Leah Mahan's blog

NC Environmental Justice Film Tour – From Witness To Action

Leah Mahan — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 19:16:30 +0000

This post was originally written for the

Don’t watch the film and consume their pain. Don’t let it stop there. How dare we ask them to carry this burden… We have to stand up. None of this ‘I saw the movie. It was wonderful.’ … What are we going to do? Because it is us as a society. We are complicit in this. We cannot continue to say we are an equal society and then let this happen and contribute to it.

These words from professor Danielle Spurlock were spoken to an audience at the on the final night of an . The film had screened at campuses in Asheville and Greensboro on the previous nights, and students, faculty, local residents and community leaders had come together to talk about issues in the film that were relevant to North Carolina. The tour grew out of screenings last fall documented by Working Films in “, who worked to stop a major highway corridor through Mebane, NC that would displace African American communities. Like Turkey Creek, local cemeteries hold ancestors born into slavery. When community members learned about the road that had been planned for 15 years without their input, they called on the U.S. Department of Justice. A moratorium was placed on the road development, but other pressing issues include toxic contamination from old factory sites and plans for a new industrial park, distribution center and a 40-acre plastic bottle plant. Wilson spoke about the systemic nature of the problems:

This is an institutional issue. This kind of inequity will always be there. There always has to be a public voice that’s organized and we have to realize that you’re not going to cure it and say ‘Oh, the cancer is gone!’ There has to be vigilance for organizations to train another generation … Fighting for public rights and welfare has to be something that is studied and worked on in an institution like this (UNC). It has to be part of your curriculum.

Earlier that day, both Spurlock and Wilson joined a conversation with filmmaker Leah Mahan on WUNC’s “The State of Things” with host Frank Stasio, which you can featured an interview with Sister Jabeen, principal of Al-Iman, who had been interviewed by one of the students for a StoryCorps project last summer.)

Photo: Omega Wilson and Danielle Spurlock at the WUNC studio.

The tour began two days earlier at , a historically black college for women founded in 1873. Dr. Valerie Ann Johnson, director of Africana Women’s Studies at the college, introduced the film by talking about the history of social activism on campus. This history includes student leadership in planning the 1960 sit-ins at the Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter that sparked a youth-led movement for racial equality across the South. In a statement before the event, Johnson said the Turkey Creek story is “being played out throughout the country as well as in North Carolina where the most vulnerable communities face the challenges of economic underdevelopment, gentrification, natural and manmade disasters, economic deprivation, and environmental injustice. Documentaries such as these educate us not only about the issues but encourage us to move from witness to action.”

The Greensboro event was co-presented by the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, and local organizers were on hand to talk about environmental justice issues and offer volunteer opportunities. NCLCV followed up with ( Learn more about this and related events by following the in collaboration with the Texas Southern University
March 26-29 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Learn about this and related events by following

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come hell or high water

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Turkey Creek

The Great Invisible - Q&A with filmmaker Margaret Brown and Antonia Juhasz

Leah Mahan — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 16:15:59 +0000

Climate and Environment

Disaster, Response and Renewal

Media and Arts

Since 2010, I've followed the development of Margaret Brown’s documentary responded quickly to the disaster by supporting documentaries by three women filmmakers, including Margaret and me (the film I made is at South by Southwest and is now in theaters, including upcoming screenings in New Orleans and Houston. I attended a screening last week in Berkeley, California and I thought I would share some of the Q&A discussion there with Margaret and Antonia Juhasz, author of at the site of the BP oil spill and if you remember the crabber who speaks to Kenneth Feinberg at that meeting at the beginning (of the film), and he says, “You know where that oil is, it’s on the bottom of the ocean and it’s in our bodies.” He’s absolutely right. That’s where it is. It’s five years later and that’s where it is. It’s still in the crabs and it’s still in the shrimp and .)

Audience Question: I have two questions. What happened with the $20 billion dollars (in BP fines) and what will happen with the oil at the bottom of the sea. Will it just sit there forever?

Margaret: I’m not exactly sure at this moment (about the amount paid out to date). The reason the film isn’t more environmental in scope – I actually have a lot of footage I shot that is naturalist and environmentalist and more that part of the story. But I kept coming back asking the same questions every year and the answer was always, “We don’t know yet.” Recently there was an article that came out, I think it was UC Santa Barbara, where they said I think it was 30 years to determine what the impact is. I think it’s hard to say but maybe you (Antonia) have something more to say on that?

