program for installing Earth- Energy Systems in New Orleans lets donors or investors join directly in sustainable recovery here--and partner with hard-hit home-owners--and see results monthly--and reduce greenhouse gases. Altogether this exchange addreses sources of climate- change through person-to-person, home-to-home, 21st-century partnerhsip. And it could employ more than one thousand in New Orleans by the end of its first year. 170 Animals Are Always Making Music

The Battle for Public Housing in New Orleans 2007-2008

Mothers teaching children at Lafitte Housing in 1940

On December 20, 2007 the voted 7-0 to demolish four housing-projects that could have readily housed people n this city, as hundreds of natives and volunteers protested in wind-swept rain outside City Hall. These "Big Four" housing-projects--the B.W. Cooper or "Calliope", the C. J. Peete or "Magnolia", Lafitte, and St. Bernard--together held 4532 apartments. At least 80% of their units could have been lived in by returnees to New Orleans in 2006-2007. That is, more than 15,000 natives could have returned and used the "Big Four's" housing. The "Big Four" also represented Blacks' history. Their buildings were made of bricks by master masons in the first half of the 20th century. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for the New York Times, wrote: 'The projects in New Orleans have little to do with the sterile brick towers and alienating plazas that usually come to mind when we think of inner-city housing. Some rank among the best early examples of public housing built in the United States, both in design and in quality of construction.' (http://www.nytimes.com/ 2007/12/19/arts/design/19hous.html . Animals Are Always Making Music 171

Regarding demolition of the "Big Four", investigators pointed displacement for profit. Michael Steinberg quotes Lolis Eric Elie and Edward T. Pound in his 'Evidence Mounts Linking HUD Corruption to the Demolition of New Orleans Public Housing.' (http://www.phillyimc.org/en/node/65942) The Lafitte housing alongside Interstate 10, less than a kilometer from the French Quarter, especially represented African-American craftsmanship and community. Catholic Charities and its New Orleans' head, Jim Kelly, used its construction arm, Providence Community Housing, to combine with Enterprise Community Partners and HUD to raze the Lafitte and build new housing. Catholic Charities and partners thereby raised costs for providing housing more than 1000%. Instead of $30,000 per unit to renovate at the Lafitte, costs went to $400,000 per unit. See 'Razing a Community' by Katy Reckdahl at http:// www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/razing-a-community/ Content?oid=1246628. For the Lafitte's multiple meanings, see http:www.cornerstonesproject.org/ cornerstones_registry_lafitte_housing_complex.html . Several hundred homeless people camped underneath Interstate 10 nearby the Lafitte complex during the Winter of 2007-2008. After the unanimous City Council vote, Rebuild Green helped to organize a Homeless Workers Council and Homeless Support Network. More than 70 individuals signed up for work with the Council. More than 60 individuals and organizations (Church congregations, motorcycle clubs, Black Indian groups, ...) signed up for the Support Network. Rebuild Green also joined with former residents of the four housing-projects and with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to resist more demolition. By early March, 2008, however, Latino workers were scaling Ludovici terro cotta tile off Lafitte buildings' roofs. Vents also were torn off, letting in rain and increasing damnage to buildings. Full-scale demolition of the Lafitte began the following Summer. 172 Animals Are Always Making Music

Dan Stewart wrote about New Orleans for the British Builidng magazine in March 2008 (http:// www.building.co.uk/comment/new-orleans-reconstruction- we-shall-overcome/3111785.article). His article describes both the Lower 9th Ward and the partially demolished Lafitte complex. It contains this quote from me: "The government doesn't want those people to return; it wants to make New Orleans into a theme-park. There's a campaign to keep people who were here away." City, State and Federal Governments' neglect and demolition of the "Big Four" public housing was and is part of an agenda to deprive and suppress Black people in New Orleans.

HOMELESS SUPPORT NETWORK

1. DIANE CRUTCHFIELD 2. SHEILA GULLETTE (Pastor) 3. YOLAND EVANS 4. KEITH LE'OLIVA 5. JOHN "ROSS" SMITH 6. CHARLES MARQUEZ (Minister) 7. BETTY JAMISON 8. INGRID THIBODEAUX 9. SMITH PRICE 10. KAREN JACKSON 11. MARLON PARKER 12. DAVID 13. ARMY 14. EDMOND 15. DANYELLE COMBS 16. ANNIE CARTER 17. LEANA HARRIS 18. MARY L. MARTIN 19. MIN KERN 20. NANCY CORTEZ 21. LOUIS TIMSON 22. JOHN WALTON 23. VEIGIE EXCALIBUR 24. ANGELA DAVIS 25. SHIRLEY STOKES 26. KIM CERCHIAA 27. DICK EBERHARDT 28. LAWRENCE EDWARDS 29. YVETTE SMITH 30. SYLVIA BAILEY 31. TINA CROSS 32. TILMON KING 33. THURGOOD COATS 34. MELVIN CROSS 35. Franklin Avenue Baptist Church (Sister CHERYL GAYTIN) 36. DIANE DUNFORD 37. ANDREA LEE 38. ETHEL BOWENS 39. AVI LEWIS 40. M. SKLOE 41. ABI THORNTON 42. JACKIE WILLIAMS 43. KATIE FOSTER 44. RONALD SANDS 45. LOUIS TINSON 46. Rev. MIKE MARSHAW 47. Rev. LANCE BROWN 48. JOE HOGAN 49. True Life Ministries [email protected] Animals Are Always Making Music 173

