REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS: THE SECOND LINE MODEL
October 25, 2007

A panel discussion at the Sound Café with Ronald W. Lewis, President of the Big Nine Social and Pleasure Club and Director of the House of Dance and Feathers; Waldorf “Gip” Gibson, Vice President of the Young Men Olympian and President of the Furious Five; Tamara Jackson, President of VIP Ladies and Kids Social and Pleasure Club and the Social and Pleasure Club Task Force; and Bennie Pete, Leader and Tuba Player of the Hot 8 Brass Band.

Sponsored by One Book One New Orleans in partnership with the Neighborhood Story Project.

Rachel Breunlin:  Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for coming out on a Thursday night. My name is Rachel and I’m one of the co-directors of the Neighborhood Story Project. The other co-director is over here, Abram Himelstein It’s really lovely to see everyone here tonight for the first part of a series of programming around One Book One New Orleans. This year’s selection is Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward, which is written by a social and pleasure club named Nine Times.  After the storm, Nine Times members got together with the Neighborhood Story Project, and over ten months wrote stories and did interviews with people in their community in the Upper Ninth Ward and the Desire Public Housing Development, as well as in the broader second line community. The culmination is this book, and in October and November of this year there will be a number of events around it. 

The importance of social and pleasure clubs has really come to the forefront since the storm.  It’s been, in my opinion, one of the main draws back into the city.  It’s the way the people take care of each other in New Orleans.  It acts as a reunion for people when they come to this Sunday afternoon parade. 

We thought to kick off this greeting period that we would invite some of the people that have been involved in social and pleasure clubs for many, many years—as well as Bennie Pete, who is the leader of the Hot 8 Brass Band—to come and talk, in their own words, about what this culture and tradition has meant to them, and also what it means to the larger history of New Orleans and our struggles and successes around rebuilding.  I’m gonna introduce my good friend Helen Regis, who is a cultural anthropologist at LSU, to give an introduction to each of the speakers tonight.  Helen has written extensively on second lines, and is also a board member of the Neighborhood Story Project, and was one of the key figures in putting together Coming Out the Door.

Helen Regis:  I’m gonna make my introductions really, really brief because these folks can all speak for themselves very well.  First, Mr. Ronald W. Lewis, who is a dear friend and a consultant on much of my research in New Orleans.  He introduced me to aspects of his culture and neighborhood for a long time.  He’s the president of the Big Nine Social and Pleasure Club, as well as the founder and director of the House of Dance Feathers on Tupelo Street in the Lower Ninth Ward.  You may know his voice from National Public Radio and many other places in which he’s spoken on New Orleans about the Ninth Ward and the culture of New Orleans. 

Our next presenter is gonna be Mr. Waldorf Gibson, also known as Gip, who is the President of the Furious Five and Vice President of the Young Men Olympian Junior Benevolent Association, which is over 126 years old this year.  Mr. Gibson is obviously an expert and participant in social aid and pleasure club culture.  The third presenter is Ms. Tamara Jackson who is the president of the Social Aid and Pleasure Club Task Force as well as the president of the VIP Ladies Social and Pleasure Club.  She’s also a nursing student and has taken a leadership role in the recent lawsuit against the city of New Orleans on parade permit fees, which successfully settled a few months ago.

Our fourth panelist is Mr. Bennie Pete, who is the leader of the Hot 8 Brass Band, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with and love.  He has performed in this space and many other spaces.  They’re here on the streets of New Orleans most Sunday afternoons and they’ve traveled extensively throughout the nation and internationally since the storm, spreading the gospel of New Orleans music.  Mr. Pete has also become an outspoken media person on some important social and political issues as well.   It’s a really great honor to present these panelists and I hope you’ll join me welcoming them.

Ronald W. Lewis:  Good evening, everyone.  I’m Ronald W. Lewis, president of the Big Nine Social and Pleasure Club, director of the House of Dance and Feathers Cultural Museum in the Lower Ninth Ward and I’m a keeper of the culture.  I’m here tonight on this stage among other keepers of the culture.  These young people have really stepped up to the plate to ensure that our culture continue living, to bring their children and grandchildren into the fold, and being consistent in what they’re doing.  Here tonight we got an active forum of people to listen, to understand why we do it, what’s important to us, and why we’re gonna continue maintaining this true and rich culture in the city of New Orleans.

We do it because we love it.  When we get out there, and we put on our fancy shoes and clothes and everything, you know what?  This is our giving back to New Orleans.  We’ve been giving back since the 1840s on.  So here we are today after Katrina.  Our mayor stood on the national stage and said the first thing he wanted to see again was the Mardi Gras and the second lines and so forth and so on.  He just talked it, but we live it.  This shirt here said it all: [ReNew New Orleans Second Line t-shirt]: Over 30 clubs participated in this event to let us know that, “Yes, we suffered devastation and all the other things that came along with it, but what it didn’t do was kill our spirit.”

