Big thanks to Upperline Financial

Thank you to Upperline Financial for helping to underwrite Rising Tide X.  This will be the first free admission Rising Tide conference due in large part to our generous sponsors.


Rising Tide Nola Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29

But wait there's more!

Look what else is happening at Rising Tide X

Taking Action: Building the Movement in Our Communities and Beyond

Open discussion with Dr. Jill Stein, community organizer, physician, environmental justice activist, presidential candidate.

3rd floor boardroom
  11:45-12:30PM

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.    

Big thanks to Gambit, Uptown Messenger and Mid-City Messenger

The organizers of Rising Tide X would like to express our gratitude to Gambit, Uptown Messenger and Mid-City Messenger for sponsoring this year's conference. Their generous promotional assistance will help to make this tenth Rising Tide a memorable event.

Thank you!

Rising Tide Nola Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29

If you're coming to Rising Tide X

Maybe you're coming by RTA or by bike or by helicopter if you are Donald Trump. There are many ways to get where Y'at. We'll be discussing all of them, in fact.  But if you're coming by car, most likely you'll want to know where to put it.

In which case you'll want to consult this map of the Xavier campus. The University Center, where RT will take place, is highlighted in red and convenient parking in green. Parking designations for faculty or staff, etc., do not apply on the weekend.

The conference welcome will begin at 9:30 in the third floor main ballroom.  After that, you'll want to consult the cubes.

History of the Tulane Basketball Scandal

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

10 a.m.
History of the Tulane Basketball Scandal & Poydras Street Report Podcast

Ryne Hancock returns from Memphis to talk about the Tulane Basketball Scandal from back in the day, hopefully while live-broadcasting for the Poydras Street Report podcast.

• Ryne Hancock
  @rhancock19

Battle to Save the Times-Picayne, Viewing & Discussion

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

3 p.m.
Battle to Save the Times-Picayne, Viewing & Discussion

Rebecca Thiem founded the nonprofit dashTHIRTYdash to raise awareness about the changes at the newspaper and money for the hundreds of employees who lost their jobs. She subsequently wrote Hell and High Water: The Battle the Save the New Orleans Times-Picayune, about that battle and the forces roiling newspapers across the country, including the dozens owned by Advance Publications, longtime owner of the Picayune. Because of the role Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath played in the international recognition of thePicayune and its staff, and simultaneously in the decline of the newspaper’s once-vaunted financial performance, the storm is a major character in the book.

• Rebecca Theim
  reporter & author

Short Term Rentals in New Orleans: GIS Study

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

11 a.m.
Short Term Rentals in New Orleans: GIS Study

Breonne DeDecker & her team are using research and GIS data to track Short Term Rentals in New Orleans. They're working to understand how this affects the overal rental market and figure out what sort of policy intervention could improve housing access and affordability.

• Breonne DeDecker
  author & photographer  

NOLA[up]rooted: A Study on Social Media & Displaced New Orleanians

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

10:30 a.m.
NOLA[up]rooted: A Study on Social Media & Displaced New Orleanians

Itza Carbajal & Joy Delgado present "NOLA (Up)rooted," a study on using social media and data mapping to track the New Orleans diaspora and find out who's already home and who's trying to get back.

• Itza Carbajal
  @iforitza
  
• Elisabeth Joy Delgado
  @joylynnd

Gideon Rising: Daring to Defend the Poor Post-Katrina

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

10 a.m.
Gideon Rising: Daring to Defend the Poor Post-Katrina

• Derwyn Bunton
  New Orleans Public Defender

Tech School at Rising Tide X

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

Tech School: Room 205C, 2nd Floor Xavier University - University Center

10 a.m. Video On a Budget David White 11 a.m. Growing Your Brand On Instagram Mallory Whitfield @MissMalaprop 12 p.m. Unraveling the Facebook Algorithm Cara Jouglard @CaraJouglard Katy Monnot @birdonthestreet 3 p.m. Intro To Podcasting Speaker: Daniel Zimmerman

Domestic Violence & Social Services in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

3 p.m.
Domestic Violence & Social Services in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Moderator: Beth Blankenship, Women's Center Director at University of New Orleans

• Shana Griffin
  Research & Advocacy Director at the Women’s Health & Justice Initiative
• Pamela J. Jenkins
  Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University of New Orleans
• Mary Claire Landry
  Executive Director at New Orleans Family Justice Center Alliance
• Amalfi K. Parker Elder
  Blueprint for Safety Interagency Coordinator at City of New Orleans Department of Health
• Lisa Richardson
  Director of Research & Evaluation at the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies

Panel Discussion: Education in New Orleans: The Next 10 Years

 


Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
3 p.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

For the last 10 years, New Orleans has played the blame game in education.
 

