An interview by Esther Sassaman for an upcoming text
The following is a personal interview by Esther Sassaman:
Bloggers are known for strong political opinions and too much openness about their love lives. A growing number have taken the expressive power of the blog into new realms. Many bloggers of all interests and political viewpoints have debunked inaccuracies portrayed by the mainstream media, maintained compendia on rapidly developing stories more quickly than big broadcasters, and established their own live news services in conflict zones. Jacob Applebaum is one of this last category, publishing photojournalism from Iraq, Houston, and New Orleans that has often surpassed the news value, narrative power, and beauty of photography produced by longstanding news service photographers. Appelbaum went to Iraq in April 2005 as a photographer and to visit friends, and visited Houston’s Astrodome after Katrina to help set up a low power FM radio network and wireless service [http://www.prometheusradio.org] for details. He is currently in the poor, black Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, administering a data center at the behest of community organizer and former Black Panther Malik Rahim.
Jacob’s photographs have gained a new audience with the Houston Astrodome series [http://flickr.com/photos/ioerror/sets/905698/], which has become widely distributed. I reached him on Tuesday, the second day of his stay in Algiers. We talked about the situation in Algiers on Tuesday, but also about his personal motivations for coming to activism, and his background.
You can read the rest of the interview off site.
NYC hackers Neil and Justin save the day
These two guys deserve more respect than I can possible express. They came in today with nearly $2000 worth of equipment and within a matter of moments they had everything ready to roll. We’ve got over a dozen laptops – both Mac OS X and Windows (Knoppix shall soon overcome!).
The two brought everything including normal telephones. I think the kitchen sink is actually still in their trunk but we’ve got a few of them so we’re good to go in that department.
These guys are my heroes. They’ve helped us complete a very vital part of our mission here, they’ve helped us bring the medical center online. The medics now have the ability to look up life saving information and stay in contact with their familes, friends or whatever they use the internet for these days.
We now have two separate internet connections that we can share out over wifi and tomorrow we’ll deploy the gear we staged tonight. I think we’ve got three EVDO cards in the general area (one is Justins and the other two are Common Ground gear). I wonder how many cards we can fit per tower, is anyone really familiar with how Verizon CDMA towers allocate slots with EVDO? How many cards can we use before we max out the tower?
If you’re in the area and you need an uplink just select essid “Common Ground” and enjoy!
Oh and don’t forget about the radiostation on 94.5FM!
Radio Interview with Chris Pirillo
Last night I talked to Chris Pirillo for his weekly show. You can hear the interview on their site.
The media center is deployed by the community!
Today was great. We accomplished much in getting everyone online. My method was to teach people how to teach other people. Everyone that learned from me went to teach others. They became the teachers and then they made more teachers. By the end of the day, no one was working with me at all, everyone knew how to fish. We now have 8 public terminals, custom ethernet cables, scavenged switches as well as other things. If you’re in the area we’ve got an open wifi network.
Here we have a photo of a local boy teaching a member of the Danish press how to setup a computer.
Here’s the finished product being used by the community that build it.
Joel is going to post about the actual tech involved tomorrow. I’m tired and for the first night since I’ve been sleeping in the Media center, I get to sleep on something other than a floor!
Secours Populaire Francais
While it seems many in America have a love hate relationship with France, I’d like to come out and say that I love the French in New Orleans.
This group of French workers have payed more than a few visits to Algiers.
These two are locals from New Orleans who apparently met the Secours Populaire Francais while traveling in Amsterdam. They’re local activists even if they don’t know it. I have a great deal of respect for these two as well as the rest of the group.
Today they came to the rescue for some really amazing stuff we need. Simple stuff but required some actually investments. The most important thing they brought us was around a dozen monitors and a printer. We then had all the parts for a media center and we had everyone around us participate in learning, teaching and building a media center.
Food Not Bombs! arrives with their kitchen
Food Not Bombs came with a portable kitchen for the community today. In a strange turn of events they left the kitchen and I’m not sure where they went. I think they went to get more supplies and couldn’t get back in after curfew but I’m unsure.
I heard today that the curfew was extended to 21:00.
Algiers radio 94.5 FM
Today one of the better adhoc hacks I’ve seen came into town.
Behold the glory of a lunch pail made into a low power FM station:
I’ve been told that this radio station is planned for 94.5 FM.
Supplies arrive from Austin, Texas
Just as the curfew came, a large amount of supplies arrived from Austin. Fuel, food and bikes. Now the locals will have transportation, fuel for generators or cars and food to eat.
Naomi Klein comes for a visit
Naomi Klein came today with Avi Lewis (husband and cameraman) and they interviewed Malik. I was really happy with the questions she asked, she really hit the important ones home. She asked about class, she asked about race, she asked about displacement, she asked about the help they received.
I’m really happy that Malik has the attention he rightfully deserves. The people on the ground here are in a fight to get the help they need and he’s the leader they love. I’ve heard people repeat over and over again that he averted people from dying, he helped them to eat, he helped them to be calm and he brought everyone together. They put aside their differences and became a community over night. He talked about the armed white men in the streets pulling their guns on every black man they could see. He talked about their efforts to calm everything and how it worked.
The man pictured above interrupted the interview to speak at length about how Malik basically saved his life and the life of the community with no outside help. He talked about the hell of the Superdome and how it was suicide to go inside. He actually took over the interview with his emotional response but everyone was listening to him. Cameras were rolling.
I was really happy at how down to earth Naomi was. She spoke to me about the project she’s doing. She does really impressive work and it’s an honor to meet someone who actually does things to change the world! When people tell me that I’m doing something worth while I think about the work that Naomi or Kalle Lasn (Adbusters) are doing, it makes me remember that I have much further to go. People like Naomi are an inspiration.
She’s filming for a documentary and I believe one of the main issues the film will address is the idea of displacement during natural disasters. I asked her what she meant and she discussed a number of subjects. One of them was how such actions could be viewed as colonialism (would this be called neo-colonialism?). Authorities often use disasters as a reason to rebuild “worthwhile” economic developments rather than homes for the displaced poor who once lived there. Perhaps this is the future of the parts of this city.
Really interesting stuff!
Into the city center
Take a look at my flickr stream for the photos I took today. Leave a comment with a link to the ones you feel deserve the most information.
The date on my camera was screwed up and so today was actually split into two days as far as the camera is concerned.
An Archive of Jacob Appelbaum's Post-Katrina weblog 