Neighborhood Meetup of February 3rd, 2007

From New Orleans Wiki

Attending

• Brian Denzer
• Karen Gadbois
• Deborah Langhoff
• H.V. Nagendra
• Gloria-Jean Masciarotte
• Becky Houtman
• Marty Rowland
• Laureen Lentz
• Cory Sparks
• Michelle Kimball
• Alan Gutierrez
• Patty Lepayre
• John DeFraties
• Amy Lafont

Brian: This is the first Neighborhood Meetup.

We are frustrated with the way that things are going, very frustrating, City Hall does things as if it were business as usual.

This neighborhood meetup is for citizens to own a process to own a process for solving a process.

Karen: Squandered Heritage was invited into the dialog to effect change. It works with Stacy Head and the PRC.

An effort to get to the passionate issue: Housing desperately needed, yet these houses that are sitting empty. The musician's village, surrounded by empty houses.

Stop criminalizing our buildings. Talk about the issues.

Brian: They come to our table. There are problems in the process, there is no way that Stacy Head, Arnie Fielkow or Oliver Thomas could identify this. That's when we became a resource. That's their job, but they need our help, because we're more on the ground.

Laureen: Once we've identified a historic structure, it's up to the neighborhood at that point. You can't care about it more than they do. We make an effort not to proxy itself, you do not hand it off to Laureen and Karen.

Nagendra: As much as you might consider people power you pass on the personal sense of responsibility, we all have very limited resources, post Katrina, communication becomes key, if you have active cells, at the each of the neighborhoods, there is this mechanism that active cells can connect with each other, with the enforcement entities at City Hall. It is not that City Hall doesn't want to. It has to be more than a voice of the people.

A collective mechanism. Give grants to the schools to give parents funds to fix schools.

Karen: Anecdotal evidence is powerful.

Nagendra: There were marketing blasts to attend the UNOP. Yet, no marketing blasts about the product, come and take a look at this.

Brian: Local radio discussing the plan, where do we get the $14 billion. Where to we get the $14 billion is not the best question. We need more intelligent communications.

Nagendra: Mass media Taps into the desire of immediacy. Change the mindset.

Marty: Strategy versus tactics. Strategic. We need to change so how to we make that change. Creation of District 6 Community Council. We have the model for how the rest of the city could do it. If one group does it right, committee thats on education.

Editor: What is a committee?

Marty: One of the problems learned from Gentilly: You cannot rely on neighborhood presidents to be political advocates, let's stop that radio tower, the district level is the right level for bringing people together.

We set the agenda, if we don't like you, we're going to vote you out.

Nagendra: We're in the 3rd District, we started the exact same conversation.

Flood washed boundaries away. They were created so politicians can govern. The crime march showed the connections between the nodes within the boundaries.

Communications and networking. That is the key to this. We are little neighborhoods, we are not big, ten square blocks, we are all active within our cells, we need to depend on each other.

Palmer Park is an asset to everyone on Carrollton Ave. Next Thursday, we are meeting on the other church.

Michelle: Four different types of organization, geographic, political district b coordinating council, issues other than zoning and planning, away form land use, planning district, umbrella, issue groups, taking in all the political issues, schools and crime.

• Arbitrary Geographic
• Planning District
• Umbrella
• Political

Cory: Saul Alinsky, networking on a gut level, one to one. Make a connection one person after another. The strength here is to build relationships to the 21st century using additional communication technology.

300 or 700 is right politicos, we can have smaller groups.

Karen: The Congressional Hearing was a cloistered hearing. Most of us stayed outside. We are staying outside a conversation that needs to take place between politicians and citizenry, and not between politicians and politicians. Ourselves being undeniable part of the dialog, presence, not sitting outside the chambers waiting.

Deborah: The citizenry knows where the problems are, where the solutions are.

One one of the problems with organizing frameworks, in New Orleans we are all so different. We need to get our cousins here, we need to get people who where born here, here. Lack of Internet?

