Max Roach - drums
Abbey Lincoln - vocals
Clifford Jordan - tenor
Coleridge Perkins - piano
Eddie Kahn - bass
"Driva Man"
"Prayer, Protest, Peace"
"All Africa"
"Freedom Day"
via youtube.com
<p>8 Goals For Africa from 8 Goals For Africa on Vimeo.</p>
The ‘8 GOALS FOR AFRICA’ song is part of an awareness and advocacy campaign developed by the United Nations System in South Africa on the 8 MDGs.
End poverty by 2015 is the historic promise 189 world leaders made at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 when they signed up to the Millennium Declaration and agreed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The MDGs are an eight-point road map with measurable targets and clear deadlines for improving the lives of the world´s poorest people. Ten years later our leaders are meeting again on 20 September in New York to review the progress, it is up to us to make sure world leaders keep their promise.
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Angelique Kidjo: Born and raised in Benin- theauthentic melting-pot of traditional cultures and musical styles- Angélique Kidjo’s music embraces rhythm & blues, soul music, jazz, and Beninese melodies. Growing up in the port city of Cotonou, raised by parents who honored many forms of creativity, she was exposed to a far-ranging array of music and dance. Today, Grammy Award winning singer, dancer and songwriter Kidjo is a definitive 21stcentury world artist. Her art roves across boundaries, genres and ethnicities, finding the connections that link musical forms from every part of the world, while still bonding closely with her own traditions.
To date Kidgo has released 10 albums with ‘Oyo’ being her latest. She first graced the music scene with her breath taking vocals on her first album ‘Parakou’ which is named after a town in central Benin.
Over the past decade, she has used her visibility to support a far-reaching collection of advocacy groups, from UNICEF (for whom she is a Goodwill Ambassador) to her own Batonga Foundation (providing educational aid to young African girls). In September, 2009, she joined forces with UNICEF in a campaign to eliminate tetanus. A portion of proceeds for downloads of the song, “You Can Count On Me,” will provide tetanus vaccines to pregnant women and mothers.
Athur Baker: Born in Boston Massachusetts, USA,Arthur Baker is among the most visible and widely-imitated of the early hip-hop producers, masterminding breakthrough experiments with tape edits and synthetic beats before crossing over to introduce the art of remixing into the pop mainstream. Hip-hop inspired, Baker went on to become an internationally renowned producer, working with legends such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and performing important remixing work for artists including New Order (most notably the club hit "Confusion").
Baaba Maal: Born in the City of Podor, Senegal Baaba Maal sings primarily in Pulaar, the indigenous language of people living in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro. Together with his group Daande Lenol – ‘The Voice of the Race’, he produced the hugely popular album ‘Wango’ which melodically embroidered highly distinctive African sounds, pop and reggae.
Eric Wainaina: Born in Nairobi, Kenya. Defined by his socially conscious messages, Wainaina’s notable releases include 'Nchi ya Kitu Kidogo' (‘Country of Bribes’) and 'Kenya Only' which became Kenya’s unofficial song of mourning after a terrorist attack in 1998. Waunaina has begun producing theatrical musicals that use Kenyan folk law as their base.
Jabulani Tsambo: Famously known as Hip Hop Pantsula or HHP, hails from Mafikeng in the NorthWest province. HHP, South Africa’s most popular hip-hop talent, is defined by his versatile use of indigenous South African languages, a term referred to as ‘Motswako.’ HHP believes that artists have the power to change people, communities and the world, a view that he manifests through his pull-no-punches lyrics that speak directly to a broad spectrum of South Africans, young and old.
Hugh Masekela: Born in 1939, Hugh Ramapolo Masekela is an acknowledged master of African jazz. Raised during the height of Apartheid racial tension and hatred, music provided a much needed gateway to a world of beauty. Masekela was part of the cultural insurrection that Sophiatown and the Drum Era spawned in the 1950’s. Hugh Masekela is famously known as a South African trumpeter, singer and composer. He has released more than 25 albums to date. His albums include ‘The emancipation of Hugh Masekela’ Waiting for the Rain, Tomorrow, The Lasting Impressions of Ooga Booga, Sixty and Phola which he released in 2009.
Jimmy Dludlu: Profoundly influential guitarist, Jimmy Dludlu became a major catalyst in the formation of the South African music genre Afro-Jazz. Dludlu graduated from the Jazz Programme at University of Cape Town's College of Music in 1994 and his debut album ‘Echoes from the Past’ was released in September 1997. His other albums ‘Essence of Rhythm’, ‘Portrait’, ’Afrocentric’, ‘Corners of my Soul’ and ‘Best of Jimmy Dludlu’ showcase his extraordinary talent, his proficiency not only as a guitarist but as an intuitive composer and arranger.
Mingas: Born in Maputo, Mozambique, Mingas’ professional musical career spans three decades. She was a lead singer in the ‘Orchestra Marrabenta Star de Mozambique’ during their tours of Europe in 1987-88. As part of the group Amoya, Mingas was awarded the coveted accolade of ‘Grand Prix Decouvertes 90’ at a Gala show in Guinea Conakry. In the late 1990s, Mingas performed alongside Miriam Makeba as a backing vocalist and solo artist during Mama Africa’s international tour that spanned four continents. Professional highlights in Mingas’ career include performances at the Sidney Opera House in Australia and a performance for Pope John Paul II during his visit to Brazil.
Oliver Mtukudzi: Internationally celebrated, gifted with a deep, gutsy voice and a talent for writing songs that reflect on the daily life and struggles of ordinary Zimbabweans, Oliver ‘tuku’ Mtukudzi has released 40 albums, of which 35 were best sellers. Singing in the nation’s dominant languages of Shona, Ndebele and English, Mtukudzi’s music is a cacophony of pop influences, South African mbaqanga, the vigorous Zimbabwean pop style JIT and the traditional katekwe drumming patterns of his clan. He maintains a flawless track record of releasing a two new albums every year.
Soweto Gospel Choir: The multiple award winning ‘Soweto Gospel Choir’ is the brain child of, Andrew Kay, David Vigo and Clifford Hocking, Beverly Bryer and David Mulovhedzi and was formed in 2002. Their debut album ‘Voices from Heaven’ reached the number 1 spot on Billboard’s World Music Chart, within three weeks of its US release. The 26 member strong group has performed alongside Diana Ross, Deborah Cox and Danny K, also performing as invited guests for an illustrious audience such as former President Nelson Mandela, Samuel L Jackson, Carlos Santana, Oprah Winfrey, Mary J Blige, Tina Turner, Patti Labelle, Sydney Poitier and Quincy Jones.
Yvonne Chaka Chaka: Born in the legendary township of Soweto, Dobsonville during the heart of Apartheid. At the age of 19 Chaka Chaka released the single “I’m in love with a DJ” that rocketed to success selling 35 000 copies. Releasing hit after hit, Chaka Chaka's subsequent award winning albums include "Burning Up", "Sangoma", "Who’s The Boss", "Motherland", " Be Proud to be African", "Thank You Mr DJ", "Back on my Feet", "Rhythm of Life", "Who's got the Power", "Bombani ( Tiko Rahini), "Power of Afrika", "Yvonne and Friends" and "Kwenzenjani".
