By Nicky Loomis

“Twilight” grossed $138 million worldwide as of this past weekend and HBO's True Blood has become the network's biggest hit since The Sopranos. It may be time to shroud the TV in garlic–vampires are back in a big way.

Vampires are a Rorschach test for our sexual sensibilities—”[N]o writer, from Bram Stocker on, has captured so precisely what sex and longing mean for a young girl,” Caitlin Flanagan writes of novelist Stephanie Meyer, on whose series of books the film “Twlight” is based.  But the comely undead have also historically represented a rejection of faith – as religious outsiders, as evil spirits, and even as the devil incarnate in some cultures.  Modern-day vampires have evolved with the times, though, representing a struggle with faith rather than a rejection of it.  

They have always been “extraordinarily elastic metaphors” Adam Sternbergh observes in a recent New York magazine article.  

“A werewolf represents our subdued animal instincts,” Sternbergh writes. “Zombies stand in for mob psychosis. Frankenstein gets trotted out to represent technology versus mortality. And vampires — well, they can represent pretty much everything else.”

Considering that they're trying to hit this moving target, it's no surprise that the media continue to miss the mark on the current vampire zeitgeist.  But by simply musing about the kaleidoscopic qualities of modern-day vampires, critics are missing a chance to sink their teeth into some serious writing about how an age in spiritual flux deals with its aspirations and anxieties.

Of all the recent vampire narratives, HBO's True Blood, based on the “Southern Vampire” series of books by Charlaine Harris, most clearly illuminates the connection between our fascination with the undead and the current religious climate in this country.  The opening credits in the show makes an explicit link to religion, with a montage that pans from a woman being baptized in a lake in one shot, to a burning cross, to a woman half-naked in lingerie in another.

In the hands of True Blood's creator, “American Beauty” auteur Alan Ball, the toothy trope takes shape as an allegory on contemporary queerness–vampires “come out of the coffin” and push for a “vampire rights” amendment that causes uproar among Christian rights groups.  

In a recent New York Times article, Alan Ball explicitly ties the resurgence of the vampire to contemporary shifts in attitudes around homosexuality: “Certainly it's very easy to look at the vampires as metaphors for gays and lesbians…But it's very easy to see them as metaphors for all kinds of things. If this story had been done 50 years ago, it would be a metaphor for racial equality.”

Importantly, Ball isn't choosing to imagine a world without faith; instead he creates a troubled world awash with equally troubled expressions of faith – a clear parallel to modern-day America – and ratchets up the tension between religious groups and the vampires in the show.

With all of this primal emotion in play, it's no surprise that True Blood can be shocking, and Ball works to keep his storytelling graphic and visceral.  In one episode, a character undergoes an exorcism and is freed from her “demons” as she writhes and convulses next to a spiritual healer in the back woods of Bon Temps, Louisiana.

A recent Beliefnet blog post describes the hyperventilating storylines in the show as “bordering on the depraved,” yet these dramatic religious themes are inevitable at a time when millions are eager to de-mystify the occult and former “fringe practices” like Pentecostalism are now at the cultural and political center of society.

In one response to the show, Salon.com TV writer Heather Havrilesky has no patience for what she sees as overworked religious themes lurking in the shadows of Ball's creation.  She finds a better representation of current religious sensibilities in the vampires and the misfits that than in the holy-rolling antics of the characters who oppose them.  

“Enduring the terrible Southern accents on this show is bad enough,” Havrilesky writes, “without a clichéd herd of Bible-thumping fundamentalists to drag us through every worn-out stereotype in the book. The nice thing about Sookie and Sam and Tara and Bill, after all, is that they're new to us. We're not sure what drives them or what they're capable of just yet. In contrast, those old familiar saccharine smiles and cries of 'Praise Jesus!' are just a few clicks away on TBN at all times. To most of us in this country, evangelical Christian shenanigans are old news. When it comes to the second season of this sultry, suspenseful vampire tale, let's hope Alan Ball sticks to some fresh blood.”

But it is precisely Ball's coupling of left-coast curiosities and square-state fervor that makes True Blood such a useful mirror for our times.

Ball has found something revelatory in vampires – a potent kind of magic that Anne Rice, that most famous chronicler of vampires, has now rejected.  Rice, who describes her rediscovery of conventional faith in Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, decided that there's no room for her old friends in her new life.

“[Vampires] represent a world without faith,” Rice declares in New York magazine, “a world in which alienated souls are wandering in the darkness, and that's how I felt all those years when I was without faith. And I don't feel lost anymore.”