Antonia: The $20 billion was a set aside for the claims payments. But that’s only one part of the money that BP has had to pay out. There’s a good news and bad news part of the story. Part of the good news is that as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil disaster, new legislation was put in place. So during the Bush administration we actually did see new laws put in place, and that was the Oil Pollution Act (of 1990). And that required (this didn’t exist before), that an oil company that causes a disaster is financially responsible for the disaster, is responsible for the clean up – is responsible for everything. And that $20 billion dollar set aside that got portrayed as this generous thing BP is doing, that is this great deal that the White House came up with, was required under law that BP actually had to cover those expenses. BP has been unbelievably stingy with what they’ve paid out. But they’ve paid out about $40 billion dollars so far for the clean up, for the stopping of the spill. It took 87 days for the cap to get put on the actual site of the spill. But it took 152 days to actually cap the well – a full cap, what was considered the well is actually sealed. The only thing they had to do to seal the well was to drill another hole. So then they intercepted the original pipe, sealed in the original spill site, and that took 152 days. That’s the only thing they know how to do, to stop a deep water spill. So in some ways the three months was lucky. So BP has paid out about $40 billion but they’re fighting every single place that they’re supposed to be paying out money. So, a health agreement settlement was reached, they paid out I think the number is 164 claims out of 200,000 I believe that have been filed under the health settlement. They’re fighting the economic settlements. They’re fighting left and right all the way to the Supreme Court at this point. [Author's Note:

Audience Question: Is the regulation of the oil industry federal or does the state have regulations?

Antonia: There’s basically the federal authority comes on at different distances from shore. It’s usually between 9 or 12 miles from shore. These are drillings that are, you saw, 100 miles offshore in 5,000 feet of water. That’s all federal. So anything that’s about 12 miles or so offshore becomes federal. But OSHA doesn’t have any jurisdiction on offshore rigs. The regulation is between the interior department and the Coast Guard. One of the things that happened in the hearings after the disaster was that a huge lack of discourse between those agencies and the Coast Guard was constantly shocked at hearings about how little actual regulation was taking place on the rigs. Interior is responsible for everything that has to do with the mechanics and Coast Guard is responsible for everything that has to do with the water. And the Coast Guard would be looking at the Interior folks like, “Are you kidding me?” There was basically no regulation happening. Unfortunately that’s still the case.

Audience Question: Is regulation being held up in Congress?

Margaret: No, there’s no further regulation. There’s one rule that did not go through Congress. It was the Dept. of the Interior. Now there has to be a third party that looks at the blow out regulator. That’s pretty much it and that didn’t go through Congress.

********* The discussion continued, but my recording did not.

Find out more about the film and where it is screening: .

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BP oil disaster

"Katrina/Sandy” brings together stories about crisis and renewal

Leah Mahan — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:14:08 +0000

Featured Project

When I first heard that Hurricane Katrina was approaching the Gulf Coast, I was driving across the Bay Bridge from my home in Oakland, California. Five days later I was in coastal Mississippi, where I had been working on a documentary for the past four years. Katrina forced me to rethink the film and it changed me as a storyteller.

It took another eight years to finish and it will stream for four weeks. And in the meantime, I started working with others to find new ways of documenting community change.

People most affected by the storm and its aftermath felt an urgency to describe its reality as they experienced it, not as they saw it reflected in the news or by outsiders who came briefly and were gone. The story was multi-faceted and epic. One voice, one medium, one narrative could not contain it.

Katrina spawned a whirlwind of creative storytelling, but there are two projects I know well that grew out of the storm and evolved to tell a larger story: from

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come hell or high water

Some History You Won't See in "Come Hell or High Water"

Leah Mahan — Wed, 28 May 2014 20:26:06 +0000

Culture and Traditions

Economy and Work

Media and Arts

Race and Racial Justice

Over the course of twelve years, I documented the struggle to save a coastal Mississippi community from rampant development, industrial pollution and disaster. I learned recently that someone very special, and a powerful voice in One story that is vivid in my mind is how Miss Eva supported her nine children as a single mother in the 1940s and '50s. For thirteen years, she worked a day job doing laundry in Gulfport and a night job at a hotel in Biloxi. When her job in Biloxi was finished at 2 a.m., she walked home to Gulfport, more than twelve miles, where a neighbor was watching her children.