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8 Goals For Africa — Mp3
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Eight African artists (one for each MDG) from across the continent recorded the ‘8 GOALS FOR AFRICA’ song. The song was produced by world-renowned music producer, Arthur Baker. The music for the song is composed by Jimmy Dludlu (South Africa), and the lyrics have been written by Eric Wainaina (Kenya). The participating artists were: Yvonne Chaka Chaka (South Africa), Angelique Kidjo (Benin), Oliver Mutukudzi (Zimbabwe), Mingas (Mozambique), Eric Wainaina (Kenya), HHP (South Africa), Baba Maal (Senegal), and the Soweto Gospel Choir (South Africa). Hugh Masekela (South Africa) and Jimmy Dludlu (South Africa) are 2 of the instrumentalists.
Some of the above artists are already involved in global and regional anti-poverty campaigns (Global Stand Up Against Poverty, African Stand Up Against Poverty and Free the Hungry Billion programmes) and some are already UN goodwill ambassadors.
Accompanied by a music video, ‘8 GOALS FOR AFRICA’ is being disseminated free of charge locally and internationally, before, during and after the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The performing artists will also make special appearances during the soccer tournament, promoting the MDGs and calling for action from relevant parties.
The ‘8 GOALS FOR AFRICA’ music video will be screened throughout the World Cup, across all the Fan Parks and Public Viewing areas. On the day of the finals, all 8 artists will come together to sing the song in a live performance at the Soccer City Fan Fest in Johannesburg. The video will also be distributed globally to other partners such as television channels, multimedia partners among others.
8 Goals For Africa lyrics
Music by Jimmy Dludlu
Lyrics by Eric Wainaina
GO HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION + ACTION STEPS YOU CAN TAKE
Opium Magazine’s Shya Scanlon 7-Line Story Contest
Judged by Amy Hempel
We’re thrilled to announce the return of Opium Magazine’s Shya Scanlon 7-Line Story Contest, judged by the brilliant Amy Hempel. To snare the grand prize of $1,000 (or the second- and third-place prize of $100), we ask that you submit a story seven lines or shorter.
The rules? Write a story or prose poem that is seven lines or less (8.5" x 11" paper with 1" margins). The winning story along with runners-up — and as many as 10 finalists — will be featured in Opium11, slated for release in March 2011. (We will not accept previously published work.)
The Deadline: October 4, 2010 (midnight EST)
The Cost: $10 for a single entry; $17.50 for two (to pay: shop.opiummagazine.com)
How to Submit: Submit your 7-Line story/poem by clicking here. (Make sure to tag your entry “Contest.” And, please, no .wpd files!). Then head to Opium’s Store (click the links above) to pay via credit card (sorry for the inconvenience, but we no longer accept Paypal for contest entries).
The Judge: Amy Hempel is the author of the books Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, The Dog of the Marriage and The Collected Stories. She has won many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, Rea Award for the Short Story, and is the recipient of the Hobson Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The Reward: $1,000 for 1st Place, $100 for 2nd and 3rd Place, and publication in Opium11.
The Odds: We can’t know this until all entries are in, but we typically receive over 300 entries. We tend to publish as many as 30 of the non-finalists on our Web site.Our first two 7-Line Story contests, featured in Opium4: Live Well (No Matter What) judged by Christopher Kennedy (won by John Colasacco) & Opium7:7 judged by Brian Evenson (won by Julius Kalamarz). While the issues are now out of print or nearly so, you can order the PDF's of the bookmark contest finalists from the two issues.
Read this stellar example of a 7-Line Story that we love (from Opium7:7):
Postcard from Mykonos
by Thomas Cooper
Estimated reading time: 30 secondsWhen H and J were on vacations they wrote postcards to the Mortimers, a couple they
never knew or met. They imagined the Mortimers at home, captivated, when they received
postcards from San Tropez, Tokyo, Madrid. “Maybe we’ll visit this Thanksgiving,” he wrote.
“Why didn’t you meet us in Bangkok?” she wrote. It went on for years. But this morning,
alone in Mykonos for Christmas, at a desk window overlooking the Aegean sea, he writes
on the back of a hotel postcard that he has news he must share in person, and that he’ll
soon be on his way.
Call for manuscripts (PDF)
Postmark Deadline: Aug. 31st 2010 (Firm)
Contest does not accept work previously published or having received awards in other
competitions. Notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.Win cash, publication, and recognition!
$100 first place winners, $75 second, and $50 third Plus publication in the Seven Hills Review
Contest Categories
Short Story 2,500 word maximum, any genre. Creative Nonfiction 2,500 word maximum. Submissions in this genre could include (but are not limited to) memoir, food or travel writing, personal essays, new journalism, biography, nonfiction stories, and nature writing. The emphasis in creative nonfiction is on factually true yet elegant literary expression. Children’s Chapter Books or Short Stories for ages 6-12, with 2,500 word maximum. Submit a synopsis of the chapter book (100 words or less) along with a representative excerpt of 2,500 words. (Note: We offer children’s picture book competition in alternate years.) Flash Fiction 500 word maximum, any genre.
Submission GuidelinesSubmit three double-spaced copies, typed on one side of 8 1/2 by 11 paper. Submission title should be in upper left corner and page number in upper right corner of each page. Author’s name is not to appear on manuscript pages or on any materials attached to it. Also send completed Seven Hills Cover Sheet. Fee of $15 per submission, nonmembers. $10 TWA members with paid dues. Manuscripts will not be returned or retained. A list of winners will be sent to all entrants via email and posted on the TWA Web site by year’s end.
Top Tips for Improving Your Chances in the Seven Hills Contest.
Send contest materials to
TWA Seven Hills Contest (category of entry)
P.O. Box 3428, Tallahassee, FL 32315
Order copies of the Seven Hills Review.
Winners of the 2009 Seven Hills Contest.
Winners of the 2008 Seven Hills Contest.
Questions? Contact Seven Hills Donna Meredith at president@tallahasseewriters.net7
Note: Remove the 7 after net in the email address before sending your message.
via twaonline.org
Flash Fiction / Prose Poetry Competition
Spilling Ink Review
Flash Fiction & Prose Poetry Competition
Now Open!
1st Prize – £100, publication, 1 free copy of annual print anthology
2nd Prize – £50, publication, 1 free copy of annual print anthology
Shortlisted Entries* – publication, 1 free copy of annual print anthology
Closing Date: 31st October 2010
Entry fee £5
* Number of entries shortlisted will be determined by the quality of submissions
Competition Guidelines
- 1,000 words max (no minimum)
- All genres considered
- Multiple entries accepted but each must be accompanied by entry fee. Please no simultaneous submissions
- Submissions accepted via email only. Entries must be attached in the form of a Word (doc) or Rich Text Format (rtf)
- Please be kind when formatting and adhere to general rules of courtesy (i.e. 12pt standard font, double-spaced, pages numbered)
- Submissions must be entrant’s own original work and must be previously unpublished (work that has appeared online, in print or has been broadcast is not eligible)
- International submissions are welcomed but all entries must be written in English
- As a condition of submitting, the author agrees that SIR has the right to publish the material both online and in print. Copyright remains with the author.
- All submissions will be considered for publication in the SIR e-journal
How to Enter
- First make your payment.