When I started the Big Nine Social and Pleasure Club in 1995, I brought attention to my members that “Hey, I want to follow the standards of the Young Men Olympia.”  It doesn’t make no difference what side of town the organization comes from.  It’s about the standards that they carry, because you know what?  We represent our communities.  We want to step out there and say, “It’s our Sunday.  Enjoy.  Leave your troubles and worries behind.” 

Before Katrina, the children in my neighborhood said, “Mr. Ronald, you have a museum.”  It was all the parade regalia my wife had put out of my house.  I decided they were right, and registered my little building with the state and everything. The more I got involved, the more passionately I felt to do more. Now I volunteer at the Martin Luther King School—the flagship of education in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I’ll continue to spread the gospel of what we do, and why people come from around the world to see it. It’s in us.  It’s our life.  It’s the way we live.  Finances have nothing to do with it; it’s just the spirit of the people, the spirit of New Orleans, and finally they’re giving recognition to these organizations for counting on such a rich culture. 

I do this all the time.  I’ve been able to speak at Kansas State University’s [Diversity Week] back in April to tell the world, “Look at us.”  When you come down to the Lower Ninth Ward, we’re the poster child of devastation but they don’t show the spirit of people.  They don’t show our struggles of coming out of these ruins to begin a new life.  When I hear Bennie and Tamara giving their talk, I have an appreciation for their knowledge and wisdom of the culture cause it’s not just me, it’s us.  And this is why I’m here tonight to say thank you for coming out there and supporting what we do, telling people the things that the city done—raising the fees and trying to drive us like cattle up the street is an injustice.  We can’t do it by ourselves cause we need the people in New Orleans to do it with us.  I’m gonna close with this.  Thank you for being there for us.

Waldorf “Gip” Gibson:  My name is Waldorf Gibson.  I’m the president of the Furious Five and the Vice President of the Young Men Olympic. With the Young Men Olympics, we’ve been around 100-some years. We have our own traditional ways that we do things.  A lot of bylaws and rules and stuff.  We wear black and white, we got the fans, and we do it the old fashioned way.  A lot of people say, “What y’all represent?”  We represent taking care of the sick and burying the dead. 

A lot of people want to know: What is the Furious Five?  Well, we’re a social and pleasure club in the Young Men Olympics.  A lot of people say, “Well why y’all name is the Furious Five?”  No, we just didn’t start off with five people.  My first year, in 1985, we started out with 25.  It’s just a nickname we picked because we’re the fifth division of the five groups in the Young Men.  Each group has a nickname.  If you’re not a member of the Young Men Olympics, you cannot be in the Furious Five.  Since I’ve been doing this for the last 24 years, I have a lot of guys who started off with me with the culture to get a feeling of it. 

I might be 48 now, but when I first started off I was in my 20s and all these older guys in their 60s and 70s and 80s.  I was the youngster, and they’ll say, “Okay, so we need you to do this and do that.”  I pick them up, bring them to the meeting. After the meeting, they’ll go with somebody else to drop them off. Still today, I’m still doing that.  15 years ago, the vice president was moving and he handed down the torch to me one Sunday.  I’ll never forget that.  I wasn’t ready for it cause I do a lot of traveling. We meet every first and third Sunday from 2:00 to 4:00. At that time we was meeting at the Elks’ Hall.

I have a lot of guys come and join me—same time, a lot of guys come and leave me.  It’s just like in the book said [Coming Out the Door], I’m a mentor to a lot of them. He leaves, and he goes and starts other groups.  I can name them all on my hand, the ones who built the culture up after leaving me. 

I’m also a coach for the recreation department. I deal with the kids. A lot of times, I take some of the kids who’re doing a good, I might invite three or four to come to the Jazz Fest.  We’ll dress them up. They might come and join the club. You never know who’s gonna keep going with it. You’d be surprised.

I’ve worked with kids 19 years.  I done seen them come; I done seen them go.  I’ve seen all kinds of bad stuff happening to them.  I’ve seen the ones who made the pros right from the St. Thomas project uptown where I’m from. Every last one has a picture. Now, here you’re at Louisiana State, you’re at Grambling State, you’re at Southern.  You want to get your degree, and at one time, second lining was actually a recreation for them. 

