Land Trust Bureaucracy Strikes the L9!

In my response to an article by my peer on a Community Land Trust developing in the L9 I tried to point out the fact that low-income workers might not like seeing their rents go to slumlords, but rather those funds could accrue such that one day they (me too!) could have that oh-so-American rite/right of passage, which “can” confer so many more rights (re: NOPD will still break them if they deem it necessary, i.e. search home without warrant):

I think the intentions of the L9 NENA are to help folks who otherwise couldn’t put a down payment on a house or land, or might not qualify for a bank loan considering how banks have been so tight with loaning out much to anyone after the 2008 crisis.

The fact that over 99 years, folks would pay about $30,000 rather than $8,000 now assumes that the price of land in 3010 (inflation adjusted) would remain around its current cost and that folks, once again, can afford the $8,000 in addition to what might be a significant monthly mortgage rate for the actual home.  It also means folks avoid–if they can’t afford a home otherwise–paying higher and higher rents. New Orleans rents are up at least 50% still, five plus years after Katrina.

The other important fact to remember about Community Land Trusts is that they PROTECT against land speculation and assessments that can bankrupt folks and/or put them into massive debt such as what happened in the very very recent crisis to much of the middle and working classes caught up in the foreclosure mania and the predatory lending by profit-not-people driven bankers.  Keeping assessments low also keeps property taxes low.  This all adds to the stability, longevity and “community” orientation that these land trusts are intended to foster.

The big worry is if the Community Land Trust folds…which leads me to…

My main concern for people who get involved in the land trust is whether they have access to power and decision-making for the CLT, rather than it residing strongly within L9 NENA, as a guardian. Like an earlier commenter who suggested a cooperative,  these forty homeowners should have direct control over the direction of the community land trust.  I say this because this quote is confusing as far as structure:

[NENA will] “maintain ownership of the land on behalf of the collective community.” He explained that participation on the organization’s board as a trust member would give residents “control of and responsibility for the stewardship of the land.”

So each homeowner is a trust member and is on the board? So there will be forty members on the board? Are decisions made by majority rule, supermajority (usually 2/3), or full consensus? NENA in this case then is only an administrator and not on the board? I think some structural diagrams or charts would be great to understanding how power and checks on it will work out in practice!

In either case, as mentioned in the article these are 40 plots of land in a neighborhood of 5000-plus. I think it will be evident within the first cycle of ownership what is working for owners or owners-to-be and what is not. If they get direct control, then the process is more readily changed for the next generation.

[end of public comment to article]

————————

Or, you and your family members and friends, folks who you would trust with your life, get together and raise some funds to own some land collectively…many plots…and create social centers and resources for the surrounding community…so they will want to follow in your footsteps and you will be able to teach them this form of liberation.

it takes will, initiative, patience, persistence and a saving for a future worth having rather than a consuming for a now that you can live just as fully without spending a dime. go for a run in the park, collect seeds to plant in your (fingers crossed: lead free) backyard, play basketball, listen to street music performances, have great conversations in friends’ front rooms, read a library book, dance. Dance. DANCE.  And then, not too long down the road, you could be looking at collective ownership where you can…defend the land!

“They hung with us”: Race and Community in a New Orleans Health Clinic

by Matthew Olson, originally published in the July/August issue of the New Orleans Tribune

In broken mirror pieces reads a sign, “Common Ground Health Clinic,” above the door where nearly forty patients a day visit this converted convenience store on an Algiers street within two blocks of the Mississippi river. Up a ramp and inside is a pristine waiting room with twenty-five chairs and along the short hallway is the social workers’ office, then four patient rooms, and an herbalist station toward the back.

Anne Mulle, the clinic’s nurse practitioner, spoke with me from inside one of the patient rooms where flyers on the walls promoted reduced-cost eye exams, healthy eating and early breast cancer detection. She stressed the importance of integrative health, relieving stress, and understanding people in their environment. To this end, the clinic provides social work, acupuncture, herbalism, live Spanish language interpretation, and supports community organizing. Weekly “Mind Body Medicine” groups focus on breathing techniques, visualization and other methods of relaxation.

