Sunday, October 14, 2007

First Kim gives me food for thought...

...and then I went to see Left Behind.

Wow.

Ran into Sophmom, who managed to head on down to these parts on her own despite her recent health woes, and Madame DB, and we watched this film together. We bawled over it together. We gave kudos to one of the filmmakers and met a few more blogger folk there together.

This documentary is good. It ought to be coming to every city near you and then some.

I live in New Orleans. What the film details is a public education disaster in these parts that has been a long time in the making and an even longer time in the discovery and dissection of its inner workings. The school board here hired a superintendent that finally tipped those scales in a big way...and yet, nothing really changed until 8-29. And why?

Among many other reasons, the folks here balked at getting the feds to come in and investigate things fully. They said having an "outside auditor" look at the cooked Orleans parish school system books and sketchy contracts was a statement of no confidence in the workings of a board that had five new members on it. Huh...sounds just a tad like a recent statement made by a certain gubernatorial Pinhead candidate about the Jena 6 protestors. (Speaking of which, said candidate apparently got a massive load of campaign dough to get a landfill opened near the state capital. If that ain't a low-down dirty shame, I don't know what is...)

Anyhow, this system still needs to get turned around. This diagram of the system as it stands now adds another dimension to the mess. My son is right in the middle of it, in a charter that is technically under the umbrella of the OPSB. Many, many other children are also in the middle, as are teachers who are doing their best in a severely crippled system to teach these kids and to show them that somebody frickin' cares.

Pardon me while I paraphrase, but...Ice-T needs to tell other filmgoers that if they wanna be ordinary, do the ordinary. If you wanna be extraordinary, do the extraordinary.

Michael Eric Dyson needs to tell the same folks that we need to look beyond the time in which we are in. Don't plan just for right now, which might be the worst time ever in your life. Plan for the best. Plan for the beyond.

This film needs to be in more theaters. Period.

___________________

Oh, and in watching the Saints finally play like we all know they can (though it is the third quarter...there's still time for them to fall flatter than pancakes!), I caught this little ad for a Lincoln vehicle featuring Harry Connick Jr. and his pet project, the Musicians' Village. Uhhh, Harry, will the muckety mucks at Ford be contributing a little something to the effort with the sale of each vehicle? Surely you could have talked those people into donating a percentage of the sales of their latest gas guzzler/crawfish delivery maker to Habitat for Humanity. Or, at the very least, to the development of vehicles that don't run on gasoline. Or to putting the wetlands back. You know, to actually restoring hope and homes...

Duh!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ford's Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts
Ford Motor Company, Ford Fund and employees donated more than $6.5 million to aid areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Efforts included donating 275 vehicles and sending a mobile command center unit to St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, to facilitate communications between various law enforcement agencies. The mobile command center also served as the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's office.

Some Ford volunteers donated their time working in the areas hardest hit by the hurricane, while others partnered with groups like Habitat for Humanity to help provide shelter to families affected by the storm. In addition, more than 1,300 Ford volunteers staffed phones in 18 call centers throughout the United States to accept nearly $1.5 million in donations for the Salvation Army and American Red Cross hurricane relief efforts as part of a nationwide telethon. Ford was the only automotive company to participate.

In recognition of its efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Ford received a U.S. Chamber of Commerce award.

Anonymous said...

What a great website it has. And I missed it. D***. The trailer is making me want to quit my job and go to work with N.O. youth. Hmmm. I maybe should do that, in some more modest way. Hmmm.

Leigh C. said...

It's a hard row to hoe. But the rewards are probably pretty great, if the insanity of it all doesn't burn you out first...

Anonymous said...

I suggest you visit the Habitat For Humanity Musicians' Village website for more information on the progress being made by Mr. Connick's innovative and heart-felt contribution.

em said...

i really wanted to make it to see left behind! but there were distractions. i've heard such good things about the film.

Anonymous said...

I need to see it. I was even in town but I was trying to see if Chico's could be prevented from taking over the whole block across from Whole Foods to expand their strip mall. Watch out for this ... that mega Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck?) is bad enough. !