Tulane's Urban Studies students are working with the Pontilly Disaster Collaborative, a resident-based community organization seeking to rebuild the Katrina-devastated neighborhoods of Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods. Students are assisting Collaborative efforts to track the recovery process, facilitate planning, and support Ponchartrain Park’s application for historic neighborhood designation by surveying the entirety of the Pontilly neighborhoods to record characteristics of the population living there at this time, ascertain resident’s plans for their properties, analyze and map data, and provide a photographic record of the more than 2200 residential parcels. This work will continue throughout the spring and fall semesters.
SUMMITS
With the active support of the Ford Foundation, the staff of the Institute for the Study of Race and Poverty is engaged in a year of planning and development. As a critical part of this endeavor, the ISRP and its allied Partnership for the Transformation of Urban Communities hosts community summits.
Each summit is designed to accomplish three goals:
To educate and foster discussion of a critical issue bearing on racialized poverty and post-disaster recovery;
To bring diverse community organizations and stakeholders together to articulate and promote solutions through inter-organizational cooperation and activity;
To solicit recommendations for the ISRP.
Structural Racism and Recovery: Opportunities for Change
Date: Monday, March 12, 2007 Time: 8:45 a.m. - 3:45 p.m. Location: Tulane University Lavin-Bernick Center, Room 212
Undertaken in collaboration with Rutgers University’s Center for Race & Ethnicity, this first of three summits brings together community leaders and outside experts to discuss issues of special relevance to the recovery and transformation of post-Katrina New Orleans and initiate interventions to reduce poverty and disadvantage.
Tulane University’s President Scott Cowen opens the summit and the keynote speaker is John A. Powell, Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Two panel discussions follow:
Defining the Problems of Structural Racism – The Impact on Communities, Especially Those Dealing with Disaster, Rebuilding or Restructuring
Solutions to Structural Racism – Projects and Programs that Change and Dismantle Practices Fostering Racialized Poverty
Multiracial Coalition Building: Strategies for Developing an Agenda for Racial Equity
PART ONE
Date: May 1, 2007 Time: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Location: Tulane University Lavin-Bernick Center, Room 212
This forum engaged ethnic and cultural communities in a dialogue examining barriers and strengths in creating multiracial collaborations and featured Ms. Maya Wiley, Director of the Center for Social Inclusion in New York City as keynote speaker. The main focus of ISRP’s multiracial dialogue was to foster discussion among Asian, Native American, Hispanic, White, African-American and other groups of people around common concerns affecting all. The specific goals of the summit included:
To convene groups from the African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and White communities to facilitate a dialogue among these groups about common concerns, issues, and solutions.
To provide ideas for establishing a multiracial coalition in New Orleans.
To make recommendations to ISRP for the inclusion of a multiracial initiative.
To identify two key strategies to guide the development of a multi-racial coalition.
PART TWO
Date: July 19, 2007 Time: 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Location: Tulane University Lavin-Bernick Center, Room 212
Part Two convened multiracial and multicultural participants interested in collaborating to dismantle barriers to fairness, equity, and social engagement. This seminar aimed to enhance knowledge about values such as justice, truth, universal responsibility, and compassion; how those values inform, guide, and sustain coalitions; and to demonstrate successful models where different ethnic groups have collaborated around particular issues to effect policy change and/or undo barriers caused by structural racism. David Beriss, Ph.D., Russell Henderson, MSW, and Ngawang Legshe were lead panelists.
Three speakers examined different cultural orientations and conceptions of right, wrong, truth, etc., as these concepts related to coalition building.
Case studies representing success models for coalition building were presented and challenges were outlined.
Local groups shared a dialogue concerning values and visions for multiethnic, multiracial coalitions.
Summary of lessons learned and wrap up.
PART THREE
Date: August 21, 2007 Time: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Location: Tulane University Lavin-Bernick Center, Race and Korach Rooms
Part Three was a training workshop devoted to an exploration of the fundamentals of multiethnic collaboration. Participants and trainers reviewed, shared and used exercises and tools to identify potential multiethnic coalitions and evaluate emerging coalitions working to rebuild New Orleans. Training was provided by The Advocacy and Leadership Center at the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Race and Poverty at Tulane University and addressed the following:
The importance of defining multiethnic coalition values and principles of unity.
The similarities and differences between coalitions, collaborations, and networks.
The types of leadership needed in building, managing and sustaining coalitions.
Types of resources necessary to work in coalition.
Some ground rules that need to be established when operating a coalition.
