Voter Registration Week Locations

9:00 am to 12:00 pm Monday – Thursday
Latter Library
Rosa F. Keller Library

10:00 am to 12:00 pm Monday – Thursday
Norman Mayer Library
Hubbell Library
Alvar Library
Algiers Regional Library
Robert E. Smith Library (Tuesday Only)

12:00 pm to 2:00 pm Monday – Thursday
New Orleans Public Main Library
New Orleans East Regional Library

1:00 pm to 3:00 pm Monday – Thursday
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library

Sandra L. Wilson, PhD, Registrar of Voters
Davanya D. Tabb, Outreach Coordinator
(504) 658-8300

“Is anybody looking at what the children eat in cafeterias? The partnership with cafeterias, is it happening?” asked Qubeka, who works in school health services in Montgomery County, Md. “The hardest thing is when you are in these schools and you really see nothing changed in their diets. Yes people are talking, but it really hasn’t trickled down to the school cafeterias.”

At the annual National Minority Quality Forum in Washington, she asked: “What is the nutritional value and logic of serving pink strawberry milk laced with high fructose corn syrup and bleached-white pancakes?”

Some health officials are unhappy with what’s being served in the school cafeterias and the vending machines.

“There are a lot of grassroots movements around the country to get vending machines out of schools, or at least change what’s offered in them,” said Cynthia Ogden, a researcher for the federal Centers for Disease Control. “But there’s still work to be done.”

And some of that work is being taken on by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Millions have seen the first lady – with her well-toned arms – doing the Dougie to the theme song of her “Let’s Move” movement, hastening women of all ages to set up appointments with personal trainers. A fire has been lit under the United States’ collective conscious to burn millions of calories. The ultimate goal? Melt down the 16.9 percent obesity rate in children and adolescents.

Dr. Kenneth Moritsugu, chairman of the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute, highlighted data that shows Black children rank among the heaviest.

According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, approximately 17 percent, or 12.5 million children and adolescents aged two to 19 years old are obese. The obesity prevalence among them has almost tripled since 1980.

Obesity in non-Hispanic Black boys nearly doubled from 10.7 percent to 19.8 percent in the period of 1988-1994 to 2007-2008. They edged out non-Hispanic White boys, who expanded from 11.6 percent to 16.7 percent over that same period. Mexican-American boys saw their rate rise from 14.1 percent to 26.8 percent in the period studied.

The sharpest jump in obesity was among non-Hispanic Black girls. Their rates ballooned from 16.3 percent to 29.2 percent. Mexican-American girls rose slightly from 13.4 percent to 17.4 percent. Non-Hispanic White girls increased from 8.9 percent to 14.5 percent.

To reverse these trends, Dr. Moritsugu detailed his institute’s plan to get children active in schools. Launched in January, it targets four cities – Atlanta, Houston, Newark and Philadelphia – and has already seen progress in the first eight weeks.

“We’ve seen 100,000 hours of exercise logged, which translates into more than 20 million calories burned,” he said. “In a February survey, teachers have noticed significant improvements in academic performance. [Children] pay more attention to instruction after each session, they behave better in the classroom and are more attentive. These are all halo effects.”

Experts said in order to be successful, they must get an increasing number of students to trade in their video time for exercise.

But a major problem to getting children out of the home has been their parents.

“How do you engage the parents, because that’s been one of our struggles with the children in our after school programs,” said Daphne Pajeaud Ferdinand, president and executive director of the New Orleans-based Healthy Heart Community Prevention Project.

Some have not given up on more parental involvement.

“Children are often our change agents,” said Dr. Moritsugu of the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute. “Our approach is to start with the children, penetrate the homes, and move to the communities. Our strategy is to try to have a bottom up approach, while other areas are trying to engage in top down.”

Whether one starts at the top or the bottom, everyone agrees that the sooner people are engaged, the better the chance for success.

“If we can prevent obesity in children, then hopefully the prevalence in adults won’t be so high,” Ogden explained. “All the data suggests that if you start off active you will be active your whole life.”

But it’s difficult to get off to a healthy start without a commitment from school administrators.

“Those of us who have been involved with schools on the local level, we all know that school districts are very protective of control over their schools,” said Moritsugu, the father of a nine-year-old daughter. “Each of us has to engage on the local level, because that’s where you’ll have the most impact.”

