Her family house has framed her world. With its doorway, marked with penciled hash marks to show her height over the years, the house tracked her growth at the same time she tracked its years of repairs after Katrina.
Posted inEmbracing our narratives
Thwarted from connecting the Lower 9 to its wetland roots
After Katrina, environmentalists built an overlook on Bayou Bienvenue to give the community access to the wetlands, which had been devastated by salt water from a now-closed canal called MR-GO. Recent construction threatens that key post-Katrina achievement, Arthur Johnson says.
Posted inEmbracing our narratives
She saw ‘a public-health crisis’ and opened a clinic in the emptied Lower 9
“Alice saved my life,” neighbors say. In 2007, Alice Craft-Kerney helped to launch a post-Katrina clinic that was invaluable to neighbors. But it closed its doors after an inexplicably short time.
Posted inEmbracing our narratives
Planting a flag in the Lower 9 ‘wilderness’
Every year on August 29 – the day that Katrina hit, in 2005 – Green’s family gathers by the place where his mom’s house once stood, in shirts that read “Roof Riders.” Then they walk the two-block route taken by the floating house, to the oak tree where it stopped.
Posted inEmbracing our narratives
Embracing Katrina narratives
After an insinuation made by a Super Bowl planning committee, reporters from The Lens asked Lower 9 residents what Super Bowl visitors should see, plotted the points on a map, and documented the Katrina narratives that go with each landmark.
Posted inEmbracing our narratives
Culturally rich, but unable to rebuild
The night before Katrina made landfall, artist Lionel Milton, who grew up in the Lower 9th Ward, suddenly decided to evacuate, after he experienced what seemed to be an omen.
Posted inGovernment & Politics
St. John the Baptist Parish cleared in First Amendment lawsuit
A jury found that the defendants didn’t violate Joy Banner’s right to free speech or the Louisiana Open Meetings Law. But testimony revealed a hatred the Parish President harbors against the co-founders of The Descendants Project.
Posted inOpinion
Making the grade – or not.
What Louisiana’s school letter grades don’t tell us about school quality. Despite our F grade, the students at Noble Minds are not failing, and we are not failing our students.
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Trial begins in First Amendment suit against St. John the Baptist Parish
Joy Banner of The Descendants Project brought the lawsuit after the Parish Council chairman threatened her with prosecution and imprisonment for speaking during the public comment period of a 2023 meeting.