My experience of Miss Eva was of warmth and joy, yet she experienced so much tragedy in her life. She raised her children alone because her husband, Lee Skinner, was killed in 1943 in an explosion at the Phoenix Naval Stores plant, along with ten other men. Like the creosote factory in Turkey Creek that applied toxic preservative to railroad ties and utility poles, this plant employed African-American laborers in dangerous work processing the longleaf pine that fueled the coastal Mississippi economy. Lee Skinner and the others died while extracting turpentine from intensely heated pine.

The only way Miss Eva could identify her husband's body was by the contents of his pockets – a pocket knife and nineteen cents. After seeing them, she fainted. When she woke, she didn't want to live because she only had 75 cents to her name and didn't know how she was going to take care of her children. But she found a way, working for 30 cents an hour, walking about 25 miles a day, and building her own home with the help of her young sons. That home was destroyed in Katrina and Miss Eva then lived in a FEMA trailer for a couple years.

Each time I watch the film I experience all that isn't there – the many precious moments and characters that didn't make it into the documentary. Come Hell or High Water was unexpectedly shaped by our nation's worst natural and man-made disasters and it was a daunting challenge to find a way to weave the events in Turkey Creek into a cohesive whole. Part of the process of finding the strongest narrative is letting go of material that holds great value.

In this digital age, thankfully, it is possible to find other ways of featuring some of that footage. When the Independent Television Service (ITVS) asked me to create a short video from some of the outtakes, I chose to focus on an important environmental justice story in Turkey Creek that is only briefly mentioned in the film.

"
My hope is that the video will be useful to communities working to address environmental justice and public health challenges, and I dedicate it to the memory of Eva Skinner.

For additional Teaching Resources related to the film, visit
Places:

Turkey Creek

Come Hell or High Water discussion in D.C.

Leah Mahan — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 06:38:07 +0000

Climate and Environment

Culture and Traditions

Disaster, Response and Renewal

Health and Wellness

Land and Housing

Media and Arts

Organizing and Engagement

Race and Racial Justice

On March 30, 2014, journalist Brentin Mock moderated a discussion about
Brentin Mock: Could you fill us in on what’s happening in Turkey Creek? I know it’s an ongoing disaster – long before the film started, and I’m sure since.

Derrick Evans: Well, it’s not a success story, first of all, because so much has been lost along the way. And it’s not over … And, most importantly, we found that there are a lot of Turkey Creeks. There’s Africatown over in Mobile Bay, Lower Ninth Ward, Plaquemines Parish and others. And so frankly, my work and our fight – all of ours – has extended beyond Turkey Creek to this contiguous, environmentally, socially, politically challenged region that the world seems to talk about, but not really deal with in the way that we have. Particularly through creating our own philanthropy even – the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health – or the Bridge The Gulf media project for citizen journalism. We’re not just a problem, but a source of solutions. I often refer to the Lower Ninth Ward and Turkey Creek as “Nazareths.” Places where, “What good can come from there?” Well, frankly, from these places after Katrina – nobody but us was listening, but – from these places, we were the ones who advocated for sustainable community development before it was part of a lexicon among the paid planners and the Army Corps and others down there. And in fact, we were the ones after BP, who had our own victim-based experience with the Clean Water Act, who envisioned the Restore Act. Wrote the first draft, lobbied, made sure that billions of dollars came back to the Gulf Coast, and not to the general fund of the U.S. Treasury, for restoration of our communities. And we are the ones who know better than anyone, particularly after Katrina, and the hurricane looting that our governor and others got away with, that these federal dollars that are meant for us have to be watch-dogged.

Watch a short ” highlighted the fact that even as a billion dollars remained unspent, and even as $600 million in disaster housing money had been diverted to this “Port of the Future” project, people working in collaboration with our state were saying, “There’s folks still not repaired and what we’d like you to do is hold car washes and bake sales to take care of the rest of their homes.” With a straight face they said this. So of course we took this to HUD and said, “Is this how you want this to turn out?” And of course they said, “No.” Yes, there was some looting going on, but there was also some clawing back. And we’re pleased to say that over time we got close to, not quite, $200 million of that put back into communities of color, overwhelmingly. Fifty-five hundred households. With the support of the Lawyers Committee [for Civil Rights Under Law]. And having clients like Derrick and Rose [Johnson, of the North Guflport Community Land Trust] who can be powerful spokespeople, we were able to put some of that money back on the creek and back throughout a bunch of communities. With communities like Derrick and Rose we’ve been able to hold the line, and begin to turn the direction of this port expansion towards meaningful accountability for spending this money and creating jobs. And we’re still fighting over the port connector road. But the difference between then and now is that we’ve gotten smarter and better at it.