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

Purple t-shirts, many with a variation of the classic “Rosie the Riveter” image showing white, Latina and Black women flexing their biceps, clustered in the shade next to the Recovery School District’s (RSD) main building on the morning of May 8. The crowd of mostly women held signs with the Service Employees Inter­national Union (SEIU) logo and slogans such as “part-time wages don’t pay full-time bills.” The crowd of union members, labor advocates and community activists had come to support 12 custodial workers who were fired on May 1. According to a press release from the union, 10 of these custodians had been cleaning schools for at least five years.

Aramark, the Pennsylvania-based firm that took over the contract to clean RSD schools in April, did not respond directly to questions emailed by The Louisiana Weekly about the working conditions described by the union members and the circumstances of their termination. The company’s spokes­person, Karen Cutler, did offer the following statement: “All of our employment decisions are fully compliant with the terms and conditions of the union’s collective bargaining agreement. As such, the union was aware of the recent decisions made with regard to these employees, and is also aware of our intention to replace all 12 full-time positions.”

SEIU President Helene O’Brien told The Louisiana Weekly that when Aramark took over the contract from the previous company, Sodexo, “[these workers] were transferred directly over from Sodexo. They retained their positions, they retained their wa­ges…and that was important to do because the transition happened in the middle of a school year.” Recognizing that an argument could be made for firing on poor work performance, O’Brien also underlined that “our union contract did not make it very hard to fire bad performers. If someone is sleeping on the job, they will lose their job.”

The firing gave the union an opportunity to highlight issues that other school workers are experiencing with Aramark. In her speech during the rally, O’Brien explained that RSD cafeteria workers now have to contend with part-time positions, some of which require a split shift that begins at 8am and ends at 9, starting again an hour or two later.

Recovery School District spokes­person Kizzy Payton responded to email inquiries about the situation explaining that Aramark had been selected over the previous firm based on price and quality. Asked whether the RSD would intervene with Aramark on behalf of the workers, Payton responded that: “the discussion is between SEIU and Aramark. The Recovery School District does not have a position on this matter.”

“What did we do wrong? I never had a write-up. I never had none of that,” former custodian Kim Lewis told The Louisiana Weekly. She went on, explaining the custodians’ significance to the school children: “we’re not just custodians. You’re not just destroying our lives, you’re destroying the children’s lives, too.”

One of Lewis’s former colleagues, Nicole Molette agreed. “You tell us that we have to be screened and background checked, yet…you let these temps come in…you don’t know who you letting around the kids. They could be convicted rapists.”

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

Scientists say oil and gas seeps surrounding BP’s Deepwater Horizon well appear to be mostly natural and to pre-date the 2010 spill. But some experts wonder if at least some of the seeps might have been caused or expanded by activity at the well. They worry subsea rock near the well may have been fractured. And they’re waiting to learn more from data collected by the National National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and also from the Natural Resource Damage Assess­ment process—under way now in response to the spill.

Seeps begin in fractures in subsea rock formations containing oil and gas deposits. Hydrocarbons are gradually released by seeps into the marine environment, including the sea floor, the water column and sea’s surface.

In the northern Gulf, the geology of the continental slope promotes the release of hydrocarbons from the seafloor, said Harry Roberts, Boyd professor emeritus at Louisiana State University’s Coastal Studies Institute. “Using 3-dimensional, seismic data, over 22,000 natural seep sites have been mapped in the region, including quite a few in the vicinity of the Macondo well site,” he said. Natural seeps can be active for years, constantly releasing gas and crude oil.

Roberts said “gas ascending through the water column may go into solution before it reaches the sea surface, depending on the water’s depth.” Oil droplets and gas bubbles covered with oil reach the surface, and the oil spreads out to make sea-surface slicks. On calm days in the Gulf, when wave action is moderate, slicks can be observed in many places on the continental slope from satellite data, Roberts said.
Pilots and mariners see the slicks too, and report them to authorities.

How are seeps studied? “Hard bottom limestone, created by microbial oxidation of hydrocarbons at seep sites and by communities of seep-related organisms, make the seafloor highly reflective of acoustic energy,” Roberts said. “These seep sites can be identified and mapped by analyzing the seafloor return from 3-D seismic data.” NOAA’s ship Okeanos Explorer is in the Gulf now, mapping gas plumes from natural seeps, he noted.

