Fresh off a Latin Grammy Nomination for "Best New Artist", Choc Quib Town greets 2010 with excellent news! This group of Afro-Colombian hip-hop has their roots in the Choco region of Colombia's Pacific Coast and is set to make their unique sound even more international this year!

Their album Oro is released in the USA (Nacional) and in Europe (World Connection) in spring 2010.

They will be touring from that moment on!

"Somos Pacifico"

"Oro"

"De Donde Vengo Yo"

"Pescao Envenenao"

"Son Bere Ju"

via youtube.com

Say My Name (Now Showing)

Posted by Kofi Agyemang on Jul 23rd, 2010 and filed under Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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Say My Name is a contemporary Black British gay love story. Set amidst a gritty urban backdrop of ‘street’ reality, the story kicks off when ‘rude-bwoy,’ Ricky, ignores his undercover lover, Chris, while hanging ‘on road’ with his crew because he is afraid of being ‘outed.’

This single act of betrayal, hurts, humiliates and infuriates his lover Chris, triggering a raging, brutally explicit, and frank row, in which conflicting issues about masculinity, sexuality, race, self-definition and love are confronted. With their relationship in the balance, Ricky is forced to confront his deepest, darkest, feelings. “To be or not to be….OUT!” That is the question.

Influenced in no small part by the 1990′s production of Boy with Beer published in Black Plays: 3, Say My Name is a tale of love in its purest sense, and tells the story of developing self-love and what must be sacrificed in order to achieve the ultimate state of being between men who love men.

Chris, through his own trials and suffering, has managed to reconcile himself with his racial and sexual identity, believing that he has found the answer in coming out to family and friends. But does Ricky love him enough to break taboo and go against community, tradition and the laws of the street?

Say My Name with actors Ayo Fawole (L) as Ricky, and Nahum Bromfield (R) as Chris.

Say My Name is the first in a series of short, stand-alone films, that together make up a series of stories in the drama between Ricky, Chris, and their family and friends, as boy meets boy, boy loses boy, and boy gets boy back.

Stay tuned in to the drama, it gets much more complex as mums, dads, friends and girlfriends get in on the act, and all is revealed in the end.

Keep up-to-date with the latest instalment from the series by subscribing to the RSS feed right here on The Colorful Times.

Congratulations to Cynthia Marie Hoffman, who has won the 2010 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry for her collection Sightseer.

The Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize (formerly the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize) is a collaboration between Persea Books and The Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project. It sponsors the annual publication of a poetry collection by an American woman poet who has yet to publish a full-length book of poems. The winner receives an advance of $1,000.00 and publication of her collection by Persea.

In addition, beginning this year, the winner receives the option of an all-expenses-paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center, a renowned artists retreat housed in a fifteenth-century castle in Umbertide, Italy.

Submission Guidelines:

• Submitted manuscripts should include two title pages: one containing the author's name, the author's contact information, and the title of the collection; and another containing only the title of the collection.

• It is recommended that submitted manuscripts be between 48 and 96 pages. They should be paginated, with the title of the collection included on each page as a header or footer, and fastened with a clip. Please do not staple or permanently bind submissions.

• Submissions may include a page of publication credits. However, they should not include other sorts of acknowledgments, thank-yous, or dedications.

• Submissions must be primarily in English to be considered. Translations are not accepted.

• Submissions must be received (not postmarked) between September 1 and November 1 (or the first weekday thereafter if November 1 falls on a weekend). They should be sent to The Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize, c/o Persea Books, PO Box 1388, Columbia, MO 65201, and should include a check (in U.S. funds) in the amount of $25.00, made payable to the order of The Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project. Please do not send submissions to Persea’s New York City office.

 

The winner is chosen by an anonymous selection committee and announced on Persea's web site in January. Submitted manuscripts will not be returned.

Coal Hill Review is interested in a wide range of fine poetry. We ask that all submissions come through our annual contest.  Please review our previous issues, our mission statement, and the guidelines carefully before submitting.

2010 Chapbook Competition Guidelines:

• We ask that all poetry submissions to Coal Hill Review come through our annual contest.
• Manuscripts, submitted through our website or through the U.S. Mail, will be accepted August 1 to November 1, and the competition is open to all poets writing in English.
• The submission fee of $20 may be paid through our PayPal account or by check or money order made out to Autumn House Press.Submission should consist of 10-15 pages, either a long poem or a group of poems.
• If poems have been previously published, acknowledgments should be included with the submission.
• The winning chapbook will be published electronically as part of our Spring issue of Coal Hill Review, and as an edition of 200 paper copies available through Autumn House Press. In addition, the poet will receive $1,000.
• All finalists will be considered for publication in Coal Hill Review and Kestrel Magazine.
• The final judge for the competition will be Michael Simms, founder and editor-in-chief of Autumn House Press.
• Manuscripts may be submitted electronically through our website, or sent by U.S. mail to this address:  Autumn House Press, P.O. 60100, Pittsburgh PA 15211.

In order to submit to Coal Hill Review through our website,  you must first register a login and password here.  Once you have registered be sure to return to this page to pay the reading fee. For further questions, feel free to email us, message us on Twitter, or ask us through our Facebook Fan Page.

Pay the reading fee through PayPal here:

The registration process takes just a few minutes. Coal Hill Review will keep all information confidential.  We won’t sell your e-mail address, send you spam, viruses, or anything else that would generate bad internet karma.

The editors of Coal Hill Review and Autumn House Press endorse and adhere to the CLMP Code of Ethics:
CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to:

1. conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors;
2. provide clear and specific contest guidelines – - defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and
3. make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public.

This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

Submit your work here

© 2009 Autumn House Press

The APR/Honickman First Book Prize

The annual American Poetry Review /Honickman First Book Prize offers publication of a book of poems, a $3,000 award, and distribution by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium.

Each year a distinguished poet is chosen to be the judge of the prize and write an introduction to the winning book. The purpose of the prize is to encourage excellence in poetry, and to provide a wide readership for a deserving first book of poems.

Note:  The reading period for the 2011 prize will begin on August 1, 2010 and extend through October 31, 2010.

 GUIDELINES

JUDGE: Marie Howe

The prize of $3,000, with an introduction by the judge and distribution of the winning book by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium, will be awarded in 2010 with publication of the book in the same year. The author will receive a standard book publishing contract, with royalties paid in addition to the $3,000 prize.

The prize is open to any writer in English who is a U.S. citizen and who has not published a book-length collection of poems with an ISBN assigned to it. Poems previously published in periodicals or limited-edition chapbooks may be included in the manuscript, but the manuscript itself must not have been published as a book-length work exceeding 25 pages. Translations are not eligible nor are works written by multiple authors. The editors of The American Poetry Review will screen manuscripts for the judge.

Please note: Manuscripts cannot be returned.

Manuscripts must be postmarked between August 1 and October 31, 2010.

Please use first class mail. Do not use Federal Express, Overnight Mail, or UPS or any other service that requires a signature.

The winning author and all other entrants will be notified by February 15, 2011. An announcement of the winner will appear in the March/April issue of The American Poetry Review.