Though Rice seems to believe she was faced with a choice between a heretic's sense of alienation and the feeling of security that often comes with an assent to orthodoxy, Ball succeeds at depicting a world of spiritual ferment where entirely new configurations of belief can emerge. That's what makes his show so satisfying—and that's also why the metaphor of the vampire is a good pointer for cultural observers who are eager to know which way religious trends are heading.  

By Brooke-Sidney Gavins

Last week's terrorist acts in India's financial capital left more than 180 people dead and 280 wounded.  The Indian and European press is reporting that the violence has sparked widespread debate as to whether the terrorists should be considered and referred to as followers of Islam,  but most of the American coverage of the attack is oblivious to what could potentially be a remarkable transformation in the Muslim world.

Immediately after the attacks, several Bollywood stars began to blog about the problem of associating Islam with terrorism. OneIndia web site reported that actor Aamir Khan wrote that terrorists are neither people of religion nor people of God.

“When will these politicians realise and admit that terrorists have no religion,” wrote Khan. “Terrorists are not Hindu or Muslim or Christian.”

Further, Khan attributes their actions to mental illness, not Islam.

“They are people who have gone totally sick in their head and have to be dealt with in that manner,” Khan wrote in his latest blog.

Another Indian news outlet, Rediff India, interviewed Idris Ali, the president of All-India Minority Forum, shortly after the attacks. Ali is well known in India's Muslim community as an advocate for minority and Islamic issues as well as a harsh opponent of anti-terrorism laws. When asked about the relationship between the events in Mumbai and Islam, Ali said:

“What we must realize is Islam never propagates violence. The word Islam is derived from aslama, which means submission to the supreme power. And submission can never be achieved through bloodshed. Those 10 bloodthirsty men who slaughtered innocent Mumbaikars cannot be the followers of Islam. Had they read the Quran, they would have waved olive branches and not automatic guns.”

Echoing the thoughts of actor Khan, Ali also said, “Fanatics have no religion, terrorists have no creed. The only religion that radicals follow is carnage.”

Many Indians and Islamic believers not only refuse to call the terrorists Muslim but have also denied the dead gunman burial in their cemeteries because in their eyes the men who committed these acts are not Muslims.

In a recent article on India's NDTV web site, Abdul Razzak, the president of Dawat-e-Islami, an international movement for the propagation of the Quran and Sunnah, is quoted as saying: “The killing of innocents is against Islam. They are bringing shame to 25 crore (or 250 million) Muslims of India. These men are not Muslims. Why should we give them place anywhere? There is no place for them in our hearts and in our cemeteries.”

Despite the fact that this movement to disown the Mumbai terrorists is widespread and gaining momentum in the Muslim world, most of the commentators in the U.S. are calling the events an Islamic attack. Michael Rubin, author of the National Review Online's blog The Corner, typifies the dismissive tone of many of the American journalists who at least acknowledge the debate.

“While it's fashionable to argue that terrorists in Mumbai do not act out of religion,” Rubin writes, “but are simply misguided, the fact of the matter is that they justify their actions in Islam.”

Rubin and the rest of the American media tend to argue that our focus should be on how terrorists describe their beliefs and not on whether their supposed fellow travelers recognize those beliefs as their own.

“For the purposes of policy and security, religion should be what its practitioners believe it to be rather than what academics or outside commentators say it is,” said Rubin.  “It is much more important to determine how terrorists are brainwashed in madrasas, than passing judgment on whether what they believe conforms to what academics believe Muslims should believe.”

Rubin's comments betray a contradiction at the heart of our attitudes toward religion generally and Islam in particular. Millions of Islamic practitioners are telling us that the terrorists aren't Muslims, but outside commentators like Rubin are telling us (and people like Aamir Khan and Idris Ali) that they are. This contradiction points toward a fundamental misunderstanding of how religious movements work. At best, this means that writers like Rubin will continue to offer commentary that doesn't reflect the greater religious and political implications of identifying Islam with terrorism. At worst, it means that the curse of mutual incomprehension between America and the Muslim world will persist for some time to come.

By Kyla Cullinane

Many American legacy media sources have reported that one of Malaysia's most prominent Islamic bodies banned the practice of yoga. On Saturday, the National Fatwa Council issued a non-binding legal decision declaring that Muslims in Malaysia risked being corrupted by yoga's Hindu influence.