Roberts, who has been studying the northern Gulf’s natural seeps since 1985, said he believes the blowout at the Macondo well had little effect on natural seep sites in the area.

In another opinion from LSU, emeritus professor of environmental sciences Ed Overton said “my understanding is that seeps caused by drilling and caps are infrequent relative to the large number of natural seeps in the Gulf.”

At Texas A&M, oceanography professor Norman Guinasso, deputy director of the university’s Geochemical and Environmental Research Group, said seeps near BP blowout predated the drilling of that well. “We’ve been studying oil and gas seeps in MC118, which is about ten miles from the Macondo site, for many years. These seeps were there long before the Macondo well was drilled.”

LSU oceanography professor Robert Carney, who studies the Gulf seafloor, said a key difference between natural seeps and industry leaks is that “in natural seeps, oil takes a long time to move up through rock and mud, whereas oil and gas from drilling will come up rather quickly.”

Associating seeps and sheens near the Deepwater Horizon with the well itself is a knee-jerk response, some experts said. Houston-based geologist and oil consultant Arthur Berman said “everybody wants to make a connection between seeps and the BP spill, and I’ve received a lot of calls about it.” But, he said, a great deal of oil enters the Gulf through natural seeps, with estimates running anywhere from 1,500 to 19,000 barrels per day. He added “it’s mostly around salt domes.”

Looking back two years, Berman said “as long as the Macondo well was still flowing, the probability of leakage would have been almost zero because fluids take the path of least resistance, and that was through the pipe. My experience tells me fluids went out the rupture at the well head. Given what we know about the Macondo well now, I don’t think it caused additional rock fracturing or new seeps.”

Meanwhile, BOEM has mapped over 22,000 active and inactive seep sites in the Gulf with 3-D seismic data, BOEM spokesman John Filostrat said last week. “Most are gas only,” he noted. He said sea-surface oil slicks must be reported to the U.S. Coast Guard, which then relays them to BOEM. “We map these reports” at BOEM, he said.

After a ten-mile oil sheen was spotted at a distance from Venice on April 12, BOEM’s sister agency, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said a modest amount of oil was emitted from a natural seep in the sea floor—based on video from Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which used remotely operated vehicles to examine the sheen. The sheen appeared in the general area of two Shell platforms.

Among the sceptics that all seeps near the Macondo site are natural is Singapore-based geohazards expert BK Lim, who has been monitoring the Gulf from Asia since the BP spill. He suspects the Deepwater Horizon well has been leaking for two years. “I believe that some of the oil just took available pathways to the seabed,” he said. “Natural seeps do not as a rule produce sudden, oil slicks running for miles, as we saw in March 2011 and this April in the Gulf.” Oil from a 30-mile slick washed up from Grande Isle westward in late March of last year.

Lim said the March 2011 and April 2012 slicks in the Gulf may have been related to seismic events—earthquakes in Japan and Sumatra, respectively, in those months—that shook soft sediment near the Deepwater Horizon and discharged oil.

Yuba City, Ca.-based geologist Chris Landau said “it would have been easy to understand the Gulf oil blowout and its consequences if they would have just shown us the mud logs—a graphical, foot-by-foot map of what geologists make while drilling goes on. They are your diary and forensic tool—the black box that explains how and why the jet crashed,” he said in reference to airline disasters.

A mud log is a record of drilling activity prepared by a petroleum geologist’s assistant, or logger, during well drilling. The log contains geological information on the drilled hole, drill times, mud characteristics, and indications or “shows”of oil and gas.

“Mud log data for the Macondo well should be released on our website this June,” BSEE spokeswoman Chauntra Rideaux said last week.

Meanwhile, NOAA has gathered data on seeps that can be viewed by the public. Scientists on board NOAA’s ship Okeanos Explorer in the Gulf have tested multibeam sonar, or echo-sounding technology, to detect and map gaseous seeps in the water column, NOAA spokesman Fred Gorell said last week. Multibeam sonar can survey wide swathes of the seafloor and water column, he explained. “We obtain and share information for others to study and characterize,” he said. “The data is rich and voluminous. It’s not on our website, but can be accessed at NOAA data centers.” That spate of data collection was independent of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process.