You ought to see what the other cities have and we don’t. It’s unreal. All the violence that’s going on now, I know why it’s going on.  I was with the recreation when we was tight. People used to come down here and copycat our recreation and take it back to their town. Now they’re number one and we have to buy it.   Right now we have a new leader for the recreation department. We hope everything is turning around.  With football, we started this year, I’ve got the most equipment I ever had in my life cause of the storm.

I guess a lot of y’all know now we have our own building at Liberty and Josephine in the Central City area. When I first joined a lot of the older guys, that was their dream to have our own building. Six months before Katrina, we wound up getting our own building and like I said we crawled before we walked.   We started a youth program every third Sunday. All the children in the neighborhood, we get them to come—start them off.   I said we started slowly but surely.

It all started in the community—doing a little social and pleasure, and having fun.  Just meeting people all over is unreal. We’ve done all kinds of gigs. Y’all know DJ Davis.  He’s one of the Furious Five members.  He does a lot of Jazz Fests and out of town gigs, and we go roll with it. We’re big in certain ways and we’re small in certain ways.  I’ve just seen like the whole world doing our culture and having fun. I enjoyed being here.  Thank you all.

Tamara Jackson:  Good evening.  I’m Tamara Jackson, the President of New Orleans Social and Pleasure Club Task Force, and I’m also the President of VIP Ladies and Kids.  The Task Force organization started right after Katrina. Initially, our goal was to just have a parade like Mr. Ronald spoke of where all the clubs in all areas of the city would parade together with the goal of uniting the citizens back in New Orleans post-Katrina.  From that, we began to network and make phone calls cause a lot of the parade people were displaced. Tipitina’s opened their doors for us to host weekly meetings. We made phone calls to network and get everybody back in hopes to renew New Orleans.  That was our thing with the shirt Mr. Ronald has on.  It was somewhat tedious.  All our efforts and hard work paid off to an extent.

We had area businesses participating. We had contractors out, organizations to assist people with gutting their homes. It wasn’t just about the parade; it was about unifying the city and unifying the spirits that was lost during Katrina. We all got together. You had 30 clubs with 350 Social and Pleasure Club members parading that we split up into four divisions, and the parade started at the Backstreet Cultural Museum.  We did a press conference. People chartered busses from Houston. We had thousands of people, and when CNN did their story, I was overwhelmed with the interviews they did with people that was their first time back home. January 15, 2006 was their first time back home when they came to participate in the culture with us. 

Later, toward the end, that event was marred by violence.  We had a shooting that really kind of killed the spirits of the citizens that came. It was emotionally disturbing for us.  By all our hard work, we felt was lost. The media took it and spinned it on a negative side. All our efforts we did in bringing people back, having resources available for individuals to sign up to get their lives back in order, was lost. 

Out of that, of course, came the tension between us and the New Orleans Police Department.  They decided because we were the hosts of this event that was violently destroyed toward the end to increase our permit fees from $1,200 to $4,445 for a four-hour parade. We were already disenfranchised post-Katrina. It’s a struggle pre-Katrina to put on your parade.  We fundraise within our community—we host events to raise that money to make sure that we gave back to the community that Sunday, and that astronomical price just set us back. The clubs agreed that we needed to form an organization to advocate and to protect us from the increased permit fees and to protect us from taking the blame cause you can’t control people that follow your event.  Anything public, you can’t control outside what happens. We only can conduct ourselves and be in control of the group that’s actually parading. Of course, we all want everybody to be safe, but unfortunately sometimes things happen. 

Out of that, the Task Force was formed and in doing so we advocate for the 23 social and pleasure clubs that are a part of the Task Force.  We act as liaisons for the New Orleans Police Department and the City Council members, but we continue to advocate for a structurally sound ordinance for the culture, as well as a stable fee that could never be raised. We went to court. We won that case—thank God. The fees dropped from $4,445 to $1,985.  You now have five hours—you have four hours to parade and you have an hour to socialize. We didn’t have that before. Immediately, once you would reach your four-hour standpoint, the sirens would go on and the police would run you off the street.  Now you have an hour after your parade ends to socialize with family and friends, take photographs, and other things that we traditionally do.

Because we’re so diverse with clubs in all areas of the city, when we hold community events, we rotate.  We may be uptown for Halloween and we may be downtown for Christmas.  Every Halloween we do a candy drive.  We have a block party for the children. We have cash prices. We have a costume contest for Christmas. We give away toys. We have dances. We have one free dance that is invitation only, but we try to just do our best with bringing the community together and keeping us unified as one. We’re family. Whether we’re across Europe somewhere, we’re family. The musicians—we’re family, all of us.  We’re all intertwine together. One cannot function without the other. We can’t parade without the band. We employ the band, which helps them financially. When we hire them, and they come on the street, other people see them, and they want them. We all work together. 