Watch a short

Photo: Leslie Fields at the Washington, D.C. premiere of Come Hell or High Water. Credit: Lolita Parker.

Brentin Mock: I think we would be remiss if we didn’t recognize Derrick’s family if they’re in the audience?

[Applause]

Derrick Evans: Ok, now, that was immediate family [laughs] … There’s a lot of folks in this room that I think are my family, ok? … These are people who have been to Turkey Creek over the years and have contributed their time and talent and just love to the work and I thank you. Also there are folks that haven’t been to Turkey Creek but that are involved in some way or another with the Gulf Coast Fund, or Bridge the Gulf or the Gulf Coast Human Rights Network, Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network. that are also here.

Brentin Mock: Cherri Foytlin and Karen Savage from Bridge The Gulf have been fighting the good fight. Barbara Arnwine, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. Derrick can you also talk about how these various pieces came together?

Derrick Evans: Yeah, my mother, who’s very quotable, once said to me … “Well, when people make a circle that excludes you, make a bigger circle that includes them.” … When a place has that many problems it also has potentially that many solutions. And that means it has, even more than that potential number of contributors who want to do something to help some piece or some part. So my job is to cultivate the 50-ring circus. We had every kind of environmentalist, educators, EJ [environmental justice] folks, conservation folks, historic preservation folks. Thanks to the Lawyers Committee and MCJ [Mississippi Center for Justice], we had more lawyers than Obama has now [laughter]. Really, really, we had hundreds of lawyers that were helping people with heirs property, deeds. They were not eligible for things, like recovery stuff, because of the cultural way in which land and property had been passed down. Not only in Turkey Creek but across the Gulf Coast. We had lawyers who specialize in historic preservation, lawyers who specialize in transportation. I mean, it goes on and on.

Brentin Mock: It sounds like we have time for one or two questions from the audience.

Deborah Menkart: I work with a group called Teaching for Change and we partner with Rethinking Schools … Some of the people that are working on environmental issues, often we forget about K through 12. It’s really K through 12 where kids either learn or unlearn their power, and learn to think about the issues that you so powerfully addressed, all of the panelists, about the crisis the whole world is in ... We are just really excited that we were able to partner with a teacher in Gulfport who’s written an article about teaching about Turkey Creek that’s in Rethinking Schools and I think it will be on your Bridge The Gulf website and I just want to keep thinking about ways to share this film with K through 12 teachers, to teach outside the textbook and outside the corporate narrative about climate change.

Reilly Morse: About 50 years ago we had students from all over America come to Mississippi to help register people to vote. We have the 50th anniversary of that happening this summer. It’s a fabulous moment in American history. Mississippi was a place where people learned how to be better Americans. And we spread that around. There’s another opportunity for us to bring new waves of environmental justice advocates into the fold by coming to Mississippi and Louisiana and similar states this year and the upcoming years. And our organization and others have hosted students. We’ve hosted 2,500 law students coming through. And believe me, they come back changed. All of y’all are involved in organizations one way or the other that can send people to the Deep South and have minds changed. And those minds stay changed. And I encourage you to take advantage of that opportunity … People can have the direct experience themselves and they can have it in any week that you want to pick. We’ll help move this country in the right direction. So that’s the challenge I give to all of you.

Brentin Mock: I think that’s going to do it. I mean, that challenge – we extend that to all of you. Next time you go to the Gulf Coast, skip the French Quarter. Go to the Ninth Ward; a village called Versailles; Turkey Creek; Mobile, Alabama; Port Arthur, Texas; Galveston, Texas. All these places are where the ongoing Gulf Coast disaster is still happening and where communities are still fighting back. So thank you all for coming out and God Bless.