£5 Entry Fee use this PayPal Button:
- Once you have a receipt/transaction number submit your entry via email to: spillingink.email@gmail.com
- Be sure to cut and paste your PayPal receipt/transaction number into the body of the email
- State the competition category in the subject line of your email
- In the body of the email please include the following:
Name Postal Address Title of Entry and Word Count PayPal Receipt/Transaction Number
- Don’t forget to attach your story!
Announcement of Winners
Winners and runners-up will be notified by email after the closing date and results posted on the SIR website.
All entries must be available for publication in the journal, and their authors should provide a brief biography for the anthology when requested.
© 2010 Spilling Ink Review / Amy Burns, Editor / PO Box 16864, Glasgow G11 9DJ, email: spillingink.email@gmail.com
Marjorie Keniston McIntosh. Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 2009
The Yoruba, one of the largest and most historically important ethnic groups in Nigeria, are noted for the economic activity, confidence, and authority of their women. Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change traces the history of women in Yorubaland from around 1820 to 1960 and Nigerian independence. Integrating fresh material from local court records and four decades of existing scholarship, Marjorie Keniston McIntosh shows how and why women’s roles and status changed during the 19th century and the colonial era. McIntosh emphasizes connections between their duties within the household, their income-generating work, and their responsibilities in religious, cultural, social, and political contexts. She highlights the forms of patriarchy found within Yorubaland and explores the impact of Christianity, colonialism, and international capitalism. This keen and insightful work offers a unique view of Yoruba women’s initiative, adaptability, and skill at working in groups.
via University Illinois Press website.
H-Net review by Cyrelene Amoah available here.
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Marjorie Keniston McIntosh. Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. xiv + 336 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35279-8; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22054-7.
Reviewed by Cyrelene Amoah (Southern Illinois University)
Published on H-Women (April, 2009)
Commissioned by Holly S. Hurlburt
Women in Precolonial and Colonial Yorubaland
Marjorie Keniston McIntosh’s study of the lives of Yoruba women between 1820 and 1960 is a welcome addition to the literature on gender, power, and culture in West Africa. She challenges the stereotypes that continue to inform popular perceptions of African women as subjugated to male power and authority, and relegated to the realms of marriage, motherhood, and domesticity. McIntosh examines Yoruba women in the precolonial and colonial eras who were involved in other aspects of community life, especially in the economic, religious, and political spheres. She argues that adaptability and syncretism enabled women to increase their influence amid external forces, such as international commercial capitalism, Christianity and Western education, and colonialism. For instance, when women were prevented from holding spiritual positions within mainstream religious organizations, like Christian churches and mosques, they extended their traditional associations into the religious realm or joined independent churches, such as the Aladura Church, which gave them greater authority.
Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change is organized into four parts. The first section is an introduction and a discussion on sources of Yoruba women’s history as well as a historiography of the major themes in the work, notably, gender and patriarchy, women and colonialism, and female agency. Part 2 lays out the framework of women’s lives. It touches on women in the domestic context, the effects of salvation religions on traditional marriage, and British imperialism. Part 3 focuses on women’s economic functions. It considers landowning by women, the types of work women did in the household and public setting, women’s contribution to agriculture, and women's adaptation of Western skills into income-generating ventures. The final part describes the other avenues through which Yoruba women participated in their community. It looks at women’s roles in religious and cultural activities as well as in public authority. Through the various sections of this work, McIntosh presents a holistic view of the lives of women in southwestern Nigeria who engaged in an array of roles from domestic and long distance traders, handicraft producers, and titled chiefs, to politicians in the 1940s and 1950s. Through this broader investigation of the spheres of female influence, this work expands female identity and enlarges the space for Yoruba women in an era when the government of the Yoruba state during the nineteenth century and the British colonial administration were controlled by men.
One of the most compelling aspects of McIntosh’s work is her discussion on gender and patriarchy. She explores the indigenous perceptions of women and men and the impact British patriarchal ideology had on the conception of gender. In the Yoruba context, the concept of gender differed from the Victorian notion of separate spheres for women and men. Men were viewed as strong, rational, economic providers; and women were the weaker, emotive group with their primary responsibilities as wives and homemakers. Yorubaland lacked such gender distinctions with both sexes sharing labor roles outside the domestic setting in commerce, production, and the service industry. For example, the Victorian gender expectation that Christian women would not have income-generating activities was simply ignored by the wife of Samuel Crowther, Yoruba missionary and future bishop, as she persisted in her trade, despite complaints to the Church Missionary Society (an arm of the Anglican Protestant Church of England) by European missionaries around 1860. Nonetheless, McIntosh also notes that though the Yoruba did not have an ideological conception of two genders, they did distinguish between male and female roles at home. Women’s gender-specific responsibilities included cooking meals for the family and child rearing while men were responsible for obtaining the family’s farm land and maintaining the compound. Clearly, although it was okay for Yoruba women to earn an income, a woman’s domestic duties took precedence. In this regard, male dominance was still present in the daily lives of women, even though their cultural ideology did not define them as a separate category or label them as inferior in physical, emotional, or moral terms.
One issue which the author raises that needs further consideration is the nature and extent of female agency and how it changed over time. McIntosh employs a functional measure of women’s agency, namely, the ability of Yoruba women to make decisions. However, most of the agency documented is personal agency. Within the household, women decided how domestic responsibilities should be performed and took control over their marriage with the aid of British marriage regulations. In the religious realm, women displayed their authority over ritual as priestesses that served as mediators between the living and their deities. Nevertheless, women’s ability to have authority over other people in the public realm was limited. Women’s individual choice could not influence traditional or colonial policy to ensure that their recommendations would be implemented by any political authority. As such, Yoruba women never gained top leadership positions in Nigeria’s political parties in the 1940s and 1950s despite their socioeconomic autonomy.
Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change is well researched and based on a vast array of sources, such as missionary accounts, records of native courts, British colonial office documents, newspapers, diaries, letters, and financial accounts of Yoruba women as well as oral histories and interviews. The work is nicely written, clearly discussing the author’s themes of gender and patriarchy, women and colonialism, and female agency in Yorubaland. It is a welcome addition to texts on gender history in Africa as well as West African history. University instructors may find it appropriate as an assigned text in an undergraduate seminar or graduate colloquium on West African history.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.
Citation: Cyrelene Amoah. Review of McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston, Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change. H-Women, H-Net Reviews. April, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24499
Race in Cuba: Images of Cuban Life
Scenes from the lives led by black people on the island, shot by native son Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo.
2 of 23
Dancing in the StreetProfessional folkloric dancer practising in the La Rampa sidewalks (23rd Street, El Vedado).
via theroot.com
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Muraleando — Community Arts in a Havana Barrio
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| Children’s Puppet Workshop. December 2002. Photo by Henri Ewaskio. View slideshow of additional images. |
In December of 2002, I was sitting in a hotel room in Havana, speaking with Manuel Díaz Baldrich, general coordinator of Muraleando Community Project. “How many children do you think there will be?” I asked.
“Oh, about 100, 150.” Fortunately, we were talking on the telephone and he couldn’t see the panic on my face. I had offered to teach a puppet-making workshop to the neighborhood children, but there was no way I could handle 150 kids. When I explained that I was not going to put on a puppet show and we agreed on a smaller number, I breathed a sigh of relief, but my worries were not over.