You may simultaneously submit your manuscript elsewhere, but please notify us immediately if it is accepted for publication. Submission of more than one manuscript is permissible; each must be under separate cover with a fee, a return postcard, and a notification envelope.

The winning author will have time to revise the manuscript after acceptance, but please send no revisions during the reading period.

To be considered for the prize, send:

1. A clearly typed poetry manuscript of 48 pages or more, single-spaced, paginated, with a table of contents and acknowledgments. A good copy is acceptable.

2. Two title pages: one with your name, address, e-mail, phone number, and the book title; a second title page should contain the title only. Your name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript except the first title page.

3. An entry fee of $25 by check or money order, payable to The American Poetry Review.

4. A self-addressed stamped envelope for notification of contest results.

5. A self-addressed stamped postcard for notification of receipt of the manuscript. Your manuscript identification number will be included on this card when it is returned to you. If no postcard is included in your entry, you will not be notified of its receipt.

Send your submission to:

The American Poetry Review

Honickman First Book Prize

1700 Sansom St. Suite 800

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Howard Zinn's the Bomb Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2010-07-19 18:28 Military Industrial Complex

 

By David Swanson

The late Howard Zinn's new book "The Bomb" is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society. Those who've read "A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments," by H.P. Albarelli Jr. know that this is a year for publishing the stories of horrible things that the United States has done to French towns. In that case, Albarelli, describes the CIA administering LSD to an entire town, with deadly results. In "The Bomb," Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over another French town, burning anyone and anything it touched. Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime.

In mid-April 1945, the war in Europe was essentially over. Everyone knew it was ending. There was no military reason (if that's not an oxymoron) to attack the Germans stationed near Royan, France, much less to burn the French men, women, and children in the town to death. The British had already destroyed the town in January, similarly bombing it because of its vicinity to German troops, in what was widely called a tragic mistake. This tragic mistake was rationalized as an inevitable part of war, just as were the horrific firebombings that successfully reached German targets, just as was the later bombing of Royan with napalm. Zinn blames the Supreme Allied Command for seeking to add a "victory" in the final weeks of a war already won. He blames the local military commanders' ambitions. He blames the American Air Force's desire to test a new weapon. And he blames everyone involved -- which must include himself -- for "the most powerful motive of all: the habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede."

When Zinn returned from the war in Europe, he expected to be sent to the war in the Pacific, until he saw and rejoiced at seeing the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 65 years ago this August. Only years later did Zinn come to understand the inexcusable crime of the greatest proportions that was the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan, actions similar in some ways to the final bombing of Royan. The war with Japan was already over, the Japanese seeking peace and willing to surrender. Japan asked only that it be permitted to keep its emperor, a request that was later granted. But, like napalm, the nuclear bombs were weapons that needed testing. The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was a different sort of bomb that also needed testing. President Harry Truman wanted to demonstrate nuclear bombs to the world and especially to Russia. And he wanted to end the war with Japan before Russia became part of it. The horrific form of mass murder he employed was in no way justifiable.

Zinn also goes back to dismantle the mythical reasons the United States was in the war to begin with. The United States, England, and France were imperial powers supporting each other's international aggressions in places like the Philippines. They opposed the same from Germany and Japan, but not aggression itself. Most of America's tin and rubber came from the Southwest Pacific. The United States made clear for years its lack of concern for the Jews being attacked in Germany. It also demonstrated its lack of opposition to racism through its treatment of African Americans and Japanese Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt described fascist bombing campaigns over civilian areas as "inhuman barbarity" but then did the same on a much larger scale to German cities, which was followed up by the destruction on an unprecedented scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- actions that came after years of dehumanizing the Japanese. Zinn points out that "LIFE magazine showed a picture of a Japanese person burning to death and commented: 'This is the only way.'" Aware that the war would end without any more bombing, and aware that U.S. prisoners of war would be killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the U.S. military went ahead and dropped the bombs.

Americans allowed these things to be done in their name, just as the Germans and Japanese allowed horrible crimes to be committed in their names. Zinn points out, with his trademark clarity, how the use of the word "we" blends governments together with peoples and serves to equate our own people with our military, while we demonize the people of other lands because of actions by their governments. "The Bomb" suggest a better way to think about such matters and firmly establishes that
--what the U.S. military is doing now, today, parallels the crimes of the past and shares their dishonorable motivations;
--the bad wars have a lot in common with the so-called "good war," about which there was little if anything good;
--Howard Zinn did far more in his life for peace than for war, and more for peace than just about anybody else, certainly more than several Nobel Peace Prize winners.

July 22, 2010, 12:32 am — Updated: 10:53 am

Stanley Greene’s Redemption and Revenge

By MICHAEL KAMBER

GO HERE TO VIEW SLIDE SHOW OF STANLEY GREENE'S PHOTOS

Stanley Greene, 61, is a founding member of Noor Images, a photography collective, agency and foundation in Amsterdam. His books include the autobiographical “Black Passport” and “Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003.” He won the W. Eugene Smith Grant in 2003. Michael Kamber spoke with him in Paris in May. Their remarks have been condensed.

---

Q.

What is it that you wanted to say with “Black Passport”?

A.

I wanted to set the record straight. I kept hearing people say, “Chechnya was when you really started to be a photographer.” And that’s not true. I was shooting back at the Berlin Wall, but nobody knew about it. I fell through the cracks. I wanted a way to say that my influences are not the ones you think they are. They are about painting. They are about music. They are about other things. The way I’ve been shooting really hasn’t changed since back in the ’70s, before all these new photographers emerged. My old work, like rock and roll, really nails it.

I found my vision way before Chechnya, it’s just that you didn’t know about it; the public didn’t know about it. Louis Faurer is an amazing photographer, but he fell through the cracks. Robert Frank used his dark room, and obviously Robert Frank looked at his pictures. They were friends. But Louis Faurer fell through the cracks. He was a great photographer and a great printer. Frank was hanging out with Bill Brandt, and he was hanging out in Paris with Man Ray and others. It’s the same if you look at Garry Winogrand, Roy DeCarava and Lee Friedlander.

Q.

Theirs is not a dark vision?

A.

Theirs is not a dark vision. It was a way of looking at pictures. At that point, pictures were being looked at in a very classical way. I think that World War II rattled everything, from photography to music to literature to painting to sculpture to film. Everything got rattled.

These guys came back and they had seen war. They had seen death. And their whole mindset — the abstract painters — they came back with those slashes of reds and blacks. And, of course, photography got rattled as well. It’s obvious everything got shaken up. But up until that point, you had this very still, very classical, very beautiful photography, taking nothing away from Ansel Adams and Minor White.

Q.

The 1950s were Chevrolets and hot dogs and the man in the gray flannel suit. Then you have all this really dark photography beginning to take shape.

A.

Gene Smith’s dark vision was lurking. And then after the war, it just blew out.

Q.

Tell me about Eugene Smith.

A.

He was a great photographer. He was a humanitarian. But he also had a lot of demons. He did drugs — he did a lot of drugs — and he drank and he was obsessed. I understand obsession. And Gene became obsessed.

