Support for Louisiana the state we’re in is provided by every day I go to work for Entergy I know customers are counting on me so Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen together together together we power life Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth b Ziegler foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall the museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and Cultural Center for Southwest Louisiana and the foundation for excellence in Louisiana public broadcasting with support from viewers like you People want to know exactly but we’re asking people to predict something that’s not terribly easy to predict the Dynamics of hurricane Ian and the math just doesn’t add up campaign ads that trigger they believe that they’re legally coming to this country for Refuge there are more refugees attained
In Louisiana than you might think what’s life like entertainment everybody hey the origins of black Greek life We’re very lucky and grateful to be here to tell our story but it was it was nasty I think it’s unbelievable how people are just helping each other and maybe everyone in this world could learn a little bit from the storm Foreign just the beginning stages of recovery they sure are and it won’t be quick after the fury Unleashed by Hurricane Ian Louisiana knows all about this we offer prayer and support and in a moment more on Ian but first tonight a clearer picture of our upcoming Governor’s race
This week attorney general Jeff Landry officially declared he will run he joins lieutenant governor Billy nungesser they’re the two who’ve already announced State Treasurer John Schroeder expected to announce soon a bunch of other candidates are expected including Senator Bill Cassidy and Senator John Kennedy the list is already pretty long
Hey there could be some good news in the looming homeowners insurance crisis a legislative package that passed this week aims to beef up protection for policyholders and we’ll have Jim Donald in next week to talk about this on swi The pictures and video from Hurricane Ian’s destruction in Florida are stunning and heartbreaking they’re also teaching us about storm surge in real time and the forces that encircle the eye wall of a hurricane LSU hurricane climatologist Jill trepenier and LSU Coastal meteorologist Paul Miller explained Jill you mentioned that you use this
Video we’re watching video of Fort Myers Beach as the storm surge comes in in your class this week absolutely I used it as a great example of what storm surge can be when it’s at its worst I think it’s about the learning about how it actually happens and where it comes
From so a hurricane when it’s out over the open ocean has a lot of real estate beneath the surface of the ocean’s water all the way down to the depth and the ocean floor as the storm approaches a coast it reaches that continental shelf and in the Gulf of Mexico the Shelf is
Very gradual so you can think about a small depth change over space but there’s a large space as the storm approaches the actual Coastline it now has lost a lot of that real estate and so that depth between the Surface and the ocean floor just got a lot shorter
So the water goes up then it reaches the Coast of Florida where you have a massive amount of infrastructure throughout a cityscape tape that water spills over the landscape and floods the roads in a relatively quick way and that’s why it’s so different than we would see if we would see it in
Louisiana and we’ve not ever seen anything like this in actual time but we know what happens absolutely but it looks so different and that’s because we have the marshlands and we have so much of that and much and much less building right on the coast absolutely so part of
It is in Louisiana we have so much swamp land so much Marshland that thankfully for that we have a what we call an ecosystem service where that environment actually provides a service to the people in Louisiana by taking some of that energy dissipating it outward away from the actual landscape now certainly
We do reach land it does actually spill over the area that we’ve seen in you know in Lake Charles for example but a lot of that energy is pushed to different places and to Greater depth because of that swamp vegetation or Marshland vegetation so this is really a super visual
Instruction of when we say preserving the coast marshlands as the buffer that’s why Florida doesn’t have that Louisiana does absolutely absolutely yes I want to show you now just some of the aftermath and Paul as you look at this um describe why it’s as bad as it is well I think
What we’re seeing here is some of the absolute devastation that can occur in these eyewall wins you know sometimes you might be a parish or a county or two away from where the eyeball makes landfall you might think oh well it wasn’t that bad I had a treat on my yard
But that was it but what we can see here is that in that immediate core of the strongest winds associated with the tropical Cyclone that we see things being literally leveled that you see houses scraped off their foundations some of that’s through a combination of The Surge and the force of that water
Literally coming in and wiping the Slate on foundations but it’s also these extreme 150 mile an hour winds that encounter these areas as well now we’ve had and seen obviously Bridges collapse uh New Orleans of course had that Mississippi had that and Katrina this storm is comparable in damage it seems to Katrina
And then the water I suppose those I think they’ll be talking about that am I correct to say that yeah you know what’s important to point out when we were watching that storm surge video that that is ocean water I think sometimes it’s confusing when we hear these