For decades I’ve been a professional puppet and costume maker in New York City, but I had come to Cuba with a group of film aficionados for a film festival. I hadn’t brought my toolbox and I didn’t have so much as a pair of scissors or a needle and thread. How would I find puppet-making supplies in Havana? Besides working in film and television, I’d done a lot of no-budget community work so I knew that it is best to start with what you can find in the street when resources are limited. That way, you know that you’re using available materials. I wandered down to the Malecón, the famous avenue and sea wall that run some eight kilometers along the northern coast of the city.
When the sea is rough, the waves crash over the malecón and onto the road in a dramatic spray that catches the late afternoon light. A storm the night before had left clumps of seaweed and scraps of driftwood all along the sidewalk. Ah, there at my feet was the rubber sole of a child’s sandal! It was a bit thick but quite usable for a puppet’s mouth. And then a few yards ahead, the sea had offered up what was, for me, its greatest treasure: a large, rectangular piece of flexible rubber an eighth of an inch thick. I couldn’t have found anything better in the shops of New York City!
Everyone in the group I was traveling with donated a pair of socks. “They don’t have to be clean.” I had said when I put out my request. “I’ll wash them.” Many people were returning home the next day and would scarcely miss a pair of dirty socks. I found a fabric store and bought cloth, buttons, thread and glue. Fortified with sea gifts and clean socks, I arrived in the barrio of Lawton, the home of Muraleando, on Saturday and was greeted by Cuban puppeteers Pedro and Marisela and two large green puppets. Baldrich had arranged for a puppet show after all!
A few artists and friends from the barrio blocked off the street, borrowed a table from a house and dragged it out into the road. We started with a small group of children and a stellar performance by Marisela and Pedro. Soon, word spread through the neighborhood that there was a happening on Calle Mercedes Muñoz and, one by one, more kids arrived. When the puppet making started, the artists and parents who had jumped in to help couldn’t keep up with the chorus shouting, “Me next! Me next!” Four hours and 50 puppets later, the weary artists who make up the directorate of the community project said, “Ya!” (Enough!) And we called it a day.
A Workshop in the Streets
When local artists Manuel (Manolo) Díaz Baldrich and Ernesto Quirch Paz began teaching art workshops in the neighborhood school two-and-a-half years ago they had no thoughts of starting a community development project. But their classes conflicted with the schedule of the state-run computer program so they moved the workshops into the streets, and there the seeds of Muraleando (literally “muraling” or mural-making) were sown. When a friend asked, “Why not take community work more seriously?” Manolo and Ernesto took up the challenge.
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| Mural painting on Lugareño near the corner of Mercedes Muñoz. Photo by Henri Ewaskio. |
The most obvious aesthetic issue in the barrio, as in much of Havana, was its paint-starved walls. The murals that started springing up all along Mercedes Muñoz, and around the corner on Aguilera, were a natural outgrowth of the art classes. They depict fanciful celebrations of Cuban life: Albert Einstein buys fruit from a roadside fruit and vegetable stand. Che Guevara, dressed in medieval armor, stands beside John Lennon riding in a bicitaxi (a bicycle-powered taxicab) driven by a Rastafarian. Charlie Chaplin steps down from an overcrowded camello (the infamous, large, public buses nicknamed “camels” for their two humps.) Similarly, found object installations sprouted from the crumbling sidewalks in bright colors and whimsical combinations. In a country where nothing is disposable and everything is useful, broken typewriters, old telephones, tire rims, wrought-iron chair parts, all were fair game to weld and paint and turn into sculpture.
Less obvious than the long-unpainted walls were deeper issues of community cohesion. According to Baldrich, problems were exacerbated during the “special period,” the Cuban euphemism for the years of extreme economic hardship in the early 1990s, immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the U.S. embargo. The scarcity of these years pushed many Cubans to adopt an every-man-for-himself philosophy. Muraleando’s answer to this community fragmentation is the Peña Comunitaria, a block party that the project organizes every six weeks, when streets are blocked off, tables and chairs are set up, and young and old arrive to share in the festivities. Invited artists include musicians, dancers, singers, actors and poets from local, national and international realms. The Peña also gives emerging and aspiring artists from the neighborhood a venue to demonstrate their talents. Food is served, of course, and neighbors come together in a cultural celebration.
The Grandmothers, the Fox and the Sun
On January 25, 2004, Muraleando celebrated its second birthday. A little more than a year after my first visit to the project had passed and I was invited to return to work with the children’s theater classes and the Grandparent’s Circle. One of the primary goals of the project is to build intergenerational ties in the community. I’d read the story that the children were working on transforming into a play, "La Zorra y el Sol" (The Fox and the Sun), a contemporary fable written by Cuban writer and pedagogue el Niche, about a little fox who wants to go to the sun. It would adapt easily to puppetry, I thought. The grandmothers have a doll-making club; they could help make puppets. Much was unclear about how things worked there and what my hosts’ expectations were. But one thing was clear: This time I wanted to bring more than old socks and trash with me. The days immediately preceding my departure were filled with last-minute preparations and decision making. Afraid that anything I packed might be confiscated by U.S. Immigration officials as unallowable under the embargo, I chose carefully, sorting through bags of fur scraps from a teddy-bear company, art supplies, foam rubber and tools. On March 4, with my duffle bag of supplies miraculously intact, I stepped off the plane in Havana into the incomparable Cuban warmth of sunshine and hospitality.
A year ago, the corner of Aguilera and Porvenir looked like any other street corner in Havana. The long-suffering buildings with peeling paint and chipped facades had given no evidence of the transformations happening two blocks away. This time there is no doubt that we have arrived in muraling territory. High up on a balcony, overlooking the street corner, bright yellow and pink graffiti-style lettering points the way to Proyecto Comunitario Muraleando. Below, two long walls are covered with paintings of flowers, trees, rainbows and bombs with big Xs drawn through them, the children’s mural for world peace. Telephone poles are carved and painted like totems. Nivia Herrera López is turning a five-foot boulder into a sculpture. On the corner of Aguilera and Lugareño, I recognize the familiar gateway to the heart of the project, a large, freestanding archway of welded tire rims painted in bright colors.
Manolo’s house is the gathering place for members and friends of Muraleando. Since Manolo and his wife Mayra are my hosts, I meet a steady stream of people there over the course of the next few days. The day I arrive I meet 16-year-old Daily Gonzalez Arango. Disillusioned with the pettiness and cutthroat competition of fellow students, she has dropped out of the performing-arts school and given up a coveted scholarship, much to the dismay of the adults in her life. She’s teaching the children’s theater classes and the first performance of "La Zorra y el Sol" is less than two weeks away. It becomes clear that puppets won’t fit into the play at this late stage in the process. We discuss ideas for costumes and come up with a costume plot. She invites me to attend rehearsals on Saturday.
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| El Niche giving notes at rehearsal. March 6, 2004 . Photo by Henri Ewaskio. |
El Niche, the story’s author, breezes through, moments later. Covered with sweat, he is a torrent of energy who runs everywhere he goes and talks as fast as he moves. We briefly discuss the fable and he promises to join us at rehearsals. Then he departs as suddenly as he arrived.
Muraleando classes and events are held in the street or, if the gate is not locked, in a nearby park where there is some protection from the sun. Tables and supplies are hauled from a member’s house where they are stored and hauled back when the activity is over. The next major goal of the project is the construction of a community center. It will provide a dependable space for activities and alleviate some of the demands on project members. They already have materials for the roof. A vacant lot has been claimed and its gate decorated with the signature archway made of old tire rims. Nivia gives me a tour of the grounds. They’re overgrown with weeds but found objects are piled there, awaiting designs for the next installation.
