healing the divide

Back of the Bus + State of Siege + Say It Plain, Say It Loud

2011-02-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

It seems silly to single out only three recent radio documentaries from the American RadioWorks archive, as the issues of inequality and injustice are woven throughout much of the collection. They do provide a good starting place, though.....

	Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality January 2011 Equal access to transportation was once a central issue of the Civil Rights Movement. But today, disparities still persist.

	State of Siege January 2011 Mississippi led the South in an extraordinary battle to maintain racial segregation. Whites set up powerful citizens groups and state agencies to fight the civil rights movement. Their tactics were fierce and, for a time, very effective.

	Say it Plain, Say it Loud January 2011 Public speech making has played a powerful role in the long struggle by African Americans for equal rights. This collection, for the ear and the eye, highlights speeches by an eclectic mix of black leaders. Their impassioned, eloquent words continue to affect the ideas of a nation and the direction of history.

October 27, 1957

2010-04-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

apologies for the commercials...

Obama's Speech on Race 3/18/2008

2009-12-28T11:42:00.001-08:00

"Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point."

in reference to: Obama’s Speech on Race - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

opensoundneworleans.com

2009-08-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Since January 2007 I have been working in the Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods neighborhoods as community projects manager with Longue Vue House and Gardens. My work has primarily focused on neighborhood recovery through landscape revitalization and heavily relies on community involvement.

Open Sound New Orleans allows me to connect with residents in a way that goes beyond specific community projects. My personal interest is in how we interact with nature through the built environment. How can we create meaningful experiences with nature and support community empowerment through landscape use and design? In the same way, sound recordings become a tool to help connect nature and culture.

I am presently involved in a project to redesign the Dwyer Canal—a physical boundary dividing Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods, originally built as separate-but-equal subdivisions. I am conducting interviews with various residents of the neighborhoods asking them about connections they have to the natural landscapes, to talk about their relationship to the canal, what the dividing line has meant to them, and to describe their vision for the future use of the space. By broaching the topic of division, I invariably approach the topic of race relations, a delicate and unresolved issue for many in New Orleans.