Reports of 20 plus inches of rain to maybe confuse what’s happening over the Florida Peninsula with all the riverine flooding and the localized flooding associated with that rain and then maybe the storm surge that’s happening on the coast there were really kind of two components of this storm one is that
Massive storm surge that we were viewing and tons of rain exactly right so they had both those things happening there’s been discussion about the forecasting and that people were confused about the forecasting as I listened to it I wasn’t but I saw the cone they wouldn’t say anything
Unusual about that but yet still people in Florida are saying that they feel the forecasting was confusing can you see why they would say that yes I think it’s a mismatch of expectation and then reality so what people want the weather State the you know Weather Channel or
National Hurricane Center to be able to do is not exactly what they actually are able to do the fact that they had it within a couple hundred miles is quite the accurate forecast if we think about it historically we are getting closer and closer to being able to pinpoint
Where that storm is going to make landfall but I think that people want to know exactly but we’re asking people to predict something that’s not terribly easy to predict sometimes in these forecasting scenarios just legitimately we’ll get conflicting guidance from our computer models last year with hurricane Ida there was remarkable agreement
Amongst the different climate models all suggesting a landfall in Southeast Louisiana and so that was a relatively straightforward forecast with a lot of consistency that’s not always the case though sometimes we see different Global models kind of giving us different ideas of what might happen as the Cyclone
Continues to evolve and hurricane Ian was one of those cases and I think that maybe resulted in a little bit more fluctuation in that forecast as people were trying to make their final preparations any takeaway from what people have seen here in Louisiana and what we experience in Louisiana and that
We know very well because we have fresh fresh memories of 2020 and 2021 I I think that a lot of the lessons that we’re learning from Hurricane Ian are are showcased in some of the successes that Louisiana actually has as hard as that is right I know we get hit with
Hurricanes a lot but we are successful in some ways and one having people get out of Harm’s Way quickly but also because we do have some of that added vegetation along the coast it helps to protect us and and Florida does not have that they used to right and we’ve taken
Them out and built things in their way and and that’s reasonable but part of the risk of what we see in Florida compared to Louisiana is related to how we treat that landscape it’s fascinating I never thought about it in some of those ways thank you both
Again for coming in and talking to us Midterms are about a month away and it’s been pretty quiet until this week when a campaign ad from the heavy favorite Senator John Kennedy hit the airwaves his anti-crime ad is but grabbed so much attention violent crime is surging in Louisiana woke leaders blame the police many on
The left said the ad was blatantly racist filled with words that triggered look if you hate cops just because they’re cops the next time you get in trouble call a crackhead pollster and Professor Dr Silas Lee called The Spot typical of ones we see these days some candidates they exploit the fears and
The stereotypes that may exist in society and a lack of understanding about an issue in an attempt to see if that will give them some momentum or increase their level of support and that’s the difficulty sometimes people know less about an issue than we think and therefore they tend to rely on using
Fear as a motivating to to generate support political analyst Jim Inkster says Kennedy position himself to win races Kennedy Knows by virtue of having lost two races for the United States Senate before he finally won one that as a liberal Democrat which he ran in 2004 and finished third and as a moderate
Republican when he ran in 2008 and lost to Mary Landrew so he realized then that he had to go hard right and he did so and it’s working for him Kennedy’s nearest Challengers are both Democrats Progressive voice Gary Chambers and Luke Mixon who looks a bit like a younger
John Bel Edwards and in an Open Primary the only way John Kennedy was going to be forced into a runoff is if there were another viable Republican taking votes away from him but there’s no Republican there so he’s basically out there alone appealing to about 60 percent of the
Electorate and then you’ve got Luke Mixon and Gary Chambers who are appealing to the other 40 and the math just doesn’t add up A federal appeals court judge ruled that DACA violates U.S immigration laws putting nearly 600 000 young immigrants in limbo the judge is keeping the policy intact which means first-time applicants will be turned away for now I sat down with Nora Ahmed the legal director for Louisiana’s ACLU to talk about
Immigration’s impact on our state when people think of immigration they may not understand exactly why people are coming here so in your experience working with these groups why are they coming so you have a number of reasons that people will come and present themselves at the border we’re talking about issues
Related to gang violence we’re talking about climate related issues we’re also talking about extraordinary poverty and we’re talking about government persecution and truly people who are living in countries who feel as though they have no hope and that if they stay in their countries they will die there
They will die from lack of food they will die because groups are coming to kill them and their only hope is to work to get out of that situation and so we see people coming from the continent of Africa we see them traveling through 11 countries in Latin America facing rapes
Muggings the Darian Gap everyone who has traversed that actual pathway they see dead bodies as they walk through and oftentimes they lose people who they started on that Journey with so the people we see at the border are the absolute most desperate human beings one can think of people who are coming to
This country believing that they will be provided with refuge and most importantly these people believe that they are coming and presenting themselves legally they see themselves as following through on the United States legal process for seeking Asylum so there’s really a lack of understanding whenever they come here an
Absolute lack of understanding and even though this country says that these individuals are in quote civil detention so they’re not quote criminals they wear tags that say inmate identification they wear jumpsuits with stripes on them so even though we have a system that says these are not quote criminals
They are treated exactly like criminals and they are housed in facilities that once housed people who were convicted of crimes in this country so about how many immigrants do we have in Louisiana so that’s a difficult number that we’ve been working on because the data is ever
Changing but we have now started to visit all of these facilities and by our count it seems as though we’re talking about 3 000 people within the state but that number is ever changing and there are more facilities and beds available so there are 10 ice contract facilities
In operation in this state but we’re talking about eight that are housing immigrants seven of the eight operating facilities are for-profit prisons that means we are profiting off the backs of immigrants some of those for-profit prisons are traded on the New York Stock Exchange so that means investors are
Making money off of immigrants there is an extraordinary disconnect between detention and allowing investors and profiteers to engage in this business and the fact that our federal government approves this is extraordinarily concerning and while it may have stopped in the Department of Corrections context it has to stop in the immigration
Context because the number of people we see with severe medical needs who are telling us that they’re being given nothing but ibuprofen is shocking we’re talking about people who have eight pound hemorrhoids we’re talking about people with cancer we’re talking about people who do not have their medication for severe medical
Illnesses and they are not being given the care that they need and in fact the care that the performance-based detention standards require and that is part and parcel of what it means to incarcerate people who are coming to this country when it’s very possible to allow them to live their lives as they
Go through the legal process of seeing whether they will or will not be granted Asylum and in fact it’s virtually impracticable and mainly extraordinarily difficult to actually win your case in the absence of a lawyer and while you’re in detention so where does the ACLU come in so we come in
Because we could not get answers to a lot of the questions you initially asked me how many people are in detention who’s in detention do they have a deportation order so we along with three other Coalition Partners we’re talking about splc RFK human rights and ipnlg
We’re actually going to all of the eight operating detention facilities providing know your rights information answering questions from the general group and then meeting with people one-on-one for consultations about where their current case stands so it’s a really complicated process is there anything that people at home should definitely know about this
Everyone at home should understand that those individuals coming to the Border they believe that they’re legally coming to this country for Refuge so there seems to be a disconnect in this country because a lot of people think those presenting themselves at the border are quote illegal but you have to understand
It from the perspective of people who have given up everything who’ve gone through torture and torment to present themselves they are saying hello ice I’m here because I would like to engage in a legal process when there responded with being thrown in jail they don’t understand
What else they should have done in order to seek Refuge when they couldn’t continue to survive in their home country well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me it’s been really interesting information thank you thank you so much In the early 1900s African Americans found themselves navigating new terrain college campuses students organized underground networks that provided community service and camaraderie eventually those networks expanded into nine fraternities and sororities called the divine nine tonight we’re excited to present the first episode in the special series of crossing over black Greek life [Applause]
Break it down the divine nine I’ve heard about this organization my entire life and I’m a bit of a legacy my sister’s a Delta my cousin’s a Delta my aunts and AKA I could go on and on but the truth is even though I’m surrounded by this incredible culture I
Only know the basics and who could blame me no one teaches you this in school so to learn about this incredible culture I called Todd Sterling so what makes up the divine nine the divine nine is the group of the nine black Greek letter organizations that make up the
Divine nine why were these organizations founded wait wait wait wait time out if you want to really understand the history of the divine nine you need to take a step back a couple steps back actually my name is Walter Kimbrough and I am the author of black Greek 101 the