Tags:

come hell or high water

Places:

Turkey Creek

"Very, Very Sick Population" Due to BP Oil and Dispersants, say Medical Experts, Scientists

Leah Mahan — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:08:28 +0000

Health and Wellness

On April 12, 2013, Bridge the Gulf and the Gulf Coast Fund , a physician in Raceland, Louisiana, began to see many patients with similar symptoms and then discovered that, “People from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were all experiencing almost identical problems.” Robichaux sought out help, and was able to fund a detox clinic to treat chemical illnesses. The treatment improved the health of many patients, but the funds ran out. A former state senator, Robichaux is extremely frustrated with the BP settlement process related to public health impacts:

“Unfortunately the courts have let us down… I have not seen a single person who has gotten a nickel from BP for any of the illnesses. I’m talking about illnesses that are going to last for the rest of their lives. I had a young man at my home yesterday who can barely walk. He’s a 32-year-old who was in the peak of health before he began working on the Vessels of Opportunity program (the BP disaster clean up) and now he’s extraordinarily ill ... When the issue came to the courts, the courts completely negated the actual existence of these problems. I’ve got patients that are going to be disabled for the rest of their lives, such as this young man. And the problems that they have are not even included in compensatory portions of the agreement between BP and what was known as the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee. So there’s a lot of questions and very few answers out there for us. And we’re going to do the best to help these folks but it’s been an uphill battle to say the least.”

Scientist Dr. Wilma Subra has seen the symptoms across the Gulf while working with
Subra said, "BP has declined to adequately acknowledge the human health impacts associated with exposure to the BP crude and the dispersants. This has resulted in a lack of adequate health care to address the health impacts that were and are continuing to be caused by the BP crude and dispersants. We have a very, very large and very, very sick population."

Subra sees the disaster as an ongoing environmental and public health crisis: "Three years after the BP disaster, the crude oil continues to be present in the subsurface waters of the Gulf of Mexico and continues to wash on shore on a daily basis into the wetlands, marshes, estuaries and beaches. Coastal community members and commercial fishermen continue to be exposed to the very toxic chemicals that are in the crude and continue to be made ill by their ongoing, chronic exposure to the crude oil in the environment in which they live, earn a living and recreate.”

Monique Harden with . In the case of the World Trade Center, “all people had to show was that they were in the vicinity where the exposure occurred and that they had a medical diagnosis of an illness – not a medical diagnosis of a causal connection, but just a medical diagnosis of an illness and they were able to receive compensation. In the BP disaster, Ken Feinberg turned his back on all of that incredible work, in terms of finding a reasonable way to compensate people who have suffered physically from exposure.”

Scientist Dr. Rikki Ott lived through the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and traveled the Gulf Coast for a year after the BP disaster, researching symptoms in the general public. What she witnessed convinced her that the region is experiencing a public health crisis related to the oil disaster. She has been particularly worried about the combined impact of the crude oil and the chemical dispersant, Corexit, used to break up the BP oil. Ott explains, “Since the 1970s it has been known that the combination of dispersants and crude oil is more toxic to the ecosystem than oil alone.” (:
Leah Mahan has been working on documentary films since 1988, when her life was changed by an internship with filmmaker Henry Hampton on the Eyes on the Prize series about the civil rights movement. She has been working on a documentary about the Mississippi Gulf Coast community of Turkey Creek for a dozen years.

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dispersants

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bp health impacts

BP oil disaster

2-Cent: "edu-tainment" for New Orleans youth

Leah Mahan — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:35:15 +0000

When I heard that 2-Cent Entertainment was hosting the first annual LISTEN! LITERACY AND ARTS FESTIVAL in New Orleans on May 21st, I got in touch with Kevin Griffin to find out more.

At 27, Kevin is the oldest member of a group that started in 2004 with the goal of creating alternative media by and for young people in New Orleans. They describe what they do as “edu-tainment – education in an entertainment format.” Kevin explains, “We’re giving you something you need wrapped up in something that you want.”

I first heard of 2-Cent in 2007, when I saw a powerful 90-second video they created called New Orleans for Sale! It’s about post-Katrina tourism in the Lower Ninth Ward and I found it so compelling that I emailed Brandan Odums, one of the people who started 2-Cent, to ask how it came about. He and friends had been producing short videos together and music labels would sometimes ask them to interview entertainers in the Ninth Ward. They were interviewing one musician when a tour bus passed by. The musician asked how they could put up with people disrespecting their community that way. The young man who performs in the video, Nik, was upset by this. Then he saw some brochures at a hotel where his friend worked advertising "destruction tours.” Brandan explained that the tours were “complete with price tags and meal plans.” So Nik came up with the idea for the video that is part documentary, with actual spectators arriving to witness the devastation, and part performance art.

In addition to creating music and videos, the 2-Cent members have been involved in mentoring. In 2009 they organized the Change We Can Create summer camp to teach media literacy to a young teenagers.

