It was a year after Katrina and the floods. We were at a FEMA trailer park, hours away from New Orleans in the wilderness.  This trailer park was one of many faraway places the US government had strewn New Orleanians after the storm.  There, African American residents, left homeless and unemployed, were greeting a group of unlikely visitors: immigrant workers who had been brought to the United States to do rebuilding work in horrific conditions. The immigrant workers had slipped away from a labor camp and driven hours to the trailer park with organizers from the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.

African American and immigrant workers: the first group was excluded from the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, where they and their families had lived for generations; the other group was exploited in the reconstruction.

The immigrant workers were stunned into silence as they entered the FEMA trailer park. The trailers stood behind a tall wire fence on a bed of gravel—a grey plateau that seemed to have no past and no future. The air was numb from despair. Children were playing in dirt. There were no jobs or homes for miles around. This is what the federal government had placed  New Orleanians in the aftermath of Katrina, instead of letting them rebuild their lives and their city.

Then, as the two groups gathered under a white tent,one immigrant worker told his story. He and other immigrants had been brought to Louisiana as guest workers on H2B visas. They were working as welders, building barges in a Louisiana shipyard. They had been promised good jobs and decent pay by recruiters in Veracruz. They plunged their families into debt for a chance at an American dream. When they arrived, they were locked into a labor camp on company property, surveilled by armed guards, and forced to work in horrific conditions for subsistence wages. The company seized their passports to make sure they didn't escape.

The group talked into the night. The black workers, who had been told that immigrants had come to "steal their jobs," learned that the immigrant workers had been recruited into indentured servitude. The immigrants learned that the African Americans in front of them had worked the welding jobs in the Gulf for years, until they were shut out of the industry to make way for cheaper, more exploitable workers—themselves.

The problems were clear. Then one African American resident, a welder who had been pushed out of work in the shipyards, asked the immigrants: What's the solution? What do you want?

An immigrant worker said, "All we want is citizenship. If we just had legal status, all our problems would be solved."

The African American gentleman gestured to the desolate trailer park around him. "We got citizenship," he said. "They gave us legal status. And look at what happened to us."

He was right. For poor communities of color in the post-Katrina South—and all across America—citizenship isn't enough. Their real fight is for first-class citizenship.

That courage of black and immigrant communities is the most enduring legacy of Katrina.

That conversation in the FEMA trailer park has driven four years of organizing work across race, class, and citizenship lines. Our goal: to radically expand democracy so it reaches the places where people are most stripped of power—homeless encampments, evacuation shelters, day labor corners, detention centers, labor camps. That means building the ability of poor communities of color to wield power over the decisions that impact their lives.

Out of the homeless encampments and neighborhoods in New Orleans, African American residents built a membership organization called STAND With Dignity.  STAND lead a statewide fight for new evacuation standards—and won.  Across the day labor corners in the post-Katrina landscape, reconstruction workers organized the Congress of Day Laborers.  Members of the Congress are now leading the strategy to shut down the day-labor-to-detention pipeline in the Southeast United States.  And throughout the hidden labor camps of the South, H2B guest workers have escaped from forced labor to build the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity, an emerging national organization of guest workers. The Alliance is now running dramatic campaigns to shift national debate and federal policy to focus on the intersection of civil and labor rights.

Through their campaigns, poor people of color who were treated as disposable in the wake of Katrina—or were downright discarded—are winning grassroots organizing and policy victories on behalf of all communities and all workers. In the coming weeks, I'll be telling more stories about how we can all follow through on the fights they've started.

Five years after Katrina, their work is a legacy of the storm that we can't do without.

*     *     *

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality. In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities.  Read more posts in this series.

Can you tell me what Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana's greatest accomplishments have been over the past five years?

JJPL started in 1997.  However, the five years since Hurricane Katrina almost feel like a new era.  We’re extremely proud of some of our   accomplishments since then, like helping to secure the release over 150 young people held in detention during the Hurricane, and releasing “Treated Like Trash,” an account of the botched evacuation of these youth and others from the city.  We also launched Juvenile Regional Services, a model juvenile public defender office that has transformed juvenile indigent defense in the city.  Alongside Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children and other partner organizations, we helped to rewrite the Orleans Parish Recovery School District (RSD) Discipline Policy to reduce the number of suspendable and expellable offenses, and helped to reduce the number of security officers in high schools by one-third and in elementary schools by one half.