Thank God for allowing us to come back to a great city and giving us a sense of normalcy by bringing the cultures to the forefront.  People appreciate it more now than they did before.  Before, you’d see second lines represented in commercials—Bell South, Jazz Fest—but we were not appreciated like we should be.  At Jazz Fest, they pay Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen a lot of money, and they need to do the same for the people here—your local culture, which keeps this city going.  We keep this city flourishing. We’re naturally New Orleans.  We thank you all for coming.

Bennie Pete:  Hi everybody.  My name is Bennie Pete.  I’m a tuba player and leader of the Hot 8 Brass Band.  The Hot 8 was formed in 1995.  Before that, we were the Looney Tunes.  We were still in school, and were really just playing music to have fun. All of us went to different schools. We had competitions with each other throughout Mardi Gras time, so we were really just about a school system band—a marching band. We were working hard at school then, man.  We took a lot of pride into putting in work for the marching band.  That’s all it was about: coming out Mardi Gras parades and being at the football games.  A few guys came to me one time and was like, “Hey man, what about playing a second line band?”  I was like, “Well, for what?”  I was young.  He was like, “You can make some money.”  I was like, “All right.  When do we start?”

A little bit before Katrina hit, a lot of the original guys left.  They got old, or graduated from school, or whatever.  A few of the guys still wanted to do it.  They wanted to make a career out of it and so that’s what we was working on doing.  We put out our first CD in 2004. We had been out on the streets at a young age so people were like pushing us to do more, but we was real young so we wasn’t thinking about it like that.  We were just having fun.  When the storm hit, like everyone else, it really took us by surprise.  As far as our careers, we only had been playing New Orleans and playing for our people at home and no one else knew us. That was our only source of income. 

It was mind boggling.  We were in a 10-foot black hole—we didn’t know which way to go.  We just was like, “What are we gonna do?  What are we gonna do?”  I got a phone call from Lee Arnold and he was like, “What y’all doing?”  I’m like, “Well Al’s still stuck in the storm.  He’s still in New Orleans.  Terrell, he’s in Atlanta.  We’re kind of scattered out right now.”  He’s like, “You still want to play music?”  I’m like, “Well I’m not thinking about playing music right now.  I don’t know.”  He said, “Well if I can get y’all a gig or something, get y’all some instruments, would y’all be interested?”  I was like, “Yeah, we’d be interested.”

I talked to all the guys, and we got Al out.  Four of our guys got stuck here and they went through the storm.  They didn’t get rescued until 4 or 5 days after.  Then we had our performance out in Baton Rouge.  Lee got LSU and a high school out there to donate some instruments, but it was just for the weekend.  We had a few people, nice turnout—fans and people who hadn’t seen us since the storm. That was our first time getting together since the storm and so it was really emotional.  It really dawned on us that we wanted to do something else while we were there, so we went playing at the shelters where they had evacuees. We showed up there and the people, they just took to it.  People were crying, people were dancing.  People came out and the media was there, CNN and all these other cameras, and they had the military there walking with their guns and stuff like that. 

After we finished, we talked to all the workers and people who just donated their time to help out. They were surprised. They were looking like, “Wow, how can all these people who were just sad and walking around wondering where their family at be so joyous at the sound of the horns?”  It was amazing for us.  The band captured that moment, and we just wanted to do more of it.  CNN interviewed us and from that we got a lot of exposure—people wanting to contact us and wanting to see how we were bringing the spirit back to these people.

We were networking and moving so fast we never really split back up.  We just went to traveling here and there—kept rolling. We were in New York, California, and everywhere we went, we saw people from New Orleans, people that was hanging out at our regular gigs, fans of ours.  It was like an amazing thing just to see those people react to the music.  It was just a beautiful feeling to look in their eyes and really see that they was enjoying themselves.  They put all their troubles aside—and us, too.  With that, we also had a chance to do a few gigs with Fred Johnson and Black Men of Labor.  We hooked up with some people out of Mississippi with Finding Our Folks.  They were taking us in just for the purpose of trying to reunite New Orleanians, just to really heal and bring some life back to people.  We had some support behind us, so it made everything better. 

At the same time, we realized the situation we were in it as far as our career.  On a business level, we got to meet people all around the world, and we also went overseas.  We went to France. We went to England. While we were out there, we went to neighborhoods.  We went to the lower income places where people were less fortunate and we played and did the same thing for them. It was a beautiful thing.  We saw where our role in the whole New Orleans culture was.  At first, we were kids just playing horns and music, everybody having a good time.  As we got older and situations happened, we had to step up and rise up to the occasion. We thought it was really important to our city and important to a lot of people who live here. 