The greatest story is when the person who took care of his house, Hattie, came to the city to tell him to try and get some money because she was supporting his family in upstate New York. She had to come down. Gene was just so consumed with looking for his vision and printing and everything, he totally ignored his whole family, to the point that Gene went nuts.

Q.

You worked for him?

A.

Yeah, I worked for him. He was obsessed. If you were in the studio, Gene would be up. And no matter what time you left, when you came back in the morning, Gene would be up. I never saw Gene Smith sleep. At the same time, we are now pulling back the onion skin and looking at him a little bit harder, especially with the digital issue.

Michael Kamber

Stanley Greene, in Paris.

There is a big debate going on right now about RAW files. People say your negative is a RAW file, and you are manipulating your pictures in the darkroom. I am not. All that information is on my negative.

Well, they say, all that information is in the RAW files. But if you alter an image and you change the hues, that’s manipulation. I am sorry; I can’t do that with a black-and-white negative. I can only manipulate for the shadows. And they throw out Gene Smith and his printing. When journalists start to distort reality, then I have a real problem with it. And when everything starts to look like a cartoon, I have a problem with it.

Q.

Are you saying that there is too much Photoshop going on?

A.

Way too much. And with [Photoshop] CS5, it is going be worse. Imagine. There is this setting now in CS5 where you can remove the horse and there will be no ghost. It’s scary. Even on the Leica M9, there is a setting that says, “Vintage black and white.” Photographers are photographing in color and printing in black and white. I was trained: if you shoot in color, you are looking at color. That’s it!

I think digital is great — for color. I don’t think it’s great for black and white. I think it’s just too much manipulation. It’s not real. There is this kind of grayness. I still don’t get the blacks I want without taking it to such an extreme that it becomes a cartoon of its former self.

Q.

Let’s face it, a lot of photojournalists now have full-time assistants who do nothing but Photoshop their images. But you are not saying that these photojournalists are inserting objects into the frame or removing objects from the frame; it’s mostly burning and dodging, right?

A.

No, I am saying they are putting things into the frame and taking things out of the frame. Absolutely. I definitely think they are doing that. You have a bucket or a chair in the original picture and all of sudden the color changes because it goes better with the form.

I have always loved the Afghanistan pictures that I have seen that have been Photoshopped. I mean, all of a sudden, Afghanistan has clouds. Every time I’ve been to Afghanistan, it’s been a flat sky. But all of a sudden, you’ve got God skies. Where did those come from? All of a sudden we’ve got colors that we didn’t even know existed.

Q.

You can make the case that someone like Alex Webb was underexposing Kodachrome 20 years ago, printing Cibachromes from it and getting vibrant colors.

A.

But I can say that when you look at his slide, all that information is in that slide. It’s not in the computer. It is on the slide. You can’t change that. The information is all in the slide. Just like the information is all on my negative. I cannot change it.

Q.

I was at World Press Photo last week, and half the stuff looks like it was shot through a toilet paper roll. It’s so heavily burned around the edges and and desaturated. It has these really heavy blacks. There is a whole look, a whole style, that’s taking over.

A.

It’s really taking hold. The problem is that when people win World Press, young photographers say: “Oh, I’ve got to do that. I’ve got to be part of that.”

Q.

Do you think that we need to go back to shooting film again? Do you think we need go back to when there was a purist approach to photojournalism?

A.

Yeah. I also think we are going to have more pictures from the 20th century than we are going to have from the 21st, because everything is getting deleted. Digital is not real. I can touch a negative. I can’t touch digital. When you have to back something up with 15 hard drives, doesn’t that rattle something?

And also, when you shoot digital, you can chimp; you can look at the image on the camera. Imagine Cartier-Bresson if he was trying to take a picture and all of a sudden he looked down. He would lose that next moment. A really good combat photographer chimping in the middle of the field could get a bullet in his head. I am surprised that no one has been shot yet.

But by shooting film, you are forced to really think about what you are photographing. You have to have a dialogue between you and the subject. When I shoot, I shoot from every angle possible because I am a super insecure photographer. And when I am shooting film, I am even more insecure. I push the envelope on trying to get the right shot, but I also think it through. With digital, there is a moment where you say: “Oh, I got it. What the hell.”

I think that we have no choice but to go back to shooting film because we have to get back to some kind of integrity. I think we are losing the moral code. And I think that in the end with film — yes, you can manipulate it and yes, you can change some things — there is still a moral code.

Anyway, I like shooting film. I have a thousand rolls of Kodachrome. But the fear I have every day is, “When I am going to get that golden assignment where I can actually go shoot the Kodachrome, then ship it off to Kansas and still hope that they are still processing it?” I am waiting. Any day now, they are going to say, “It’s all over.” But they said that about Polaroid, and now Polaroid is coming back with a vengeance.

Q.

I have been hearing this from a lot of older photographers: that the young photographers today are technically amazing, they have learned what an amazing photograph looks like, but they sometimes lack a variety of influences or a certain humanity.

A.

They don’t have humanity. They are definitely much better technically. They know that backwards and forwards. And they should. It’s their generation. But at the same time, because of all that technology, they are losing the humanity.

When we get to the point where we start digging up graves to make photographs, I think we are in trouble. When we get to the point where a woman is standing there with a bucket, trying to hold her guts in, and we are trying to get the right frame, and chimping at the same time we are doing it, we are in trouble. “Wait a minute, I need to take this picture, but I need to do an interview with you, but also, I need to shoot some video. Do you think you could keep that bucket there and maybe a little bit more, so we could see the blood running out?” And she is just shell-shocked.

Q.

Where did you see that?

A.

In Georgia.

Q.

Do you think that young photographers need to get away from the computer and start looking at other influences?

A.

First thing, I think that photographers need to get away from the computer and get out and walk around the communities that they photograph. I think that a lot of photographers are taking nothing away.

And there is a thing called disaster tourism. That is disgusting. I am sorry. But that is disgusting: to bring people, like they are going to the zoo, and show them how to take pictures.

“That is the job of a journalist, to upset your morning.”

 

— Stanley Greene

I think that when you arrive in a place, you need to sniff the air. You need to take your finger, stick it up and see where the wind is blowing. You need to be able to communicate with people. You should know a language. But even if you don’t know a language, you should at least be decent enough to understand what you are about to photograph, instead of just going, “Pow, pow, pow.” Because when you do that, then you are a vulture, and then you are what a lot of N.G.O.’s call us: “Merchants of misery.”

But if you take the time and really get an understanding of what the story is about, you will come away with an experience. It won’t be just for some World Press Award. It will be: “I understand what these people are going through, and I think we should do something about it.”

Because I think — at the end of the day — we have to be diplomats. I don’t like the word “photojournalism.” It’s been bastardized. I am comfortable with the idea of being a photographer, just being a photographer. I don’t want to be an artist; I want to be a photographer. That’s what I do. And a photographer is someone who looks at the world and tries to make some sense of it for themselves, and for everyone else. And that’s what I want to do.

When I do a story, I go there and I try to understand what is going on. I’ll try to research it before going. I become passionate. It gets under my skin and I get a little bit obsessed. I have a problem with just dashing off to a place because there is violence and death and destruction and we think it’s going to help our career. There is a whole young group of photographers who work with that mindset, and the problem with that is that they give all of us a bad name.