Culture customs and challenges of black fraternities and sororities the fraternity and sorority movement in the United States begins in 1776 with the founding of Phi Beta Kappa it really sort of branches off from the literary societies that existed in higher education but they served an even broader purpose like most things at that
Point in time in American higher education most of the students were white in upper middle class there were very few black students and they didn’t really arrive to campus until the early 1800s why were these organizations founded the organizations were originally founded because there were so few African-Americans going to college
And they gave African-Americans who were like-minded an opportunity to come together it sounds to me like trying to create a network a safe haven to be in at an all-white University absolutely that predominantly white University was Cornell in 1904 six black students attended and they didn’t come back the
Next year so by 1906 New Black students were desperate for a community Alpha Phi Alpha was the result the Alpha Phi Alpha was founded December 4th 1906 and was founded by our seven Jewels Alpha Phi Alpha was just the beginning after that black fraternities started popping up in droves
Kappa Alpha Psi Incorporated founded 1911 at Howard University in Washington D.C Omega sci-fi Incorporated founded 1911 at Howard University Phi Beta Sigma Incorporated founded 1914 at Howard University Iota Phi Theta Incorporated founded 1963 at Morgan State University in Baltimore Maryland now these organizations in the divine nine were just the ones that stuck
What if I told you there were actually dozens of black Greek life organizations let’s check back in with our expert for some context when we think about historically black fraternities and sororities a day we hear the term the divine nine and so most people think there are only nine of these groups in
Actuality there have been over 70 black fraternal organizations that have existed in the United States they might be known as wine sci-fi or whiskey sci-fi others then might have more Afrocentric names in an all-swahili name like Malik Sigma PSI it started off all Swahili they added Greek letters later
On as a part of what they did so we focused a lot then on people who want to be part of the divine nine organizations but of course there’s another aspect of black Greek life that I’ve been neglecting it’s the women’s side DeVille Essex is a 101 year old AKA from
Louisiana making her the oldest member in her chapter so what year did you cross I don’t say cross what year did I become an alpha cup Apple it was in 1953 on May 2nd at Grambling Epsilon psiomega was the chapter there and I was among the first women added to that Charter chapter
I graduated from Grambling in 1945 and Greeks were not a part of Gremlin at that time I had been out of college 11 years when they graduate chapter Epsilon PSI Omega was chartered at Grambling well if they didn’t have any Greek activity on the Grambling University in 1945. how did
You find out about akas well we had teachers members of The Faculty who were akas and really when they got ready to Charter that chapter they had to get women from Minden Monroe and Shreveport to make the number for chartering but so I knew about them
And I I was inclined to follow that and when it came along they invited me and I accepted yeah suppose you were not invited would you be able to just sign up no some some organisms some Greek organizations they can apply but you have to be invited
And we are encouraged not to say that you were going to invite I wouldn’t tell you I was going to invite you just in case the membership said no Alpha Kappa Alpha was the first black sorority it was founded by Ethel hedgeman at Howard University she gathered 12 other ladies to organize
It and it was modeled after both Alpha Phi Alpha and white only women’s organizations at Brown our theme service to all mankind you look at all people who need help and help them but you have you carry yourself in such a way that those looking at you want to be like you
That’s the basic thing more sorority started after the akas Delta Sigma Theta Incorporated found in 1913 Howard University Zeta Phi Beta Incorporated founded 1920 Howard University Sigma gamma rho Incorporated founded 1922 at Butler University things have certainly changed since 1906. black Greek membership is up and it’s not uncommon
To find members in different parts of the world I’m learning that this culture is Rich it’s historic and it’s Unique another example of black perseverance episodes of crossing over black Greek life will air on Fridays for the rest of this month so I hope you guys stay tuned
With us but they made it happening they were Crusaders they were definitely Crusaders they made a network and it was very imperative for them can’t wait to keep on seeing that and everyone that is our show for this week remember you can watch anything LPB anytime wherever you
Are with our LPB PBS app you can catch LPB news and public affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you’ve come to enjoy over the years and please like us on Facebook Twitter Tick Tock and Instagram for everyone here at Louisiana public broadcasting I’m Andre Morrow and I’m Kara sincere until next
Time that’s the state we’re in foreign For Louisiana the state we’re in is provided by every day I go to work for Entergy I know customers are counting on me so Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen together together together we power life Foreign support provided by the Fred B and Ruth b Ziegler foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall the museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and Cultural Center for Southwest Louisiana and the foundation for excellence in Louisiana public broadcasting with support from viewers like you
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