We’ve been seeking more education from our older musicians. Dr. Michael White has been working with us a lot, along with Fred Johnson.  He always has the door open for us any time we need to talk. Along with that, we’ve been trying to talk to the younger musicians because it never really happened like that for us.  We never had bands to come back, look out for us, and pass things on. This whole brass band thing has been a whole, “Get it on your own” type thing and if you didn’t know anyone, you just would miss out.  So we’re trying to take and change that. We’re reaching out to the younger bands.  The older bands are already established, so we’ll start with the younger ones.  They’re easy to reach and I can talk to them. 

Seems like it’s easy to pick on the youngsters. “They want to run wild.  They want to be out there. They don’t know how to do a real jazz funeral.”  But they didn’t teach us neither.  We never really had opportunities to perform the traditional music.  But I got it.  I know what it’s all about now, and I’ll do my part in trying to pass it on to the guys in the Hot 8, and the rest of the younger bands. 

I’m not trying to point my finger at no one or saying it’s someone’s fault. A lot of them older musicians, man, without them we wouldn’t be here. We didn’t really take that in too much consideration before, but now we’ve got the knowledge of it. We’re trying to get the history and get back more of the tradition to keep it preserved. Now, we’re gonna actually do a traditional recording and there will be more to come, too.  This is our first one. 

We want to also have our own identity because we live in different days.  People might say, “Oh, look at the old band.  They used to be nice.  They had on suits and this and that,” but if you look, that was the time because the crowd even had on suits and gowns.  You take a picture of the same thing today, you might see people with t-shirts and jeans.  This is the day and age we’re in, so it’s going to be more relaxed. 

Back to New Orleans and the Hot 8, there was another side of the band. Before Katrina, just living and coming up in New Orleans was a whole different story for us. We’re musicians, but we still have to go home at night in our neighborhoods and deal with real New Orleans and what that brings. 

Our first encounter as a band dealing with a tragedy was in 1996 when our young member Jacob Johnson was murdered in his house. He was a neighborhood barber, aside from playing music, and he used to cut hair on the porch.  Everybody knew him—even the police.  He was either playing trumpet with us or cutting hair. Guys came over. He knew them, so he let them in.  It was like they were coming to get a haircut and it turned out they was coming to rob him and whoever else was in there.  Jacob and two of his friends were duck taped around their eyes and taped around their hands.  He was shot behind the ear once and he didn’t make it, but one of those guys lived to tell the story and they caught one of the guys.

We was real young at that time and we had to live with that.  From that, in 2004, Demond “Bart” Dorsey, our trombone player, passed of a heart attack.  Then, a month after that, Joe Williams was murdered.  He was our trombone player.  He was murdered by the New Orleans Police Department on August 4, 2004.  He was unarmed, had a cell phone and trombone in the truck.  It was said he used the vehicle to try to kill one of the police.  Actually, he was blocked in—two cars in the front, one in the back—and they shot him from all angles. The car had bullet holes in the front windshield, the side windows, and the back.  He was shot around 15 times.  We had to live through that, while also trying to uphold the culture and be musicians in the city.  That’s the type of things we had to live with. 

The last we just went through the murder of Dinneral Shavers in December of ’06 and dealt with him.  He got murdered a few days after Christmas. It’s hard. We pray a lot. That was instilled in us—from our parents, but also as a group in school with our band teacher. A lot of our people from the communities sent cards and just appreciation. Going back to our music really helped us get through it, but it’s hard.  We try to put lyrics in it about how we feel, what eased our mind and our pain as a group.

We’re still dealing with it.  It’s still hard cause nobody’s gonna play the trombone like Joe and nobody gonna beat the drums like Dinneral.  Sometimes I crack down on Sammy, our new drummer, and it’s just really cause I’m upset that it’s not Dinneral. We miss him. I don’t want to be so negative, but it’s just the truth.  That’s what we’ve been going through, and still upholding the Hot 8. 

Everybody say they see the Hot 8 at the Sunday parades—they see us jamming up the block—but on the inside of us, there be a lot going on that people don’t know about. They only know what the media tells them. I learned that just hands on with Joe.  The media painted Joe up as this jailbird type guy.  At that time, he had just been released from jail.  We were trying to get Joe out bad.  We were playing gigs and had raised the money to bail him out.  They said, “We’re holding him to test fingerprints in different places at different burglaries.”  They didn’t want to let us bail him out.  They said there’s a hold on him. 

