Black People, All People, Bleed Red, By Greta Gladney

On Tuesday, I returned home after ten days travel. I use my time away from the office and New Orleans to recharge, re-energize and refocus on my life and my work.

I called Cynthia Wiggins, CEO of Guste Homes Wednesday morning to confirm our first Friday of the month Mobile Market and learned of the shooting on Tuesday outside the building. The woman who died in the car, from two gunshots to the head, was the daughter of a Guste resident. She told me that a five-year old girl also died.

Last night we continued our African American Women: Breaking Silence series of speakers with Terry Mogilles, RN, a mental health provider and executive director of Positive Living Treatment Center. Terry’s co-presenter, Brandon Williams, was a young African American man, a first for our series. He presented on racial disparity while those of us in the room realized that he is an outlier, an African American male under 35, and holder of an advanced degree in public health who works in IT at Ochsner Hospital and volunteers at a mental health transitional housing facility.

During the question and answer period, our conversation turned to the recent shootings in Central City and the publication of photos in the Times Picayune, the one of a 5-year-old girl in particular.

I found a link to the photos online.

I believe that there is a psychological impact on every New Orleanian who watches the local news, sees these photos, witnesses violent death, and continues to live and breathe in this City. Black people, all people bleed red and everyone in this City is suffering.

I did not want to see the child lying on the ground as Vera Warren had described her last night. But I did. I was not prepared to see the photos of the car, including a close up of the auto interior; its driver’s side airbag covered with the blood of a woman I did not know who had just visited her mother, a resident whom I have yet to meet, from a community the Renaissance Project serves at Guste Homes.

I did not digest the news well or at all.

As an organization, are we supposed to stop providing our food pantry and fresh markets at Guste? Can we live, individually and collectively, in conscious fear of driving through the City and stop providing services to the poor? Is it time to throw in the towel and close shop?

I wanted to leave town again.

Last week our presenter Deon Haywood of Women With a Vision had her office burned the night of her presentation.

And the previous week our presenter and videographer Ashley Jones learned while setting up the projector that her home had been burglarized for the second time in less than ten days. Vera Warren, owner of Community Book Center, asked me to consider the potential connection between our Racial Healing presentations and recent acts of theft and arson. The incidents are correlated with and connected to the relationships we have established as participants in the Breaking Silence project. We know the intimate details of each others lives.

Residents, who simply like to socialize, will be restricted from congregating outside the building, a further disruption to our well-worn social fabric. Bulletproof glass will replace the office windows soon.

Everyone, across race, creed, and orientation, must respond to our call to action to alleviate poverty and reduce racial disparity in New Orleans. For our part, we will connect Positive Living and Pyramid Wellness to the Guste Community for mental health services to begin a process of healing. Our June presentations for African American Women: Breaking Silence to Heal Ourselves and Our Communities are under preparation as I speak. We will continue to provide food banking, fresh markets, SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare enrollment and racial healing story circles to low-income families in New Orleans.

Chanel Lafarge of George’s Produce delivered and we sold watermelons, bananas, oranges and strawberries to the residents today.

Greta Gladney is Executive Director of The Renaissance Project.

Coalition Gathers to Demand Action on NOPD Shootings

NEWS RELEASE: Non-Profits, Attorneys, and Community Members Unite to Demand Information from and Action by Local and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, the District Attorney, Mayor Landrieu, and the Local Press concerning NOPD Police-Involved Shootings
One week after the tragic NOPD police officer involved shooting of Wendell Allen, New Orleans area non-profits and community members are calling for immediate action by government officials.

“Wendell Allen’s murder raises significant civil rights issues, again, and reminds this community that nearly one year since the U.S. Department of Justice’s report concerning severe dysfunction within NOPD, that system has regressed,” according to Attorney Tracie L. Washington, Director/Counsel for Louisiana Justice Institute.