One of our greatest accomplishments has also been the launching of Young Adults Striving for Success (YASS), an organizing project.  The group started when we filed a federal class action lawsuit on conditions of confinement at the Youth Study Center, New Orleans’ juvenile jail. A number of incarcerated youth who were plaintiffs got involved in the campaign for reform.  Many of them continued to work with us after their release and wanted to take on other social issues they were grappling with post-Katrina New Orleans.  From there, YASS was born, and they have added a whole new dimension to JJPL’s work.

YASS participants © Dana Kaplan

How does JJPL engage young people to help transform Louisiana's brutal and punitive juvenile justice system?

Youth have always been involved in some aspect of our work, but with the development of YASS, it has become its own full-fledged program.  Initially, YASS worked with JJPL and other organizations in the city on the campaign to close the Youth Study Center, hosting DJ parties as outreach events and testifying before the City Council about their experiences in the facility.  Since then, they have hosted two Youth Summits, with participation of youth from Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama.  They also just launched a campaign to reform the school security policies at the Recovery School District, an issue that was brought to the forefront after a six-year-old was handcuffed and shackled by a security officer at his elementary school.  While JJPL joined the Southern Poverty Law Center in a lawsuit on behalf of that child, YASS launched an organizing campaign to make schools more supportive and safe in New Orleans.

Youth are also involved in other aspects of JJPL’s work. Via internships and volunteering, young people learn about everything we do, from fundraising to learning about the State Capitol and the law.  JJPL is also committed to including incarcerated youth in our work, seeking their input on reform recommendations and amplifying their stories and voices in our publications and reports.

Fundamentally, JJPL’s belief is that we won’t see the change necessary in the juvenile or criminal justice systems if we aren’t building the political power of those most disenfranchised– poor communities and in particular communities of color.  It’s why working with and empowering youth is so important to us in our work, as well as our partnerships with organizations like FFLIC, Voice of the Ex-Offender (VOTE), and members of other youth organizing groups in New Orleans.

What effect does youth involvement in JJPL advocacy have on the individual? Policy makers?

Incarcerated youth and those on the outside become better advocates for themselves when they work with JJPL.  Rather than relying on others, we’ve seen young people find their voice and use it to make change for themselves and for their communities – which is incredibly powerful to watch.

For the policy makers, it has also made a difference.  I’ve seen elected officials become incredibly moved when they hear first-hand stories from young people caught up in the system that they themselves become more involved.  Whether it’s at City Council meetings or talking with the media, youth that we work with have absolutely been some of the most effective messengers in building broad coalitions and getting some of the most unlikely allies on board.

The five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the floods just passed.  Can you tell us about some of the emotions evoked by this event?

There’s been a lot of reflection leading up to the anniversary, with both a mixture of hope and optimism about what’s been accomplished, as well as recognition of how much work remains to be done and how challenging it is to get there.

For the anniversary of the Hurricane, we are releasing a report called “From Trash to Triumph,” which is a re-release of the original “Treated Like Trash” study about youth trapped in Orleans Parish Prison during the storm, alongside a history of the efforts to reform juvenile detention in New Orleans since then.  After the release of the first report, the Sheriff said he would never again house youth who were in the custody of the juvenile justice system at his facility.  Our litigation against the detention center resulted in a settlement agreement that fundamentally improves conditions for youth, including mandated schooling, recreation time, counseling and mental health services, and increased programming.  The new administration is reform-minded and is in the process of implementing real change.   However, reform is far from complete, and the report offers a number of solutions for what still needs to happen in this city, including more support for alternatives to detention programs for youth.

What should we expect from JJPL in the next  five years?

We're hoping to see YASS continue to grow, and, alongside our partner organizations, reduce suspension and expulsion rates in the New Orleans school system.

Right now, we’re focused on the 65 individuals eligible for relief under the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sullivan and Graham v. Florida, a case that found it unconstitutional to incarcerate children for life without parole for non-homicide offenses.  We are also working alongside Citizens for Second Chances, an organization of families of children serving life without parole, and our faith and community partners to lay the foundation for broader reform to keep children in the juvenile justice system, as is most appropriate.