The fatwa received coverage by the AP, which disseminated its reporting to CNN and Fox News, where the story was at the top of web pages. It seemed like another tale of What-are-the-Muslims- going-to-do-next?. While that's not surprising, I was amazed by how many reporters in this country overlooked the backlash that followed the yoga ban.

By portraying Muslims as crazy yoga-banning extremists, the American press is overlooking the more interesting fact that Malaysian Muslim women are fighting against the fundamentalist ruling.

International news organizations in Malaysia, England, France and Indonesia covered that dimension of the story well. According to the foreign press, there are many Islamic scholars, doctors, yoga practitioners and Muslim womens' rights groups (yes, they do exist) actively speaking out against the fatwa. Our legacy media mentioned that some people in Malaysia opposed the council's declaration, but they did not examine the reasons behind the opposition movement or give it any context.

Because the concept of fatwas is foreign to many Western audiences, the American press needs to give a better explanation of the practice. How common are fatwas?  What do Muslims generally think of them? From the AP story there's no way to know. One Malaysian article suggests that the conflict over yoga illuminates a clash between Islamic fundamentalists on the National Fatwa Council and the majority of Malaysian Muslims. If that is true, the American legacy media lost a golden opportunity to enrich our understanding of Islam instead of pandering to stereotypes.  

Malaysia's National Fatwa Council is no stranger to controversy. In October, the council issued another edict banning women from wearing pants because council members believed that women who wore them were beginning to behave like men.  

Contrary to widespread Western assumptions, Muslim women—indeed, most Muslims–are not passive victims of repression who take their orders from fundamentalist mullahs. In Malaysia, Muslims of both sexes are speaking out to protect their civil liberties. It's too bad their voices and the voices of others like them are rarely heard in the American press.

Kyla Cullinane is an Annenberg Fellow in the Master of Specialized Journalism program at USC. Previously, she worked as a prime-time television news anchor in Texas.

By Jennifer Hahn

“Twilight” might be this year's most religious film – but you wouldn't know that by reading the reviews. It's no secret that Stephenie Meyer, author of the series of teen vampire romance novels on which the film is based, is a Mormon. Meyer readily admits that her lifelong membership in the Church of Latter Day Saints has had an important influence on her work. Yet, somehow, critics of the film version of her first book, which debuted to $70 million in ticket sales this past weekend, completely and utterly overlooked the religious themes that make the flick much more than a silly rehearsal of the tired boy-meets-girl teen melodrama.

In case you're still unfamiliar with the “Twilight” story: Teenage Bella moves to Forks, Washington, to live with her dad. Then she meets the preternaturally pale and brooding Edward Cullen, one of a motley family of equally blanched children adopted by the local doctor (who couldn't resemble a youth pastor more). The two leads fall in love, and eventually Bella figures out that Edward is not merely odd; in fact, he's a vampire who is insatiably horny – sorry, thirsty –for Bella's blood.

Edward can't ever let himself “lose control” with Bella because he might, as Roger Ebert put it, “sink his fangs in just a little, and not be able to stop.” You see, Edward and his family form a unique coven of vampires who have sworn off human blood. Instead, they satisfy themselves with a sanguine Ensure sucked from the necks of four-legged animals.  

For the most part, critics have dismissed “Twilight” as superficial and stale, the kind of media offering that might follow Gossip Girl on the CW –“a slog of adolescent angst,” as the AP's critic put it. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times even went so far as to summarize the film in teen text message speak: “OMG he's SO HOT!! Does he like ME?? Will he KILL me??? I don't CARE!!! :)” Perhaps this is because Dargis wants to collapse the film's complex moral quandaries into the simple idea that “there's something worse than death, especially for teenagers: sex.”

If this were really what the film was about, Dargis would be right to claim that “the story's moral undertow keeps dragging [it] down.” But if she'd just look a bit deeper she'd see that the film is as much an exposition on free will (it takes place in Forks, Washington, after all) as it is propaganda for abstinence until marriage. The film's “moral undertow” is actually what makes it brilliant.

“I really think that's the underlying metaphor of my vampires,” Meyer told Time magazine in April. “It doesn't matter where you're stuck in life or what you think you have to do; you can always choose something else. There's always a different path.”

As William Morris of the Mormon arts and culture site A Motley Vision points out, the Mormon concept of free will or agency is a distinctive feature of the faith. Though he's not sure Meyer does the best job of exploring it, Morris, unlike other critics, at least notes the presence of the question of agency in Meyer's stories. Morris says he wishes the media would focus on themes like this when talking about Mormonism instead of obsessively covering the Mormon's-can't-even-drink-coffee story, which reduces their faith to a summary of “what we don't do rather than what we believe.”