The theater class meets in the park on Saturday, March 6, a day and a half after my arrival. Afterwards, back at Mayra and Manolo’s house, I meet Aida who works with the Círculo de Abuelos (Grandparents Circle.) Retired, and a grandmother herself, she teaches doll making to weekly gatherings of neighborhood elders. She works with Dr. Ramón Sánchez Gutiérrez, a geriatrician, who chairs seminars on health issues and leads exercise classes. We chat over a cup of sweet, strong coffee on the terrace overlooking neighborhood rooftops and the Havana skyline. A plan is made that I will teach puppet techniques to the doll-making club and they’ll make costumes for the children’s play.
Chucho Finds a Home
It is Mayra who has made the coffee that Aida and I share. Mayra sweetens the coffee just so and offers a shot-glass-sized cup to all who gather. She is the diplomat, confidant, advisor and perpetual hostess of the group. In a rare moment when she sits down to talk and drink a cup of coffee herself, she tells me about a young man in his 20s who is a frequent visitor and friend of the project. She tells me the history that he doesn’t mention when we later meet. A victim of the special period, Chucho (not his real name) was a young teen when his mother died and his father left the country, abandoning four children in desperate times. Chucho was caught stealing and sent to jail. When he got out and moved in with his sister-in-law, he had been afraid that the community would ostracize him for his prison record. Muraleando welcomed him with open arms. He, in turn, threw himself into mural painting, preparing and scraping walls, building scaffolds and taking on whatever the task at hand might be. He told Mayra that without Muraleando, “I would just be sitting on any street corner.”
Monday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. A big event is planned to honor the neighborhood elders. There’s an exhibition of drawings from the children’s art classes and a display of dolls made by the Círculo de Abuelos. There are guest speakers, musicians, singers and poets. Well over 60 grandmothers attend. The aging, male belly dancer, sporting a black wig and silver crown, orange harem pants and a plastic sword, is one of a kind. But the richest moment for me is watching the grandmothers groove to original hip-hop tunes performed by Chucho and two fellow rap artists. With broad grins and rhythmic hand clapping, the elders dance in their seats. Chucho indeed has found acceptance.
After his performance we have a chance to talk and I ask Chucho how he got started with the group. “I began contributing to the project, doing whatever needed to be done, and then I discovered my talent as a rapper. They gave me the opportunity to write a song for the project, which I finished quickly, and -- the people liked it. I feel proud to be a part of Muraleando.”
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| Grandmothers making costumes. Nena is on far right. March 10, 2004. Photo by Henri Ewaskio. |
On March 10, the grandmothers make costumes out of cardboard, foam rubber and glue. They cover a headpiece for the rooster in bright red cotton knit fabric. There is laughter and banter just like in any costume shop. I look up and see the gentle face of Maria Teresa. It’s her first visit to the Grandmothers’ Circle and I’m delighted to see her. Less than a week ago, her mother died after a long illness and Nena (as she is called) had cared for her throughout the illness. Muraleando folks have been urging her to come to the Círculo. The sorrow in her eyes is palpable. But she has come. She picks up a needle and thread and works on the rooster’s crest. Amid the laughter and sewing, stories are shared. They talk of a woman who lost two sons and then a month later her husband died. Someone says, “But she comes. And now she doesn’t cry any more.” A woman remembers, “My husband died while we were bathing together. Now I bathe in the kitchen. I can’t bare to bathe in the bathroom.” I hope that Nena doesn’t feel quite so alone.
Early in the evening, the fine-arts class meets to paint the cardboard headpieces that the grandmothers made. I help Nivia prepare paint. We scoop out globs of donated printing ink from old, rusty cans and mix it with a solvent called brillante, although I’m told that gasoline would do just as well. We gather up a fistful of the saddest, most worn-out, crusty brushes that I’ve ever seen. Miguel demonstrates shading and feathering techniques to the teenage students. They paint two large flowers and a sun. It is pure magic to see the “silk purses” emerge from the “sow’s ears.”
Still later that day there is a dance class. I’ve been hearing about this class since I arrived. A year ago none of the kids could dance. Now they win competitions and dance on national television. Ariel is the resident dance instructor. A dance aficionado with no professional training, he is a chauffeur and mechanic by day. At night he dedicates his time to “his kids.” Tall, svelte and super cool, his appeal to adolescents is easy to see. Working with teenagers is never easy, but winning national competitions has motivated them and the dance itself is also a great teacher. Rueda de Casino requires cooperation and responsibility, as does the rehearsal schedule. When they dance, they all have to work together and own up to their mistakes. Ariel runs a tight ship. He checks up on them at school. They have to keep their grades up to stay in the class. If they’re not focused in rehearsals they hear about it. After all, he’s a volunteer; if they don’t care, why should he? They’re learning a lot more than just dance steps.
Art classes continue the following day with the preparation of a backdrop for the children’s show. Someone works at the hospital and is able to get small cardboard boxes. They’re flattened and laid out on Manolo’s roof and spliced together with strips of cardboard and glue. Ernesto does a rough sketch and the students cut out a leafy stage door and prime the cardboard. They paint it the following day, the day before the performance.
Meanwhile, Daily has been rehearsing diligently with the young cast. Behavior is still an issue; they’re wild on Saturday mornings. They’re swallowing their words and not playing to the audience. But she’s had a chance to work with el Niche, who’s had a lot of experience staging stories with young children. His exuberant personality captivates them. Daily hasn’t cast for talent. This theater troupe is for anyone who wants to join. Its purpose is to give kids a chance to perform, regardless of skill, in a noncompetitive environment.
The play will be staged on a block down by the railroad tracks where the newest mural has just been completed. This is the most marginalized section of the barrio. Houses are much poorer and the street is unpaved. There’s a high incidence of alcoholism. When city water flows through the aged, cracked pipes underground, every other day, the street is filled with muddy puddles. On the days when it doesn’t flow, water storage is an issue for those who can’t afford a tank on top of the house.
The Big Day
Sunday, March 14, the day of the opening dawns. Ernesto and his students are stringing the backdrop across the road when the young actors arrive to block the play in the new location. The street is filled with mud and Little Fox worries that she cannot throw herself on the ground when she jumps from the treetops. Manolo assures her that the sun will dry up the mud by the time of the performance. Residents are already gathering to watch the preparations. There is a final run-through back in the park.
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| Grandfather Crocodile makes his entrance. Opening scene of "La Zorra y el Sol." March 14, 2004. Photo by Henri Ewaskio. |
At three in the afternoon the block is filled with people of all ages. In costume backstage, behind the backdrop, the kids take their places with unbridled excitement. When Grandfather Crocodile makes his entrance, the action begins. Performing before an audience works its magic on the cast. They enunciate, project and play straight to their public. The audience loves it. The grandmothers applaud with particular pride, seeing their costumes come to life. Poetry, dance, storytelling and an original hip-hop number follow. The artists are all under 10 years old. There are riddles, hidden treasure and prizes. With a cup and bowl from home, the children line up for food and drink and cake. Muraleando folks pass out servings to adults on scraps of cardboard or “disposable” plates that will be saved and washed for the next event. By the time we carry the costumes back to Manolo’s house, the event has taken on a life of its own. The entire street has been transformed into a stage. The microphone is open and block residents are taking over and showing off their talents.