Q.

But do you think that somebody, a young person, could look at your book — there are a lot of beautiful women and a lot of death in your book — and get the wrong idea? Or feel like this is some romantic view of what my life will be like if I follow Stanley Greene?

A.

No, I try to deflate that image. When you realize that you have been with these women and you have left them and broken their hearts — and look, let’s be real here. I don’t own an apartment. I don’t own a house. I don’t own a car. I don’t have any stocks and bonds. All I own are my cameras. That’s it. And some cowboy boots.

If you want to be a success financially, please don’t follow this path.

A lot of the stories I did, I financed. I am not a good business person. I didn’t know how to negotiate with a magazine. I just simply said, “Please give me this story, and give me the go-ahead to go do it.” Or in some cases, “If I do it, and I get the pictures and I send it to you, send me money.” And that is the generation I come out of.

I live from hand to mouth. I am one of the founders of Noor. There are three agencies today: there is Magnum, there is Noor and there is VII. I have a lot of respect for VII, but I really think we are the second agency, and we did it in three years. When you say you are a founder and owner of Noor, people expect you to be rich, but we’re not. Because we are really committed to doing what we are doing and we have made sacrifices to make that happen.

And we are going to continue to make sacrifices to allow that to happen. In the end, it isn’t about money. You want to have enough money so that you can go and eat a nice meal, and you can take your family on a fairly reasonable vacation. But then you have another level, where you don’t even think about that — where you just think about the next story. How do we get the money to go do the next story?

Q.

Right. But partially because of this, photographers are doing workshops and are doing N.G.O. work. They are finding different ways. They are not out trying to do fresh photo essays that they can sell to magazines. They are putting their energies into other things to make money.

A.

I’m glad you brought up N.G.O.’s, because that has become a real game. Like we work for these N.G.O.’s, right? It’s advertising, so that they can raise money and they can continue to do the good that they do. We get all upset if a photographer shoots for Shell or BP. But when we think in terms of photographing for certain nonprofit organizations who have a lot of money, and we become their spokesperson, we start to lose our objectivity.

Q.

Right, but what should our role be as photojournalists working for them?

A.

We have to be objective; we have to accept that. For example, when I worked for Human Rights Watch, they would take my pictures and sell them to raise money. What I always admired about Corinne Dufka is that she was a great photographer. And she quit and has literally become an investigator for Human Rights Watch. I think we have to be investigators.

Q.

So you’re saying that when we are working for N.G.O.’s, we may try and please the people we are working for instead of acting as true journalists?

Stanley Greene/Noor Asya was abducted and raped at the age of 14. Her captor then married her. After the birth of their child, he beat her. She fled to her sister in Grozny, Chechnya. After graduating from nursing school, she met her second husband. She is now 22.

A.

Exactly. And that happens a lot — more than people will admit. Because you figure: “They are paying for a place for us to sleep. They are giving us vehicles to get around in. Well, then, we are certainly not going to go out and criticize them. And we know what they expect to see.”

Q.

How is this different than working for a magazine, which also expects to see something?

A.

A magazine editor who hires me better understand that I am going to try and show you the truth. Some of my photos were just too hard to look at. But the truth of the matter was the picture of dead Americans in Falluja was going to run against an advertisement and the advertising people said: “No, no, no. Dead American bodies? Uh oh. No, no, no. Burnt lines? No, not like that.” And in the end, Time magazine ran it in Pictures of the Year, you know? It was made for Newsweek, but it ran in Time.

Q.

Because it was causing a problem with the editors? Or advertisers?

A.

Yeah, but I shot the picture. I certainly didn’t say: “Would the advertisers be upset if I show dead Americans — burnt, being beaten and tossed down the street? And then hung under a bridge and cut down?”

Q.

Do we need to see images like that as Americans? There have been almost no images of dead Americans published.

A.

We need to see it because it’s reality. We go to the movies, and we look at violence splashed across the screen like spaghetti sauce. If we can’t stomach watching our men and women being killed in these situations, then we shouldn’t send them there to be killed in such gruesome ways. We can’t have it both ways.

You want to sit there comfortably with your newspaper and blueberry muffin, and you don’t want to see pictures that are going to upset your morning. That is the job of a journalist, to upset your morning. The problem with newspapers and magazines folding is that the investigative journalism is going to disappear. And these criminals doing these nasty and dirty things in the world are going to get away with it.

Q.

Let me come back to the book. You said Eugene Smith and Louis Faurer were mentally ill. Do you think that there is a link between great photojournalists and mental illness?

A.

Well, I think you have to be nuts to do this job. I think you have to be a monk. I think it just takes too much out of you. Anybody who wants to be with you has got to be super strong, because there is just too much, too much that is going on in your head. There is too much going on in your life.

I did two years in a mental hospital. I know what crazy is, so now I am just controlling my craziness. I think that everyone else should at least acknowledge that they are nuts. I acknowledge that I am quite out there. But I am out there to a point where I found a way to control it, and I found a way to channel it so that I can still function.

Q.

When were you institutionalized?

A.

When I was 15.

Q.

And why did you include the intimate material about women and relationships in the book?

A.

I felt this book had to be honest, and it was a way of exorcising a few demons. I felt that it had to be an honest book or it wouldn’t have made sense, you know? This has been my journey. And why are you the way you are? Well, if you read this, then you start to see it didn’t happen over night. It was a long process. And I think that is a very healthy thing, once you understand. I quit being a fashion photographer because I wanted to give something back.

I felt bad about some things I had done in the past. Why would I go off to these nasty places and risk my life? It was like a debt. I have used the
analogy of Westerns. Westerns are always about revenge and redemption. This book is about, in a small way, a quiet revenge. And in a small way, trying to achieve some form of redemption. My revenge is to say, “I survived.” The greatest form of revenge is to still be standing.

So many people, on so many different occasions, wanted to write me off. And so many times they were wrong. So many times people thought, “He is just a bum; he is a dope dealer.” Everybody has someone decent inside of them. Once you acknowledge what that is — and you achieve that — you are going to be a better person.

Q.

How long have you been a photographer?

A.

Since 1971.

Q.

Almost 40 years?

A.

Almost 40 years. Yeah. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, but when I heard Jimi Hendrix, I realized I could never touch him. I wanted to be a painter, but Matisse and all those guys were ahead of me. And I wanted to be a writer, but you know, Richard Wright and all those guys.

And I looked around and all there was was Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava. I could compete, and I knew I could bring something. It’s like Miles Davis. He was a drummer. But when he picked up a trumpet, he realized that he had found his instrument. When I picked up a camera, it was like one of those movies.

Stanley Greene/Noor Putin’s Russia: On Stary Arbat Street, Moscow. 1996.

FACING SOUTH - Online Magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies

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The real story of racism at the USDA

Right now, if you do a web search of the words "racism" and "USDA," the majority of links will steer you to coverage of this week's Shirley Sherrod affair, in which the African-American U.S. Department of Agriculture staffer based in Georgia resigned after a conservative website reversed the meaning of a speech she gave last year to imply she would deny farm loans to whites.