Reformers have shamed the past to argue for change. In return, reform has been charged with destroying public education for future children. The aftermath of Katrina should have incited passions. However, everyone seems to have profited from the debate except for public school families—the people who need more than just words.

Durable arguments have concretized into an immovable tableau that gets in the way of both justice and progress. Pointing fingers to say who did what to who doesn’t solve problems. Progress forces us to ask where do we go from here. 

This session will ask participants where should New Orleans education head in the next 10 years. 

Moderator: Andre Perry, Columnist

Amanda Aiken, Principal of Crocker Elementary

Sharon Clark, Principal of Sophie B. Wright Charter School

Karran Harper Royal, Parent Advocate

Jamar MckNeely, CEO of the Inspire Network

Dana Peterson, Deputy Superintendent, Recovery School District

Lamont Douglass, Parent and PTA Member at Wilson Elementary 

The Education panel will begin at 3:00 pm in the UC ballroom. 

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.   

Open Primaries in Louisiana: Is there a better way to do this, or are we so far behind that we’re ahead?

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

12 p.m.
Open Primaries in Louisiana: Is there a better way to do this, or are we so far behind that we’re ahead?

Moderator: Scott Sternberg, @slslsu 

• Stephanie Grace
  Political columnist for The Advocate  @stephgracenola 
• Karen Carvin Shachat
  Carvin/Seeder Consulting  
• Brian Brox
  Professor of Political Science - Tulane University 
• Westley Bayas III
  Chair, Young Democrats of New Orleans -@WestleyBayas

Melanated Writers Collective Presents: 10 Writers for 10 Years

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

11 a.m.
Melanated Writers Collective Presents: 10 Writers for 10 Years

Members of the Melanated Writers Collective will read poetry and fiction in remembrance of Hurricane Katrina and what it means to live in New Orleans today.

MWC Facebook Event

Readings by:

• Maurice Ruffin
• Ambata Kazi-Nance
• Gian Smith
• jewel bush 

Environmental Panel: Are we any Dam Safer?

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
11:30 am

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Rising Tide V (Howlin Wolf 2010 Fantastic time was had by all) featured a presentation on levee standards by Tim Ruppert. The presentation was cleverly titled "When can we get some Dam Safety in New Orleans?" The presentation does not appear to have been filmed. Luckily, Tim's annotations are still online. Here's the summary.

The thrust of my presentation is this: As long as we think of levees as protection for houses and furniture, there will be no motivation to increase the level of protection. Houses and furniture can be replaced and the government underwrites the insurance to cover those losses.

We need to talk about levees as serving a higher purpose: levees are often life-safety structures. When levees fail, people die. That’s what’s important and that’s what we should be designing for.

Five years after this talk and, of course, ten years after the catastrophic failure of New Orleans's flood protection system, Lens environmental reporter Bob Marshall writes that our standard is still inadequate. 

Of all the questions being asked about New Orleans’ progress 10 years after the disaster that killed nearly 1,500 residents and clouded its future, the most persistent has been this: Is it safer now?

Interviews with engineers and storm experts resulted in answers filled with caveats and concerns such as Luettich’s.

The best summation: It’s safer for houses, but not necessarily for the people who live in them.

That’s because the new system is the city’s best engineered and built ever, but it was designed to a lower level of protection than the one that failed. It’s also less than what Congress ordered in 1965. It was built to provide property insurance, not save lives. And experts insist it’s insufficient for an important city sitting on a sinking delta in hurricane alley during the age of climate-induced sea level rise and mega storms.

The legal standard for determining the safety of a dam is measured in lives. But "when levees fail, people die" also. And still we're building levees only rated to a standard that satisfies property insurers.  Shouldn't we be asking for more dam safety?

At Rising Tide X, Bob Marshall will participate in a discussion about flood control and about the deteriorating South Louisiana coastal marshes without which the entire system is moot. Here is the full panel.


Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade , began her career in Nigeria, collaborating with local communities to address oil companies’ destruction of the Niger Delta. She returned to Louisiana in 2000 and founded the Louisiana Bucket Brigade to end oil pollution in her home state. The organization has created cutting edge tools, including the iWitness Pollution Map, the Refinery Accident Database and in street based artistic performances.  Anne was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana where many people made their fortunes from the oil industry. She has seen the wealth and the poverty created by oil production and seeks to make the industry more equitable.  She has a Masters in International Development from Tulane; she has twice testified before Congress. Her work has been recognized by local and national awards, including the Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Public Advocacy and the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leader Award.

Bob Marshall covers environmental issues for The Lens, with a special focus on coastal restoration and wetlands. While at The Times-Picayune, his work chronicling the people, stories and issues of Louisiana’s wetlands was recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes and other awards. In 2012 Marshall was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Loyola University School of Communications Den of Distinction. 

Jonathan Henderson manages the Gulf Restoration Network's  field operations in the Gulf region. By air, sea and land, he searches for, documents and reports pollution incidents such as leaking pipelines, well heads, platforms, and ongoing BP disaster impacts. He also documents the extensive O&G industry destruction of Louisiana wetlands. He is a founding member of the Greater New Orleans Water Collaborative of which he serves on the interim steering committee and as co-chair of the Advocacy working group. Jonathan is also the Founding President of Vanishing Earth advocacy consulting photography. Born and raised New Orleans, Jonathan grew up fishing and canoeing in Louisiana's bayous and creeks, visiting family along coastal Mississippi, and vacationing on beaches in Alabama and Florida. Jonathan has a Bachelor’s degree in Theater from LSU, a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and a JD from Southern University Law Center.

The Environmental panel will begin at 11:30 am in the UC Ballroom. 

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.   

She's Got Her Own: New Orleans Black Women Creating Their Own Spaces Online and in Print.

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

Seminar Room: 2nd Floor - Xavier University - University Center

10 a.m. She's Got Her Own: New Orleans Black Women Creating Their Own Spaces Online and in Print. Panel will discuss the importance of women of color perspectives in print and online and the challenges they've faced in New Orleans to go from vision to fruition. Moderator: Charmel Gaulden. Kysha Brown RobinsonCo-Founder of Runagate Press Desiree EvansCo-Founder of Wildseeds: The New Orleans Octavia Butler Emergent Strategy Collective Kelly HarrisFounder of BrassyBrown.com Rachel GrahamCEO of Small Hinges - Strategies Communications Events

Gary Rivlin, Katrina: After the Flood

Rising Tide X
Aug. 29, 2015
9 a.m.

Xavier University
1 Drexel Drive

Admission is free.
Register at Eventbrite

Gary Rivlin, author of Katrina: After the Flood an investigative reporting fellow at The Nation Institute, is a former New York Times reporter and the author of five books, including most recently Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.—How the Working Poor Became Big Business. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, GQ, and Wired, among other publications.

Panel Discussion: Transportation: How'd ya Get Where Yat?

Freelance writer Megan Braden-Perry created the popular Public Transit Tuesdays feature for Gambit Weekly where she became your friendly guide to the often daunting task of getting around New Orleans via RTA. Megan will moderate a conversation about how New Orleans makes infrastructure an obstacle course.

• Rachel Heiligman of Ride New Orleans
  
  
• Dan Favre of Bike Easy
  
  
• Jeff Januszek of Fix My Streets
  
  
• Amanda Soprano from #NOLATwitter @AmandaSoprano

This panel will begin at 10:30am in the UC ballroom.

After the Transportation panel, Amanda Soprano's taking over the classroom for a breakout session on New Orleans RTA issues specifically.

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production, there's a separate GoFundMe page here. 

Author and Journalist Gary Rivilin Speaks at Rising Tide X

Gary Rivlin, author of Katrina: After the Flood an investigative reporting fellow at The Nation Institute, is a former New York Times reporter and the author of five books, including most recently Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.—How the Working Poor Became Big Business. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, GQ, and Wired, among other publications.

Rivlin has spent the past decade in and out of New Orleans researching the city's recovery. Katrina: After the Flood was recently reviewed by Gambit.  