We have the opportunity to see real reform if we work collectively to build the power of grassroots communities, in coordination with strategic litigation and policy work.  I’m hopeful that five years from now we’ll see reduced incarceration rates, more community services, and increased political power for low-income communities and communities of color in the Deep South.  That would be an invaluable victory for all of us.

*     *     *

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality.  In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities. Read more posts in this series.

While Estonia could further liberalize some of its policies, overall the view mentioned above is superficial and erroneous.

To start with the issue of citizenship, the fact that 7.5 percent of Estonia's 1.35 million population continues to be stateless is often mentioned as an example of discrimination. However, statelessness does not mean a right-less status for these individuals in Estonia. What these technically stateless individuals indeed do not have is the right to participate in the elections to Estonia's parliament.

However, in Estonia stateless permanent residents have the right to participate in municipal elections and elections to the European Parliament. On a purely practical level, they have arguably even more opportunities than Estonian citizens—namely, they can travel visa-free both in the EU and in the Russian Federation. Some believe that this has in fact contributed to the situation where some of the stateless individuals seem not to be actively interested in naturalization.

The Estonian government has organized campaigns to promote the citizenship among the group of stateless individuals but the parliament has not changed the rules of naturalization as such—especially the Estonian language test requirement. Those who successfully naturalize are paid back the money they spent on the language course. So, it is doubtful whether the burden of proof and the responsibility for the continued statelessness lies only with the Estonian government. It takes two to tango, and for some Soviet-era settlers not to acquire Estonian citizenship—or, to learn the Estonian language for that matter—seems to have been a conscious choice.

As far as the education in Estonia's Russian-language schools is concerned, a majority of Russian-speaking parents and pupils currently demand that children graduate from public schools with a very good knowledge of the Estonian language. In short, they do not want to end up being disadvantaged in the country's job market. It is difficult to find a competitive job in Estonia—certainly in the public sector but mostly in the private sector as well—without knowing the national language. If Estonia doesn’t ensure that its public schools teach Estonian to its Russian-speaking children, it would continue to face the "chicken or egg" accusation that joblessness is higher and salaries lower among the Russian-speaking minority than among ethnic Estonians.

Overall, Estonia's citizenship and language policies have served legitimate aims and been compatible with international legal standards. While statelessness has not been fully solved, most Russian-speakers have opted for Estonia's citizenship and have learned to speak at least some Estonian over the last 20 years. It is therefore important not to focus only on the negative but on what has been achieved in terms of integration in Estonia. Perhaps what the country needs now is not so much a change of laws or regulations but a shift of attitudes. It is true that on the level of attitudes, Estonia and ethnic Estonians should become more inclusive towards their Russian-speaking compatriots.

To advance this goal, I as a scholar have—together with the current Chancellor of Justice of the Republic of Estonia, Indrek Teder—started to promote the idea of “constitutional patriotism” in Estonia's public debates. While constitutional patriotism was initially a German postwar political idea, we believe that it could be successfully used for integration purposes in our country. The main idea is that Estonian citizens must find their equal rights and status in the country's constitution notwithstanding their ethnicity or mother tongue.

In this sense, the idea of “constitutional patriotism” implies that equal civil rights should be the highest constitutional value, for instance higher than ethnicity. Nevertheless, the idea of this type of new “social contract” of explicit equality is based on the continued recognition that the country's official language is Estonian.

Battle Ground Baptist Church, 2200 Flood Street, New Orleans, Summer 2007. © Stanley Greene / NOOR

Photographer Stanley Greene remembers:

I was just in New Orleans and had a moment to return to the Lower Ninth where I photographed the destroyed flag in the Battle Ground Baptist Church. The church was originally located in Fazendeville, a small African-American community that thrived in St. Bernard Parish from 1867 to 1964.  Fazendeville occupied the site of the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Among its many functions, Battle Ground Baptist Church served as performance space and community hall. When the neighborhood was razed in 1964, the church’s pastor, Reverend Allen Thomas, relocated Battle Ground Baptist Church to Flood Street in the Lower Ninth Ward. Much of the congregation followed, making the church the center of the displaced Fazendeville community.

The Battle Ground Baptist Church was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and left abandoned for many years afterwards. The image of the destroyed flag was taken in the summer of 2007 and since then, the church remains have been razed to the ground, and the residents of the neighborhood were all scattered by Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed.

