Monday, January 14th, 2008

Rappers On ‘Roids

What does 50 have in common with Roger Clemens & Barry Bonds? This story is just beginning to break. By week’s end it could be the fodder for an entire new season of Def Comedy Jam (uh, Tyler Perry?!), or the catalyst for some soul-searching. Or both. Or neither. What do you think?

Entertainers including the singer Mary J. Blige and the rapper 50 Cent are among thousands of people whose names are turning up in an investigation into obtaining steroids or human growth hormones, an Albany newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Times Union reported that the investigation, being conducted by the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares, also found evidence that in addition to Ms. Blige and 50 Cent, other possible recipients included two other musicians, Wyclef Jean and Timbaland, and Tyler Perry, an author, actor and producer in theater, film and television.

The newspaper cited records it had gotten and information from witnesses on Long Island who were cooperating with the investigation. A spokeswoman for Mr. Soares declined to comment on the report on Sunday.

…

None of the celebrities was accused of violating the law. Instead, the investigation has focused on stopping the flow of the drugs by cracking down on doctors who illegally prescribe them without seeing patients, and on the so-called anti-aging clinics, pharmacies and other distributors that supply the drugs.

UPDATE 1/15 :: Your boy in Ben Sisario’s reax piece for the NY Times.

posted by @ 12:34 pm | 2 Comments

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Best Music of 2007


Feel Mysterious Today?

The theme of my year: learn to act up, not down. Doesn’t mean I can’t crank it with the youngest of them. And I ain’t mad at your Members Only. But I did that in 8th grade.

When I was a teenager, I used to read Rolling Stone and Pazz & Jop religiously, and buy, tape or somehow cop all the top-rated stuff (then hate half of it). The first time Xgau sent me an invite to Pazz and Jop in 1992, I hung it on my wall.

But when the whole critics poll thing imploded last year, with the Idolator Jackin’ Pop splitting from the P+J, I began to stop caring. At one point, seeing a hip-hop act atop the critics’ charts was really important to me, but now it’s clear that searching for pop consensus—and trying to move that consensus—is not the best use of the time I have left.

So I submit this list to you more out of a sense of obligation than evangelical fervor, just to let you know—if you care—what I dug, in the hopes of possibly turning you on to something that will move you the way it did me. I really think you really don’t care what was on my iPod last year. But supposing you do, here it is what it was…

As always in no particular order. And now, in no particular format either, because the album as we’ve known it is dead or at least dying and privileging album-lengths no longer makes much sense. Format inserted only so that you can be a happy consumer, if you wish. Somewhat helpful notes included sometimes.

THE LIST, ALREADY

“Night” :: Benga + Coki
Afrofuturist carnival dubsteppa whose soca beat and bell-ringing Latin breakdown allusions to Todd Terry’s classic “A Day In The Life of…Black Riot” had me falling out of my rocker. Rewind of the year, if not the century.

Kala :: M.I.A.
Maya Arulpragasam, why don’t you love me? Just kidding. You’ve heard me on this album before, but I’ll say it again. Respectfully breaking from many of my peers who, like the homie O-Dub (see, we are different people) have called MIA’s record “politically uneven”, I repeat that artistry and policy are not the same thing.

Lefty musicrits have talked this trash since Bob Dylan’s 1965 electric parting of the pop seas. (Note the lefties back then were on the ‘folk’ side of the folk/rock split.) And it’s a charge that they only make against so-called “political” artists like Bob Dylan, the Clash, Public Enemy, and Rage Against The Machine. If I ever hear a musicrit accusing Ted Nugent or Toby Keith of being politically uneven, I will eat his copy of Atlas Shrugged without ketchup.

Really, do we want MIA to set the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to a dirty house beat on her next album? I thought not. Next…

Hamsterdam, Volume 2: Stash To Da Strip :: Darkroom Productions
The rap mixtape I listened to the most this year. Featuring a true cross-section of Bmore’s best, Darkroom takes gangsta back to the days when it was scary, not merely stylish, and blew absolutely everything on the majors and, uh, Koch, right off the page. Tyree Colion’s relentless, ambivalent, shocking “Projects” was the best rap song of 2007. Period. Quote me.