Since the opening of "La Zorra y el Sol," the children’s troupe has performed for the Peña Comunitaria and staged the play at Casa del Estudiante in Old Havana. The teenagers continue dancing with a rigorous rehearsal schedule, learning new moves from Ariel and preparing for the next competition. Nena has made a cat puppet out of old socks. Members and friends have spent a day clearing the vacant lot in preparation for the groundbreaking of the long-dreamed-of community center.
When I ask Manolo what he thinks the greatest accomplishments of the project have been, he says, “In two-and-a-half years of existence, the project has managed to physically transform our community, converting it into a People’s Art Gallery. In fact, the changes are spiritual as well as physical. A sense of belonging has developed in the barrio where people get involved and concern themselves more and more with solving problems with our own efforts.”
Referring to the dozen or so people who form the directorate of the project, he adds, “No one receives a salary. The only incentive that we receive is that things go well and that they move forward and that they continue having results.”
Henri Ewaskio is a freelance artist and teacher. She has worked in Jim Henson’s Muppet Workshop, at Plaza Sesamo in Mexico City, and with many other educational projects for children. Her writing has appeared in El Diario/La Prensa. She lives in New York City.
Original CAN/API publication: July 2004
>via: http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2004/07/muraleando_comm...
Animated graphic on Deepwater disaster brings together multiple aspects of Gulf of Mexico oil spill
Published: Monday, August 02, 2010, 7:55 AM Updated: Tuesday, August 03, 2010, 9:14 AM
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has proved to be a multifaceted disaster, with simultaneous developments on the surface of the water and at the wellhead 5,000 feet below, at the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and on shorelines from Texas to Florida, affecting wildlife, oil workers, tourism workers, and everyone who cares about the wealth of natural resources along the Gulf Coast.
In this Times-Picayune interactive graphic
chronicling the first 100 days of the disaster, Ryan Smith and Dan Swenson bring together many of those threads, presenting the story of what happened day by day. It maps the spread of oil on the surface of the Gulf, fishing restrictions, and the areas of shoreline that have been affected. It also points up BP's various efforts to cap the Macondo well.
Incorporated in the graphic are video vignette of the stories of six people deeply affected by the oil spill:
- Pam Patrick, a Bucktown seafood vendor who asks, "How much more can we get knocked down?"
- Thomas "Uptown T" Stewart, an Uptown oyster shucker who boasts of his "tasty oysters, but they are from Florida at the moment."
- Mari Darr~Welch, a beach portrait photographer whose summer business is a quarter of what she would have expected without the spill.
- Nick Collins, a fourth-generation oyster harvester from Golden Meadow facing "grim realities."
- Chief Albert Naquin, leader of the Biloxi-Chitimacha community on Isle de Jean Charles, whose fears have not been realized.
- Kevin Vanderbrook a recreational fisher from Covington who finds renewal on the water.
via nola.com
Delacroix residents 'never imagined how bad it would get': Part four of four
Published: Wednesday, August 04, 2010, 9:12 AM Updated: Wednesday, August 04, 2010, 2:25 PM
In the early 1960s, Delacroix Island native Henry Martinez began noticing changes in the lush marshlands he trapped and fished.
The water was getting deeper. All his life, it had been wrist-deep when he set his traps, and the same when he picked them up. Now, the water reached his elbow.
The tides were getting stronger, too, moving with more speed and rising higher on the upswing.
And the land -- as they called the marsh -- was shrinking, falling apart; islands were getting smaller, bayous wider.
He and others in the isolated but prosperous bayou enclave figured the canal dredging for oil and gas might be causing the changes.
"But we never imagined how bad it would get, how it would all end," recalled Martinez, now 67.
The end of their world did not come in the form of a cataclysm. Rather, it was like an undiagnosed disease that showed only vague and scattered symptoms until it grew terminal. For more than 200 years, the wetlands along Bayou Terre aux Boeufs and the St. Bernard delta had supported a unique culture, provided livelihoods and buffered a community from the rapid societal changes sweeping the nation beyond their cypress trees. They lived lifestyles little changed from the subsistence culture established by their ancestors in the mid-1700s: fishing, trapping, hunting, speaking Spanish -- and hardly traveling outside.
What they didn't know then was that their wetlands had been under attack for more than 50 years. By the early 1960s, they were being tamed by hard-surfaced roads, drowned by flood-protection levees and strangled by industries that brought canal dredging to the fragile ecosystem.
Asphalt and concrete highways were an obvious sign, and they quickly began changing the social order. While shell and mud roads had reached Delacroix by the 1920s, getting in and out remained a difficult and time-consuming challenge, taken on mainly for commerce. The all-weather surfaces that came in the 1950s allowed more residents to get jobs at the refineries and manufacturing concerns closer to the city. As people on "The Island" got exposed to a different, more comfortable life, a slow migration began.
A father's advice
But a more fundamental change was under way. The wetlands ecosystem was dying, and some of the senior members of the community had noticed. Lloyd "Wimpy" Serigne had always counted on being a fisherman. But as he entered his teens, his father disabused him of that notion.
"He encouraged me to move up the road, get a job in one of the towns," said Serigne, who took his father's advice and became a Teamster.
The father could see a way of life starting to slip away with the ever-higher tides, even if he didn't know exactly why at the time. "Of course, back then people didn't realize why it was happening."
In fact, for 70 years, residents mostly supported the very forces that would spell doom for their lifestyle -- levees and canals dredged for oil, gas and shipping.
They applauded dependable levees on the Mississippi River because they could prevent floods that inundated cropland and even homes. But sealing bayous like Terre aux Boeufs from the river stopped the delivery of the silt and fresh water the delta needed to remain above sea level. Without the silt, it would slowly sink, becoming ever more vulnerable to flooding.
If levees were all that had happened to the delta, the wetlands in place at the turn of the century would have remained largely intact for hundreds of years, coastal scientists have said. But in the 1930s, oil and gas was discovered in the coastal zone, unleashing a frenzy of canal dredging that would compress the wetlands' demise into 70 years.
"That was the shortest way to drilling sites," Martinez said. "To be honest, at the time we didn't mind those canals, because they were shortcuts across the marsh for us, too."
Fatal wounds
At first the impacts seemed incremental to residents like Serigne and Martinez. But in truth, the changes were gathering speed; as scientists now know, they are exponential. As a lagoon, canal or lake becomes wider, wind-driven waves become larger and strike fragile shorelines with growing energy, further widening the area of open water, leading to still-larger waves and greater damage.
A total of 27,600 acres of marsh in St. Bernard Parish were converted to open water between 1930 and 2005. Today, according to federal reports, Lake Borgne shoreline "retreat" averages between 2 and 27 feet per year.
All those impacts were greatly exacerbated when the nation -- with the support of local worthies -- ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, designed as a shortcut for big ships between the Gulf of Mexico and port of New Orleans. When politicians cut the ribbons in 1963, they opened a wound 76 miles long, 500 feet wide and 32 feet deep into the pristine wetlands of eastern St. Bernard Parish.
The MR-GO would go down as one of the worst mistakes in Louisiana history, an economic and environmental disaster. Commercial traffic never came close to predictions, and it was a world-changing event for the local ecosystem and a culture that depended on it. The corps reports erosion rates along the north bank of the MR-GO have run 15 to 65 feet per year.