When I took this picture of the American flag inside the church, it was the only thing left standing, like a flag one would find on a field of battle. This takes on special significance when considering that the church had stood on the site of the Battle of New Orleans. When looking at the photograph, it almost says “defeated for now but not broken,” which is what you can say about the people of the Lower Ninth.

* * *

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality. In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities. Read more posts in this series.

Exterior of Those Who Fell Through the Cracks mobile exhibition. © Kadir van Lohuizen.

Stanley Greene and Kadir van Lohuizen, both Open Society Katrina Media Fellows, launched a mobile exhibition of large-scale mural photographs called Those Who Fell Through the Cracks.

It powerfully documents the toll that the floods and Hurricane Katrina took on Gulf Coast residents and the struggles they face to this day in re-establishing their lives.

Interior of Those Who Fell Through the Cracks mobile exhibition. © Kadir van Lohuizen.

The photographs cover the interior and exterior of a 24' truck that will cover the path that so many former residents of New Orleans took: traveling from Houston to New Orleans during Katrina's fifth anniversary.

Those Who Fell Through the Cracks documents the United States in the beginning of the 21st century, and is a testament to the power of art’s ability to bring new awareness and sensitivity to communities, and encourage systemic change.

See the Exhibition in New Orleans

Saturday, August 28, 2:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Mobile exhibition honoring the people of New Orleans East
Lake Forest Mall
New Orleans East, LA

Sunday, August 29
Mobile exhibition
1717 Deslonde Street
Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, LA

Sunday, August 29, 9:00 p.m.
Multimedia projection
Jourdon Avenue
Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, LA
In commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the storm, works by a range of photographers will be projected onto the floodwall

Monday, August 30 – Tuesday, August 31
Mobile Exhibition
Old U.S. Mint
400 Esplanade Avenue
French Quarter, New Orleans, LA

Monday, August 30, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Workshop seminar with Stanley Greene, Kadir van Lohuizen & Alan Chin
Ashe Cultural Arts Center
1712 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard
New Orleans, LA

Past Events

Saturday, August 14, 2010
Workshop with Stanley Greene & Kadir van Lohuizen
Houston Center for Photography
1441 West Alabama Street
Houston, TX

Friday, August 20, 2010, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Opening reception for mobile exhibition
Lawndale Art Center
4912 Main Street
Houston TX

Saturday, August 21, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Symposium
The Museum of Fine Arts
Brown Auditorium Theatre
1001 Bissonnet (at Main Street)
Houston, TX

Monday, August 23, 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Mobile exhibition
Alief Center
11903 Bellaire Boulevard
Houston, TX

Thursday, August 26
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.   Opening reception for mobile exhibition (on view through August 27)
8:00 p.m.                    Screening of the documentary Trouble the Water with Kimberly Rivers
Ashe Cultural Arts Center
1712 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard
New Orleans, LA

Friday, August 27, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Symposium
Ashe Cultural Arts Center
1712 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard
New Orleans, LA

* * *

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality. In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities. Read more posts in this series.

This weekend will mark five years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and the levees broke in New Orleans.  As the date approaches, we remember and mourn the many lives and homes that were lost.  We also honor the inspiring work of so many in New Orleans to rebuild and transform this remarkable American city.

New Orleans represents the best and worst of America.  Its rich tapestry of African-American, Cajun, Creole, and European traditions gave birth to a unique and vibrant culture of music, food, and pageantry known around the world.  New Orleanians have an indomitable spirit—drawn directly from a deep love of their heritage—that has fueled a remarkable resiliency in the face of disasters from Hurricane Katrina to the BP oil spill.  While the city suffers from the legacy of slavery, a punitive criminal justice system, a weak infrastructure, and pervasive corruption, its residents are developing homegrown solutions that offer models for advocates around the nation and the world.

Before, during, and after the storm, the Open Society Foundations’ U.S. Programs has been privileged to support people and organizations determined to tackle the city’s challenges.  Starting at the neighborhood level and going all the way up to City Hall and beyond, advocates are reforming the criminal justice system in order to shed the dubious distinction of jailing its residents at a higher rate than any other U.S. city. Community-based organizations and good government groups are working together to insist on greater transparency, expand public participation, and ensure open government at the municipal level.  And the city’s culture bearers are engaging young people to use proud traditions like brass bands and second line parades to put an end to street violence.