It's an astonishing development given the history of race relations at the USDA, an agency whose own Commission on Small Farms admitted in 1998 that "the history of discrimination at the U.S. Department of Agriculture ... is well-documented" -- not against white farmers, but African-American, Native American and other minorities who were pushed off their land by decades of racially-biased laws and practices.

It's also a black eye for President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who signaled a desire to atone for the USDA's checkered past, including pushing for funding of a historic $1.15 billion settlement that would help thousands of African American farmers but now faces bitter resistance from Senate Republicans.

FORCED OFF THE LAND

Any discussion about race and the USDA has to start with the crisis of black land loss. Although the U.S. government never followed through on its promise to freed slaves of "40 acres and a mule," African-Americans were able to establish a foothold in Southern agriculture. Black land ownership peaked in 1910, when 218,000 African-American farmers had an ownership stake in 15 million acres of land.

By 1992, those numbers had dwindled to 2.3 million acres held by 18,000 black farmers. And that wasn't just because farming was declining as a way of life: Blacks were being pushed off the land in vastly disproportionate numbers. In 1920, one of out seven U.S. farms were black-run; by 1992, African-Americans operated one out of 100 farms.

The USDA isn't to blame for all of that decline, but the agency created by President Lincoln in 1862 as the "people's department" did little to stem the tide  -- and in many cases, made the situation worse.

After decades of criticism and an upsurge in activism by African-American farmers, the USDA hosted a series of "listening sessions" in the 1990s, which added to a growing body of evidence of systematic discrimination:

Black farmers tell stories of USDA officials -- especially local loan authorities in all-white county committees in the South -- spitting on them, throwing their loan applications in the trash and illegally denying them loans. This happened for decades, through at least the 1990s. When the USDA's local offices did approve loans to Black farmers, they were often supervised (farmers couldn't spend the borrowed money without receiving item-by-item authorization from the USDA) or late (and in farming, timing is everything). Meanwhile, white farmers were receiving unsupervised, on-time loans. Many say egregious discrimination by local loan officials persists today.

Among those concluding that such racial bias persisted were the USDA's own researchers: In the mid-1990s, they released a report [pdf] which, analyzing data from 1990 to 1995, found "minorities received less than their fair share of USDA money for crop payments, disaster payments, and loans."

Adding insult to injury, when African-American and other minority farmers filed complaints, the USDA did little to address them. In 1983, President Reagan pushed through budget cuts that eliminated the USDA Office of Civil Rights -- and officials admitted they "simply threw discrimination complaints in the trash without ever responding to or investigating them" until 1996, when the office re-opened. Even when there were findings of discrimination, they often went unpaid -- and those that did often came too late, since the farm had already been foreclosed.

In 1997, a USDA Civil Rights Team found the agency's system for handling civil rights complaints was still in shambles [pdf]: the agency was disorganized, the process for handling complaints about program benefits was "a failure," and the process for handling employment discrimination claims was "untimely and unresponsive."

A follow-up report [pdf] by the GAO in 1999 found 44 percent of program discrimination cases, and 64 percent of employment discrimination cases, had been backclogged for over a year.

TAKING USDA DISCRIMINATION TO COURT

It was against this backdrop that in 1997, a group of black farmers led by Tim Pigford of North Carolina filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA. In all 22,000 farmers were granted access to the lawsuit, and in 1999 the government admitted wrongdoing and agreed to a $2.3 billion settlement -- the largest civil rights settlement in history.

But African-American farmers had misgivings with the Pigford settlement. For one, only farmers discriminated against between 1981 and 1996 could join the lawsuit. Second, the settlement forced farmers to take one of two options: Track A, to receive an immediate $50,000 cash payout, or Track B, the promise of a larger amount if more extensive documentation was provided -- a challenge given that many farmers didn't keep records.

Many farmers who joined the lawsuit were also denied payment: By one estimate, nine out of 10 farmers who sought restitution under Pigford were denied. The Bush Department of Justice spent 56,000 office hours and $12 million contesting farmers' claims; many farmers feel their cases were dismissed on technicalities.

THE POLITICS BEHIND THE SHERROD AFFAIR

Shortly after coming into office, President Obama and his chief at the Department of Agriculture, Iowa's Tom Vilsack, signaled a change in direction at USDA. Vilsack declared "A New Civil Rights Era at USDA," and stepped-up handling of civil rights claims in the agency.

This year, Vilsack and the USDA also responded to concerns over handling of the Pigford case, agreeing to a historic second settlement -- known as Pigford II -- in April that would deliver another $1.25 billion to farmers who were excluded from the first case. As Vilsack declared:

We have worked hard to address USDA's checkered past so we can get to the business of helping farmers succeed. The agreement reached today is an important milestone in putting these discriminatory claims behind us for good.

But the Pigford II case was very much still alive when right-wing media outlets went after Shirley Sherrod this week. Sherrod herself had received $150,000 from the USDA last year as part of the original Pigford lawsuit, which has been bitterly opposed by Republicans and conservative media.

The settlement is also now a major political battle in Congress: President Obama had put aside $1.15 billion in May to cover Pigford II cases, which the House later approved. But Republicans stripped the money out of their bills, leaving the supplemental spending now being debated in the Senate as the final option to appropriate the funding.

Given the stakes of the Pigford II decision -- which again affirms the present-day consequences of decades of racial discrimination -- and the sharp partisan battle over spending in Congress, black farmer advocates don't think the attacks on Sherrod this week are a coincidence.

And given the history of racial discrimination at USDA, they can't help but note the hypocrisy. As Gary Grant, president of the 20,000-strong Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association, said in a statement [pdf]:

The statement from Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, that USDA does not "tolerate" racial discrimination is a complete lie. Talk to almost any family member of a black farmer or check out ... the government's documentation of how USDA employees, on the local and federal level discriminated against black farmers, in particular. And nothing was ever done to penalize the all white officials bent on destroying a society of black farmers across the nation: not one firing, not one charge brought, and not one pension lost. Yet at the first erroneous offering by a conservative blogger that a black woman from USDA might have discriminated, she is immediately forced to resign.

Which begs the question: Where was the Republican and conservative concern over USDA "racism" before this week's swiftboating of Shirley Sherrod?

 

 

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT HAITI

Actor Sean Penn, who is helping manage a camp of displaced earthquake victims in Haiti, is making pointed criticisms of journalists for dropping the ball on coverage of Haiti. He’s wrong. I’ve been on the ground in Port-au-Prince working as an independent journalist for the past ten months. I’m an earthquake survivor who’s seen the big-time reporters come and go. They’re doing such a stellar job and I want to help out, so I’ve written this handy guide for when they come back on the one-year anniversary of the January quake! (Cross-published on the Huffington Post, inspired by this piece in Granta.)

For starters, always use the phrase ‘the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.’ Your audience must be reminded again of Haiti’s exceptional poverty. It’s doubtful that other articles have mentioned this fact.

You are struck by the ‘resilience’ of the Haitian people. They will survive no matter how poor they are. They are stoic, they rarely complain, and so they are admirable. The best poor person is one who suffers quietly. A two-sentence quote about their misery fitting neatly into your story is all that’s needed.