Federal and state government NRDA projects, funded by BP and often involving universities, are part of an effort to restore the Gulf to pre-spill conditions. Several professors contacted for this article were unable to talk because of their NRDA research work. NOAA is collecting information directly for the NRDA process, partly through research cruises, and some of the data will be used in the government’s legal case against BP. More on the agency’s role in NRDA can be found on www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov.

Subsea rock formations and oil seeps and slicks near the Deepwater Horizon are among the many matters to be discussed in the federal trial against BP, scheduled to start on January 14 in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. “Anything and everything will come up in that trial,” Arthur Berman predicted.

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

Nathaniel Meredith is a tall, skinny young man of 24. On a sunny Friday morning in May, Meredith was waiting for his brother to be released from Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) who had been arrested on a drug charge, his first offense, in October. “I hear the longer you sit in here, they get paid off you,” Meredith told The Louisiana Weekly. According to Meredith, the charge against his brother was dropped, although he languished in the jail for seven months.

Stories such as this have been common in OPP. For many detainees, the issue has been an inability to post bond, one factor that plays into the stark disparity between the average length of stay in OPP for Blacks and whites charged with the same crime. This disparity was highlighted in a 2010 report prepared by James Austin for the City of New Orleans as it began discussions around building a new jail. According to the figures in Austin’s report, the average length of stay for a Black person charged with murder was 257.1 days versus 67.1 for whites.

This kind of disparity is one thing that the new pre-trial services program unveiled on May 4 should help alleviate, according to Jon Wool, Director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office.

“Everyone agrees that there are undoubtedly people detained who don’t pose a significant risk to the community,” Wool told The Louisiana Weekly. He also explained that people “essentially are detained because they don’t have the money to pay a commercial bond, and by focusing the detention decision on risk…we can ensure we only detain people who pose a significant risk to the community.”

The Vera Institute was one of the key players in launching the pre-trial services program, which uses a statistical model to determine whether an arrestee is a good candidate for release prior to trial and what level of bail should be required. This is somewhat familiar territory for the Vera Institute since its first project was a pre-trial service program to tackle similar issues with the New York City jail system in the early 1960s.

For the moment, the pre-trial services are only available 5 days week from early in the morning until mid-afternoon. One of the people assisting arrestees is Darrick Holmes, a native New Orleanian who has been working on criminal justice issues since 2004 and is currently completing a master’s degree at Southern University of New Orleans. Sporting long braids and a crisp white shirt, Holmes explained that being a young, Black man with local roots helps establish trust with the arrestees. “We’re able to communicate,” Holmes said. “They tend to trust a bit more, especially when you drop down into that New Orleans dialect, but I think ultimately that as the program grows in popularity and status…both the court work group and the arrested individuals will start to trust us a bit more.”

The program did not blossom overnight. It is the outcome of months of efforts by a working group that brought together representatives of the courts, the Sheriff’s Office, criminal justice advocates and city officials. Councilmember Susan Guidry is one of these. She told The Louisiana Weekly that the benefits to the city should be multiple.

“People who get into the jail system are more likely to offend again,” Guidry pointed out. “So we want to keep that part of the society that’s made some mistake, but who shouldn’t be introduced to this world, from doing so.” Guidry also underlined that the program should result in a net savings to the city. “If we’re not jailing ‘em, we’re not paying for those people to be in jail beds, and the cost of the pre-trial services program is small, comparatively.”

These aren’t the only potential benefits to the program, however. “Whether or not someone is incarcerated pre-trial has a huge impact on that person’s case,” Jee Park, Special Litigation Counsel with the Orleans Public Defenders, told The Louisiana Weekly. Park outlined that people who are released from jail have a greater ability to meet with their attorney, and, consequently, to investigate and prepare more fully.

Just a few weeks before the program was unveiled, The Micah Project, a faith-based organization focused on addressing the problems that most concern its constituents, held a forum with a range of public officials. Daniel Schwartz, executive director of the Micah Project, estimates that there were 450 people at that event. Speaking of the long stays in OPP that Micah’s members witnessed or experienced in person, Schwartz said that the faith community felt compelled to organize to confront “a system that is harvesting the poor and making money off the poor.”

Noting that the pre-trial services program had been slated to begin on earlier dates that had been pushed back, Schwartz commented that he hopes the commitments made at the forum will be respected. “When public officials are seeing hundreds of people standing up, that sends a much different message than just five or six people meeting in private.” The pre-trial services program was just one of the promises made at that forum. The other two concerned reforming the per-diem payment system that currently funds the jail, and capping the size of the new jail to 1438 beds.

