We’ve been working toward the launch of bridgethegulfproject.org for many months and the BP oil disaster has added new urgency to the project. It’s a new media storytelling initiative promoting cultural survival, environmental justice, and sustainable development in Gulf Coast Communities. The project is the result of a collaboration between the Turkey Creek Film Project and the Gulf Coast Fund for [...]

On May 7 a team of media artists from New Orleans Video Voices and 2-Cent Entertainment attended a community meeting in Biloxi, Miss. to hear about the impact of the oil disaster on fishermen, particularly the Vietnamese community there. They were invited by Thao Vu, advisor to the Gulf Coast Fund and a counselor at [...]

Last week I witnessed the sense of dread felt by Gulf Coast communities as the oil spill approached. I was in Gulfport, Miss., shooting footage for my Turkey Creek documentary. Derrick Evans, Rose Johnson and other environmental justice activists working in the Turkey Creek watershed were meeting with officials at the state and federal level on an entirely different [...]

The Bridge Project will be highlighted March 22 in the opening plenary of Katrina @ 5: Partners in Philanthropy, a special convening of the philanthropic community, nearly five years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, to explore the lessons of response, rebuilding, and transformation in the Gulf Coast, and how they apply to communities around the country. [...]

My last post was about the community activists and leaders I interviewed during a meeting of the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network. As I listened to these interviews I was reminded of these comments by Lisa Jackson, U.S. EPA Administrator, at an Environmental Justice Town Hall Meeting in January. A cameraman for my documentary TURKEY CREEK videotaped [...]

This weekend in Moss Point, Mississippi, I videotaped interviews with sixteen community leaders and activists from coastal Alabama (Coden), Louisiana (Terrebonne and Lafourche Parish) and Mississippi (East Biloxi, Lucedale and Moss Point). Excerpts from these interviews will be posted on an interactive map of the Gulf Coast on The Bridge Project Website, which is in [...]

THE BRIDGE PROJECT, a digital initiative that grew out of the TURKEY CREEK documentary, will be in Moss Point Feb. 26 & 27, 2010. Video interviews will be recorded with members of the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network (SCN). The video footage will be provided to the interviewees, the network and The Bridge Project. Excerpts of [...]

It has been a busy time as the post-production of TURKEY CREEK has gone into high gear and the development of The Bridge Project has become a major focus. I have been working with the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health to lay the groundwork for The Bridge Project. In July I met [...]

Coast activists take demands to D.C. Sun Herald Washington Bureau June 1, 2009 WASHINGTON — With a FEMA trailer strategically parked across the street, a coalition of Gulf Coast activists stood outside FEMA headquarters at the start of hurricane season Monday to demand Hurricane Katrina rebuilding and to protest the latest deadline for eviction of about 5,000 [...]

In March I learned that the W. K. Kellogg Foundation will be making a grant to support “Turkey Creek” and the launch of The Bridge Project. I’ll be posting something soon about what this will mean, but for now I’m running off to Louisiana to participate in a meeting of the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities [...]