Removal of the marsh wasn't the only damage canal dredging was doing. Wetlands scientists say deltas can maintain their elevation against sea level not just by the seasonal addition of new sediments from the river that builds them, but also with sediment delivered when high tides wash over the marshes, and from the detritus from the annual decay of lush plant communities.
Related stories
- Gulf of Mexico oil spill is just the latest blow for Delacroix: Part one of four
- Delacroix was insulated from history by wetlands: Part two of four
- Delacroix settlers found themselves in an opulent natural bazaar: Part three of four
- Delacroix residents 'never imagined how bad it would get': Part four of four
- Video: A Paradise Lost
- Photos: Delacroix Island historic image archive
- Photos: Delacroix Island now
But the canal-dredging techniques employed in coastal Louisiana deposited the removed material in a line along the canals, creating so-called "spoil levees." Those levees, researchers report, form dams blocking the overbank flooding that could help maintain a delta starved of river sediment.
And the canal systems also opened highways for salty Gulf water to invade freshwater marshes in the northern end of the estuaries, removing entire plant communities, converting fresh and brackish marsh to salt, and others to open water. With plant production removed or dramatically curtailed, the wetlands lost another source of sediment.
By the 1970s, local fishers sensed the fate of their world. The MR-GO had nearly doubled in width to a quarter-mile at some points and grew monthly; much of eastern St. Bernard Parish was falling into Lake Borgne, while its southern edges were being consumed by Breton Sound and Black Bay. Land once used for vegetable gardens was now being flooded with salty water. Even small storms carried surges that could flood homes.
The storms
Any who remained in denial were shocked to reality on Sept. 9, 1965, when Hurricane Betsy ravaged their community. Not only were most homes destroyed, but the fragile condition of the wetlands was made plain.
Still, 80 percent of the natives didn't want to give up their lifestyles and resettled in Delacroix within three years. But social changes accelerated. Residents watched their community start to morph from a tight-knit working village to a weekend playground, with almost as many camps as permanent homes.
Even projects designed to help the decaying marsh took a toll. The Caernarvon freshwater diversion -- originally designed to help oyster fishers by preventing the outer bays from becoming too salty for the crustaceans -- was also hailed for its ability to strengthen marsh plants with surges of fresh water. But local fishers said that change also pushed inshore shrimping out of business and, they believe, actually destroyed marsh rather than bolstered it.
"You can't find a brown shrimp inside no more," said Martinez. "And it's hurt that marsh. Land we used to be able to walk on is now open water. How did that help?"
A still more devastating blow came on Aug. 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina basically wiped Delacroix from the map -- taking as much as 120 square miles of the wetlands with it. Few natives ignored that message.
Today, fewer than 15 families live in the community full time. Most new construction after the storm was for fishing camps. Commercial crabbing is still viable, but most crabbers commute, just like the sportsmen, the "chivos" they once ridiculed as clueless outsiders.
Thomas Gonzales knows the world surrounding his trailer now doesn't resemble the habitat where he grew up: "People talk about the 'wet lands.' The only wet lands left is in my yard when it rains. There's no land left out there."
BP
In April, the few surviving remnants of the old Delacroix lifestyle became threatened when BP's Deepwater Horizon exploded and began sending a river of oil toward the surviving wetlands. Like much of the coast, most of St. Bernard Parish was closed to fishing.
Many locals began picking up paychecks as high as $1,500 a day working cleanup, and villages such as Delacroix have become boomtowns invaded by hundreds of workers. But instead of lifting spirits, the windfall has only deepened the sense of loss and anxiety among natives, the sense of a world ending.
"That money I'm getting now is good, but we all know it ain't gonna last forever, or even very long," said Martinez. "I'm worried about what we're going to have left when they leave in a few months or next year.
"If that oil messes up the crabs from laying their eggs, where are we gonna get crabs next year? And if people in other parts of the country don't want our crabs, what kind of price we gonna get here?"
"If I can't crab, what am I going to do? I'm 70 years old. This is the only way I know how to make a living."
Serigne, retired several years, has been picking up an extra paycheck as a deckhand on response boats. But the financial gain comes with a price: He feels the anxiety sweeping through men and women who still want and need to live off the wetlands.
"People are really, really worried, depressed," he said. "All they talk about is, 'What's going to be left when BP leaves? Never in my life did I think anything like this would happen. Even after all the bad stuff before -- the canals, erosion, hurricanes.
"You think about what we had not long ago. You can't imagine what was there. What we already lost."
These days, when Serigne and Martinez visit the scene of their childhood adventures, they see a thin, battered strip of open land between an encroaching bayou and an expanding marsh. The hardwood forests are gone. So are the dance halls, groceries, schools and churches. The only Spanish they hear is their own. The touchstones of their early lives have been erased.
"When you look at this -- this graveyard," Serigne said, running his eyes over the empty lots and sunken boats, "it's hard to tell the young people what was here just a short time ago."
Bob Marshall can be reached at rmarshall@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3539.
via nola.com
Final spot for oil-spill debris:
common landfills
Related Content
Coast Guard's efforts in the Gulf
Oyster-men's business suffers in spillBY LESLEY CLARK AND FRED TASKER
lclark@MiamiHerald.com
MOUNT VERNON, Ala. -- At a sprawling landfill some 50 miles from the oil-spotted coastline, trash bags brimming with tar balls, oil-soaked boom, sand and tangles of seagrass are dumped.
Though workers in the largest environmental disaster in the U.S. wear protective gloves and coveralls as they labor across the Gulf Coast clearing beaches of oil, the mounds of debris they amass meet a pedestrian fate: burial in the same landfills that take in diapers, coffee grounds, burnt toast, yogurt containers, grass clippings and demolition debris.
Since the first trucks began rolling in June, nearly 40,000 tons of ``oily solids'' and related debris have been sent to municipal landfills from Louisiana to Florida, sparking enough consternation that BP agreed late last week to stop dumping in one Mississippi landfill.
``They tell us, `It's not bad, it's not hazardous,' '' said Christopher Malloy, who borrowed a sign from his wife's tanning salon to announce his opposition to using the Pecan Grove landfill in Mississippi's Harrison County.
``Oil in Gulf -- Bad. Oil in landfill/wellwater not bad? What!'' reads the sign in his front yard, less than half a mile from the landfill where 1,300 tons had been disposed as of July 20.
``What I worry about is when they come back and say, `Oops, we were wrong. So sorry,' '' said Malloy, 39, a registered nurse who said he fears that toxic chemicals from the oil soaked material could seep into his groundwater drinking supply. ``Where does that leave us?''
Under a 34-page waste management plan developed by the federal government, oily solid waste that reaches Gulf Coast beaches is bagged by BP contractors and transferred to area landfills by waste management giants: Heritage Environmental Services in Louisiana; Waste Management Inc., which is working from the Louisiana-Mississipi border east to the Ecofina River, southeast of Tallahassee; and Republic Services, which covers Florida's west coast, the Keys and Miami.
Oily water is handled differently: mostly it's processed for recovery.
So far, BP says it has recovered about 836,000 barrels of oily water from the Gulf, picked up by skimming vessels or vacuumed up as ``oily mousse'' at the shore.