Today, we launched an online fundraising campaign with MoveOn and ColorOfChange.org to raise funds for Open Society Foundations grantees who are working to transform New Orleans. MoveOn and ColorOfChange.org are appealing to their members to donate $500,000 to mark the anniversary of Katrina and the floods, and the Open Society Foundations will match those donations dollar-for-dollar. You can learn more about the campaign here: http://civ.moveon.org/donatec4/katrina.html or http://colorofchange.org/transform/message.html.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch the short film above that profiles three of these extraordinary organizations working for change in New Orleans. You can learn more about our work in New Orleans here: www.soros.org/us/nola.

We are deeply grateful to our many partners who have committed time and resources to New Orleans.  As we work together to strengthen democracy and open society in America, we all have much to learn from New Orleans.

With breath-taking dispatch, the four men—José Abeso Nsue, Manuel Ndong Anseme, Alipio Ndong Asumu, and Jacinto Michá Obiang—were tried, sentenced, and executed. Everything was over in less than 10 days.

On August 22, the court handed down its capital sentence, and within an hour, the men were executed. Mr. Abeso Nsue reportedly asked to see his family before execution, but was dead by the time his wife and son got to the prison. Military tribunals in Equatorial Guinea do not provide for any rights of appeal.

According to Amnesty International, the military officers assigned to represent the four refugees had no legal training. Exile opposition sources note that when highly regarded Equatoguinean human rights lawyer Fabián Nsue volunteered to defend the men, the tribunal refused. The military court reportedly relied on confessions extracted under torture.

This was not the first time Equatoguinean forces kidnapped political dissidents from foreign countries. Amnesty International reported on 12 such kidnappings, in Nigeria, Gabon, Benin, and Cameroon, from 2004 to 2008.

Only a month before the latest kidnappings—possibly even as the crime was being planned—the UN Human Rights Council concluded its Universal Periodic Review of Equatorial Guinea’s human rights practices, issuing a draft report on December 11, 2009.  The report included earnest-sounding responses from Equatorial Guinea’s diplomats, who insisted that the human rights situation was improving, but also acknowledged that “a lot still needs to be done.” Surprising many observers, the thirteen-member EG delegation accepted 86 wide-ranging recommendations from the UPR working group, including important commitments to:

• Thoroughly investigate all reports of abductions and introduce a registry of prisoners available to the public
• End arbitrary arrests and detention and the practice of secret detention
• End the torture and other mistreatment of detainees
• Disallow confessions obtained through torture and ensure all allegations of torture are properly investigated and those responsible held accountable
• Bring the organization, functioning, and competence of military tribunals into conformity with international principles

There can be little doubt that this proceeding had—at least—President Obiang’s okay. As the US Department of State reports, although the constitution and law provide for an independent judiciary in Equatorial Guinea:

the government [does] not respect this provision in practice, and the judiciary [is] not independent, according to UN officials and local and international human rights advocates. Judges serve at the pleasure of the president and [are] appointed, transferred, and dismissed for political as well as competency reasons. Judicial corruption [is] widely reported, and cases [are] sometimes decided on political grounds….The president appoints the members of the Supreme Court, who reportedly took instructions from him. The Supreme Council of the Judicial Power appoints and controls judges. President Obiang is president of the Supreme Council, and the president of the Supreme Court is the vice president of the Supreme Council.

Yet President Obiang likes to blame his troubles on the bad faith of international NGOs seeking sensationalistic media attention.

“Evaluate us by our actions…and not according to the flow of news from negative sources,” he pleaded in June.

As part of a global charm campaign, Obiang is paying lobbyist/adviser (and former Clinton aide) Lanny Davis a million dollars a year. And EG’s $55,000-a-month PR firm Qorvis seems to be issuing upbeat press releases almost weekly: “Equatorial Guinea President Pledges Environmental Conservation”; “Equatorial Guinea Advances Public Health Through Education”; “Equatorial Guinea Sponsors National Literary Prize Contest to Promote Culture and Literacy in Society.”

Nevertheless, much of the news this year has not been so sunny. In April, Equatorial Guinea got the boot from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative for failing to meet minimum benchmarks for revenue transparency. Barely three months later, Obiang’s effort to buy respectability blew up in his face when global protest about his regime’s poor governance record and alleged corruption forced UNESCO to suspend the $3 million UNESCO-Obiang life sciences prize he had pledged to fund.