On your last visit you became enchanted with Haiti. You are in love with its colorful culture and feel compelled to return. You care so much about these hard-working people. You are here to help them. You are their voice. They cannot speak for themselves.  

Don’t listen if the Haitians speak loudly or become unruly. You might be in danger, get out of there. Protests are not to be taken seriously. The participants were probably all paid to be there. All Haitian politicians are corrupt or incompetent. Find a foreign authority on Haiti to talk in stern terms about how they must shape up or cede power to incorruptible outsiders.

The US Embassy and United Nations always issue warnings that demonstrations are security threats. It is all social unrest. If protesters are beaten, gassed, or shot at by UN peacekeepers, they probably deserved it for getting out of control. Do not investigate their constant claims of being abused.

It was so violent right after the January 2010 earthquake. ‘Looters’ fought over goods ‘stolen’ from collapsed stores. Escaped prisoners were causing mayhem. It wasn’t necessary to be clear about how many people were actually hurt or died in fighting. The point is that it was scary.

Now many of those looters are ‘squatters’ in ‘squalid’ camps. Their tent cities are ‘teeming’ with people, like anthills. You saw your colleagues use these words over and over in their reports, so you should too. You do not have time to check a thesaurus before deadline.

Point out that Port-au-Prince is overcrowded. Do not mention large empty plots of green land around the city. Of course, it is not possible to explain that occupying US Marines forcibly initiated Haiti’s shift from distributed, rural growth to centralized governance in the capital city. It will not fit within your word count. Besides, it is ancient history.

If you must mention Haiti’s history, refer vaguely to Haiti’s long line of power-hungry, corrupt rulers. The ‘iron-fisted’ Duvaliers, for example. Don’t mention 35 years of US support for that dictatorship. The slave revolt on which Haiti was founded was ‘bloody’ and ‘brutal.’ These words do not apply to modern American offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Cite Soleil is the most dangerous slum in the world. There is no need to back up this claim with evidence. It is ‘sprawling.’ Again, there’s no time for the thesaurus. Talk about ruthless gangs, bullet holes, pigs and trash. Filth everywhere. Desperate people are eating cookies made of dirt and mud! That always grabs the reader’s attention.

Stick close to your hired security or embed yourself with UN troops. You can’t walk out on your own to profile generous, regular folk living in tight-knit neighborhoods. They are helpless victims, grabbing whatever aid they can. You haven’t seen them calmly dividing food amongst themselves, even though it’s common practice.

Better to report on groups that periodically enter from outside to deliver food to starving kids (take photos!). Don’t talk to the youth of Cite Soleil about how proud they are of where they come from. Probably gang members. Almost everyone here supports ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But their views aren’t relevant. There is no need to bring politics into your story.

You can’t forget to do another story about restaveks. Child slaves. It’s so shocking. There is little new information about restaveks, so just recycle old statistics. Present it as a uniquely Haitian phenomenon. Enslaved Haitian farmworkers in southern Florida, for example, aren’t nearly as interesting.

When you come back here in six months, there will still be a lot of desperate poor people who have received little to no help. There are many big, inefficient foreign NGOs in Haiti. Clearly something is wrong. Breathless outrage is the appropriate tone.

But do not try to get to the bottom of the issue. Be sure to mention that aid workers are doing the best they can. Their positive intentions matter more than the results. Don’t name names of individuals or groups who are performing poorly. Reports about food stocks sitting idly in individual warehouses are good. Investigations into why NGOs are failing to effect progress in Haiti are boring and too difficult. Do not explore Haitian-led alternatives to foreign development schemes. There are none. Basically, don’t do any reporting that could change the system.

On the other hand, everyone here loves Bill Clinton and Wyclef Jean. There are no dissenting views on this point. Never mind that neither lives here. Never mind that Clinton admitted to destroying Haiti’s domestic rice economy in the ’90s. Never mind that Jean’s organization has repeatedly mismanaged relief funds. That’s all in the past. They represent Haiti’s best hope for the future. Their voices matter, which means the media must pay close attention to them, which means their voices matter, which means the media must …

Finally, when you visit Haiti again: Stay in the same expensive hotels. Don’t live close to the people. Produce lots of stories and make money. Pull up in your rented SUV to a camp of people who lost their homes, still living under the wind and rain. Step out into the mud with your waterproof boots. Fresh notepad in hand. That ragged-looking woman is yelling at you that she needs help, not another foreigner taking her photo. Her 3-year-old boy is standing there, clinging to her leg. Her arms are raised, mouth agape, and you can’t understand her because you don’t speak Haitian Creole.

Remove the lens cap and snap away. And when you’ve captured enough of Haiti’s drama, fly away back home.

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

Abe Louise Young

Abe Louise Young is a poet and activist native to New Orleans, LA. She lives in Austin, TX. 

July 21, 2010  

 

 

In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

Work crews in Grand Isle, Louisiana, still stand out. In a region where nine out of ten residents are white, the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men. The racialized nature of the cleanup is so conspicuous that Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, sent a public letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward on July 9, demanding to know why black people were over-represented in "the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins."

Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process.

Known to some as "the inmate state," Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any other state in the country. Seventy percent of its 39,000 inmates are African-American men. The Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC) only has beds for half that many prisoners, so 20,000 inmates live in parish jails, privately run contract facilities and for-profit work release centers. Prisons and parish jails provide free daily labor to the state and private companies like BP, while also operating their own factories and farms, where inmates earn between zero and forty cents an hour. Obedient inmates, or "trustees," become eligible for work release in the last three years of their sentences. This means they can be a part of a market-rate, daily labor force that works for private companies outside the prison gates. The advantage for trustees is that they get to keep a portion of their earnings, redeemable upon release. The advantage for private companies is that trustees are covered under Work Opportunity Tax Credit, a holdover from Bush's Welfare to Work legislation that rewards private-sector employers for hiring risky "target groups." Businesses earn a tax credit of $2,400 for every work release inmate they hire. On top of that, they can earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay annually to "target group workers."

If BP's use of prison labor remains an open secret on the Gulf Coast, no one in an official capacity is saying so. At the Grand Isle base camp in early June, I called BP's Public Information line, and visited representatives for the Coast Guard Public Relations team, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Louisiana Fisheries and Wildlife Department. They were all stumped. Were inmates doing shore protection or oil cleanup work? They had no idea. In fact, they said, they'd like to know—would I call them if I found out?

I got an answer one evening earlier this month, when I drove up the gravel driveway of the Lafourche Parish Work Release Center jail, just off Highway 90, halfway between New Orleans and Houma. Men were returning from a long day of shoveling oil-soaked sand into black trash bags in the sweltering heat. Wearing BP shirts, jeans and rubber boots (nothing identifying them as inmates), they arrived back at the jail in unmarked white vans, looking dog tired.

Beach cleanup is a Sisyphean task. Shorelines cleaned during the day become newly soaked with oil and dispersant overnight, so crews shovel up the same beaches again and again. Workers wear protective chin-to-boot coveralls (made out of high-density polyethylene and manufactured by Dupont), taped to steel-toed boots covered in yellow plastic. They work twenty minutes on, forty minutes off, as per Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety rules. The limited physical schedule allows workers to recover from the blazing sun and the oppressive heat that builds up inside their impermeable suits.