WHERE IT GOES
The oily water is taken to facilities -- including a vacant shipyard near the Alabama landfill -- where the oil is separated from the water and sent to refineries for processing as fuel. BP's website says it gets about one gallon of oil from each 17 gallons of seawater. BP has said it will donate the net revenue from recovered oil to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
The ``oily sheen'' often seen floating on the Gulf is too thin to use for fuel; the water is removed and the oil is mixed with ash and turned into a solid that goes to landfills.
The ``floating hotels'' -- the armada of skimmers and spotter boats, as well as the relief wells operating in the Gulf -- are also producing liquid waste, and Waste Management runs ``basically a milk route'' to the offshore vessels, collecting wastewater and rainwater and delivering it to onshore wastewater treatment plants.
Some material is too valuable for disposal: damaged containment boom -- in great demand because of the spill -- is washed and repaired at a cavernous building in Theodore. Patriot Environmental Services has processed more than 40 miles of boom.
The EPA and each state's environmental protection agency have signed off on the plans for the oil-smeared bulky waste. And the operators of the landfills insist the BP garbage is not unprecedented and is suitable for the type of landfills they've selected: disposal sites that take household waste, as well as ``special waste'' like contaminated soil. They note much of the waste is generated by the cleanup operation itself: soiled cleanup coveralls, gloves, sandwich wrappers and drink containers. Some 44 tons of waste materials have been recycled.
``This waste is not that much different from what we've been accepting here every day,'' said Matt East, a district manager with Waste Management, which runs the Pecan Grove site and Mt. Vernon landfill in Chastang. The BP waste at Chastang averages about 20 tons a day, which sounds staggering, East notes, until you realize it accounts for just 2 percent of the landfill's daily intake ``The volume is minuscule. It really is.''
Waste Management estimates that the BP waste at the Pecan Grove accounts for 6 percent of the landfill's waste per day. The landfill, according to the state, accepts about 8,000 tons of trash a week.
What worries environmentalists and some residents is that under EPA rules, waste from petroleum operations is exempt from hazardous-waste rules. But cleanup officials say they're taking the precautionary measure of testing the BP waste shoreside for potential carcinogenic volatile substances including benzene, toluene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals like nickel.
BP is required to sample and test collected waste weekly and the EPA is doing its own sampling to confirm, said EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara. It has yet to turn up a hazardous sample, she said.
A SEA CHANGE
Though what was spewing out of the blown-out well in the Gulf was toxic, scientists say the light sweet crude undergoes a sea change as it bobs in the water for 50 miles or more before hitting shore.
``At least 50 percent of the oil evaporates in the first week,'' said Ed Overton, an oil-chemical hazard assessment expert at Louisiana State University. ``And it's the most volatile parts of the oil, the potentially carcinogenic benzenes and so on.''
The weathered oil also gets chewed on by naturally occurring bacteria that eat the oil.
``By the time it gets to shore, it's more like road tar,'' Overton said. ``The average driver is exposed to more oil volatiles filling his gas tank than being around oily waste.''
The sites in use now are regular municipal landfills, not designed for hazardous waste. Waste Management officials, who offered a tour of the Chastang site last week, said its three landfills boast important safety features including a ring of ground-water monitoring wells that are tested twice a year, and pipes that collect rainfall and the ``garbage juice'' that percolates through the waste. That sludge is then taken to a sewage treatment plant for disposal.
The Coast Guard and the EPA in late June tightened their oversight of the project and imposed more requirements on BP, including developing a community outreach plan. The changes came after an Associated Press review found collection problems, including a leaky truck piled with protective gear that ``left a pollution trail of its own.''
Waste Management says its trucks carrying the waste are lined with plastic to prevent waste from leaking and its landfills are lined with high-density polyetheylene membranes rated to last 1,000 years, atop an impermeable clay layer.
POLLUTION DEBATE
G. Fred Lee, an environmental consultant in El Macero, Calif., who has written several studies criticizing landfills, says such thousand-year claims are written by consultants working for the landfill companies, and are ``way out of line.''
But he believes that the oily waste going into Gulf Coast landfills is too degraded to pose danger.
``What's going into these landfills is not likely to cause groundwater pollution,'' he said.
Still, suspicion persists, particularly in Harrison County, Miss., which succeeded in getting a halt to disposals at the Pecan Grove site.
``BP is responsible for polluting our beaches, our marshes, our estuaries and now they're picking it up, hauling it not more than five miles away and dumping it in our landfill,'' said Marlin Ladner, a supervisor whose district includes the landfill and the nearly 300 groundwater dependent homes in a half-mile radius. ``That's a slap in the face.''
In Florida, David Guest, an environmental attorney with Earthjustice, said he has had calls from anguished residents asking about legal recourse to stop oil spill debris from reaching the Springhill Landfill near Campbellton in Jackson County. That site had accepted more than 14,000 tons -- 13 percent of its landfill intake.
``There's a genuine serious risk of poisoning the aquifer years from now,'' Guest said, arguing that once the landfills are closed they are not monitored.
Waste Management officials, however, said federal law requires that the type of landfills used for spill debris be monitored for 30 years post-closure.
The Springhill landfill takes in debris from Florida beaches, and at least one county, Escambia, is working to reduce the amount of beach sand that lands there. County officials have devised a rake that cuts down on how much sand is lifted, said Sandy Jennings, an engineer with the county's environmental agency.
``It works something like a kitty-litter scoop,'' said Jennings, noting that county officials were worried about losing sand, especially from the barrier islands. Since the development of the rake, the county now scoops up about 98 percent product and just 2 percent sand, Jennings said.
via miamiherald.com
===============================
Here's Where BP is Dumping Its Oil Spill Waste
Infographic: Hatty Lee
As the map below shows, the Environmental Protection Agency has approved nine landfills in the Gulf Coast to receive the waste products from the country's largest oil spill. Five of those nine landfills are located in communities where a majority of residents are people of color.
The sites are in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi and are regular municipal landfills, not designed for hazardous waste, according to the Miami Herald. That's because waste management officials claim the debris is not hazardous. So far, the landfills have received 40,000 tons of "oily solids" and waste from the clean up of the disaster, including soiled gloves.
The analysis of the landfill sites and racial data was done by Robert D. Bullard, a prominent figure in the environmental justice movement and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center. Calls to the EPA were not returned.
The only place that has successfully halted dumping at their landfill is Harrison County, Mississippi, where 71 percent of residents are white.
In Florida, white residents were incredulous that their town of Spring Hill was picked for dumping oil waste --- until they realized the EPA had printed a typo. The federal agency didn't mean Spring Hill, where whites make up 94 percent of the town's residents. They meant the Springhill Regional Landfill in Campbellton, a town of just 221 people, where 60 percent of residents are African American.
The waste is being hauled around the Gulf Coast by three giants in the business of waste management: Heritage Environmental Services in Louisiana; Waste Management Inc. on the Louisiana-Mississippi border and in Florida; and Republic Services in Florida.
As Bullard pointed out in his analysis, the decision about where to dump BP oil waste is no surprise. Black and Latino communities in the South have long been "sacrifice zones."
An investigation by the Associated Press in June found that "the handling and disposal of oily materials was haphazard at best." Reporters found a truck leaking tar balls, sand and water on a main beach road and also oily sand sitting in an uncovered waste container in a state park.
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