“People typically think of health as blood pressure, weight, and laboratory results,” explained Mulle (pronounced MOO-lay). “We believe their health includes the complete picture: What’s going on with their housing, with their kids and their schools? What’s their stress level? What’s going on with their work: are they working multiple jobs or not able to get a job at all? How is their over-all well-being impacted by their community and their environment?”

Earlier this year, Common Ground Health Clinic received the highest level of recognition for national health standards as a “Patient-Centered Medical Home” by the National Committee on Quality Assurance(NCQA). The standards for the primary care applicants can include the use of best-practices, the quality of medical records and following up with referrals. While thirty-seven applicants from the Greater New Orleans Area received recognition, only two practices earned the prestigious level three: Common Ground Health Clinic and St. Thomas Community Health Center.

Unlike peer institutions, these two clinics are explicit about their intention to be community-integrated and anti-racist as a means to long-term community health. As a means to those goals, both organizations work with the nearly thirty-year-young and locally-staffed People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, which often facilitates weekend-long “Undoing Racism” workshops. The People’s Institute has worked with St. Thomas since 1991 and, in January 2006, the People’s Institute co-sponsored its first workshop since the storm with CGHC.

“They have incorporated anti-racism into their mission and vision,” said Dr. Kimberley Richards, CGHC board member and core trainer with the People’s Institute. “They recognize race in the health paradigm.” Part of this recognition is to turn the principles into practice beyond a single training. Accordingly, PISAB meets monthly with CGHC for strategy sessions and hosts quarterly trainings for patients, staff and community members.

“How do you incorporate anti-racist principles?” Richards continued. “You engage the community, establish partnerships, hire residents that fit, recognize the resource in the community, not just bringing in from the outside.”

“I think it made all the difference in the world,” said R. Noah Morris, a clinic co-founder and CGHC Board President, about the affect of anti-racist principles on getting the highest NCQA recognition. He added that the recognition should also convince the healthcare community that “free does not mean cheap.”

“There’s a notion that community clinics or free clinics provide a sub-standard quality of care. We’re here to show that doesn’t have to be the case,” added Mulle. The vast majority of people who come to CGHC, eighty-six percent, are without any form of healthcare coverage.

♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣

Despite living only a few blocks away, Keith Jones’ first trip to the clinic came a full year after its opening. “What I had was simple,” Jones said of his knee injury. “I got advice beyond what I really needed: ‘Did I live by myself? Could I make it?’ I’m getting all this attention with a sore knee? And nobody knew me from the man on the moon.”

Soon after, he accepted the clinic’s invitation to attend an “Undoing Racism” workshop, which included staff and patients together. “It was on point,” said Jones, who began volunteering and is now on the clinic’s staff as a community organizer. “They recruited from the class and I’ve been there ever since.”
Several staff members were first patients, including Coleen Murphy. Murphy had lived in Algiers Point for four years when Katrina hit and hesitated to return after reading reports of vigilante violence. But with the news of a clinic, she found a clear reason to come back. “I have never had health insurance and had been a patient of various sliding scale clinics my entire adult life. Never had I been treated with such care and kindness,” wrote Coleen Murphy in an e-mail.

A few weeks later Murphy started volunteering at the front desk. Now, as the clinic’s Communications Coordinator, she assists in outreach and edits all of CGHC’s publications, including the coveted health resource guides—collated by geography, like the Central City Guide, or themes, like the Mental Health Guide. The overall guide, “New Orleans Community Resource Guide,” is so thorough that it is utilized by clinics, hospitals, and social service agencies city-wide, including the city’s health department.

On days when the clinic is open, Marie Romeo can spend up to five or six hours in conversations with patients about job searches to healthy eating to racism. “It’s revolutionary to have health care and racism in the same context. That’s not done anywhere. I think that utilizing anti-racist principles in social work is not only possible but it’s imperative to be effective,” said Romeo, the clinic’s social worker. The first crucial steps are to listen to “a person’s experience and understand them. What would be characterized as a pathology is a constant exposure to systemic oppression. People often come in saying, ‘can’t get a job. I’ve a got a bachelor’s and master’s degree and can’t get a job.’ There’s stress around making ends meet.”

Integrating social work and mental health services into the clinic in the fall of 2008 relieved a tremendous burden on the physicians and nurses to help patients with referrals, counseling, applications for other services and getting prescriptions filled properly. “A lot of that didn’t exist before, or it was falling on the primary care providers,” said Anne Mulle. ”In a healthcare system that is overwhelmed, having mental health and social work services in the clinic takes a huge burden off the patient visit and allows primary care providers more time for chronic disease management.”