After they checked fingerprints, and they didn’t find nothing on him, they released him. All the charges should’ve been dropped. Then a week later, he was murdered and the news said, “This guy was in jail for burglary,” but they didn’t say, “We had to release him because they was all false charges.”  Now people think, “Oh, that’s the Hot 8, that’s the killer.”  That’s what people think because they don’t know us.  They’ve never met me.  They just hear what the media says, so we’ve got to still put up with the reality of the inner city of New Orleans and what it brings.  I can talk on this subject forever cause it’s just the reality for me. I would just like to say thank y’all for coming and look forward to a lot of music coming from the Hot 8 for 2008.

Question & Answer

Q:  We’ve been talking about the relationships with the police and the official price and permits.  Of course, everybody knows recently the police broke up a spontaneous second line [in Tremé in honor of Kerwin James, tuba player of the New Birth Brass Band and brother of Philip and Keith Frazier of the Rebirth Brass Band]. How does the community address that?

Ronald:  Can I tell you this?  You’ve got New Orleans policemen who’ve lived in New Orleans all their lives that will second line when their cousins get married, but that’s as far as it goes.  Once they see Ben and them on the street, or our club out there parading, then it becomes null and void about the culture.  That’s why I have the House of Dance & Feathers.  I call it a cultural education center because I want everybody in the city of New Orleans to know that it’s not just a fun thing, it’s also—like Gip says—it’s to bury the dead, assist the living, and all the other things we do.  We roll out of this water and debris and lead the way back to the life that we love—the life that people came to New Orleans to hear and ended up staying.  Those same people who moved into our community all of a sudden don’t want the round the block thing in honor of a musician cause they brought a “not in my neighborhood” attitude. Even though it was my neighborhood first. 

So these are the things that we have to contend with.  We also have to deal with the miseducation of our New Orleans police.  They beat up our Mardi Gras Indians a couple years ago on St. Joseph’s night—a tradition that had been going on for generations before they used these miniscule laws to say why you’re not supposed to do this. They attack and then they justify it after the fact. 

I ask y’all here tonight for the purpose of hearing what we’ve got to say, to go back out and educate your friends on why we do this. I ask you to come down to the House of Dance & Feathers at 1317 Tupelo in the Lower Ninth Ward—I won’t even charge a fee—so I can do just what I’m doing right here with you: We have to educate our own.  We have to constantly reach out and get people to understand this just ain’t a party, it’s our life.

When the Hot 8 were the Looney Tunes, the Big Nine Social and Pleasure Club was an equal opportunity employer.  We would hire a big name band and we’d hire a young band that just come on the street because this is the way that is.  For anybody to grow they’ve got to be allowed to grow, and through that I’ve built great relationships.  Yes, I done cried many times when they had to carry these young men to their last rite.  I felt like I’m a big brother to these young people.  They call me “uncle” and everything else.  They hug me and embrace me because this is our lives and we have to lead the way.  The writers who are in here—put a positive spin for us.  Let them know that we’re all civilized people and we just want to continue maintaining the life of the city of New Orleans the way it was then and try to make it bigger and better now. 

Rachel:  [To Bennie] Do you want to add anything about the musicians and what happened in Tremé?

Bennie:  Yeah, well, everybody read on it.  Kerwin had caught a stroke.  He was in a coma. We was all worried about him for a whole year and he finally passed.  He was a good guy, very humble, and he was a tuba player, so that’s personal for me. I’ve been knowing Kewin a long time. We grew up in church together. My grandfather was the pastor and his mom was the organist so we used to run around church and cut up and make noise and try to beat on the drums and everything.  He was my session leader at Kohen.  I went to Kohen Middle cause I was living in the Ninth Ward, right where [the Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village] is now. 

The musicians had a ceremony.  I wasn’t there at the time, but the band was doing it and everybody was welcome—any musician to come along and play.  It was just doing the regular thing: paying respect to Kerwin. The musician’s way of doing that is through performing—your best performance, too.  That’s what everybody says, “You’d better roll for me when I go.” They hold you to that. I’m serious.

When I heard the police arrested musicians, it made me upset.  The bottom line is that’s just a disrespect from the law to us as musicians.  Like Ronald said, the police don’t seem to want to know. They just want to be a robot on that situation, “We don’t want nobody on the streets,” and they just attack under that word.  It’s like they don’t care what we were doing, or why we were out there. It’s a slap in the face to his family.  When I was in school with him, Kerwin was in 8th grade and I was in 6th grade.  He was gone a lot cause he was on tour.  He was in Europe, and other places. All that time, he was representing New Orleans. Whenever they introduced him they said, “Ladies and gentlemen, New Birth Brass Band from New Orleans.”  He’d been doing a lot for the city, and for the city to turn around and do him like that was upsetting. I figured it could’ve been me.  Living in these days on the street, any one of us can go at any time, and that’s just the reality of me seeing and knowing them guys, knowing they weren’t bad people.