Inna Di Road :: Chezidek
True Reflections…A New Beginning :: Jah Cure
Since I Wayne’s 2004 breakthrough “Can’t Satisfy Her”, one-drop fans have been pushing back towards more gentle falsettos, which partly explains the swelling of support for Jah Cure, who literally built his fanbase from behind bars, and Chezidek, a consummate stylist whose previous albums never drew much attention. Of these two great records, Chezidek’s is the more consistent, Jah Cure’s has the higher heights. If Cure can survive freedom, he might become one of the all-time greats. Chezidek is already on his way.

Untrue :: Burial
After Burial’s ethereal first LP, one might have expected his sophomore effort to float away. Instead, it become slightly more melodic and groove-oriented, a little more defined. Untrue is a less demanding pleasure, yet one whose meanings remain elusive and mysterious. Dubstep at its most auterist, and that’s not a bad thing yet.

…I Scream Bars For The Children :: Bambu
My favorite mixtape this year didn’t come from a dude named Wayne, but this brother from Los Angeles (and the Yay) from Native Guns. (LATE CORRECTION (1/23) :: it’s actually his second LP…) Bambu easily accomplishes the very thing that De La Soul used to do so well: humanize the day-to-day struggle. But this is hardly by-the-numbers neoclassical hip-hop in a ’89 vein. There’s no wasted nostalgia. Instead Bambu has idiosyncratic humor and sly insight that come from actually having lived something real. …I Scream… is an effortless evocation of west coast streetwise polyculturalism, an understated classic bound to grow in the hip-hop imagination.

“Hunting For Witches” :: Bloc Party
A burning number about the hypocrisy of the politics of terror and Lou Dobbs-style anti-immigrant pseudo-populism, sung hard by the UK son of Africans. Bloc Party took critical hits this year for supposedly going topical and obtuse, but this one song had more balls than that entire album by those wack Talking Heads wannabees Spoon. Rrrrrrahhh!

African Underground Volume 2 : Depths of Dakar :: Various Artists
A bicoastal project—from New York City to Dakar—that not only demonstrated the ridiculous talent of Senegal’s port city but played a role in voter protection in this year’s landmark elections. The music ranges from skittery hi-tempo beats that sound like grime-on-meth to Senegalese reggae to downtempo urban potboilers. Slept-on, but essential.

“Nothing Better Than” :: Joss Stone
I like my corn. Yes I do.

Gutterfly :: Lifesavas
The World Has Made Me The Man of My Dreams :: Me’shell Ndgeocello
The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust :: Saul Williams + Trent Reznor
Ok, ignore what I said about the album format. Here are three records that—like Return To Cookie Mountain did last year—loudly and quietly make the counterargument—that the form is not just relevant, but necessary, in order to tell a layered narrative, and to present difficult, interconnected ideas that can somehow substantiate all those critical claims of genius.

“Morning Child” :: 4 Hero
If strollers were outfitted with subwoofers, this would have been the Saturday AM bump on Seventh Avenue in the Slope this year.

“2D” :: Skream
And this kid is still only, like, 21. Praise di yute dem!

“Shadowcasting” :: Martyn
“Grimey Princes” :: Joker
Two more dubstep tracks leading toward the field out of its half-step pogo toward an encounter with the strange perspective-warping spatialistics of 80s Detroit techno.

Betty Davis
They Say I’m Different :: Betty Davis
Monumental reissues by the fantastic Seattle label Light In The Attic—lovingly remastered, blissfully annotated by O-Dub—of an unjustly forgotten, incredibly important figure in the funk.

Live Convention 77-79 :: Kenny Wilson
The record’s provenance is still indeterminate, but the grooves are glorious. A true evocation of old-school Bronx-style hip-hop, featuring the voices of Lisa Lee, Kool Kyle, Melle Mel, Cowboy, Smiley, and more.

Mad Decent Worldwide Radio Podcasts :: Diplo
Hate him because he’s got red-carpet treatment at airports around the world. Even hate his music. But admit that the second year of podcasts has often been revelatory, including a killer cumbia set, a ridiculous mix that reduced the BBC’s Pete Tong to on-air confusion (OK, so that’s not too difficult), and a guest spot by Radio Clit spinning blazing African rumba rockers. Plus, dude posted Arkade Funk on his website (only about two years after me). Face it, Diplo has great taste and you don’t.

We’re About The Business :: Chuck Brown
Chuck links with Chucky Thompson and sets a new standard for go-go. Long live The Godfather!