The Wesley United Digital Arts & Training Center 2008-2010

2517 Jackson Ave., the former Wesley United Methodist Church, September 2009

First class of Home Builders' Institute apprentices, December 2009, photo by Jim Belfon 174 Animals Are Always Making Music

Work to transform the disused Wesley United Methodist Church into a Digital Arts & Training Center, serving New Orleans' at-risk youth in particular, was yet another earnest effort whose success was frustrated by institutions of power. The Wesley United … is New Orleans' second-oldest Black church. Its roots trace back to 1838, when slaves, Free People of Color, and abolitionist Whites began their congregation in a stable at the corner of Baronne and Gravier streets. Over the next several years this congregation used hand-made bricks to erect their own building at Liberty and Perdido streets (one end of New Orleans' current City Hall) From 1844 onward, then, this congregation's Wesleyan Chapel was "Mother Wesley" for further Black churches in New Orleans. It hosted dignitaries and pioneered the city's first public school. Mary Todd Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation inside "the Wesley" in 1865. Mary McLeod Bethune, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Marcus Garvey also spoke in seminal, central church. Louis Armstrong and more musicians played nearby among the 'churchpeople, gamblers, hustlers, cheap pimps, thieves, prostitutes and lots of children' (as Louis' Satchmo describes the company) . In 1951 construction of a new City Hall forced the Wesley to move from Liberty and Perdido to the Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church at 2517 Jackson Avenue in New Orleans' Central City. The Mount Zion MEC was one of the Black churches begat by "Mother Wesley". First floor of its building was completed in 1873. Its second-story Sanctuary went up during the 1890s, coincident with the the U.S. Supreme Court's support of Jim Crow laws. In 1952 the Mount Zion MEC shifted to a larger building and "Mother Wesley" became the sole church in its new, Central City location. Animals Are Always Making Music 175

1966--128th Anniversary of "the Wesley", fronting 2517 Jackson Avenue

The 2005 infrastrctures-failure flooding of New Orleans caused the United Methodist Church to consolidate its three Central City congregations into one building, the First Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church at 2309 Dryades. The grand, two-story, Spanish Gothic at 2517 Jackson Avenue was abandoned. In September 2007 Sakura Koné heard from Pastor Lane Eden of the First Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church that "the Wesley" was threatened with demolition. Sakura placed Common Ground volunteers in the building. In early 2009 Common Ground quit its connection to "the Wesley" and on April 10, 2009 Sakura and I signed an agreement with First Street ... to remediate the building at 2517 Jackson. The subsequent effort had many uplifting successes. Significant progress started in November 2009. A grant from the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation let me engage the Level Engineering firm to stabilize the Wesley's foundation. We installed five piers, 100s of concrete blocks deep, under each of the Wesley's two towers, fronting Jackson Street.

The first team of apprentices from the Home Builder's Institute went into action in December 2009. The second team helped us during March and April 2010. Each team--22 and 21 respectively, all but three of them Black--accomplished great and/or fine amounts of work. The first team's transformations were especially graphic. We removed all plaster from walls of the Wesley's upstairs 176 Animals Are Always Making Music

Sanctuary--walls more than 30 feet high beside windows of stained glass, stained glass illuminated in particular by twilight--these walls' exposed bricks of rich red-brown. Wheelbarrows, sledgehammers, chipping-hammers, electric jackhammers, men and two Black women--trundling and swinging in constant motion through the dust they raised in those December weeks following my speech to them about Dr. Martin Luther King's meanings for the Wesley. "So much love!" said photographer Jim Belfon of the Gulf South Photography Project. "That's what I feel when I'm with you all! It's overwhelming!" Mark Wilson, our advisor and partner from the Operational Plasterers and Cement Masons International, "puddled upP--that is, shed tears when the first HBI team met for a final, graduating session in the Sanctuary. We celebrated with an Appreciation Day for our volunteers at which Evan Christopher, Helen Gillet, Kirk Joseph, and Neti Vaan played and Kavanaugh Farr of Strip Ease of New Orleans served Nicaraguan lasagna. "Wow! Wow! Wow--Wow--Wow!," exclaimed the new Pastor of the First Street … Church, Dr. Martha Orphé, when she first entered the new, exposed-brick beauties of the Sanctuary in January 2010.

