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Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six
Organizers, activists, artists and community members share their struggles in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina. Floodlines is a firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans. The book weaves the stories of gay rappers, Mardi Gras Indians, Arab and Latino immigrants, public housing residents, and grassroots activists. From post-Katrina evacuee camps to torture testimony at Angola Prison to organizing with the family members of the Jena Six, Floodlines tells the stories behind the headlines from an unforgettable time and place in history.
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First published June 1, 2010
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About the author
Jordan Flaherty
8 books20 followersJordan Flaherty is an award-winning journalist, producer, and author. He has appeared as a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows, including CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, RT America, the Alan Colmes Show on Fox, and News and Notes on NPR. He is the author of the books No More Heroes: Grassroots Responses to the Savior Mentality and Floodlines: Community and Resistance From Katrina to the Jena Six and has produced television documentaries and news reports for Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera English, teleSUR, The Laura Flanders Show, and Democracy Now.
Jordan’s print journalism has been featured in dozens of publications, from the New York Times and Washington Post to ColorLines and the Village Voice. His articles have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, and published in major publications around the world, including Die Zeit in Germany, Clarin in Argentina, Juventude Rebelde in Cuba, Red Pepper in England, and many more from Lebanon to Paris to New Zealand to South Africa. He has also reported as a correspondent for Agence France Presse, and written for dozens of news websites including Huffington Post, CommonDreams, AlterNet, Counterpunch, and ZNet. He has been a regular correspondent or frequent guest on Democracy Now, Radio Nation on Air America, and many other outlets. As a white southerner who speaks honestly about race, Jordan Flaherty has been regularly published in Black progressive forums such as Black Commentator and Black Agenda Report, and is a regular guest on Black radio stations and programs such as Keep Hope Alive With Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Jordan has produced award-winning fiction films, documentaries, music videos, and news reports, and his reporting and analysis has been published in several anthologies, including the South End Press books Live From Palestine and What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race and the State of the Nation; the University of Georgia Press book What is a City; the AK Press book Red State Rebels; and Bury The Dead from Cascade Books. He has appeared as an actor in HBO’s television series Treme, playing himself. He produced the fiction film Chocolate Babies, which won best picture awards at South by Southwest and New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Jordan was the first journalist to bring the case of the Jena Six to a national audience, and he has so far been the only journalist identified as a subject of the New York City Police Department’s spying programs. His journalism awards include awards from New America Media for Best Post-Katrina Reporting in the Ethnic Press, and from the National Headliner Awards for Best Broadcast Environmental Reporting.
Jordan has lectured at dozens of colleges, universities and conferences including Columbia University, Stanford Law School, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of California at Los Angeles, SUNY Stonybrook, American University in Washington DC, Loyola University Chicago, University of Florida, University of Chicago, University of Texas at Austin, Loyola Law School, Tulane University, University of New Orleans, Xavier University, and many others. He is also an editor of The Abolitionist, a bilingual newspaper distributed mostly in prisons in North and South America, and from 2004-2011 he was a part of the editorial collective that published Left Turn Magazine, a publication that reported from progressive and revolutionary movements around the world.
You can see more of his work at jordanflaherty.org, and some of his recent writing at medium.com/@secondlines.
Jordan’s print journalism has been featured in dozens of publications, from the New York Times and Washington Post to ColorLines and the Village Voice. His articles have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, and published in major publications around the world, including Die Zeit in Germany, Clarin in Argentina, Juventude Rebelde in Cuba, Red Pepper in England, and many more from Lebanon to Paris to New Zealand to South Africa. He has also reported as a correspondent for Agence France Presse, and written for dozens of news websites including Huffington Post, CommonDreams, AlterNet, Counterpunch, and ZNet. He has been a regular correspondent or frequent guest on Democracy Now, Radio Nation on Air America, and many other outlets. As a white southerner who speaks honestly about race, Jordan Flaherty has been regularly published in Black progressive forums such as Black Commentator and Black Agenda Report, and is a regular guest on Black radio stations and programs such as Keep Hope Alive With Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Jordan has produced award-winning fiction films, documentaries, music videos, and news reports, and his reporting and analysis has been published in several anthologies, including the South End Press books Live From Palestine and What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race and the State of the Nation; the University of Georgia Press book What is a City; the AK Press book Red State Rebels; and Bury The Dead from Cascade Books. He has appeared as an actor in HBO’s television series Treme, playing himself. He produced the fiction film Chocolate Babies, which won best picture awards at South by Southwest and New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Jordan was the first journalist to bring the case of the Jena Six to a national audience, and he has so far been the only journalist identified as a subject of the New York City Police Department’s spying programs. His journalism awards include awards from New America Media for Best Post-Katrina Reporting in the Ethnic Press, and from the National Headliner Awards for Best Broadcast Environmental Reporting.