Question:  Thank you.  I’m wondering what, if anything, can be done or is being done to work to make the environment safe for everybody at the parades.  The police have said on occasion, “We can’t let this go on because there’s this violence that happens in association.” I’m wondering what are some of the things that people are trying to do, or if that’s even the right way to think about it?

Ronald:  Can I say something to you?  By us having the population that we have in the city of New Orleans, every little thing is focused on the African American community. We pay a fee for New Orleans’s finest to do their job.  We parade; we’re not police. We put on our parade route, “Leave your guns at home.”  You go to other festivals around the country and they don’t tell people, “You pay us, but you be the police.”  It don’t go like that!  If I hire you to do a job, I expect you to do a job.  I expect for you to have the type of communication to understand why we need you to do this job. 

We can sugarcoat it all kinds of ways, but the truth is that they look at us as not being civilized, rowdy and everything else, only because it’s a part of an African American culture.  That’s why they kept us on the back streets so long.  That’s why they try to confine.  That’s why it took years for people like Gip and them to go do gigs everywhere, for Ben and them to get the recognition that they have—it’s only because of the perception of who we are.  You know, when they found out that we owned the Lower Ninth Ward, it was like the shock heard around the world—60% or so of the people owned their own homes down there.

Bennie:  I’m gonna add something to that on the more real side—that’s the reality of the streets.  There’s a lot of crime going on in New Orleans right now, period.  Four people killed last night. I don’t know why they were killed, but say it was a type of grudge type thing where Steve killed Bob and then Clarence killed Tom.  We may have an this event in the neighborhood where all this is going on and know nothing about it.  You know what I’m saying?  You won’t ever hear it was a second line member killed or shot.  It wasn’t a band member pulling out no big old rifle and blasting nobody.  It wasn’t really nobody who came to hear the music.

“Second Line Club had another killing and they’re doing it.”  That’s how y’all are gonna hear it when y’all turn on your box.  It’s just how they’re spinning it in the media cause they’ve got control over the population. They can reach you in your living room.  We don’t have no cameras to tell y’all, “Well, this ain’t how it happened, y’all.”  They’ll just spin it because they don’t want it to look like the police can’t do their job. They are paying the police to do that.  At the same time, we’re paying taxes for them to do the same thing.  If the streets were cleaner, and there wasn’t already crime, those things wouldn’t happen.

Tamara: Louisiana has a problem, period—be it the Mayor’s office, the City Council, the Police Department, the District Attorney’s office.  So what do we do as citizens, not just us as the keepers of a culture, to keep our community safe?  We know people sit on their porch and allow things to happen, and I don’t blame them, believe me.  You’re not gonna call the police and say, “Joe’s selling crack on the corner” cause the police are probably gonna tell Joe you called, and then you’re dead tomorrow.  That’s the reality of the way things are orchestrated here in New Orleans. The Police Department don’t want to hear us tell them they can do better.  The community don’t want to hear you tell them you can take control of your neighborhood.  People don’t want to hear the truth. 

When a murder happens, it’s not just the victim and the one who assaulted the victim.  We all are responsible.  That’s how I feel.  That could be you.  I lost my father.  My father was murdered July 24th of 2000.  Before he was killed, I used to turn on the TV and, “Oh Lord, that’s a shame,” click.  But when it happens to you, or somebody dear to you, somebody you know even, it takes on a different perception.  They’re not going to find somebody to come forward.  You can ask, “Tell me who killed my dad.”  But that didn’t happen.  Now I can understand why people cry out, and they offer rewards looking for somebody to tell what happened.  We’re living in a city that’s really on the edge and on the verge of all kinds of craziness.

We’ve been working with Superintendent Riley.  He felt like with the increased permit fees, if he increased the visibility of officers it would be a deterrent for crime, which is not factual.  We requested that he work with us, as well as the community. You need to protect that community 24 hours a day, not just four hours for our second line. We asked that he would do some cultural sensitivity training so his officers can understand the culture of what we do and the reasons why, for instance, a social and pleasure club chose a particular neighborhood for their second line. That has not taken place. 

This culture will never die. They can get on the TV, they can point fingers, but ultimately you’re out there. We can’t make a difference by ourselves.  To reiterate what Mr. Louis said, we need you to bring the message out and let people know we’re not ignorant.  I mean we’re civilized individuals, we have education, we own property. We just do things a little bit different than you but hey, we love y’all, we love the culture, and we want y’all to share the love like we share the love on Sundays.  Spread the love around.