Despite the best efforts of Obiang and his public relations team, this week’s sordid saga of cross-border kidnapping, a kangaroo trial, and high-speed executions shows that Obiang has only contempt for international law and justice and for the rights of his own citizens. He takes his own solemn promises to reform no more seriously than anyone else.

I went down to New Orleans in early August for the annual Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans—to present a panel on HBO's Treme and do a public interview with trumpeter Kermit Ruffins about our 2009 visit to the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, NY. Both events dealt on some level with facts and myths about New Orleans jazz history, not to mention ideas of what we can hold onto and what might be lost.

As always, Satchmo Summerfest—a free outdoor music festival combined with a two-day symposium—began with a second-line parade. Led by the Treme Brass Band, whose trumpeter Kenny Terry is deserving of more renown, the first parade opened somewhat uncharacteristically with the Bobby Womack tune (best known as a 1964 Rolling Stones hit) “It’s All Over Now.”  Most of the bands, including The Rebirth Brass Band, rolling in the streets these days regularly play the song, but it’s outside the Treme’s traditional repertoire.

As if in contradiction to the song’s literal title, three younger bands followed in the Treme’s wake: Baby Boyz, Young Ones Brass Band, and To Be Continued Brass Band. The Baby Boyz have been coming on strong for the past several years and are among the most inspiring flowerings of brass band tradition in Katrina’s wake.  The Young Ones Brass Band is a relatively new band started by Earl Weaver IV, who plays a mean tuba but favors the bass drum instead. Most of its members met in the marching band of St. Augustine High School under the direction of Edwin Hampton.

Ah, Hamp: I recall interviewing trumpeter Terence Blanchard, a three-time Grammy winner, in July.  During the interview, he stopped to read an urgent text message. "My band director just passed," he said with heavy sigh. Edwin Hampton, the founding director of the St. Augustine High School's ‘Marching 100’ band, had died in his sleep that morning at the age of 81. Blanchard recalled how Hampton, under whom he’d played more than 30 years ago at St. Aug, "brought something to the African-American youth in that community that they wouldn't get any other place—a certain level of excellence."

That level of excellence, not to mention strong senses of camaraderie, commitment and groove, have been upheld and passed on by esteemed New Orleans educators like Hampton and trumpeter Clyde Kerr, who died the day I arrived for Satchmo Fest at the age of 67. Kerr, who graduated from St. Augustine High School, is best known for his 16 years heading the jazz department at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA), a finishing school for many of the best-known jazz musicians from New Orleans.

Another  quintessential finishing school, especially when it comes to brass bands, is the street. Not just the routes where, for four hours at a stretch, a second-line parade wends its way through and between neighborhoods. But also the streets of the French Quarter, where, in time-honored tradition, brass bands hone their craft, connect with peers and elders, and play for tips. I remember Sean Roberts, a 23-year-old trumpeter in the To Be Continued Brass Band talking about the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets, where TBC plays most nights. “I learned how to play trumpet on this corner,” he said. Joe Maize, a trombonist in the TBC band, calls the spot “our practice room.”

The TBC sounded sharp and potent at the Satchmo Fest parade. They’d worked hard on the corner. I’d been talking with their members about that corner a month or so ago because a controversy had begun to stir regarding noise ordinances and quality of life issues in the French Quarter after the police served notice to the band regarding an 8:00pm curfew. (See my lengthy piece on this issue at Truthdig.com.) This controversy, and a slew of others, pointed to the fact that the ordinances governing such activity throughout New Orleans, and especially in the French Quarter, need reform.

Here’s an update: According to Scott Hucheson, the cultural economy advisor to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a working group of some 15 people—ranging from French Quarter residents to WWOZ-FM general manager David Freedman to attorneys and city council members to the TBC’s Roberts—have met several times to “go line-by-line and scrub the relevant law,” as Hucheson put it, “looking at inconsistencies, contradictions, and blatant unconstitutionality.” (All of which exist, according the lawyers and experts I’ve consulted.)

Hucheson says that when this process is through, sometime before the end of the year, the recommendations will be posted in the administration’s website for 14 days, with public comments invited. Only then will the ordinances be revisited by the city council—the first such reconsideration in decades.