Jordan has lectured at dozens of colleges, universities and conferences including Columbia University, Stanford Law School, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of California at Los Angeles, SUNY Stonybrook, American University in Washington DC, Loyola University Chicago, University of Florida, University of Chicago, University of Texas at Austin, Loyola Law School, Tulane University, University of New Orleans, Xavier University, and many others. He is also an editor of The Abolitionist, a bilingual newspaper distributed mostly in prisons in North and South America, and from 2004-2011 he was a part of the editorial collective that published Left Turn Magazine, a publication that reported from progressive and revolutionary movements around the world.
You can see more of his work at jordanflaherty.org, and some of his recent writing at medium.com/@secondlines.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 7, 2017
This book is a stellar examination of Hurricane Katrina and the organizing in its aftermath. It provides excellent introductions to issues like The Shock Doctrine, Disaster Capitalism, The New Jim Crow, school privatization, the Non-Profit Industrial System, destruction of public housing, and white savior-ism, with depth and nuance. It is a remarkably empowering book with countless examples of folks daring to struggle, daring to win against remarkable odds.
Every white person who seeks justice should read this.
*I got this as a complimentary ebook from Haymarket Books in the days after 2017's hurricanes. Flaherty offers the book for free in a variety of digital formats on his website. The paperback is also available from Haymarket, a publisher that should have all your money anyway.
Every white person who seeks justice should read this.
*I got this as a complimentary ebook from Haymarket Books in the days after 2017's hurricanes. Flaherty offers the book for free in a variety of digital formats on his website. The paperback is also available from Haymarket, a publisher that should have all your money anyway.
November 15, 2019
A hard read
November 12, 2010
yay on Jordan!
As a citizen-journalist and social justice activist in New Orleans, Jordan Flaherty conveys in powerful and passionate prose the numerous ways in which New Orleans’ most economically and politically disenfranchised populations—prisoners, people of color, immigrants, public housing occupants, and urban youth—have been continually subjected to discriminatory practices post-Katrina. While the immediate aftermath of the levee breaks highlighted egregious national government negligence that continues to plague the recovery of the city five years later, Floodlines juxtaposes callous government actions alongside others such as the closing of Charity Hospital, the razing of public of public housing, and the firing nearly all of New Orleans schoolteachers and situating them within the city’s history of political corruption, police brutality, and abandonment of public education and affordable healthcare. However, rather than simply critique these oppressive institutional and policies pre- and post-Katrina, Flaherty weaves a narrative of resistance and hope throughout his book, revealing how alternative civic infrastructures such as bookstores, community centers, even architectural urban features such as porch stoops, can be sites of resistance in neglected communities often through the intersection of culture and politics.
Performance, story circles, poetry, music---all have become collective forms of resistance, primarily within New Orleanian African American communities, that contribute to community sustenance and rejuvenation and that materially embody social change. Whether it is his discussion of spoken word poets such as Sunni Patterson, transgender bounce performer, Freedia, song and dance by Mardi Grass Indians, or traditional secondline, Flaherty’s examples underscore how cultural traditions within historically oppressed communities are politically motivated in their relation to community. His analysis of cultural traditions also points to the ineluctable relationship that space and cultural practices have on developing particular kinds of resistance. As he mentions early on in the book, “Organizing in New Orleans looks different than it does in other places. It is more about building community and family, about sharing stories and meals.”
The dominance of white majority voices in media and publications about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has drowned out other stories of survival and resistance primarily those of people of color. As Flaherty notes in his introduction, his own positionality as a white writer is problematic in that he may in some way “be benefiting from others’ struggles,” (2) yet he hopes that through writing this book he has tried “to find systems of accountability by engaging in dialogue and action with the people whose struggles are depicted in this book” (3). Throughout the book, Flaherty maintains this accountability by avoiding what has become a default position among many journalists championing under-represented, marginalized social groups: the heroic journalist who tells the story of those who cannot. Instead his lens consistently remains focused on how social justice organizations already established in New Orleans responded to the recovery process and how their attempts to establish a political agenda during the recovery was thwarted not just by corrupt local and national interests but also well-meaning outsiders: white volunteers, NGOs and foundations.
