WTUL News & Views talked to Yvette Thierry, Director of Community Organizing for
Safe Streets Strong Communities, about the proposal to restructure NORD as a public-private partnership, essentially removing the department from direct oversight of the mayor's office.
The proposal is on the October 2, 2010 Ballot as a City Charter change.
(audio: 22:38)
photo of Richard Lee playground in Lower Ninth Ward from
The Gambit
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The Raging Pelican, an anti-authoritarian newspaper critical of the Gulf Oil Spill, was not allowed on Tulane University's campus last month at a public meeting called by the Federal Government. A University of New Orleans student was escorted off campus, onto the public sidewalk of Freret Street, for handing copies to his friends.
To the left is a photo of McAlister Auditorium on Tulane's campus where the public meeting was held on August 4, 2010.
See the articles that are in the inaugural issue of "The Raging Pelican: Dispatches from the Louisiana Gulf War"Listen to the confrontation with - and reasoning of - Tulane's campus security.
6min:29sec, 1.48MB, mp3
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Like a mine explosion, an outbreak of smallpox, or a chestnut blight, BP's oil spill looked like just another disaster, a tragic mistake made by benevolent capitalists. But like those past tragedies, this oil spill is a predictable consequence of an industrial civilization where risks are not calculated by those who will face the consequences should something go wrong.
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Two weeks before the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the huge, trouble-plagued BP refinery in Texas City, Texas spewed tens of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the skies.
The release from the BP facility here began on April 6 and lasted 40 days.
A 2005 explosion at the same refinery killed 15 workers and four more workers have died in accidents since then. Last year, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $87 million for failing to address safety problems that caused the 2005 blast.
In the July 23, 2010 issue of the
Texas Observer, an editorial takes the stance that "since the Supreme Court considers corporations to have personhood, maybe it's time we see BP for what it is: an unreformed criminal."
[photo by Lance Rosenfield, used without permission from ProPublica]
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