The judges are ultimately responsible for making the final determination on whether an arrestee can be released on his or her own recognizance and what the appropriate bail amount is. They are using the information that the Vera Institute’s staff are compiling to enhance this process. In a phone interview, Magistrate Judge Gerard Hansen told The Louisiana Weekly that while it is too early in the program to make a full assessment of its impact, the additional information is useful. “It has been a help. There have been some individuals who have been released…but [the additional background] gives me a bit more security to say that it’s OK to release them.”

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

That’s the conclusion of a new survey Gallup conducted using its Emotional Health Index tool, which looks at daily worry, stress, sadness and clinical depression. The survey found that the emotional health of residents of Gulf-facing counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas has declined by 1.6 percent since the period before the spill—at the same time the emotional health of residents of inland counties in Gulf states and non-Gulf states has improved.

The changes in Gulf Coast residents’ Emotional Health Index scores “are statistically significant and meaningfully large,” according to Gallup’s Dan Witters.

“These findings provide supporting evidence that whatever improvements have been made to the physical environment of the Gulf area, the damage to residents’ emotional health continues to persist,” Witters writes.

The survey also found that residents of Gulf Coast-facing counties were 31 percent more likely to report a diagnosis of depression in January through April of this year than before the BP oil spill. The respondents were asked about a diagnosis occurring at any point in their lives, so this does not necessarily mean the disaster caused the depression. However, Gallup points out that the increase in depression diagnoses among Gulf Coast residents comes as such diagnoses were statistically unchanged in the rest of the country—and amid a slight decline in depression in inland counties in the Gulf states.

But in a bit of good news, the survey found that Gulf Coast residents’ negativity declined slightly after peaking in the winter/spring of 2011.

The Gallup poll confirms the findings of “Troubled Waters,” the recent Facing South/Institute for Southern Studies report on the BP disaster produced in collaboration with Bridge the Gulf and the Gulf Coast Fund. The report documented how many Gulf Coast communities have reported a rise in mental health problems since the oil spill, with surges in drug abuse and domestic violence. Local leaders blamed not only the BP disaster alone but the repeated nature of disasters affecting the region.

“The stressors of the hurricane [Katrina], the BP oil spill, the housing bubble bursting, the economic downturn—for the Southeast portion of the United States it seems that we’ve just had one thing after another,” said Teresa Bettis, executive director of the Center for Fair Housing in Mobile, Ala. “The stress of it has caused folk who were fine before to now be faced with mental health issues.”

Sue Sturgis is an investigative reporter and editorial director of Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies, where they story originally appeared, www.southern­studies.org.

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

(Special to the NNPA from the American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy) — The current foreclosure crisis constitutes a monumental civil rights issue. Communities of color were targeted for risky mortgage loans, have experienced disproportionately high foreclosure rates, and have been stripped of vast amounts of wealth because of discriminatory lending practices. From 2005 to 2009, median wealth fell by 66 percent among Latino households and 53 percent among African-American households, compared with just 16 percent among white households, largely due to declining home values. From 2009 through 2012, African Americans are projected to lose an estimated $194 billion in housing equity, and Latinos are expected to lose $177 billion.

Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the destructive effects of the foreclosure crisis on communities of color have yet to be fully realized. They face another devastating blow caused by further discriminatory treatment towards homes and neighborhoods by the very lenders who initiated the foreclosures.

The civil rights problems that permeate the foreclosure crisis are unfolding in stages. First, lenders targeted communities of color with subprime and other risky loan products that led to foreclosure. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the largest residential fair lending settlement in history, in which Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that Countrywide Financial discriminated against African-American and Latino borrowers during the housing boom. DOJ found that Countrywide loan officers and brokers charged higher fees and interest rates to 200,000 African-American and Latino borrowers than to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk. Countrywide also steered borrowers of color into costly subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit profiles received prime loans. Countrywide was not an isolated example. Other research has found that African-American and Latino borrowers were much more likely to receive subprime loans than white borrowers, even after controlling for income level or credit risk.

