Revolutionary History: Lost and Found and Lost Again

                On this recent July 5 my curiosity got the better of me. Art writer Nikki Cormaci emailed me the day before, out of the blue, to say she…

A Day at Criminal Court in New Orleans

Watching Court on a Monday Morning      By Orissa Arend             On Monday mornings I step into a completely unfamiliar world – the criminal courthouse on Tulane and Broad. I am…

Book Review- Michelle Miller’s Belonging

Belonging: A Daughter’s Search for Identity Through Loss and Love by Michelle Miller             I never expected Michelle Miller’s new book Belonging to affect me so deeply. On the day…

Book Attempts to Dismantle Racism

 Deconstructing Racism: A Path Toward Lasting Change by Barbara Major and Joseph Barndt          by Orissa Arend             The book is new; but the authors’ involvement with my church is not.…

A Lesson in White Supremacy

What can The Road to Damascus teach us about White Supremacy?           By Orissa Arend                     White supremacy is a term that has come into the public discourse in the last…

Moon Landrieu and the Black Panthers

A Moon Landrieu Story         by Orissa Arend, author of Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans             I want to add a story to…

The Women of Justice and Beyond  

A Pillar of Justice and Beyond             Five years after its inception, Justice and Beyond (J&B), shifted from a coalition founded and led by two men – Dr. Dwight Webster…

Undoing Racism Work Continues

A meditation on continuity and the long view      by Orissa Arend             I recently stumbled on to the last day of an Undoing Racism workshop presented by the People’s Institute…

Why Reparations?              

by Orissa Arend             The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raines (Simon and Schuster,2022) is a true story. It begins with the fatuous bet by an Alabama plantation owner. He…

Energy Reparations    

by Orissa Arend             Historically, we have thought of reparations for African Americans in terms of land or money. But a recent forum of Justice and Beyond (J&B April 25)…