Forever Version Deluxe Edition:: Dennis Alcapone
Roots Man Dub :: The Revolutionaries
Heartbeat’s reggae reissue series steps up with two of the greatest Jamaican records. Alcapone’s 1971 record shows him in fine form over all the classic Studio One riddims, an important early DJ record, and adds 6 new tracks. The 1979 Roots Man record is a classic dub album from Alvin Ranglin’s vaults, with an entire previously unreleased CD’s worth of dubs.

+MORE:

Back East :: Joshua Redman Trio
“Back Home” :: Blue Scholars
Back to Black :: Amy Winehouse
The Big Doe Rehab :: Ghostface Killah
The Cool :: Lupe Fiasco
“Crown Royal” :: Jill Scott
“Culture United” :: X Clan & Damian Marley
Dawn :: Build An Ark
“Dreaming” :: Mavado
Dubstep All-Stars Vol. 5 :: N-Type
“Emergency Bass” :: Dr. Das
“Hustlin'” :: Calibre
In Rainbows :: Radiohead
Keep Reachin’ Up :: Nicole Willis & The Investigators
Live At The 2006 New Orleans Jazz Fest :: Hot 8 Brass Band
La Radiolina :: Manu Chao
“Nostalgia” :: Marco Polo feat. Masta Ace
Maths & English :: Dizzee Rascal
SiNo :: Café Tacuba
Sound of Silver :: LCD Soundsystem
“Take Back The Scene” :: Durrty Goods
Two Sevens Clash Deluxe Edition :: Culture
Underground Kingz :: UGK
United We Swing :: Spanish Harlem Orchestra
Visions :: Dennis Brown
West Coast Vaccine (The Cure) :: Turf Talk
“What You Need” :: Lyrics Born with Galactic

posted by @ 4:39 pm | 1 Comment

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Danny Hoch Takes Over Berkeley

Bay Area heads are blessed with another premiere of world-class cutting edge hip-hop theatre when Danny Hoch’s new piece “Taking Over” opens tonight for previews at the Berkeley Rep. Opening night next Wednesday is sold out, but Danny will be doing talk-backs through the month. Check the calendar for those special shows.

“Taking Over” is a classic Hoch maneuver: a raw, wickedly humorous multi-character play looking at thorny urban issues, in this case, the role of hip-hop heads, hipsters, young artists and cultural workers in the gentrification of the global city. Here’s a taste of some of Danny’s flavors:

“This group ‘Artists Against Gentrification.’ You know how funny that is to me? You could make a sitcom. The artists are the advanced ground troops. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. That’s like the US Army Rangers deciding they’re against the occupation of Iraq.”

“I’m thinkin’, where did all these people appear from that’s waiting on line and made reservations for brunch? I been here 37 years, and there wasn’t no BRUNCH happenin’ in this neighborhood…People were eatin’ Ding Dongs for DINNER if they was lucky.”

The hotness happens here in the B-Town ’til February 10th. Then it’s coming to another gentrifying city near you.

posted by @ 10:51 am | 0 Comments

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Poll Dance

posted by @ 10:45 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

Obama :: Go West?


Albert Bierstadt :: Yosemite 1868

Obama’s speeches have been a marvel to behold, an emotional, sublime climax to long nights spent waiting through fill-in blowhards like Wolf Blitzer and Bill Bennett, and Edwards’ one and only speech (it was pretty good the first time).

Obama has begun weaving a new self-mythology, and the prospect of looking west to Nevada and California had him sounding positively poetic the other night in New Hampshire.

We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we’ve been told that we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

He is remaking the American story into his own, with liberal borrowings from Cesar Chavez’s UFW campaign (“Si se puede!”), and Bobby and John Kennedy.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

But these speeches also sound a cautionary note for anyone who thinks he’s the same fire-breathing young revolutionary fresh off the campus, Malcolm X books on the shelf, calling out power to the people. (If he ever was.)

Any history major will recognize Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis at the heart of Obama’s New Hampshire speech. Turner, possibly the most influential American historian, crafted in the fronter thesis the intellectual analog to Manifest Destiny–the doctrine championed by Jackson Democrats to justify the forced taking of Indian lands in the mid-to late 19th century. The frontier was the point at which savagery turned to civilization, hope manifested in democracy.

(JFK’s “New Frontier”, with the moon-shot as its symbol, consciously meant to recapture Turner’s triumphalism.)

Of course, many indigenous people recall that period of history differently than Turner–an era of broken treaties, brutal displacement, and horrific bloodshed. Manifest Destiny ushered in the final Indian Wars of the West, and the conquering of a good chunk of Mexico. (As some immigrant rights activists like to say, “We never crossed a border, the border crossed us.”) The optimism of the westward-facing settler, the lone man on the mountaintop, is predicated on the blood of the native.

Turner’s thesis virtually erased that history from the American record, and the American imagination filled with new images. The emergence of uniquely American painting came with the great landscape painters of the west, who depicted the land’s Edenic grace as unpolluted by any inconvenient Indian or inchoate settler. Later, Hollywood enshrined the heroic settler narrative in the western, the foundation of American film. So these remain powerful American myths. No wonder Obama feels compelled to draw upon their power.

But for those who theorize native/non-native relations in 21st century interracial societies like my home Hawai’i (or even say, Black-Latino relations in Watts, with its myriad twists of history), Obama’s speechifying conflation of the hope of immigrants with that of white settlers has to be a little, well, unsettling:

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

Is it ever possible to forge a truly new national narrative, a different way of understanding “the unlikely story that is America”?

posted by @ 8:02 pm | 3 Comments

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

The Old Dogs Learn New Tricks :: What the Clintons Learned From Iowa


Hey young people! Hey women! Thanks for coming!!

Xposted at The Huffington Post

Don’t call it a comeback. Hillary was always going to win, polls (especially polls of African American candidates) and media (always itching for any reason to throw dirt on a Clinton coffin) be damned.

But New Hampshire marks the moment that generational change is becoming major factor in the Democratic primary race.

The Clintons have history here. After young people—the supposedly politically dodgy “Generation X”—turned out in huge numbers to sweep Clinton to the presidency in 1992, the Dems consistently ignored them and their issues for the next 3 elections, calling them “apathetic” and “cynical”.

It’s true that we proved them right for the next few elections. But there were more than a few good reasons to stay home on election day: Bill’s strategic demonizing of young African Americans, the welfare deform that tossed hundreds of thousands of poor young people out on the street, the rapid deterioration of college access, and the tough-on-crime “centrist” politics that put more young people of color behind bars than any previous American generation.

(I was stunned this morning to see a new level of unseemly Boomer crowing, as if a Clinton victory is a much-needed beatdown of post-Boomers and the MSM who allegedly love them. It’s a demonstration of how closely many Boomer Dems identify with the Clintons. It bears noting, though, that the drop in the youth vote after 1992 played no small role in the rise of Newt Gingrich and the politics of the impeachment.)

So thus it has been since 1992. Every election season, there are a few lines about increasing student loans—Just what we need! More debt!—and some token lines about the wonder of idealism (thank you, Bill Bradley), but other than that it’s usually been, “Boy, get me some coffee.” Then came 2004, the hip-hop generation’s all-but-ignored breakthrough moment, and Iowa 2008, with Obama’s armies of the quad.

Even as the media was writing off the Clintons as tired, confused and done, they were rapidly assimilating new knowledge. They knew that young voters would make up a much smaller proportion of Dem voters in New Hampshire than in Iowa. Hillary’s grassroots operation was in place, her people were motivated by a life-and-death kind of adrenalin, and she learned some key lessons from Iowa.

1) Take back the women’s vote. A lot of attention last night–in an explicitly sexist way–focused on “The Tears Of The Ice Queen” story. (How uncomfortable were CNN’s Donna Brazile and Campbell Brown with line of rhetoric? Very. How many male commentators would ask Rudy Giuliani to cry? None.)

But no one in the MSM picked up on Gloria Steinem’s call to action in the Times yesterday, part of an all-out effort to tell the white women of New Hampshire: this race ain’t about race, it’s about gender.

(For more stuff on the Steinem piece, check Julianne’s blog here and here, and a guest post by Jennifer Fang on Carmen’s blog.)

2) Split the kids. On Sunday, Bill Clinton told MTV News, “I think historically young people have not voted in the Iowa caucus because they are from other states…This time we had a lot of students who did come back and I think, frankly, thousands and and thousands of them were from Illinois and wanted to support Senator Obama, and they had a very aggressive outreach. And … we haven’t made that mistake here; we’ve reached out to young people here just as much as he has, and I think we just have to keep trying.” Aside from the carpet-bagger diss—get used to it, Bubba, because it is what it is—it was a telling shift. The campaign retooled itself to attract young white women.