This book should be read not solely for its substantive insertion of how social justice movements and cultural practices have played a critical role during the recovery process, but the book is prescient in that the issues and problems magnified by the city’s devastation are those many other urban areas are facing as debt-saturated states divest in public education, government-subsidized housing, and affordable healthcare, contributing to an increasingly dysfunctional democracy where only a small percentage of working American can afford what were once basic rights. What has happened to New Orleans since August 2005 (sans the floodlines) can now happen anywhere.
As a citizen-journalist and social justice activist in New Orleans, Jordan Flaherty conveys in powerful and passionate prose the numerous ways in which New Orleans’ most economically and politically disenfranchised populations—prisoners, people of color, immigrants, public housing occupants, and urban youth—have been continually subjected to discriminatory practices post-Katrina. While the immediate aftermath of the levee breaks highlighted egregious national government negligence that continues to plague the recovery of the city five years later, Floodlines juxtaposes callous government actions alongside others such as the closing of Charity Hospital, the razing of public of public housing, and the firing nearly all of New Orleans schoolteachers and situating them within the city’s history of political corruption, police brutality, and abandonment of public education and affordable healthcare. However, rather than simply critique these oppressive institutional and policies pre- and post-Katrina, Flaherty weaves a narrative of resistance and hope throughout his book, revealing how alternative civic infrastructures such as bookstores, community centers, even architectural urban features such as porch stoops, can be sites of resistance in neglected communities often through the intersection of culture and politics.
Performance, story circles, poetry, music---all have become collective forms of resistance, primarily within New Orleanian African American communities, that contribute to community sustenance and rejuvenation and that materially embody social change. Whether it is his discussion of spoken word poets such as Sunni Patterson, transgender bounce performer, Freedia, song and dance by Mardi Grass Indians, or traditional secondline, Flaherty’s examples underscore how cultural traditions within historically oppressed communities are politically motivated in their relation to community. His analysis of cultural traditions also points to the ineluctable relationship that space and cultural practices have on developing particular kinds of resistance. As he mentions early on in the book, “Organizing in New Orleans looks different than it does in other places. It is more about building community and family, about sharing stories and meals.”
The dominance of white majority voices in media and publications about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has drowned out other stories of survival and resistance primarily those of people of color. As Flaherty notes in his introduction, his own positionality as a white writer is problematic in that he may in some way “be benefiting from others’ struggles,” (2) yet he hopes that through writing this book he has tried “to find systems of accountability by engaging in dialogue and action with the people whose struggles are depicted in this book” (3). Throughout the book, Flaherty maintains this accountability by avoiding what has become a default position among many journalists championing under-represented, marginalized social groups: the heroic journalist who tells the story of those who cannot. Instead his lens consistently remains focused on how social justice organizations already established in New Orleans responded to the recovery process and how their attempts to establish a political agenda during the recovery was thwarted not just by corrupt local and national interests but also well-meaning outsiders: white volunteers, NGOs and foundations.
This book should be read not solely for its substantive insertion of how social justice movements and cultural practices have played a critical role during the recovery process, but the book is prescient in that the issues and problems magnified by the city’s devastation are those many other urban areas are facing as debt-saturated states divest in public education, government-subsidized housing, and affordable healthcare, contributing to an increasingly dysfunctional democracy where only a small percentage of working American can afford what were once basic rights. What has happened to New Orleans since August 2005 (sans the floodlines) can now happen anywhere.
September 4, 2013
This is awesome.
Floodlines is unequestionably the best book about New Orleans I've ever read, especially New Orleans following Katrina. I only wish I had been exposed to these stories of struggle and resistance many years ago while trying to find my footing in this city I love so much but can't quite seem to find my place in.
Flaherty is a community organizer and activist who is not unaware of the problems that he brings in telling these stories, as a young, white, male, outside. Yet his collecting these stories for others to hear is so so important.