During their breaks, workers unzip the coveralls for ventilation, drink ice water from gallon thermoses and sit under white fabric tents. They start at 6 AM, take a half-hour lunch and end the day at 6PM, adding up three to four hours of hard physical labor in twenty-minute increments. They are forbidden to speak to the public or the media by BP's now-notorious gag rule. At the end of the day, coveralls are stripped off and thrown in dumpsters, alongside oil-soaked booms and trash bags full of contaminated sand. The dumpsters are emptied into local HazMat landfills, free employees go home and the inmates are returned to work release centers.

Work release inmates are required to work for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, sometimes averaging seventy-two hours per week. These are long hours for performing what may arguably be the most toxic job in America. Although the dangers of mixed oil and dispersant exposure are largely unknown, the chemicals in crude oil can damage every system in the body, as well as cell structures and DNA.

Inmates can't pick and choose their work assignments and they face considerable repercussions for rejecting any job, including loss of earned "good time." The warden of the Terrebonne Parish Work Release Center in Houma explains: "If they say no to a job, they get that time that was taken off their sentence put right back on, and get sent right back to the lockup they came out of." This means that work release inmates who would rather protect their health than participate in the non-stop toxic cleanup run the risk of staying in prison longer.

Prisoners are already subject to well-documented health care deprivations while incarcerated, and are unlikely to have health insurance after release. Work release positions are covered by Worker's Compensation insurance, but pursuing claims long after exposure could be a Kafkaesque task. Besides, there is currently no system for tracking the medical impact of oil and dispersant exposure in cleanup workers or affected communities.

"They're not getting paid, it's part of their sentence"

To learn how many of the 20,000 prisoners housed outside of state prisons are involved in spill-related labor, I called the DOC Public Relations officer, Pam LaBorde, who ultimately discouraged me from seeking such information. ("Frankly, I do not know where your story is going, but it does not sound positive," she said on our third phone call.)

Going to prison officials directly didn't help. The warden of a South Louisiana jail refused to discuss the matter, exclaiming, "You want me to lose my job?" A different warden, of a privately-owned center admitted, on condition of anonymity, that inmates from his facility had been employed in oil cleanup, but declined to answer further questions. Jefferson Parish President Steve Theriot and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, and Grand Isle Police Chief Euris DuBois declined interview requests.

Transparency problems are longstanding with the Louisiana DOC. There is also scant oversight of private prison facilities. Following Hurricane Katrina, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a 140-page report that documented abuses and botched prison evacuations, as well as the numerous times its requests for official information were rejected. "It appears that you are standing in the shoes of prisoners, and therefore DOC is exempted from providing any information which it might otherwise have to under public records law," DOC lawyers told the ACLU National Prisons Project.

Some officials have been more forthcoming. A lieutenant in the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office told me that three crews of inmates were sandbagging in Buras, Louisiana in case oil hit there. "They're not getting paid, it's part of their sentence," she said. "They'll work as long as they're needed. It's a hard job because of the heat, but they're not refusing to work." In early May, Governor Bobby Jindal's office sent out a press release heralding the training of eighty inmates from Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in "cleaning of oil-impacted wildlife recovered from coastal areas." DOC Spokesperson Pam LaBorde subsequently denied that any inmates participated in wildlife cleaning efforts.

Offering an exception to this policy of secrecy is Lafourche Parish Work Release Center, the only one in the state that is accredited by the American Correctional Association. It is audited regularly and abides by national standards of safety and accountability, which is perhaps why I was able to simply walk in on a Thursday afternoon and chat with the warden.

Captain Milfred Zeringue is a retired Louisiana state police officer with a jaunty smile, powerful torso, and silver hair. His small, gray office is adorned with photos of many generations of his Louisiana family and a Norman Rockwell print picturing a policeman and a small runaway boy sharing a meaningful look at a soda fountain counter. A brass plaque confers the "Blood and Guts Award" upon Zeringue. Of 184 men living under the Captain's charge, 18 are currently assigned to oil spill work. The numbers change daily and are charted on white boards that stretch down the hallway.

Captain Zeringue says that inmates are glad for any opportunity they can get, and see work release jobs as a step up, a headstart on re-entry. "Our work release inmates are shipped to centers around the state according to employer demand," he explains, describing the different types of skilled and unskilled labor. "I have carpenters, guys riding on the back of the trash trucks, guys working offshore on the oil rigs, doing welding, cooking. Employers like them because they are guaranteed a worker who's on time, drug-free, and sober."

"And," he adds, "because they do get a tax break."

Inside the center, men sit around long plastic tables watching TV, or nap on thin mattresses under grey wool covers. The windowless dormitories hold twenty to thirty men each in blue metal bunk beds. Hard hats hang off of lockers, ceiling fans circle slowly, and each bunk has a white mesh bag of laundry strung from one rung. An air of dejection and fatigue permeates the atmosphere, but the facility looks safe and clean. It's surrounded by chain link fence and staffed by former police officers. One long shelf stacked with donated romance and adventure novels serves as a library. GED classes and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings gather weekly. Individuals are free to walk around the halls, use pay phones, shoot pool, or sit and watch cars pass on the highway from a small outdoor yard. A doctor visits once a week. Inmates greet the captain as we walk and jump to hold doors open for us.

Zeringue exudes a certain affection for the workers in his center. "To me, I'm kind of like Dad here. The inmates come to me and talk about their problems. They get antsy and nervous when they're close to getting out—how am I going to survive, how's my family gonna be with me?"

Like all Gulf Coast residents, inmates have good reason to feel anxious about the future. BP has received almost 80,000 claims for lost revenue in the wake of the spill. Scores of people are out of work, the offshore drilling industry is in limbo and the age-old fishing and shrimping professions are looking death in the face. In the towns and bayous of the gulf, anxiety and post-traumatic stress are taking hold.

In some places, the desperation is palpable. I met Randy Adams, a construction contractor from Grand Isle, on the sidewalk outside of a local bar. "This BP spill is turning me into an alcoholic, because I don't have anything to do," he says. "That, that, thing—that thing they did—" He points to the beach. He's unable to say "spill" or label it in any way. He points to the water again and again. "That thing has taken everything away from me. I have a gun under the front seat of my truck, and every day I decide, do I want to put a bullet in my skull? Live or die, that's my choice here, every day. My life is gone, do you understand?"

Scott Rojas of the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission suggests that for all the work to be done, finding local labor to do oil-spill cleanup jobs is trickier than it would seem. "These are really hard, and really low-paid jobs—I know agencies have put effort into finding locals to do the work. But they may not always have an easy time of it. As for reports of inmates being hired, I can't confirm or deny. The people down in Grand Isle swear to it, but you're going to have to talk to them."

The Louisiana Workforce Commission, the state unemployment agency, is advertising hazardous waste removal oil spill cleanup positions as "green jobs." They pay $10 per hour, so these jobs might seem like an attractive opportunity. But Paul Perkins, a retired Angola Prison deputy warden who owns and operates five for-profit inmate work release centers, says that even as the agency is "overflowing with applications for oil spill jobs," the work force is inconsistent. "They might hire 400 people on Monday, and after one day of work, only 200 will come back on Tuesday."

Hiring prison labor might prove more reliable, but it evokes understandable rage among Gulf Coast residents. According to Perkins, the Louisiana Secretary of Corrections, James LeBlanc, met with disaster contractors in early June and asked them to stop using inmate labor until all unemployed residents found work. But as the spill has so dramatically demonstrated, in this new environment, the government seems only able to make polite requests. BP calls the shots, and its private contractors, like ES&H, are the sole clean-up operators. From there, subcontractors, such as Able Body Labor, decide whom to employ.

Working for BP: "This isn't what I would like to be doing."

Anna Keller relocated to Grand Isle in May to work with Gulf Recovery LLC, to help develop community-based responses to the oil disaster. Also a member of Critical Resistance New Orleans, Keller says, it is "common knowledge" that prisoners are doing cleanup. "If you talk to anyone working on the beach they'll tell you, yes, prisoners are working here." She describes a shipping container that sits at the turn-off for the Venice Boat Harbor, advertising "Jails to Go." Such containers work as contract labor housing for work release prisoners, with bunks inside, bars on the windows, and deadbolts on the doors.

According to Keller, the use of inmate labor takes recovery one step further away from those people who are most intimate with the ecology, culture and landscapes of the area. In her view, they should be hired first, and not just for the grunt jobs. "Community members should be hired in the planning stages, and paid for their expertise. The local people are the true experts here."

Up the road at A-Bear's Restaurant in Houma, an elderly man in overalls describes his son's financial dilemmas to the room of locals over dinner. The son is 40, married with children, and was laid off from an oyster shucking factory shortly after the BP leak began. He's now walking door-to-door with a lawnmower, looking for grass to cut. The man holds his head in both arthritic hands. The waitress hands him a paper napkin to blot his eyes. I ask him if his son would work for BP in the cleanup and he grimaces. "Maybe, no, I don't think so," he says. "That would be hard for his pride, you know? For that little money? No."

Beach cleanup workers do make the lowest wages in the recovery effort. Others on the BP payroll have it slightly better, but the jobs they are doing are a daily reminder of what they have lost. Chris Griffin is a French-speaking Cajun shrimper whose father and grandfather also captained shrimp boats. After oil contamination closed the gulf waters, Griffin was hired to captain airboat tours of oil-impacted marshlands for BP. Three times a day he steers a slim four-seat boat with a deafening engine into the waters he's known all his life, while Coast Guard officials give media tours and answer the same grim questions again and again.

"This isn't what I would like to be doing," Griffin says, "but I'm glad I have a job so I can take care of my family. I'm not worrying about the money. Not everybody has that. Me, I'm worrying about the years in the future here. Will we keep cleaning it up? Will they take care of everybody?"

Abe Louise Young

July 21, 2010  

 

BP Hides Use of Mostly Black Prison Labor For Oil Gusher Cleanup

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse

   

Fri Jul 23, 2010 at 10:45:29 AM PDT

When the BP oil gusher mess first began, BP hired prison labor in order to reap tax benefits instead of hiring coastal residents whose livelihoods crashed with the explosion of the wellhead. When the community expressed their outrage, BP did not stop the practice of using prison labor. No, apparently BP simply tried toliterally cover-up the use of prison labor by changing the clothing worn by the inmates to give the appearance of a civilian workforce. Big surprise. 

• Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse's diary :: ::

According to The Nation article, during the first few days of this cleanup, cleanup workers for Louisiana beaches wore "scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words 'Inmate Labor' printed in large red block letters." This is how coastal residents learned that BP hired prison labor rather than them. After community outrage was expressed at public meetings, the "outfits disappeared overnight."

However, Abe Louise Young, author of the article in The Nation, was not convinced that BP had actually stopped using prison labor in Grand Isle, Louisiana because "nine out of ten residents are white, [but] the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men."  Ben Jealous, the president of NAACP, also demanded to know "why black people were over-represented in 'the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins.'"

So, was BP still using prison labor? Federal and state officials did not know, but said to Young: "They were all stumped. Were inmates doing shore protection or oil cleanup work? They had no idea. In fact, they said, they'd like to know—would I call them if I found out?"

The answer is yes, BP just changed their work attire to hide the fact of a prison work force:

I got an answer one evening earlier this month, when I drove up the gravel driveway of the Lafourche Parish Work Release Center jail, just off Highway 90, halfway between New Orleans and Houma. Men were returning from a long day of shoveling oil-soaked sand into black trash bags in the sweltering heat. Wearing BP shirts, jeans and rubber boots (nothing identifying them as inmates), they arrived back at the jail in unmarked white vans, looking dog tired.

The inmates really can't make a voluntary choice to perform dangerous work that might ruin their health. "Although the dangers of mixed oil and dispersant exposure are largely unknown, the chemicals in crude oil can damage every system in the body, as well as cell structures and DNA." Inmates don't have the option to "pick and choose their work assignments" and can face repercussions for rejecting a job, including the loss of earned good time. Thus, inmates face the dilemma of protecting their health by refusing this work or staying longer in prison.

When Young tried to find out how many of the 20,000 prisoners "housed outside of state prisons" were performing BP spill work, an official with the Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC) tried to discourage Young from pursuing this inquiry. Prison officials were also not helpful, one warden refused to discuss the issue, stating: "You want me to lose my job?"

Some government officials did provide confirmation of the prison labor force. "A lieutenant in the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office told me that three crews of inmates were sandbagging in Buras, Louisiana in case oil hit there."  In early May, Gov. Jindal sent out a press release "heralding the training of eighty inmates for "cleaning of oil-impacted wildlife recovered from coastal areas." And, a warden with one work release center confirmed that 18 prisoners were "currently assigned to oil spill work."

Also a member of Critical Resistance New Orleans, Keller says, it is "common knowledge" that prisoners are doing cleanup. "If you talk to anyone working on the beach they'll tell you, yes, prisoners are working here." She describes a shipping container that sits at the turn-off for the Venice Boat Harbor, advertising "Jails to Go." Such containers work as contract labor housing for work release prisoners, with bunks inside, bars on the windows, and deadbolts on the doors.

Naturally, there is a money angle. BP benefits from the use of a cheap labor force that is easily silenced and also the bounty of tax credits and a partial "kickback" of wages paid:

The advantage for private companies is that trustees are covered under Work Opportunity Tax Credit, a holdover from Bush's Welfare to Work legislation that rewards private-sector employers for hiring risky "target groups." Businesses earn a tax credit of $2,400 for every work release inmate they hire. On top of that, they can earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay annually to "target group workers."

Yet, who will provide or pay for health care of prisoners now and down the road if the prisoners become ill?:

Prisoners are already subject to well-documented health care deprivations while incarcerated, and are unlikely to have health insurance after release. Work release positions are covered by Worker's Compensation insurance, but pursuing claims long after exposure could be a Kafkaesque task. Besides, there is currently no system for tracking the medical impact of oil and dispersant exposure in cleanup workers or affected communities.