Politicians are listening. Who are the listening to? They are listening to the people who put them in office. That is why I'm doing this.

Editor: Put our candidates in there.

Laureen: Servant leadership. People turn to me because I'm here and it's something that I know how to do.

Michelle: Some basic guidelines for civic leadership.

Amy: All of my displaced people were asking during the elections, what's up with Shelly and Jay Batt, what's gong on? The planning process, I asked what did you get? They said nothing. Interest is there, but they are unaware of this process.

With the school system and the planning process, they have rejected local input.

Brian: We're all thinking the same way, we all understand that we have our point of interest. We're in agreement that we're working in isolation. I value this face time. The face time is where we really develop trust.

Crime and media, sustatinable issues, crime is first, media second, I proposed a structure that might work, crime boards that would be based in neighborhood planning organizations.

Blakely was appointed to protect Ray Nagin. He's not interacting with the community. Every neighborhood, every race, every class, marched on City Hall. Riely has not be present. He came to the 2nd District NONPAC meeting. The answers he provided were misleading. He has not invited the community into a process.

Deborah: Crime boards address immediate need. Always been an environmentalist. In cities with trees have less crime. Baton Rouge has planted 40,000 trees. Trees are a symbol of hope.

Cory: ACT and Carrollton United have frustrations with the second district, getting information in a timely manner. Any cameras in the hot-spot areas.

911 does not get information to officers or detectives. Perhaps, text messages to the detective's phones.

Brian: Moving forward with the appearance of community policing. No answer to what the criminal justice community as a whole, before the city throws up their hands.

Marty: I'm conducting a course on oversight and perhaps someone can take on crime, analyze it in depth.

• If there 19 police agencies in Orleans Parish, maybe 38 are better, or 2302 are better?
• How much money goes into them?

Nagendra: Repopulation is key to the survival of our neighborhood. Communications with the media. The networking is key.

CBNO/MAC is trying to do it city wide. We are not finding comfort in each other.

Patty: Communicating between police and the district attorney. Do what we can to be proactive about it. Captain Boyalice now. Know people by now.

I've gotten a listserv up and running. Beg people for immediate crime alerts. We're linked together.

They take alerts and send it to the next couple of neighborhoods.

We need to come together, and be proactive with the crime. Community policing, joining COPS, too. They help provide cops with the vest.

Become proactive with the police as part of the community network. Pay attention to the neighborhood going on.

Tracking cases is hard to do, that's not what..

Karen: This is what we did. We photographed a crackhouse. We went to NONPAC meetings. We can't get information about protocol. We need information about protocol issues.

There is a guy on the corner flashing.

There is a guy dumping cars.

Where is protocol. Can we get together with the Fraternal Order Police. There is a committee.

Deborah: There were meetings once, that included the DA. A juvenile advocate. Someone from the judiciary.

Brian: Criminal justice system is broken and not working. They are not giving a response that develops confidence that we can fix these problems.

We need to require that they actively engage with us to solve these problems.

Karen: What information is public access. How do we put it out there.

Patty: We need to put the information out there. They don't even put that. Call it in. Put it down.

Alan: ChicagoCrime.org

Brian: City Council needs to assert our ownership the 911 service data.

The NOPD gets those calls for data.

Nagendra: Thinking in terms of resources that are already there, we don't have to duplicate. You have the Metro Crime Commissions, the Crime Stoppers, the missing part, preventive measures.

The criminal justice system is not just the police department, we have to complete that circle. If we can use the resources.

Brian: I've approached Rafael, this is not going to happen, these organizations are in the way.

Patty: I'll be talking to MCC this week. MCC gets the criminal court information.

Brian: I'd prefer to get the information.

Amy: We cast too wide a net. We need quality policing.

Brian: How do we get the correct information? Endymion as an example.

Karen: How do we form a workgroup?

Editor: At this point, there was consensus that we need to get raw 911 service data. However, we did not determine exactly how to proceed.