Now, it turns out, lenders are failing to properly maintain or market the foreclosed properties they own, and leaving these properties in a state of disrepair. According to a recent investigation by fair housing organizations, this stage of the crisis is not affecting all communities equally. Due to the discriminatory maintenance and marketing of foreclosed properties, African-American and Latino communities and cities with high minority populations risk losing many billions more in wealth through reduced neighborhood property values and increased expenses incurred by local jurisdictions. Importantly, these practices affect not those families who already lost their homes, but their neighbors living next door or down the street from the vacant foreclosed property.

This month, the National Fair Housing Alliance (“NFHA”) and four of its member organizations released a report, entitled “The Banks Are Back, Our Neighbor­hoods Are Not: Discrimination in the Maintenance and Marketing of REO Properties,” which examines ongoing discrimination in the maintenance and marketing of bank-owned foreclosed properties known as real estate owned (REO) properties. The study evaluated over 1,000 REO properties in cities across the county. The findings are extremely troubling: banks have engaged in substandard maintenance and marketing of foreclosed properties in communities of color, while properly maintaining and marketing foreclosed properties in predominantly white communities. In other words, properties in white neighborhoods “were more likely to have neatly manicured lawns, securely locked doors and attractive ‘for sale’ signs out front,” while homes in communities of color “were more likely to have overgrown yards littered with trash, unsecured doors, broken windows and indications of marketing as a distressed sale.”

The fair housing groups evaluated the maintenance and marketing of REO properties on a 100-point scale, subtracting points for such deficits as broken windows, water damage and overgrown lawns. The evaluations took into account 39 different aspects of the maintenance and marketing of each property.

Overall, REO properties in communities of color were 42 percent more likely to have more than a dozen maintenance problems than properties in white neighborhoods. Other trends revealed by the investigation include:

• REO properties in communities of color were 82 percent more likely than REO properties in white communities to have broken or boarded windows;

• REO properties in white neighborhoods were 32 percent more likely to be marketed with the proper signage than African-American neighborhoods and 38 percent more likely than in Latino neighborhoods; and

• Newer homes generally scored higher than older homes, but racial and ethnic disparities persisted with non-structural factors such as curb appeal and signage.

Since releasing the report, NFHA and several of its member organizations have filed housing discrimination complaints with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against Wells Fargo, et al., and U.S. Bank, et al.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 requires banks, investors, servicers or any other responsible party to maintain and market properties that are for sale or rent without regard to the race or national origin of the residents of a neighborhood. It is illegal to treat a neighborhood differently because of the race or national origin of the residents, and banks are obligated to monitor the actions of the companies they hire to perform housing-related transactions to ensure that those third-party entities comply with fair housing laws.

The Fair Housing Act has two goals: to eliminate housing discrimination and to promote residential integration. HUD’s regulations interpreting the Fair Housing Act state:

It shall be unlawful because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status or disability to restrict or attempt to restrict the choices of a person by word or conduct in seeking, negotiating for, buying or renting a dwelling so as to perpetuate segregated housing patterns, or to discourage or obstruct choices in a community, neighborhood or development.

Differences in the maintenance of foreclosed properties based on the racial composition of neighborhoods can certainly violate the Fair Housing Act.

• HUD’s regulations clearly state that “failing or delaying maintenance or repairs of sale or rental dwellings because of race” is a prohibited action under the Fair Housing Act.

• Steering by real estate agents based on neighborhood racial composition is illegal and other behavior in the housing sale or rental market that operates to discourage potential buyers from purchasing or renting homes in neighborhoods of color, such as by failing adequately to maintain properties in minority neighborhoods, can also violate the Act.

• In addition, the Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to “make unavailable or deny” housing to any person because of race. If the poor maintenance of a foreclosed property in a neighborhood of color makes it difficult for a potential purchaser to obtain a mortgage loan for the property, the poor maintenance has made the housing “unavailable” within the meaning of the Act.

To date, more than four million families have lost their homes to foreclosure, and nearly three times as many families are seriously delinquent on their mortgages and face a real threat of foreclosure. Efforts are underway to reform mortgage lending and servicing practices to prevent another foreclosure crisis. These are much needed and long overdue, but they are not enough to address the harm that has been done to minority borrowers and communities of color. More must be done to stabilize these communities and help these families rebuild their lost wealth. Establishing effective quality controls on foreclosed properties, and providing remedies to the African-American and Latino neighborhoods affected by the discriminatory maintenance and marketing of foreclosed homes are two crucial steps. Making sure they happen is an urgent civil rights issue facing our federal government, our nation’s financial institutions, and communities across the country.