Katrina: After the Flood

By Gary Rivlin (Simon & Schuster, $27)

Rivlin covered the aftermath of Katrina for The New York Times and pieces together a tapestry of portraits and tales that should place this as one of the definitive books on the subject. He was a fly on the wall at meetings of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission (which was, of course, about bringing back some neighborhoods and not others), and examines the 2006 mayoral race, which brought 21 challengers against Mayor Ray Nagin, who had made headlines with his "chocolate city" comment. Along the way, Rivlin tells personal stories of New Orleanians just trying to get by, like that of Cassandra Wall, who believes the stress of the storm contributed to her mother's death from cancer, and the late Mack McClendon, who worked on his destroyed house all day and slept in a formaldehyde-poisoned FEMA trailer at night.

There are fascinating quotes on nearly every page, from real estate developer Pres Kabacoff ("It took a Katrina to finally turn things around") to Nagin, who allowed talk show host Oprah Winfrey to enter the Superdome only after swearing aloud, "I, Oprah Winfrey, promise not to hold the city liable financially or otherwise as a result of me going into this doggone stinky-ass Superdome."

Rivlin also resurrects a 2006 story by The New York Times' Adam Nossiter, who described boosters imagining a New Orleans that has become "an arts-infused mecca for youthful risk-takers, a boomtown where entrepreneurs can repair to cool French Quarter bars in ancient buildings after a hard day of deal making." You be the judge.

In Rolling Stone this week, Rivlin reports on a generation of young New Orleanians whose lives were affected by the disaster.

Gary Rivilin's talk will begin the day at Rising Tide X in the Ballroom at 10:00 am. 

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.  

Hello... Is this thing on?

Hi. It's Jeff.

I'm going to be posting some information here today about the schedule for Rising Tide X.. or Rising Tide 10.. or #RisingTideX as some have hashtagged it.. or #RTX as others have.. or you can even use #StillStanding which is a joke nobody gets.  But please do not call it #ThePartyWagonBubbleMachine because that is not funny.

The first thing you need to know about the conference this year, though, is that there are 10 things you need to know about it.

But another thing you need to know about it is, HOLY CRAP there are CUBES!


Whoever thought that Rising Tide would get so big and multi-faceted that we would need cubes. Nuts, right?   Actually, we're very pleased to offer the full... robust... schedule we'd always hoped to present.  This is going to be a great event. And the best thing about it is, unlike the big bright corporate sponsored, city endorsed events going on all week, Rising Tide is very much a homemade, volunteer, grassroots affair.

Okay, actually, the best thing about it is you can get in free for nothing if you want this time, which is something else we've always aspired to. (You can still help us cover costs with a donation if you like.) This is your conference, New Orleans. We couldn't be more proud to have presented it for a decade.

Stay tuned for some content updates. We hope to see you Saturday.

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production, there's a separate GoFundMe page here. 

Civil Rights leader DeRay Mckesson to keynote Rising Tide X conference

The organizers of Rising Tide, the premier annual new media conference in the GulfSouth, are proud to announce that civil rights activist DeRay McKesson (@deray) will deliver the keynote speech at Rising Tide X (#RTX), Aug. 29 at Xavier University.

Since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, McKesson has used social media to amplify protest and advocacy against oppressive systems. In the past year he has become one of the most widely-recognized civil rights leaders of his generation. His keynote, scheduled for 2pm, will highlight a full day of multi-track content at Rising Tide X.

Rising Tide organizer Mark Moseley said, "Part of Rising Tide's mission is to use technology to transform advocacy into action. No one has done that better over the past year than DeRay McKesson. He is at the forefront of an innovative digital movement to expose and resist systems of racial oppression. We thank him for accepting our invitation and look forward to his speech and presence in New Orleans on August 29."

Fortune magazine rated McKesson #11 on its list of “World’s Greatest Leaders.” The Los Angeles Times hailed McKesson as one of the “new civil rights leaders,” and New York Magazine profiled him in May and said he helped build the "nation’s first 21st-century civil rights movement."

For more on @DeRay, see his bio page here.

Rising Tide X will be free admission. Organizers aim to have free lunch for attendees, as well, but this will be contingent on the amount of donations received on the RTX Go Fund Me page gofundme.com/7y3bpndfw

Rising Tide X registration
Rising Tide website
Rising Tide X FB
Rising Tide twitter

The 10th annual Rising Tide New Media Conference will be held from 9am-5pm at the University Center at Xavier University of Louisiana, 1 Drexel Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana 70125 on August 29, 2015.