Gip: Like Tamara was saying, classes would be good. For our parade, we have six bands.  It’s a big parade, and you have officers that have never been on a detail and don’t understand how a second line is run.  When we stop at a place on a second line route, that’s a “stop.”  We take a break.  The band gets some water, the guys get some drinks and sandwiches.  The guys up on the horses, and in the police cars might get on the megaphone and say, “Okay.  We’re not stopping.”  They don’t know we’re taking a break.  They need to have their classes to know what we’re doing: This is the deal with the stopping.  Even the police get refreshments.  We’re getting some water and get them water, too.  You got me?

It started raining for our parade this September.  I told all my guys, “Get your stuff.  We’re gonna put it in this police truck.” The rain was coming hard; we put some more stuff in there. The officer went crazy.  He gets on the megaphone, “Get y’all’s stuff out of my truck.”  He’s supposed to go to the end.  We’re about to cut the parade 2 hours short, so he’s about to get paid two hours for nothing, so why can’t we put it in there? His job is to go through the whole parade, that’s his detail.  He’s going on about missing the Saints game.  I wrote his truck number down, asked him his name, and told all my guys to get their stuff and put it in somebody else’s van.  I asked another police guy, “Why are you not going to the end with us?” and he said, “Oh, we’re going to the end.”  Bullshit—he ain’t going to no end.  He got on his megaphone again. 

Question:  You would think if a cop is sensitive to culture and s/he is cruising through the Sixth Ward and they saw a parade at night, “Oh, somebody must’ve fallen. They’re having a parade.  Maybe I’ll just tag along and make sure everything is all right.”  The other night, it didn’t happen that way.  Really, those guys say they are just following orders so there’s got to be some kind of direction coming from the mayor, coming from the chief of police, to let the rank and file know that they need to respect these things. I’m just hoping there’s gonna be some kind of direction coming top down to let people know.

Tamara:  It’s not happening. The only person on the council that has been receptive and really diligent with trying is James Carter, but he has his back against the wall because he’s alone. We schedule meetings with them. We have pamphlets we give out.  We want to listen to their perceptions so we can get an idea of what they’re thinking, and to let them know, “We’re not the people you think we are.” 

Question:  I live in Tremé. When the officer started yanking the musicians, all the paraders had gotten out of the street, so technically the second line was over.  I asked the officer, “So what ordinances, what laws, are being broken? Why are you arresting them?” He could not quote what law he was using to arrest them, and so finally he said, “I grew up here.  I’m from here.  There are murderers in this thing.  There are always murderers.  I see them right now.”  He was very angry that he wasn’t able to shut the second line down and there was clearly, with this guy, a need to have the sensitivity training. 

There is a legal structure around the four-hour parades or the five-hour parades now, which is protected.  You hire folks and you pay them, so that structure is in place, but there isn’t anything right now legally to protect the impromptu shorter ones that happen in the neighborhoods to honor someone whose passed on.  Is there anything that’s being organized, or thought about, in terms of coming up with some sort of legal protection for these sort of impromptu shorter ones that don’t require four hours worth of security?

Tamara: The legal structure does protect the social and pleasure clubs, especially the ones that are named in the lawsuits.  Now we’re working on securing an ordinance that would protect the culture on a whole, which would include the jazz processions.  To me, it’s culturally pertinent, because funerals are where most of the tradition started. They don’t understand that.  When they see a bunch of us gather, they’re frightened.  Again, we’re working.  It’s going to take some time. Initially, our council member Oliver Thomas was assisting us so then we had to start over.  Now we’re working with James Carter.

Rachel:  I think we’re gonna wrap up for now, but if y’all have extra questions we’re gonna be selling books and if there’s something else that y’all want to discuss with our panelists then they’d be happy to answer questions. I’ve got a point of business as well. There is a Halloween parade this Saturday from 6:00 to 9:00 from the Sixth Ward to the Ninth Ward.  It starts at 1020 St. Claude Avenue.  The Soul Rebel Brass Band and the  Warren Easton Marching Band will be performing.  There will be candy for kids so if you have young people in your life you can take them out and have a safe, fun Halloween experience. If you want a route sheet, they’ll be available.  Thank you very, very much.  Abram has a few more things to say.

Abram:  Thank you all for coming.  One of the things that Mr. Pete said that I agree with is a lot of the media being made about second lines without a lot of appreciation for the culture.  Somebody who is doing it with an appreciation of it is showing a movie Monday night at the Prytania Theatre.  That’s Royce Osborn and his film is All On A Mardi Gras Day.  It is free. Come and bring 10 friends.  Please keep coming to all the events.  We love seeing y’all, and a huge, huge round of applause to everyone.