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

Navigating the New Orleans Public School system is complicated. There are two school districts, and both have direct-run schools as well as charters that they supervise. Moreover, so many schools in the city perform poorly that parents need to know how to understand what is happening at their child’s school and how they can advocate.

The Urban League of Greater New Orleans and New Schools for New Orleans have partnered with JP Morgan Chase and Baptist Community Ministries to offer an extensive series of parent workshops on dealing with the city’s public schools. The workshops have an awkward title that translates into the acronym for PRIDE (Parents Ready to be Involved to Deliver Excellence). The three core sessions focus on school performance data, parental involvement, and the school system’s structure and other sessions deal with topics such as English as a Second Language programs and special-needs students.

Participants receive a $100 stipend and child care is available for those who need it. The courses will be offered until mid-May.

One mid-April evening, Rashida Govan, director of policy and Research at the Orleans Public Education Network, led a group at Clark High School through the curriculum for understanding school performance data. She pulled no punches about the harsh reality facing many public school parents.

Govan told the dozen participants flat out where the system was inequitable or lowering standards. “The PRIDE workshops are really a good tool to get parents the information they need to advocate for their children more effectively,” Govan told The Louisiana Weekly. “What I’ve noticed every time we’ve come is the parents say things like: “if we didn’t come here today, how would we have known this?” And that is really startling and troubling because all parents want to advocate well for their children, they want the best for their children. So if we’re not doing what we need to do as educators and non-profits and stuff, what’s going to happen?”

During the workshop, Govan pointed out that the standard for being classified as an “A” school, had been compared to the previous system based on a five-star rating. She also noted that roughly 80 percent of the city’s public schools are Recovery School District (RSD) schools, but the RSD is ranked second to last in the state, and since the standard for failing is going to be raised, “if we don’t move up about 10 points as a district, or a little bit less than 10 points, we will be failing next year,” Govan told the group of parents assembled in a Clark High School classroom.

The interactive session also gave parents an opportunity to ask questions and offer their own views on what has happened in the New Orleans school system in recent years. One parent commented on the change in the ranks of those teaching in New Orleans Schools. “You have a lot more of Teach for America teachers who want to pay their student loans off, versus the seasoned teachers who really want to see the kids grow and prosper.”

In spite of charged topics such as this, the discussion was open and friendly. While Govan pointed out some of the inequalities in the current system, she also told parents how to get involved, explaining that School Improve­ment Plans are a tool for them to use. “They have to have parents on the school improvement plan or school improvement team,” Govan told her audience, “so you should be asking ‘who are the parents on the school improvement team?’ Because lots of times, people count on you not knowing.”

Govan’s honesty about the issues and things parents should know made her presentation a success. At the end of the session, the participants praised her work. Rhonda Butler has two children, one finishing at a private high school and another at Ben Franklin Extension. Butler told The Louisiana Weekly that not only did she enjoy the presentation, but also that she would share the knowledge with those connected to the Head Start program where she works.

Butler said her daughter was in private school because that was the only option right after the storm, and while she sees the improvement in the city’s public schools, she lamented that so few of them are serving the children well.

Rachel Johnson, who is a Parent-Teacher Organization member at Joseph S. Clark, contributed actively to the classroom discussion. “It was good to just be able to sit down with a group of other informed parents and discuss the issues,” she said to The Louisiana Weekly after the workshop. Demonstrating the commitment that Govan praised in parents, Johnson stated that “as long as my child is a student here, I’m going to be here, and whatever I can do to help make things better, I’m here. I’m one phone call away.”

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

Enhancing a strong presence in local, regional and national markets, Hammerman & Gainer International, Inc. (HGI)—the largest African American owned third party administration company in the nation— has relocated its corporate headquarters to downtown New Orleans.

The move will provide approximately 30 full time jobs within the company, which currently boasts 335 employees and 12 offices in Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and Washington DC.

Larry D. Oney, sole owner and chairman of HGI, says the move is indicative of the company’s pledge to the city’s economic landscape.

“Our firm, HGI, is totally committed to the City of New Orleans and more importantly to good jobs for the people that live in the city. Many firms in the area that do what we do as high level administrators and program managers have long since moved their operations outside of the city,” he said. “Moving our corporate headquarters to New Orleans demonstrates HGI’s high commitment level to the City of New Orleans.”