At the Center for Mind Body Medicine training in January 2007, Anne Mulle met Antor Ndep, a public health doctorate student, and encouraged her to apply for the Executive Director opening. Ndep, who has lived in New Orleans since 1997, was hesitant, but committed to visiting before passing judgment.

“What hooked me is that it was almost a manifestation of everything that I’ve thought about establishing in a community health center back home,” said Ndep, who was born in Nigeria. “Here are a group of very young people on both sides of the race line saying we want to talk about racism because we feel that racism is what is making communities poor and ill. That is something that you just do not find anywhere. “Combating racism, gardening, monitoring the police. Pieces of the puzzle were all there, they just needed us to concentrate to put those pieces together.”

In two years as the clinic’s Executive Director, Ndep has overseen impressive growth through channeling the unique energy she felt on that first visit. Using her education in public health she formalized the organizational structure, revamped the clinic’s policies and procedures, and embraced the clinic’s non-traditional programs based in community organizing and engagement.

“Community engagement for us comes in many different forms,” said Ndep, who emphasizes consideration of patients as peers worthy of dignity and honesty. “It’s not sophisticated in any way at all. We talk, we make friends, look people in the eye and invite them to everything we do. It’s a way of providing healthcare that goes beyond sitting across from a provider and telling him what’s wrong and that’s the beauty of it..”

In contrast to its volunteer beginnings, the clinic now has an operating budget over one million dollars per year, a staff of more than fifteen, and a state-of-the-art electronic medical record system. While one co-founder of the clinic used to quip—“we’re building a plane while flying it”—the healthcare facility now seems to be a well-worn, thoughtful and precise collective.

Through the processing of those growing pains, the People’s Institute and the St. Thomas Community Health Center supported and guided CGHC. “St. Thomas Community Health Center has really been a model health clinic for us,” Mulle affirmed.

♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣

In operation since 1987, the St. Thomas Community Health Center has been a model clinic of community inclusion and patient-centered health for CGHC. For instance, patients are a majority on St. Thomas’ board. Undoing Racism workshops have been a regular part of volunteering or working at the center since 1991. St. Thomas makes impactful partnerships with other health providers, including a unique cardiovascular surgery program for uninsured patients with Ochsner.

“At Charity, it’s just someone you don’t know. Here, you can talk directly to Mary,” said Barbara Jackson, a founding member of the St. Thomas CHC, of Dr. Mary Abell. Jackson said that after finding out why a patient came, Mary will ask, “‘But what else is bothering you?’ You could never do that anywhere else. It’s holistic problem solving.”

Executive Director Dr. Don Erwin, who chaired the Department of Medicine at Ochsner Hospital when he started volunteering at St. Thomas back in 1991, thinks the success in good health outcomes comes from an interdependence between the community and the center. “If you’re a patient of ours and we know that you’re sick and can’t make it, we’ll send a taxi for you. It’s not the clinic over here and community over here,” Erwin said, moving his hands from left to right.

Though St. Thomas is not free, but low-cost, they do have an open access policy to see a patient the same day they call. “The traditional appointment system has a forty percent no show rate,” explained Erwin. “If there’s no bus, you can’t come. If you can’t get a babysitter, you can’t come.” Switching to a walk-in or call-in system where patients can be seen the same day allows for flexibility in a patient’s environment—a crucial step to being patient-centered and anti-racist.
“Race is an independent risk factor,” Erwin firmly stated. It is a statement Antor Ndep repeated to me, and a lesson the Common Ground Health Clinic has taken to heart.

♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣

CGHC has come a long way since setting up card tables to divide first aid stations inside the Masjid Bilal mosque in dry Algiers on September 9, 2005. Then, a few dozen volunteers saw one hundred patients per day and acted largely as an emergency first-aid location. Volunteers often drove people to the nearest open Jefferson Parish hospital or called ambulances when necessary.