Another concentration of activity came through a second LDRF grant in October 2010 and partnerships with Central City Millworks, the Central City Home Depot, the Preservation Resource Center, the Central City Artist Project, the Early Childhood and Family Learning Foundation, the Prospect 1.5 art-shows, Ecologic Mortar, Strip Ease of New Orleans, Sue Swain and the Zeitoun Foundation. Between November 2009 and December 2010 we: •Stablized the building's foundation through Level Engineering's implanting of five piers each under the building's two front towers Animals Are Always Making Music 177

•Removed plaster from walls on the first and second floors (some in the Sanctuary over 30 feet high) •Removed concrete fineals that were loose on the top tier of the bell-tower and placed them in gardens •Used Mississippi River driftwood logs of pine and cypress to replace termite-eaten columns on the first floor •Restored stained-glass windows in the Sanctuary •Replaced tongue-and-groove ceiling upstairs •Installed a roof of standing-seam metal panels as the best surface for solar energy, per recommendation of architect Steven Bingler •Hosted six events for Prospect 1.5 or to celebrate the Central City community in the new Wesley. •Accomplished more than $800,000 in improvements to the building with $73,000 in donations.

By December 2010 the building at 2517 Jackson Avenue was gaining improvements and community-minded events by the day. It was involving more young people from Central City. It was fulfilling its promises of nurturing 21st-century Louis Armstrongs, Oretha Castle Haleys, and Olympia Brass Bands through Training in the Digital Arts. It was serving as yet another PROOF of people-power in post-flood New Orleans. Again, residents--in the form of the two HBI classes of apprentices--and volunteers and donors and long-distance aid-givers had made something good happen without any help from City, State or Federal Governments. The Wesley United Digital Arts and Training Center was then to do much more soon, as it advanced elements of community and creativity so integral and vital to working- class New Orleans . 178 Animals Are Always Making Music

Post-Script to this Gung-Ho Optimism of late 2010

In January 2011 our Rebuild Green / Restore Wesley United project was evicted from 2517 Jackson Avenue through Pastor Martha Orphé of the Louisiana Conference of the United Methodist Church. The previous month I'd made clear in a meeting with with the Pastor that rehabilitation of the building would need a written commitment from her and the UMC that 2517 Jackson Avenue would indeed become a Digital Arts and Training Center. We would need "site control" at the least, I said, in order to better raise funds and fulfill the pledges we'd made to our donors and volunteers and other partners. Sakura Koné then met with United Methodist Pastors in San Francisco, CA. They passed along the distressing details of the UMC's seizing Church buildings in Chicago and San Francisco from well- meaning efforts, once those buildings had achieved substantial or complete rehabilitation. Over the next several months I worked at engaging an attorney in New Orleans to represent our efforts and make a case of 'unjust enrichment' against the Louisiana Conference of the UMC. to rehabilitate the buildings. In February 2011 Zoie Clift and the National Trust for Historic Preservation brought out a piece about the Wesley. 'Damaged by Katrina, an African American icon will one day reopen as a training center.' http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/ story-of-the-week/2011/new-orleans-mother-church.html Volunteers from Michigan, led by Gail Wolkoff, started a Facebook page to go with an earlier FB page that advocated for our preservation and transformation of the Wesley. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Restore-Wesley-United/ 126838662639?sk=notes In August 2012 Tulane University noted its volunteers many 1000s of hours of work at the Wesley in its August 2012 piece and presented our 2009 video about the project-- https://outreachtulane.wordpress.com/ 2012/08/07/it-takes-more-than-one-day/ In May 2014 the Louisiana Landmarks Society named the Wesley as one of 'New Orleans Nine Most Endangered' entities. http://louisianalandmarks.org/preserve/ new-orleans-nine-archive/2014-new-orleans-nine In May 2014 realtor Rebecca Galjeur bought the building and lot through realtor Anthony Posey. Anthony had visited the Wesley often in 2009 and 2010 and had, as a member of the Parker United Methodist Church in Uptown New Orleans, given us contacts to the Louisiana Conference in early 2011. We shall see where the Wesley's story goes from here. We can say for sure that the work and hope invested in this very important and spiritual building deserves something like a Digital Arts & Training Center for its still hard-hit community.

Zoie Clift and Sheila Matute with Adopt-a-Brick names, among them Amby Burfoot Michael Franti, Eve Pell, Jonathn Richman, Ric Sayre, Steve Spence, Patti Smith, and Ben Vereen May 2010 Animals Are Always Making Music 179

Standing-seam metal panels on eastern length of Wesley roof, December 2010

Sign that went up on the Wesley in December 2010