The 2nd Battle of New Orleans: Transcending The Odds –> Transforming Our City
Friday, August 8, 2008
BNO supporters attended several excellent workshops at the 50th Annual National Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], which took place in New Orleans during the first week of August.
The premiere civil rights organization was founded here 51 years ago in a small Mid-City church. It was an honor to speak at the SCLC Neighborhood Event, held at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School; the first public school to reopen in the Lower 9th Ward after Katrina. The school is also the namesake of the SCLC’s founding president.
With a keen interest in history, I wanted to create imagery and take the audience back to the First Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The following 3 paragraphs represent a summation of what I talked about, you can also watch an ad libbed version of my speech by clicking on the preceding link:
“General Andrew Jackson led a brigade of American forces along the Mississippi River to defeat adversaries seeking to seize and conquer the Crescent City. American forces were successful in defending New Orleans then and we will be successful in defending New Orleans today. But we cannot do it by ourselves - the entire country must join together in the theater of our recovery campaign to win the 2nd Battle of New Orleans.
The storm almost knocked us out. Our infrastructure and capabilities have been weakened - compound that with governmental inefficiency and a lack of federal leadership. We are crippled by the mandate of an antiquated Stafford Act and without a comprehensive Category 5 levee system. And so we have a sea of problems, an ocean worth of challenges. The path to victory no longer seems navigational. Our ship anchored in our faith in progress seems to be drowning. But despite the bleak forecast, that grainy picture - we know from our history, our shared American experiences that “a rising tide can lift all ships.”
In order to win this 2nd Battle of New Orleans, we must redeploy, re-energize and re-mobilize the American forces. Or as I like to think of them as, the non-violent forces of good. Those tangible things, those values of determination, service, sacrifice, selflessness and a commitment to community. These are the forces of good that make us who we are as a people. Join the movement and get involved.”
The 2nd Battle of New Orleans from BlanketNewOrleans.Org on Vimeo.
Martin Luther King III is the gracious recipient of our inaugural Golden Blanket Award. It was a great pleasure to speak with him about the project we are working on. We created the award as a way to recognize a national figure for their continued commitment to the recovery of New Orleans, those displaced by Katrina throughout the Gulf South, and the advancement of civic engagement. Mr. King III is the CEO of Realizing The Dream, which implements “bold initiatives to empower people to take charge of their lives and the life of their communities.”