Kevin explained that the Listen! festival evolved out of a project last year, when 2-Cent donated 2,400 books to Langston Hughes Academy. Members of 2-Cent had been shocked to learn that the library at the school was an empty room with no books in it. They worked with Scholastic to make the books available and turned the delivery of the books into a performace event, a song and a video.

When I asked Kevin to explain the focus on literacy he said: “The people who created change prior to us were readers.” He wants young people to know “You can be that person, too. You are that person. You just haven’t tapped in to it.”

Four thousand books will be given out to young people attending the festival, which is billed as “a fun outdoor festival with a purpose.”

LEAH MAHAN has been working on documentary films since 1988, when her life was changed by an internship with filmmaker Henry Hampton on the Eyes on the Prize series about the civil rights movement. She recently received a Sundance Documentary Fund grant and will complete her documentary about Turkey Creek in 2011.

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Culture and Traditions

new orleans

video

festival

social justice

literacy

youth media

2-cent

A Community Photo Project Asks "Why Should We Save Coastal Louisiana?"

Leah Mahan — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:32:29 +0000

Searching for a way to mark the one-year anniversary of the BP oil disaster, I thought about a series of photographs I saw recently from Lower Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. They weren’t images of coastal destruction, they were the faces of people young and old holding up a simple handwritten message answering this question: “Why Should We Save Coastal Louisiana?”

The question was asked by Bayou Grace Community Services, which works to address the needs of a largely rural, minority population on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. This area of the country is more water than land, connected by interwoven bayous and canals.

I decided to contact Rebecca Templeton from Bayou Grace to find out more about the Earlier this month I interviewed Rebecca and Diane Huhn, who helped organize the photo project:

Can you give an update on how your community has been impacted by the BP oil disaster?

Rebecca Templeton: It’s important to realize that the BP disaster is just yet another impact of what it means to live in coastal Louisiana. Unfortunately this is another impact of the oil and gas industry. When I think about how the community is doing I think people in the community are tired. People are just weary from these environmental impacts that are taking a toll on our community. Especially when you think of the cumulative effect of all these crises people are enduring here. People really don’t know what this disaster means for our communities. There is still such a great deal of uncertainty about what are the longterm impacts on the environment, fisheries, livelihoods. That level of uncertainty is really worrisome for me. What that does to a community to live under that level of uncertainty time after time.

How did the photo project get its start?

Diane Huhn: The idea came from an experience I had at a retreat with the Institute for Sustainable Communities. We were talking about why we do what we do and what gives us drive and purpose to keep going. The facilitator showed us a website called “Why Do You Do What You Do.” (“A social-media meme of people answering the simple question by combining an image and text in a creative way.”) And it was very, very powerful. I started thinking about why I do what I do. Because I want to save coastal Louisiana. I want to save the culture, the heritage, the environment and everything about this place. So there are two million people that live in coastal Louisiana and that’s two million reasons right there. We decided to kick off the project at an event in Thibodaux called La Fete d’Ecologie. We set up a booth and I’d say over 100 people participated at that event alone.

Rebecca Templeton: I think we saw that this is a project that anyone can participate in and give a meaningful response. We had children who couldn’t write, but they could draw. We had older people who nearly filled up the poster (with words). It surprised me that the responses on the posters ranged from the funny to the touching. And they evoke a very wide range of emotions in the people looking at the photos. That really opened my eyes to see that this has the potential to connect with a really large audience.

Diane Huhn: You don’t have to be a resident of coastal Louisiana to care about saving this place. We work with people from all over the country in our volunteer program. They care very deeply about this place and the people here. So I think it’s really powerful when you have people from Iowa or Minnesota or Maine express their reasons why this place is important and why they feel we should save it. And it’s a great way to bring awareness to folks that don’t know about coastal land loss. We really debated the specific question we wanted to ask. Does the question seem too negative? Should it be “What is your vision for coastal Louisiana?” But we kept coming back to the idea that there are people all over this country that don’t know about land loss and what it means to our communities here. And if we don’t do something we’ll literally be wiped off the map. So we settled on that question of “Why save coastal Louisiana?” so that people that don’t know about coastal land loss would ask the question: “What do you mean save coastal Louisiana? Where’s it going?” Well then you start that conversation about “Well, hey, we have the highest rate of unnatural land loss on the planet.” So it brings that awareness.

What are your plans now for the photo project?