Bay Love, a volunteer transplant who is now the clinic’s Financial Officer, remembered the intensity of those first few months. “It was inspiring, exciting, and thrilling, yet extremely humbling. I thought, ‘this is really bad, people are really sick, and there is nowhere for them to go,’” he recalled. What made the need for a permanent health clinic in Algiers urgent, at least for him, was the realization that people’s health and the healthcare in the city had been poor and broken due to systemic racism and poverty long before the storm.

On a recent April day, Algiers resident Ronald Ragas sat on the steps of Delille/Drexel Fellowship Center of All Saints Church on the opposite corner from the clinic. A middle-aged man, Ragas shook his head as he spoke deliberately about a bladder infection he had not long after Katrina hit. He paused between sentences. “I was short four units of blood. A walking dead man. They put me in the hospital. I wouldn’t have made it. A lot of people were saved by the clinic.”
The clinic might now need to be saved by the people. The clinic threw a fundraising kick-off dinner in April at their office, which is two doors down from the clinic. In the front yard, a DJ announced the event over loud speakers to passersby and added his own wisdom: “They were there for us, so now we’re here for them.”

The goal of the clinic’s fundraising campaign is guarantee the sustainability of the clinic and deepen the partnership with the patient community. They have set the bar high: the clinic wants to raise one million dollars by its fourth anniversary, September 9, 2009. For current operations the clinic relies heavily on a government grant that will end in December 2010. Without knowing how the Obama Administration’s will act, the conclusion of the grant could drastically alter the clinic’s structure. When community members heard that the clinic might have to reduce services, many enthusiastically brought up suggestions from church dinners to hosting a bazaar. “We’re trying to fundraise on three or four tiers, grassroots to the upper level to the internet,” said clinic community organizer Keith Jones.

Listening to the DJ, Bay Love danced on the porch and a young boy imitated him. An older girl laughed at them both. In the office’s first room, Anita Powell, wearing an impressive white straw hat with a black band, took money for the fundraising dinner. Powell shares her hat making skills in clinic-supported classes as a way for community members to relieve stress. In the kitchen, next to anti-racist principles written on the wall, Lanette Williams served up fried fish, potato salad, green salad and spaghetti. Everyone working at the fundraising dinner had volunteered their time.

“I got to get off my feet,” gasped Williams, who had been cooking for at least the past seven hours.

R. Noah Morris, a clinic founding member, pulled a cooler from under the dining table and put it in front of Williams as a makeshift footrest. He said, “I know how to take care of the caretakers.”

More than twenty people remained in the dining room and backyard sharing stories after dinner. Among them was Orissa Arend, who wrote about the clinic’s origins for this publication in 2007. She “gave somewhere between zero and a minus one to the chances” that the clinic would endure because of so many broken promises from other providers such as Red Cross, FEMA, and all levels of government in the fallout of Katrina.

But thankfully, as Ronald Ragas told me earlier in the day, “They hung with us. Didn’t show up for a week or two then leave.”

Beyond Jena

I am attending a conference focusing on “bloggers of color, education and social justice in New Orleans” that ties its news peg to the Jena 6 movement, especially the Sept. 20 protest, that has largely been attributed to blogging and internet organizing.

[below are notes, not my personal opinion…I’ll respond in my own way later on…]

Professor Dedra Johnson, blogger of G Bitch Spot.
Perspectives not taken into account, documentation that can fall through the cracks.

Dr. Eban Walters, blogger of New Orleans — It’s Just Me.
Most productive period of blogging was when he moved back home in late 2006.  Happened that there was the first Rising Tide blogger conference, which was the first time everyone had met.  Another blogger, NOLA Slate, urged him to blog because there were so few bloggers of color (Dedra being one of the only people). His first post was the first anniversary of Katrina, August 29, 2006, when he just couldn’t take it anymore.

Clifton Harris, blogger of Cliff’s Crib.
“It was a lot easier to write when I thought no one was paying attention. I’m not a writer by trade.” People shouldn’t be over concerned about who your audience is, says Harris, because then you’re doing things to get readers instead of staying true to yourself.

Harris — comment on blogs if you support what they say. Don’t just say the compliment in person…cause then it looks like it’s just one crazy black guy. Fight back against derogatory comments on nola.com! Needs to be a dialogue, conversation that’s TWO-SIDED.