Those critics that caught the abstinence theme (and shockingly, there weren't many of them) did little more than ridicule or dismiss it. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “True to Meyer's Mormon beliefs, there is neither hanky panky nor panky nor anything resembling a third or even a second base between Bella and her dreamboat.” But Phillips, like other critics, fails to see the absolute genius of this plot point. Meyer deserves credit for achieving something next to impossible: She makes abstinence sexy.

Not surprisingly, the only journalist to really dig past the forbidden love story into the sometimes profound religious subtext of the film was Religion News Service's Steve Rabey, who took the time to call an expert on Mormonism to figure out what this movie is really about.

“[A]nyone who is familiar with the Book of Mormon can also discern deeper theological themes, from the Mormon reinterpretation of the Fall of humankind…to the theme of overcoming natural man, which we can see when Bella wrestles with her desires and decides not to become a vampire,” Jana Riess, author of Mormonism for Dummies, told Rabey.

Maybe it's unreasonable to expect film critics to be up on the fine points of the Book of Mormon – but that's not all the mainstream media are missing. There's a heavy helping of sexism as well as religious naïveté factoring into these reviews. Again and again, critics remarked that teenage girls would “surely squeal with delight” at the film's bloodthirsty star, Robert Pattinson. But why is it so difficult for reviewers to see that teenage girls might love this franchise just as much for its thoughtful treatment of the existential and religious dilemmas with which they struggle?

Jennifer Hahn, whose work has appeared in Ms. magazine and Los Angeles CityBeat, is currently a master's degree candidate in specialized journalism at USC.

J517: Reporting on Religion
by B. Adriana Venegas-Chavez

God Loves Beauty

LOS ANGELES—For the past four years, Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities have come together to communicate their ideas about faith, spirituality and beliefs through art.

At the fourth annual God Loves Beauty Festival artists from around the country gathered at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple to showcase their visual and performing art in a six-day interfaith festival.
The art exhibition, which served as the opening event for the festival, was comprised with paintings, sculptures, pottery and photographs and was meant to start a dialogue within different faiths and cultures to go beyond the differences.

This interfaith event is one of many taking place around the Los Angeles area, including one through Crenshaw High School, where Muslims and Christians, Black and Brown communities came together to showcase the youth's artistic talents. There was also the annual Jewish/Muslim Dialogue at the Islamic Center of Southern California.

 “If you start with a common project instead of hitting people with heavy, ideological political ideas, a project like art opens doors of commonalities and it can go to other levels,” said Carole Wilson, one of the participating artists.

In fact, that was one of the reasons why Ani Zonneveld, president of Muslims for Progressive Values, helped organize the event. “It's a very easy way to connect with people. And when you all connect, it doesn't matter where you come from you connect through art. So we use whatever tools like music and visual arts to connect,” she said.

Another reason, Zonneveld continued, “I always thought that God got a bum rap. I thought instead of all these awful things being done in the name of God I wanted to do something positive and stick up for God for a change,” she said. Along with her, the International Muslimah Artists Network (IMAN), Center for Religious Inquiry, Iranian Cultural Center (IMAN) and St. James' Episcopal Church all helped sponsor and organize the event.

The interfaith exchange has been a new experience in the area, especially for the Muslim community. After Sept. 11, 2001 the Muslim community began to see the need to share their faith and experience with other religious groups and become more transparent. Nathan Richardson was one to notice how hard it has been for this particular community to open its doors, “This type of events works well for certain communities. I think it works well for everybody but some people don't do quite well as they should. The Muslim community, depending on what art you have, is not always into it.”

Despite its hesitation, the Muslim community, like many religious communities now, has shared its beliefs with others only to discover many similarities.  Rabbi Stephen Stein of the Center for Religious Inquiry at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple talked about the common ties within the religions that gathered.  “All of us probably know the word 'amen' whether it's amen, amen (Hebrew), ameen, in Arabic, it's all the same. It means 'I believe,' 'I have faith'.” He continued, “I don't think it's any accident that the root of amen in Hebrew forms the word faith but also forms the word art. There is a singular path from the heart of the artist into and through how we see the world; how we believe the world around us and I think what we have here tonight not only in person, but also in the art, is a real testament of how God loves us all and how God really loves the beauty in us all.”