Diane Huhn: Right now we have the whole gallery on our website. Every week we have a “Wednesday Why.” We feature one or more photos that have been submitted to us and we tend to group them around a theme and post them to our website every Wednesday and we post it on our Facebook page and hope people will share those with others. But we definitely have other ideas in mind. When we take the photos at an event we keep the posters because we would definitely like to have a traveling exhibit sometime in the future. And I’d love to go beyond just the posterboard responses and encourage people to create a song or video or dance and express themselves in whatever way makes sense to them.

Anyone can submit a response to the "Why" Photo Project by emailing photoproject@bayougrace.org. Go to the

This is the first of several blog posts I plan to write about creative community-based arts and media projects on the Gulf Coast. The next will be about 2-Cent Entertainment and the upcoming LEAH MAHAN has been working on documentary films since 1988, when her life was changed by an internship with filmmaker Henry Hampton on the Eyes on the Prize series about the civil rights movement. She recently received a Sundance Documentary Fund grant and will complete her documentary about Turkey Creek in 2011.

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Louisiana

Culture and Traditions

Environment

Mike Roberts

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terrebonne parish

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Why Photo Project

A different take on Turkey Creek's epic story tonight on The Daily Show

Leah Mahan — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:06:06 +0000

When I heard that The Daily Show was sending one of its "correspondents" to Turkey Creek (in coastal Gulfport, Mississippi), I tried to imagine how a brief satirical “news” segment might shed light on a story I take seriously, and one that I've been documenting on video for more than a decade (read about the Turkey Creek documentary
I'd made my first visit to Turkey Creek a couple years earlier, when my friend The citizen-led effort to protect the watershed and the people living there was making headway in 2005 when news broke of a hurricane named Katrina approaching the coast. The area was devastated by the storm, and for a time the national media was interested in efforts to rebuild ("
While national media attention turns towards the Gulf Coast during particular news cycles, there is struggle and triumph happening every day in communities across the region. Most of the important drama happens under the radar, away from the cameras and headlines. While my documentary-in-progress attempts to capture the story of one historic community fighting for a sustainable future, we wanted a way for communities across the Gulf Coast to also share their stories, even when CNN isn't paying attention. That's why we created Bridge the Gulf, a forum where diverse communities across the Gulf Coast tell their stories and share their perspectives in their own voices.

You can help change the story of the Gulf Coast by sharing Bridge the Gulf with your network and joining us on To see a video about how the Turkey Creek story was one of the seeds of Bridge the Gulf, click Read about Read about how LEAH MAHAN has been working on documentary films since 1988, when her life was changed by an internship with filmmaker Henry Hampton on the Eyes on the Prize series about the civil rights movement. She recently received a Sundance Documentary Fund grant and will complete her documentary about Turkey Creek in 2011.

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Mississippi

Derrick Evans

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Bridge the Gulf Youth Media Workshop in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana

Leah Mahan — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:18:55 +0000

Dana Solet is one of the coordinators of the United Houma Nation's Youth Media Team, and her excitement about using new media is contagious. This video includes an interview with her and other participants in a Bridge the Gulf youth media workshop in Terrebonne Parish -- in the bayous of southern Louisiana. The goal was to help a group of young people document current challenges in their communities, particularly how the BP oil disaster is affecting their lives.

The workshop took place on July 23rd and 24th, when Tropical Storm Bonnie was deciding where to land and how much trouble to make. The participants were eager to learn as much as they could before their families had to decide whether or not to evacuate. Ultimately evacuation wasn't necessary, and the training ended just as the rain began.

We had organized the youth media event in conjunction with a regional gathering -- titled "Restoring Our Coast, Our Communities, Ourselves" -- that was organized by the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health and the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network.

This opportunity for young people to develop skills and have access to mentors and tools is the beginning of our effort to fulfill an important goal of Bridge the Gulf – to provide not only an online forum, but also an educational resource for communities seeking new ways to share their stories and ideas for positive change. We've also provided support for workshops in Moss Point, Miss., organized by the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network and led by media trainers from New Orleans Video Voices and 2-Cent Entertainment.

Please take a look at the video and stay tuned for the work that these young media makers create.

LEAH MAHAN has been working on documentary films since 1988, when her life was changed by an internship with filmmaker Henry Hampton on the Eyes on the Prize series about the civil rights movement. She recently received a Sundance Documentary Fund grant and will complete her documentary about Turkey Creek in 2011.

Tags:

Houma Nation

Recovery and Renewal

youth

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