Johnson — Been waiting for the number of bloggers of color in New Orleans to increase, doesn’t know why. Thinks especially important here to have those voices, need to represent the diversity of the culture of this city ONLINE. “I mean, you know there are more opinionated black people than the three of us.” Parts of the conversation were missing, whether talking about which neighborhoods should be rebuilt, public housing, etc.

Harris — Did write about Jena before 9/20. One of the few moments that I felt that technology was used to change a wrong that was done. There was black radio, but the seeds of the story were on blogs. The only regret I have about the whole situation — in a piece I wrote called “My personal apology to Michal Bell” — is that we had enough to follow through to get him out of jail, but not enough to heal his life. Should have had a counselor there with him, or something. If he had been successful in killing himself, the whole Jena movement would feel completely hollow.

Johnson — I was hopeful to get more out of the movement to Jena. Of course, there was a great dialogue that popped up on this issue…misperceptions. It shows us what we can start, not what we can finish, how we can follow through. I did find it disappointing that there was this great swell of interest and support that kind of faded.

Walters — I didn’t blog about Jena. I think about that period, I remember being surprised that this Jena story popped out of nowhere. I was upset that Nagin went up there, get some photo ops instead of handle business back home.

Moderator: What’s the next civil rights issue or important issue in New Orleans?

Johnson — Still feel housing is important. Education. I hope I make an impact by documenting, bearing witness to what’s happening.

Walters — Healthcare, mental healthcare in particular and crime. Link between crime and education. [tries to rock the boat a little, but worried about career?] I’ll write a letter to people, like Governor Jindal or David Vitter. Or some jerk editor from the New York Post about how New Orleans should be written off. And I’ll post that letter and tell people to use what they want from it to make their own letter.

Harris — If we’re fighting for new schools, hospitals, etc, then you can’t trash the schools or start a turf war as soon as you come back to the city. Job training.

Need to say: This is what we need to do once we get it. [set expectations] Fight for justice and equity that we deserve and then hold each other accountable. Don’t know how to separate the two, so I do both at the same time.

[end of the first panel…battery cut out before Q &A…]

New Orleans’ Update

This is a letter I recently wrote to a friend also on the Gulf Coast as an update on the situation in New Orleans. I am a slacker and this conveniently covers much of what I was planning to write. Will add more as time and internet access permits.

New Orleans is transitioning in its political scope, looking at long-term solutions, such as the office of the inspector general and the successfully tacked on independent police monitor (which i helped do some research on and was in the council chambers today to support). Today, the city council also voted in favor of this vague Master Plan zoning, which is as of yet an unwritten but mandated plan that has to be reviewed at least every five years and no more than once a year. So it’s weird because there are so few safeguards to prevent the zoning plan from taking away individual property rights like the VA-LSU hospital plan in mid-city…you know, that old eminent domain, for the greater good thing. But the zoning plan is a positive for some folks in that it will be a city-wide comprehensive standard that would draw business and development investment into the city, something that many argue is holding back the full recovery.

These are both proposals to add to the City Charter, which can only be changed through a popular ballot vote….to be held in the fall. But it seemed the hardest part was getting them through the city council (and getting the support of the police orgs, which was somehow miraculously done).

Also, there is a burgeoning citizen participation process being developed and I’m attending the inaugural summit this weekend. I’m still ruminating on my role in this whole process, kind of trying to get advice from my landlady who should have gone but doesn’t want to. I will try to bring my full self and that’s all I can do.

Other than that, I’ve been going blueberry picking in MIssissippi several weekends and been making tasty smoothies for these ninety degree days. I was just told, not unusually, that I had something, a lot of something in my teeth–blueberry skins indeed.

The World’s Eyes on New Orleans…again: Eve of the SPP

“I live in New Orleans, I don’t have time for anything else.”

This phrase written–with no explanations or clarifying context–in my notebook. Maybe I was thinking it, maybe someone else said it, but either way it struck a chord that I am still feeling two weeks later. Not that I don’t read and listen to events in other parts of the earth. News of people’s struggles is my lifeblood, inspiration for all the work that I do and no doubt connected in our global struggle against imperialism and corporate capitalism and for direct democracy and the healthiness of the earth, land on which we live and eat and breath. (I reflect now on Zimbabwe’s three week delayed election results, on the recent events in Tibet, on the almost surreal parade of the Olympic torch, and the sensory-numbing consistency in the attrition of life, health and history in Iraq and Palestine that might drive us all to irrational means of survival if faced with starvation and silence.)