In all, the relocation equates to a $2 million investment in New Orleans.

This commitment and investment was realized with help from the New Orleans Business Alliance, which helped HGI identify a downtown location. “HGI is a strong and growing company well positioned in the New Orleans market,” said Rod Miller, President & CEO of the New Orleans Business Alliance. “HGI has already made an impact on the New Orleans economy thanks to its disaster recovery efforts and with HGI’s headquarter relocation; HGI will now be able to take their investments in New Orleans to the next level.”

As a third party administrator, HGI provides risk management, claims administration, program management and property in­spection services to clients nationwide. The company has been in existence for more than 80 years.

As majority owner, Oney has more than 30 years of leadership experience in the insurance claims sector having worked for private and governmental entities. He acquired HGI in 1999 and has since expanded the company’s scope to focus on healthcare and post-disaster administration services.

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper

She was not convinced she told attendees of Howard’s 2012 Health Symposium, which brought health experts and advocates to the Blackburn Center to discuss the discrepancy of proper health care treatment, access and environmental education among underserved people of color in America.

She said she was gaining weight, feeling increasingly lethargic, when she went to the doctor he still said, “Everything’s okay.”

But everything was not okay she said, “I had to really become that monster patient and say ‘I’m demanding that more be done.’ I demanded that I get every test executed and every scan done.”

Equipped with insurance, access to health care and a desire for answers, Whitfield avoided a serious medical complication that could have led to further sickness or death. After all of her doctor’s visits and tests she was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor.

Many people in Washington D.C.’s Ward 8 share similar stories as Whitfield: they are burdened by unknown ailments, and unsure of how to cure them. However, with a poverty rate of 35 percent, many lack insurance and are unable to fight for a solution, according to the Urban Institute.

The speakers at the last discussion of the day were: Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Bradford Grant Ph.D, Professor Angel F. Clarens of the university’s architecture department, and research student Aarika Puckett presented their findings on how environmental issues play a key role in health inequalities in low-income neighborhoods.

“You’ve heard of ‘sick building syndrome,’ blight and environmental conditions that cause health problems,” Grant said. “There are many conditions that we are exploring as it relates on how to produce a healthy sustainable environment for our activities for our health and lives.”

Sick building syndrome is described as a situation in which building occupants experience acute health and comfort effects that appear to be linked to time spent in a building, according to the EPA.

In 2006, Professor Clarens demonstrated the power that changing the “brick and mortar” environment people live in can affect their health. He assisted in revamping an apartment building in the Langston Lane area of Southeast, which had been declared a high-crime area by the attorney general.

Partnering with a nonprofit organization he assisted in the development of site strategies such as creating a gated communities to increase the level of safety, a play ground and rental office to establish a presence in the neighborhood. They also added large bay windows and introduce color to the building so the residents units see up and down the street, which they thought would help community moral. Clarens said that it was important that the resident felt they had ownership in the community or they would not embrace and their new environment.

“The nonprofit has hired a full time social worker and she has made miracles a transformation she takes care of children makes sure they have a good breakfast, they go to school, come back to work and little by little over the last three years she’s changing little by little the culture that exists in the community. Then making all of these physical improvements worthwhile,” he said.

Following the presentation, Brian Smedley Ph.D, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Eco­nomic Studies, and Mohammed Akhter Ph.D, director of the D.C. Department of Health discussed the solutions needed to make district residents healthy.

One of their main concerns with health care involved finding solutions to health disparities, such as the scarcity of healthy foods in underprivileged neighborhoods, which cause unhealthy diets.

Akhter said that the Department of Health is pushing to change food deserts in low-income communities.

“We must help change the environments by taking the available park land that’s owned by the city to grow vegetables and fruits for the community,” Akhter said. Additionally, we have an agreement that is being pursued with the DC Public School system that guarantees great land be open to the community to start gardens.”

In an effort to stop unhealthy lifestyles during childhood, Akhter said when a child shows up with their parent to the doctor they should be given a prescription for their diet, exercise and direction to the nearest safe-walking area.

A concern that Akhter ad­dressed was that generations of underprivileged people are isolated from current awareness of health care because of trepidation, which motivates ‘the need to connect.’

This article was originally published in the May 14, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper