Land of Opportunity: Questions about the Future of New Orleans and Beyond

As long as we have known her, Luisa Dantas was making her documentary about post-Katrina, New Orleans. Now, on the heels of the 5th Anniversary of the disaster, she is releasing her documentary film, "Land of Opportunity". A great trailer for the film can be seen on the Land of Opportunity website.

Luisa spent a lot of time attending the meetings which planned the reconstruction after the disaster. She spent a lot of time listening. She attended the community meetings and got to know many of the passions which guide New Orleans' determination to exist.

Her documentary will raise questions which we should all be asking about how our lives may be affected by disaster. It will ask us to become more aware of how major events such as natural or man made disasters, war, economic crisis etc can be major shifts upsetting the lives of individuals, communities, entire peoples, even the planet.

Today's headlines described economic shudders felt globally, climate changes gone unnoticed, wars without certain end, continued environmental degradation. Luisa's film takes one relatively small event - the human and nature caused destruction of an economically insignificant city in which mostly peoples' communities were severely affected. Yet, it transposes these events onto us all. Could this type of event, could this type of disaster, affect your community? If something like a Katrina hurricane happened in your country, how would the community that you live in recover? What makes for a resilient community? What are efforts governments and others can support or enhance following disasters to grow human restoration, community engagement, and cultural resiliency?

A free community screening of the movie, "Land of Opportunity" by Luisa Dantas is an appropriate way to view this film and begin these important conversations. If you can't be in New Orleans for the sneak peek - make certain to support it coming to your town.

Happening Here: An Evening of Film,Theater, Poetry, and Food

Featuring Poet Sunni Patterson, The New Orleans Day Labor Theater of Revolution, and a SNEAK PEEK of the documentary film Land of Opportunity!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14TH • 5PM-9PM • WARREN EASTON HIGH SCHOOL 3019 CANAL ST • FREE EVENT • FOOD AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

Doors at 5PM, Program begins at 6PM

This event is organized in partnership with JoLu Productions, New Orleans Video Access Center, PATOIS: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, Survivors Village, and the Louisiana Justice Institute. Land of Opportunity is a multi-platform documentary project that follows people from different walks of life through the last four and a half years of the reconstruction of this city. During this time, footage and short pieces have been used as tools for organizing and education and even featured in art exhibits in New Orleans and across the country. After years of filming, we and our partners want to share this work with our friends and family: the entire New Orleans community! Please join us as we present this evening of performances and film designed to inspire, educate, and galvanize.

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Lomé, Togo: 50th Anniversary

written by Nathan

Protests in the street on the 50th Anniversary of Independence

On the day of our arrival in Lomé, Saturday, we saw mass protests on the boulevard. Every Saturday in Lomé, at least 60,000 citizens rise in opposition to the entrenched oligarchy here and march through the streets. Nearly every weekend these protests are begun with song and dance and ended with teargas and clubbing. After watching the first presidential address to the nation (five years after assuming power) we were dulled into boredom of watching fancy tinted window SUV’s and military might on parade from our TV. Our friend, a local musical celebrity of afro-funk and supporter of the opposition, stopped by and invited us to join him in visiting the celebrations of independence by the opposition.

All three of us loaded onto moto-taxis and rode to the beach where the protest marchers were circling after being refused entry to Lomé’s Independence Square. Meanwhile, the Stalinist-era military parades were taking place on the other end of town, and, while the square remained empty, the opposition was barred from using it (they had also been barred from using their own central church because, apparently, the president has a great fear of the power of burning candles).

The celebrations and speeches on the beach were already wrapped up when we arrived, crowds were either dispersing or joining the mass of the parade back to their headquarters. We enjoyed very much walking beside the quickly-moving parade (at one point thousands passed by us under a massive Togo flag - providing illumination of their country pride and much needed shade to those underneath). The march turned from the beach back onto the boulevard principal and we shortly found ourselves nearing their headquarters.

We arrived to see food and rich shade under a canopy in front of an nondescript building. We were so happy to be shown the ins and outs of Lomé by a local celebrity, people passing greeted us and burst into song from his popular ouvre of opposition music. We had not realized how lucky we would be to have this friend and guide. He suggested that we get going. “The parade did not stop here as I suspected they would,” he said, “apparently they continued back to Independence Square of the Cathedral.” When we turned back onto the boulevard, he said, “we are almost home, it is just a couple blocks. Let’s go back through the neighborhood.” Just as we crossed the boulevard we saw groups running back in our direction, behind them was the army truck that we had seen following the protest march.

“Run!” our friend yelled, taking off running in front of us. Brittany and our friend sprinted in front of me. I glanced behind just at the moment that the army truck turned onto the gravel road behind us. Soldiers were pointing tear gun rifles out of the back of the truck! As I watched, canisters began shooting through the air, tumbling down the street behind us. Families standing in courtyard gates waved to us, “Come in to our house!” they yelled in English. We turned a corner and stopped at the compound of a family known by our friend. “Come in!” they beckoned. We gratefully accepted. Shortly, the excitement died down. The tear gas truck, we were told, had gone off chasing the opposition in other directions. We walked back to our neighborhood watering hole, drank a few beers, recanted the excitement. “This happens every Saturday and has gone on for more than 20 years,” our friend said. “We almost won in 1990,” he told us. “We changed the constitution and had a Prime Minister elected who took power,” he went on, “the army surrounded his compound with tanks, barricades, and artillery until he waved a white flag and submitted to arrest.”

We discussed our experiences of studying Ghandhian thought in India and the powers of its implementation at the “Bapu Kuti” ashram in Sevagram. We shared our pride at the election of the USA’s first black president (with the peaceful transition of power that accompanies our elections). We discussed the history of non-violent civil rights movements in the USA and India - and pressed for their merits to continue here. Our friend shared his own experiences, while living in Chile twenty years earlier, of being part of the peaceful protects against the military dictatorship of Augosto Pinochet in that country; “I hope that Togo has a peaceful transition of power the same way Chile did,” he told us. “But, here, these youth are frustrated. They are asking their leaders for arms.”

Sadly, we will not understand the complexity of Togolaise politics on this visit. We were, however, with the right person to get a view of the very real struggle taking place here. We wish Togo and her people freedom, prosperity, dignity, and democracy in the future.

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We have been traveling with a half dozen small books by Ghandi we purchased at the Bapu Kuti ashram. One of these, Mohan-Mala, is “A Ghandhian Rosary.” It shares a prayer each day for peace and justice.

On the day of this writing, a day after independence celebrations here, I read today’s rosary;

April 28 -

“Shall we have not the vision to see that in suppressing a sixth (or whatever the number) of ourselves, we have depressed ourselves? No man takes another down a pit without descending into it himself and sinning in the bargain. It is the suppressor who has to answer for his crime against those whom he suppresses.” - YI, 29, March, 1928

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Lomé, Togo: West Africa

We are lucky to have arrived just a few days before the auspicious occasion of the 50th anniversary of Togolaise independence. But, luck in this instance is a learning experience to further our understanding and impressions of Africa, to get a slight interpretation of the massive affects of 400 years of colonial rule, and to explore, for ourselves, the ways that Togo has had impacted our lives in unanticipated ways.

Lomé, capital of Togo, is home to more than 2/3 of the country’s inhabitants. It is a sleepy slow city, at first impression, milling and humming on boulevards by motor bike, constantly avoiding the heat of day. Like most tropical cultures, though, Lomé comes to life after sunset, with visiting, cooking, partying, and general merriment that occurs until the wee hours of the morning.

Lomé is not impressive. There are perhaps a half dozen buildings over six stories scattered across its horizons. It has a port; but the port seems mostly to be set up to import basic necessities such as oil. It had (or has still?) a railroad. It has two perpendicular transit routes, one 56 km across its coast, another north all the way to Burkina Fassao.

Lomé is a history that encapsulates Africa’s suffering and injustice. The current president is the chosen son (among dozens) of the recently deceased one who ruled Togo for nearly forty years. It is a democracy in name only. Recent elections handed the president a resounding victory (monitored by U.N./E.U observers -who paid for the observations and then paid the observers who apparently treated the elections as a tropical vacation, were paid, and created a perfect economic loop before returning their opinion that there were not ‘enough’ irregularities to call the election a farce), while 80% of the population supports the opposition. Of course, the opposition is divided and unsteady.

While Togo is poor, corrupted, bureaucratically vile - the government is not the people. They are kind.

The manners are like home (the US South): everyone responds with greetings on the street. Children and old folks are so happy to speak to us. Like our discovery of other countries, people want the same basic necessities - quality life and economy, opportunity and hope, education and self-sufficiency, pride of culture, freedom of movement and expression, better lives for their families and neighbors.

Having just been in Ethiopia, it is easy to draw comparisons of what democracy has not done for Africa: Empowerment of elites and oligarchies; Replacement of colonial powers with neo-colonial entrenchment; Ruination and vast degradation of environments and natural resources. None of this, however, should be any reason not to visit. If anything, African and ‘3rd World’ democracies do envy most western democracies - in their worst sense. Entrenched oligarchic rule benefits elite and self-centered powers that have little interest in the people suffering under them. Participatory democracy may not herald better times; however, honest reflection on history seems to point to one unjust and corrupt government being swept away and replaced by something similar. As our friend said, sometimes the opposition just prefers the ‘devil you know, to the one you do not.’

While these themes of graft and corruption prevent progress and democratic participation, the heartbeat of West Africa is strong. As visitors and ambassadors of the western power structure we can show our solidarity in visiting; we can explain and measure the poor performance of government and ‘true’ democracy by sharing some of the failures of our own histories. We can enjoy and engender new forms of trust and affection between our peoples.

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See “Zeitgeist Addendum” a movie on world monetary systems

1% of the world’s populations own more than 40% of its wealth.

50% of the worlds citizens survive on less that $700 U.S per year or >$2 per day

Think of an item that you spent $700 on. We spent almost five times this on each of our ‘round the world’ tickets. Is your item worth it? It is a question worth pondering….

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