Peace be on every just being tonight. And let nightmares fall on President Bush, President Calderon and Prime Minister Harper on their way to New Orleans for a behind closed doors meeting to spread complete US hegemony to two nations already blackmailed into NAFTA and other agreements that have the force of law. The summit meeting of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership” is executive branch only.

If any enforceable decisions come out of this bypassing, or coup, of the republic/democratic (small d) tradition than it would be a strong and clear move toward fascism. A president is meant to be a nation’s head of government, an inspiring voice of strength and reality in difficult times, its leading diplomat to the world and in touch with its peoples concerns that it can assist, with the initiative of representatives, in translating into law.

The foundation of law in this country has a long and ambivalent history of maintaining slavery while hypocritically alleging free speech, free assembly, free choice of religion in the first amendment in the constitution.

It seems just at a time when citizens continue to hold this country to those ideals and they’re starting to gain traction, its leaders have partially abandoned that foundation, that process of representation and checks and balances (the judiciary hardly even tries to check the executive branch right now). Democrats, of course, are against the SPP (though you would hardly know it with their silence) because Bush is a Republican and Republicans carry on as if these summits are business as usual–indeed a cause for profit-sharing celebration–rather than an affront to democratic and republican principles of governance.

Here, in an ode to Vermont’s lively successionist movement, I say: break your allegiance with the state. when it becomes foe to the least capable of us spirited and honest folks, when it refuses to acknowledge discrimination and the human rights to shelter, food and health, then we know its function is outdated and must be replaced within our own communities by building relationships and unified, but autonomous organizing that will continue to heal, re-energize and spread the love and support of an across-educated (across cultures, classes, borders), liberated and participatory society.

through experience, and the sharing and listening of all our stories and histories and knowledge bound up together, with an endless commitment to each other as human beings we will grow to sustain, support and check each other’s survival, needs, wants, desires and visions for maintaining our unique thread in an intricate tapestry of justice.

NEXT WEEK: People’s Summit in New Orleans! Counter the new NAFTA!

The People’s Summit : Our Response to NAFTA Expansion

www.summitneworleans.org

April 20 – 22, 2008 · New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Coming together for our communities

Linking the Gulf Coast struggle to the fight for the survival of communities in Mexico, Canada, & the rest of the United States

Building collective knowledge and action to transform NAFTA & other unjust economic policies pushed by Bush, Calderon, & Harper

Sunday, 4/20

12:30 pm – NAFTA Workshop in coordination with the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival. FREE at Zeitgeist.

1:30 pm – Press Conference outside Ashe Cultural Center, 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd.

3pm-5pm: Pick-up Soccer at City Park. Go on Orleans Ave. away from French Quarter a couple miles until City Park Ave where it turns into Marconi Blvd (on western edge of C.P. ). Stay on Marconi underneath Interstate 610, fields on left between road and a canal.

6pm: Conclusion of New Orleans Fifth Annual International Human Rights Film Festival with Jena 6 Documentary and Panel. Perhaps a social gathering

Monday, 4/21

9am – 12pm Community Tour of New Orleans & Story Circles along Algiers Riverfront (a ferry’s ride across from the French Quarter, pick up at base of Canal St. & leaves on :15 and :45 of every hour from Canal Side, :00 and :30 from Algiers Riverfront side)

12 – 1:30pm Opening Ceremony & Lunch along Algiers Riverfront

2pm – 5pm Understanding Who Profits & How: NAFTA+ and Katrina Profiteering (Craige Cultural Center)

5pm – 6pm Dinner

6pm – 9pm Understanding Who Profits & How: NAFTA+ and Katrina Profiteering (for day workin folks; also at Craige Cultural Center)

Tuesday, 4/22

9am – 12pm Self-organized sessions

1pm – 4pm Self-organized sessions

6pm – 9pm Breaking Inferiority & Superiority to Restore Ourselves & Our Communities

Locations of Workshops: McKenna Museum of African American Art (2003 Carondelet St.), Craige Cultural Center (1800 Newton St. on West Bank/Algiers), Loyola University, Greater Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church/Holy Cross Neighborhood Association (5130 Chartres St.)

MORE TO COME AS THE WEEK PROGRESSES….