The most notable image last night was Hillary’s imitation of Obama’s perfect Iowa victory speech: the candidate bathed in morning light, surrounded by bright hopeful diverse (well, as diverse as you can get in Iowa) crowds in rapt attention, ready to explode in joy. Last night, Hillary’s handlers perfectly duplicated Obama’s set–right down to placing all the under-24 white women they could find (plus an Asian Indian woman for a little color and a Chinese dude for a little diversity) behind her. “Ready to Lead” became the inspirational “Ready for Change”. She even inserted a couple of applause lines about predatory student lenders.

All this was in sharp contrast to her Iowa speech in which she gave a boiler-plate stump that even she didn’t seem invested in, looked uncomfortable standing next to Bill, and was surrounded in poor lighting by Madeline Albright and shady-looking union operatives.

So the old dogs can learn new tricks. Hillary moves on to South Carolina ready to sound more liberal and more concerned with racial justice than she ever may again this election season. And you can bet that a lot of dedicated young activists in the Clinton and Obama campaigns are about to be tapped by their higher-ups for the ride of their lives.

Because of the hard work of what might now be seen as a vanguard group of activists at the University of Iowa, Iowa State, and other college campuses in the Hawkeye, Democrats are more interested than they’ve ever been in what young people are going to be doing on the day their little election comes to your state. So if you’re a left-leaning college student, know that for the next several weeks, you will be the most courted youth in the history of American politics.

The ball is now in your court. What do you really want?

posted by @ 9:54 am | 5 Comments

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Tmw Is The Day


Yes, not just for the New Hampshire primaries, but for the Wire soundtracks. Feel free to criticize me for my single-mindedness (it wouldn’t be the 7,643th time) but I’m hella gratified and proud to be a small part of this amazing project.

Plus the truth is I’m still getting up to speed on my thang for 2007, let alone 2008, so all the unfinished biz from ’07 will be handled in due time. Yes king! Yes queen!

In the meantime, run don’t walk to cop both brilliant sets: The Wire: And All the Pieces Matter – Five Years of Music from the Wire and The Wire: Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore, the Bmore rap set. Then come check back here for all the rest over the next few days.

Just a small last word on tomorrow’s vote: the media has been rubbing Clinton’s face in it–over Obama’s increasing lead in New Hampshire and more. Don’t believe the hype til the returns come in tomorrow night. Much as everyone wants to believe, the media has a much better story if Clinton is portrayed as besieged right now. The bigger the lie, the more they believe.

posted by @ 3:13 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Bill Clinton :: Hillary Lost Iowa Because Of The Youth Vote

MTV News reported yesterday that Bill Clinton is blaming Hillary’s loss in Iowa on underestimating the youth vote.

Psssh. Par for the course for the old Dems. After young people–so-called Generation X–swept Clinton to the presidency in 1992, the Dems consistently ignored them and their issues for the next 3 elections, calling them “apathetic” and “cynical”. The drop in the youth vote after 1992 was a fact that played no small role in the rise of Newt Gingrich and the politics of the impeachment.

Here’s Bill’s quote. Amazing how he can still find ways to rationalize a youth vote away:

“I think historically young people have not voted in the Iowa caucus because they are from other states,” the former president told MTV News on Saturday night. “This time we had a lot of students who did come back and I think, frankly, thousands and and thousands of them were from Illinois and wanted to support Senator Obama, and they had a very aggressive outreach. And … we haven’t made that mistake here; we’ve reached out to young people here just as much as he has, and I think we just have to keep trying.”

posted by @ 1:21 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

Sweeping Out The Dust

Hey fam, welcome to the New Year and best wishes for all of you!

I’m already way behind on my list of posts to do in this blog including:

+ Best Records of 2007
+ What Obama’s Win In Iowa Means (short version: something, but not much)
+ And the imminent return of “The Wire”.

Let me get the last one out of the way and just let this blog do the talking. More previews here.

In the meantime, patience! Hotness takes time…

posted by @ 6:53 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

The New Storm In New Orleans

By now you may have heard news of what are being called riots by residents and supporters of public housing in New Orleans against police and the NOLA City Council. In fact, peaceful demonstrators were met with Tasers and pepper spray.