Building trust between coalition members and deciding what is the collective responsibility of the coalition.
Harnessing the richness that diversity brings in a multiethnic coalition to fuel union instead of division.
How do you measure your successes and failures?
ISC Facilitators
Nader Tadros, Founder and Director, People’s Advocacy
Jennifer Deng-Pickett, Organizer, D.C. Language Access Coalition
Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and CEO of PolicyLink, co?]author of Searching for the Uncommon
Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002) spoke on “Equitable
Development”. Ms. Blackwell observed that earlier equality struggles very much focused on breaking
down the legal barriers that prevented access to opportunity; keeping people out of jobs, housing, or
education because of the color of their skin. Decades later it is obvious that the barriers are more than
just legal; after decades of racially inequitable public policymaking we need a new generation of public
(and private sector) policies to insure that all people have the opportunity to participate and prosper. Download highlights from Ms. Blackwell's presentation (pdf).
Lynette Colin is Vice?]President of Enterprise Corp. of the Delta and Manager of Hope Community Credit
Union in New Orleans. These excerpts are from Ms. Colin’s discussion of pre?] and post?]Katrina efforts
to redress the lack of traditional banking resources and financial services in low income communities. Download exerpts from Ms. Colin's discussion (pdf).
Joel A. Devine, Executive Director of the Partnership for the Transformation of Urban Communities and
Professor of Sociology, Tulane University discussed “Income & Wealth Differences” across races and
ethnic groups observing that structured economic disparities are a persistent fact of American life.
While the gap in income has shrunk to some extent over the last forty years, differences in wealth
acquisition have become more distended within the past twenty years. Download highlights from Mr. Devine's discussion (pdf).
Barbara Major, longtime community activist and Co-Chair of the Bring Back New Orleans Commission
shared a series of observations about “Racism Before and Since Katrina”. Defining racism as “race
prejudice plus the misuse of institutional and systemic power”, the following excerpts come from Ms.
Major’s talk. Download highlights from Ms. Major's speech (pdf).
Professor john a. powell has written extensively on a number of issues including racial justice and regionalism, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, the link between housing and school segregation,
opportunity based housing, gentrification, disparities in the criminal justice system, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, and racial and ethnic identity and the current demographic shift. Download highlights from Mr. powell’s keynote presentation (pdf).
Shelia J. Webb, Ph.D., R.N., CNS, Director of the Center for Empowered Decision Making spoke on “Health Disparities”, the disproportionate burden of disease, illness and preventable deaths bore by African?]Americans and other minorities in the United States and how the current health care crisis in New Orleans has exacerbated longstanding structural inequities in health care. Download highlights of Ms. Webb's speech (pdf).
Maya Wiley, Founder and Director of the Center for Social Inclusion, a national policy advocacy intermediary organization based in New York City, was the keynote speaker and facilitated a rich discussion with the summit participants. During summer 2007, ISRP/PTUC sponsored a follow?]up workshop and training session on coalition building. Download excerpts from Ms. Wiley’s presentation (pdf).
Tulane: Structural Racism and Recovery, Panel #1
Defining the problems of structural racism – The impact on communities, especially those dealing with disaster, rebuilding or restructuring.
Panelist include:
Barbara Major, Citizens United for Economic Equity
Robert R.M. Verchick, Loyola University New Orleans School of Law
John A. Powell, Executive Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Tulane: Structural Racism and Recovery, Keynote
Tulane University's President Scott Cowen opens the summit and the keynote speaker is john a. powell, Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Recorded at Tulane Unviersity - March 12, 2007.
Keynote Speaker: Professor john a. powell is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, and issues relating to race, ethnicity, poverty and the law. He is the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. He also holds the Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law.
Tulane: Multiracial Coalition Building
Strategies for Developing an Agenda for Racial Equity. This forum engaged ethnic and cultural communities in a dialogue examining barriers and strengths in creating multiracial collaborations. Recorded at Tulane Unviersity - May 1, 2007.
Keynote Speaker: Maya Wiley, Director of the Center for Social Inclusion
Carol McMichael Reese – Associate Professor and Harvey-Wadsworth
Professor of Urban Affairs, Tulane School of Architecture, New Orleans
Structural Racism and Social Change: New Orleans and Beyond John A. Powell – Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law. Director, Kirwan Institute
ISRP/PTUC Summit: Structural Racism and Recovery – March 12, 2007
Income & Wealth Differences Joel A. Devine – Executive Director of the Partnership for the Transformation of Urban Communities and
Professor of Sociology, Tulane University, New Orleans