The activists and organizers Flaherty knows and highlights are incredible, powerful, thoughtful, and remarkable people. They are the ones who fight for criminal justice reform because it affects them most, they are the ones who fight for school funding when their schools are defunded, they are the ones that fight to keep second lining when formal institutions tell them no. They are the storm's first responders, and most resilient rescuers. They are the people of New Orleans.
In watching my younger brother's activism, and those around him, and those around me, I am wholly inspired by the strength, foresight, commitment, and creativity that compels actors to tackle injustices according to their own rules, on their own times, and for the greatest benefit. Sure, there are attorneys in court, teachers in schools, journalists in the field, but the people en mass are who Flaherty highlights, and are who make the most difference in times of need. And we are always in times of need.
A powerful and uplifting read that also tells the truest version of the storm, both as it effected New Orleans and as her people responded. A must read.
Thank you!
Floodlines is unequestionably the best book about New Orleans I've ever read, especially New Orleans following Katrina. I only wish I had been exposed to these stories of struggle and resistance many years ago while trying to find my footing in this city I love so much but can't quite seem to find my place in.
Flaherty is a community organizer and activist who is not unaware of the problems that he brings in telling these stories, as a young, white, male, outside. Yet his collecting these stories for others to hear is so so important.
The activists and organizers Flaherty knows and highlights are incredible, powerful, thoughtful, and remarkable people. They are the ones who fight for criminal justice reform because it affects them most, they are the ones who fight for school funding when their schools are defunded, they are the ones that fight to keep second lining when formal institutions tell them no. They are the storm's first responders, and most resilient rescuers. They are the people of New Orleans.
In watching my younger brother's activism, and those around him, and those around me, I am wholly inspired by the strength, foresight, commitment, and creativity that compels actors to tackle injustices according to their own rules, on their own times, and for the greatest benefit. Sure, there are attorneys in court, teachers in schools, journalists in the field, but the people en mass are who Flaherty highlights, and are who make the most difference in times of need. And we are always in times of need.
A powerful and uplifting read that also tells the truest version of the storm, both as it effected New Orleans and as her people responded. A must read.
Thank you!
June 26, 2011
Man-made catastrophe. Demographic threats. Hundreds of thousands of refugees denied the right to return to their homes. A criminal justice system that is motivated by racism. A government that is determined to portray itself as a melting pot all the while pursuing policies that insure a system of inequality will be upheld in all sectors: education, healthcare, safety, housing. Jordan Flaherty's book may be about New Orleans, but it has so much to teach the world about catastrophes and how to resist them in a variety of contexts. His style of journalism is deeply rooted in grassroots organizing and activism. Flaherty paints a vivid picture of New Orleans historically, culturally, and currently. Readers will get an inside view on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina as well as the creative means to resist the ongoing depopulation of New Orleans that targets women, people of color, and the poor. This book is not only essential reading, it is a call to grassroots, leftist organizers. It is filled with ideas and an agenda for taking action not only in New Orleans, but beyond.
January 7, 2014
I'm happy that I finally went back and finished this book. Floodlines is a rigorously researched, street-level study of New Orleans in the years following Hurricane Katrina (finishing off with the story of the Jena Six). The book's content lays bare the brutal consequences of structural racism and capitalism, while at the same time raising up stories of resistance and struggles for justice. If you're looking for an in-depth analysis of specific aspects of post-Katrina New Orleans, this may not be the book for you - but if you'd like to read about what happened there, from the immediate aftermath to the ongoing consequences of disaster capitalism and institutionalized racism, as told by a respected organizer and journalist, I'd highly recommend it.
December 2, 2010
Best book I have read about community resilience and resistance in a long time. Highly recommend. I wrote a book review for Bitch about it, but I cannot say enough good things about this book. He does an amazing job talking about what it means to be an ally, how race, class, gender, and sexuality were at play in Katrina and New Orleans. And he tells a really important story of staggering injustice and people fighting back pre-and post-Katrina.
January 6, 2013
incendiary. a critical book for anyone interested in New Orleans community organizing and activist history, most recently with regards to Katrina and the flood. A beautifully written, thorough and thoughtful book on many current crises that New Orleans faces.
December 22, 2010
This is an unbelievable book that is important for movement workers everywhere. It is about New Orleans, resistance, and people of color led organizing before and after Hurricane Katrina and a powerful read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews