NRDC President Frances Beinecke spent time last week on the Gulf Coast with Turkey Creek’s Derrick Evans and other advisors and grantees of the Gulf Coast Fund to learn about how the BP disaster is impacting coastal communities. She wrote about her observations in an article titled “Voice Off the Bayou” on her blog:

“… Still reeling from Katrina and scarred by a federal response so inept that it shocked the world, Evans and those he speaks for are bracing for another punishing round of setback and loss.

“We are a people in constant disaster,” Evans intoned as if quoting Scripture. “We don’t get to recover from one before another hits. It’s almost like a book of Job that doesn’t end.”

Evans is an advisor to the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Economic Health, a project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

After touring Grand Bayou in an oyster boat last week, he hosted a meeting of other Gulf Coast Fund participants and community activists last in Biloxi, Miss. There, he and his peers spoke clearly and directly about what they need most.

First, he said, they need authoritative information about the risks to health and livelihood. Who is monitoring air and water quality, asks Evans, how are those results being shared and what do they mean to the daily lives and decisions being made by families who live here? …” Read the full article “Voice Off the Bayou”

Derrick Evans leads Gulfport tour for federal and state agencies

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 subject.

In the last couple months I’ve shot a number of interviews for The Bridge Project with people working to address the impact of the oil industry on coastal communities. Here is a brief clip from Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network, who spoke about the impact of the thousands of miles of dredging by oil companies in the southern Louisiana wetlands.

Through The Bridge Project, New Orleans Video Voices will be working with the Houma Nation, one of the groups struggling to maintain their connection to the coastal Louisiana ecosystem that has sustained them. Youth leaders will work with media mentors to create a “Watershed Story” video project (additional projects will be underway in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama). Here is a clip from a February interview with Kirk Cheramie about the challenges the Houma Nation faces in securing a sustainable future.

Evans family and neighbors greet relief caravan Sept. 2005

This photo was taken just after sunrise on the morning we’d arrived. Derrick had just greeted his mother, the Rev. Lettie Evans-Caldwell, sitting in the foreground. Miss Lettie and her husband had been rescued from their home during the storm. Water had risen to their necks when neighbors called out to them and swam over to help.

I’ll be returning to Gulfport next week to continue documenting the story. Filmmaker Dawn Logsdon (Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans) recently joined our team as Senior Editor and we’re working to finish the Turkey Creek film later this year.

The Bridge Project Web site bridgestoryproject.org will be developed at the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies May 28 through June 6 at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) in San Francisco. Leah Mahan and the Gulf Coast Fund will work with technology experts to connect The Bridge Project library of digital stories to interactive, multi-layered maps of the Gulf Coast that link to regional and national issues of cultural survival, environmental preservation, and sustainable development. Generously funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation with additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nathan Cummings Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment, and general operating support, the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies helps independent producers expand the impact of their socially relevant storytelling by connecting them to multiplatform models of storytelling and distribution.

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 the event .

I heard this week that EPA is sponsoring “Faces of the Grassroots: Environmental Justice Video Contest.” I hope the EPA is flooded with media from communities that too rarely have the opportunity to have their message heard.

Rev. Richard Earl Young of Moss Point, Miss.

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 development.

The interviewees represent some of the rich diversity of the coast: African Americans, Native Americans, Cajuns and new immigrants. They are all members of the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network (SCN), a “braintrust” of grassroots leaders coordinated by the Institute for Sustainable Communities. They came together for a workshop about using video and visual storytelling in their work. It was an intense two days, full of stories about communities in jeopardy, but told by people who are determined to work for positive change.

While the interviews focused on the strides being made by community organizations to revitalize the Gulf Coast, a sad theme emerged in the multiple stories about the ongoing impact of Katrina: toxic industrial pollution churned up by the storm is an invisible menace that many suspect is causing illness; countless people are still living in temporary housing and have been unable to access insurance or government assistance; post-traumatic stress causes anxiety and panic attacks; and there have been too many funerals in the last five years, including funerals for leaders like Pam Dashiell, who so many depended on as a visionary and advocate.

Despite everything they’ve been through, this is an enthusiastic and inspiring group, and people were excited by the opportunity to learn and apply new skills. While I was doing interviews, members of New Orleans Video Voices and 2-Cent Entertainment were leading a workshop where SCN members got hands-on experience videotaping interviews, editing, creating blogs and uploading videos.

Stay tuned to see the projects that come out of this event.

Media trainers Lily Keber, Kevin Griffin and Michele Burton-Otis, from New Orleans Video Voices and 2-Cent Entertainment

ISC members in coastal Louisiana in 2009

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 the interviews will be posted on The Bridge Project interactive map along with photos and text provided by the storytellers. MORE…

Derrick Evans and Bishop James Black with the KatrinaRitaVille Express in Coden, Alabama.

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 with advisors and grantees of the Fund during a convening in Alabama. I joined representatives of more than 60 social and environmental justice community groups from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas for two days of collaborative education and advocacy for gulf coast human rights and community renewal. These groups were convened by The Gulf Coast Fund, the Gulf States Human Rights Working Group and the Gulf Coast Fellowships for Community Transformation.

We visited organizations and projects supported by the Gulf Coast Fund in Mobile, Coden and Bayou La Batre. The tour was accompanied by the  KatrinaRitaVille Express FEMA Trailer, which has logged over 30,000 miles to carry diverse community voices and recovery lessons from the Gulf Coast to the American public.

We visited the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic just days after President Obama nominated its founder, Dr. Regina Benjamin, as U.S. Surgeon General.

“We know the problems in the Gulf Coast didn’t start or end with Hurricane Katrina – that those problems were highlighted and then came more into the national news after the hurricane … The Gulf Coast can be a catalyst for change in this country. We’re beginning to see that with people here in the Gulf Coast coming together, crisscrossing issues. You know, we’ve had a tendency in history and within our work to defend our issue. We defend environmental justice. We defend housing. We defend youth rights. We are building a movement of the Gulf Coast that brings all these different issues, brings different communities, brings different races together. Even brings different regions and states together to really fight for that change that we’re about.”

– Genaro Rendon, Gulf Coast Fund Advisory Group

With input from these networks of organizations, we are working to create a digital storytelling resource that will contribute to a just, sustainable future for the Gulf Coast.

]]> http://www.leahmahan.com/425/the-bridge-project-visits-coastal-alabama.html/feed