Now is a moment for Landrieu to signal a clean break from the policies (or lack thereof) of his predecessors, and of long-standing but ill-serving local laws relating to culture. While he and his City Council consider the ordinances that tell bands to keep quite past 8:00 p.m., why not revisit the full scope of cultural policy that is at odds with New Orleans’ true identity?

*     *     *

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality.  In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities. Read more posts in this series.

Long before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’s criminal justice system was broken. Rates of violent crime as well as the use of arrest and detention were many times higher than in other U.S. cities. Most arrests, however, were for minor offenses, and once in jail people would languish for over a month waiting for a formal charge. The situation was only made worse by a public defenders office overwhelmed by unworkable caseloads.

Although the devastation wrought by Katrina exposed these failings, it also had a more positive outcome—encouraging political newcomers interested in reforming New Orleans to run for office. James Carter and Shelley Midura were two such reform-minded City Council members, who in 2006, asked Vera for assistance.

Meetings were held with local judges, the superintendent of police, district attorney, public defender, and other key criminal justice leaders to discuss how to go about reinventing the system, and Vera subsequently wrote a report for the council that identified four areas ripe for reform, most of which would result in fairer, more effective practices and less reliance on detention.

In the Spring of 2007, the city council adopted the report’s recommendations and Vera, along with the council and Baptist Community Ministries, began working to put them into practice. The Criminal Justice Leadership Alliance, made up of government partners and supported by non-profits, was born.  Working groups—still active today—began driving the plan’s implementation.

The groups help develop reforms, pinpoint key issues, and debate competing interests. So far the alliance has achieved a number of goals, including:

• decreasing the time from arrest to charging and arraignment by a factor of six; expanding the use of summonses instead of custodial arrest for minor misdemeanors;
• shifting prosecution of marijuana and other misdemeanor cases from state court to the municipal court, resulting in a dramatic improvement in case outcomes and court efficiency; and
• developing a system that allows for continuity of defense representation and more efficient  prosecutorial assignment.

The two main priorities now are improving the municipal court system and developing New Orleans’s first pretrial services system.

Although developing pretrial services harks back to Vera’s first initiative in 1961 in Manhattan, our New Orleans work has some distinct differences from the organization’s other efforts. New Orleans is the home of our only local office. And the high-intensity local engagement Vera is undertaking here might prove a useful model for other jurisdictions.

In New Orleans there was no other way to match the need. Early on we recognized the necessity for a concentrated, long-term, on-the-ground presence, both to fully appreciate the political and cultural climate and also to deliver the sort of comprehensive services necessary to see reforms through. Our staff live and work in the community, are engaged with community groups and civic leaders, and experience the struggles and the pride that all New Orleanians feel.

The fifth anniversary of Katrina brings into focus the fundamental question of whether New Orleans is going to reinvent its criminal justice system. We see many hopeful signs. There’s much more discussion about the need for systemic thinking and collaboration across agency lines and system actors are working together to solve problems rather than simply shift blame as convenient. There’s more recognition that how we practice criminal justice has enormous and far-reaching implications for how the city sees itself and treats its residents. And community members’ insistence that system decisions be made in their interest rather than in the interest of system actors is increasingly being heard.

Yet we have a long way to go. The criminal justice system remains hampered by funding structures that produce perverse incentives or pose obstacles to reform. For example, the court systems are funded significantly through fines and fees that flow from convictions, providing an incentive to process as many cases as possible. The jail is still funded through a per diem structure, incentivizing the detention of as many people as possible, in an endless and unreachable effort to adequately fund its operations. And the city still leads the nation in its rate of local jail detention, and the number of arrests per capita is also much higher than in other jurisdictions.

As we mark the fifth anniversary, the city is set to make a final decision about rebuilding the jail, a task necessitated by Katrina damage. The question is starkly posed: Are we going to build an enormous new jail that continues a longstanding reliance on unmatched rates of detention or are we going to redirect resources that can be used to begin to solve some of the city’s crushing problems?

What is heartening is that some civic and government leaders and many grassroots groups, including among the Open Society Foundations-funded New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, are coming together in an effort to make a rational decision about the jail.

But the jury’s still out: will we rebuild the old system or reinvent one that is fairer and more effective?

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In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality. In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities.  Read more posts in this series.