This is a storm that has quickly gathered in the past few weeks. The issue at hand is the vote to destroy 5000 units of public housing in the city, a move that many believe is tantamount to permanently clearing poor Black residents from their home.

Today, the City Council was scheduled to vote on whether or not to approve that drastic, unconscionable step.

In the past few weeks, even NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourrossoff has decried this move as “ruthless indifference to local realities.”

At the same time, The Gulf Coast Recovery Act is up in the U.S. Senate. It will ensure that for every unit of housing demolished, another one will be replaced. This bill has been blocked by Republican Senator David Vitter who has said of the housing shortage, “I can’t imagine the need is as much as the need pre-Katrina.”

Here’s the latest from on-the-ground, via the Katrina Information Network, a broad network of residents and supporters that has been working on post-Katrina issues. More information is at the Defend New Orleans Housing website.

12/20/07 13:30p.m. -New Orleans Public Housing residents, and affordable housing advocates are being locked out of the New Orleans City Council (public meeting) proceedings and being harassed by multiple ‘law enforcement’ agencies as they attempt to conduct a peaceful show of support for a halt to the immoral and untimely demolition of the 4 largest housing developments during an unprecedented housing crisis in this city.

Approximately 500 participants who attended an opening press conference preceding City Council’s regularly scheduled session this morning were met with a show of force from several law enforcement agencies. Since 10:00a.m. this morning people have been peppered sprayed, locked out of the proceedings and 24 have been arrested.

Organizers on the ground in New Orleans are asking for supporters in the struggle for affordable decent housing and the right for all those displaced by Hurricane Katrina and the policies which hold blatant disregard for low-income and poor people to send out a call to:

1.Get on the Phone– Call your congressional and senate representatives urging them to support the passage of SB 1668- the New Orleans Housing Recovery Act, currently awaiting a vote in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. There is a list of phone numbers here.

2.Send out Mail and Make Calls – Send word to New Orleans elected officials that their way of working with recovery issues is inhumane and until the broad constituency they were elected to represent are treated with the respect they deserve and represented in the process of redeveloping their city their plans are hinged on the backs of the very people that make this city the unique and special place that it is.

Council Members
Arnie Fielkow (President)
City Hall, Room 2W40
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

Phone: (504) 658-1060
Fax: (504) 658-1068
Email:AFielkow@cityofno.com

Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson (Vice President)
City Hall, Room 2W50
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

Phone: (504) 658-1070
Fax: (504) 658-1077
jbclarkson@cityofno.com

Shelley Midura District A
City Hall, Room 2W80
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

Phone: (504) 658-1010
Fax: (504) 658-1016
Email:SMidura@cityofno.com

Stacy S. Head District B
City Hall, Room 2W10
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

Phone: (504) 658 -1020
Fax: (504) 658-1025
Email:SHead@cityofno.com

James Carter District C
City Hall, Room 2W70
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

Phone: (504) 658-1030
Fax: (504) 658-1037
Email: JCarter@cityofno.com

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell District D
City Hall, Room 2W20
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70112

Phone: (504) 658-1040
Fax: (504) 658-1048
CHMorrell@cityofno.com

Cynthia Willard-Lewis District E
City Hall, Room 2W60
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

Phone: (504) 658-1050
Fax: (504) 658-1058
CWLewis@cityofno.com

Mayor Ray Nagin
New Orleans City Hall
1300 Perdido Street
New Orleans, LA 70112

City Hall Operator: (504) 658-4000

3. Spread the Word – Get the word out to your network of family, friends and co-workers. The attack on low-income and poor families is not limited to New Orleans, If we allow affordable housing to disappear during a critical time in it’s recovery, there will be less chance for it’s survival throughout the US.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has helped to procure lucrative contracts for hundreds of thousands of dollars for friends and associates who went to work at HUD-controlled housing authorities in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands, he is now holding the end to funds for all redevelopment in his sector over the head of this city, if demolitions do not go forward. There is valid reason to be suspicious of the type of contract work that will be done for millions of dollars that destroy sound structures rather than redeveloping communities with the input of it’s residents. Act now to support a full and just recovery for all of those so devastated in the gulf south.

posted by @ 12:45 pm | 4 Comments



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