The assembled groups and community members have sent their letters to NOPD, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice, District Attorney Leon Canizzaro, and Mayor Mitchell Landrieu, calling for immediate access to critical information and actions to redress systemic problems within the criminal justice system.

Among those requests are the following:

1. To the NOPD, that it provide the names of all officers involved in the fatal shooting of Wendell Allen, and the Public Integrity Bureau files for all officers on the scene of this tragedy, in addition to providing to the public all NOPD policies related to

a) NOPD’s Use of Force, and,

b) NOPD investigation of officer involved shooting, including any policies or practices related to a waiting period after an officer involved shooting before officers are interviewed by investigators.

2. To the Office of Mayor Landrieu, that it provide documentation concerning status of the Consent Decree negotiations and confection;

3. That District Attorney Cannizzaro immediately convene a Grand Jury to investigate the fatal shooting of unarmed Wendell Allen shooting by NOPD Officer Jason Coclough, and request appropriate criminal charges;

4. That the NOPD provide unfettered and immediate real time access by the Independent Police Monitor (IPM) to all shooting-related crime scenes and that any and all information related to officer related shootings be released immediately, and upon demand to the IPM;

5. That the F.B.I. is called immediately to all officer-involved shooting crime scenes – and that the F.B.I. accepts this charge as a mandate – and that the FBI is actively involved in such investigations and allowed unfettered and immediate real time access to same. Further, that the F.B.I. provide names and access to all assigned agents involved in these investigations;

6. That the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights, open an investigation immediately into any NOPD officer-involved shooting and allegation of excessive use-of-force, and allow public access to all findings at the earliest appropriate time, and

7. That Mayor Mitchell Landrieu attends a meeting of community groups to discuss his plans to address the growing sea of distrust between the NOPD and the people of New Orleans they are sworn to serve.

The tragic fatal shooting of Wendell Allen by the NOPD, the unanswered questions regarding the investigation of this calamity, the outstanding questions regarding the shooting of Earl Sipp in police handcuffs and the fatal shooting of Justin Sipp – these events alone are alarming enough, but when considered with the surge of violent crime, and the mounting credibility challenges facing Superintendent Serpas and fundamental failure of NOPD command to respectfully and effectively engage the public in the fight against violent crime have resulted in an toxic and volatile atmosphere of distrust that threatens the peace and safety of every New Orleanian. It is imperative that leadership act immediately and transparently to begin to address the evaporation of public confidence in the NOPD and city government leadership.

Why Are Children Killing Children in New Orleans? By Lance Hill, Ph.D

The shooting of eight people this weekend in one incident has once again set off a debate about youth violence in New Orleans. What I find troubling is that in today’s newspaper which reports this incident and several other killings, the paper also reports another police officer under investigation into the alleged police killing of a black man in the aftermath of Katrina; and it reports the awarding of a Pulitzer prize for a story on the alleged killing of nine patients, most of whom were African American, at Memorial Hospital four days after Katrina. For the past two weeks, the local news has been full of allegations of police and racist vigilantes killing innocent citizens in the wake of Katrina.

The young teenagers engaged in violence today were mere children when Katrina struck. This “Katrina Generation” lived through the some of the most degrading and inhuman treatment ever inflicted on a community in the last century. Children returned to a city with no public medical care, no systematic trauma stress care; a city where authorities closed hospitals and mental health care units; where children lived in gutted houses and attended schools where they were forced to sit on floors because they had not chairs or desks. Yet we wonder what is wrong with our children?

Isn’t the question: “What is wrong with us?”

If we dehumanize children, can we not expect that they lose a part of their humanity? When children numb themselves to their own pain, can we not expect them to numb themselves to other people’s pain? The most dangerous form of violence is the silent violence of indifference to the suffering of others.

How can we ask children to heal themselves when we cannot heal ourselves of our own inhumanity? Nearly five years after Katrina, there is still no trauma screening program in New Orleans schools.

Why are children killing children in New Orleans? Because we make killing less painful than living.

Lance Hill, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research, Tulane University.