    One of the most popular pieces of the exhibition was a series of two paintings by the artist Ali Rahamad. Both were composed of 12 smaller paintings and each showed a woman from a different religion and culture wearing a veil. “I painted this after 9/11 because people were saying the women from my country Malaysia who wore veils had no freedom. And I wanted to show everyone how women from all religions and cultures wear veils and are free.”

    Wilson, a painter since 19 and traditionally Jewish, converted to Buddhism in her early twenties; however, her paintings reflect Christian visions she sees in her dreams. “I've included spirituality and religion in my art because I had such beautiful visions inside of me. Visions of golden light that I really just wanted to express them through canvas… I'd love to think that God loves beauty and that's always been a very, very big part of my mission as an artist.”

    Even those who do not identify with a certain religion also participated, like Elyse Wyman. She said, “I'm very much interested in not so much religion but interfaith exchange. In the way we can learn from each other and basically save the world through art.” She continued, “This is what we need in the world, more cultural exchange, more conversation, and more things that we have in common so we can eventually celebrate our commonalities and talk about our differences and get a dialogue going.”

     Joan, who did not want to provide a last name, felt the event was promising in allowing religious groups to communicate their beliefs freely through art. “There's potential there for an expression, an outpouring of a certain truth. And each religion if it's expressing the truth, they're all expressing the same thing even though manifested in different ways,” she said. “The art makes you feel hopeful.”

    Many in attendance were, in fact, hopeful that events like these can build relationships between faiths in order to encourage appreciation, but most importantly tolerance. 

In the following days, the festival continued with The Muslima Monologues, the Muslim women equivalent of the Vagina Monologues where Mehnaz Afridi told stories of Muslim women on various paths of life. There were also musical performances by Ani Zonneveld, Marshall Voit, and Hadi Meidani and Farnoush Banaei. Trinita Kennedy from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York closed the festival with the art lecture “Venice and the Islamic World” where she examined the influence of Islam on Venetian art over a period of thousand years.

This year, more than 300 people of various faiths came together to “celebrate our differences and honor God through beauty and creativity,” Zonneveld said.

By Tara Graham
 
While crowds all over the world cheered Barack Obama's historic presidential win, a South Carolina priest advised his congregants to make a mad dash for the confessional before partaking in communion if they supported the pro-abortion candidate in the recent election.

“Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation,” wrote Rev. Jay Scott Newman in a Sunday bulletin for St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville.

The Greenville News ran a story about Newman's remarks in the Thursday paper, along with the headline, “Priest Advises Penance for Obama Vote.” Once the Associated Press picked up the story three days later and pegged it with the headline, “SC Priest: No Communion for Obama Supporters,” newspapers and websites around the world followed suit:

“Priest: No Communion for Obama Voters”

“Catholic Priest to Obama Supporters: No Communion for You!”

“Vote for Obama? No Communion, Priest Says”

In less than 24 hours, Newman's inbox was clogged with thousands of e-mails. Some were approving and others were not, but most importantly, all were responding to  headlines that misrepresented the facts.

“The AP story and, perhaps worse, the headline attached to the story gave the impression that I intended to deny Holy Communion to anyone who voted for Barack Obama last week. This, of course, is absurd,” wrote Newman in an e-mail to the editor of the Catholic Exchange.

The central issue at stake for Newman was abortion, not Obama. Many headlines missed the mark on this point. They also oversimplified Newman's message.

In order to ready oneself for the Sacrament of Holy Communion and avoid offending God, the Catholic Church teaches that one must first confess and repent one's mortal sins: “Whosoever is holy, let him approach. Whosoever is not, let him repent” (Didache 10).

If “receiving or participating in abortion” qualifies as a mortal sin—which, according to the Catholic Answers website, it does—then voting for a candidate who supports abortion does too.

The Catholic Church has long been ridiculed for instilling a deep-seated guilt into its followers. But while Newman was arguably doing exactly that by encouraging his parishioners to prepare for Sunday communion by repenting for (directly or indirectly) voting in favor of abortion rights on election Tuesday, the press turned his prescription for penance into a categorical punishment: “No Communion for You!”

Headlines that sensationalize religion may sell papers or attract online traffic, but they also tend to misrepresent the larger values at play and overlook the fine print in declarations of religious faith and practice.

“When I wrote it, I had no thought that [my column] would be read by anyone other than parishioners of St. Mary's or out of the context of everything that has been taught and preached here, from the pulpit or in writing, over these seven years,” Newman remarked in this past Sunday's bulletin. “And yet that was precisely the result of the distortion of my words by the Associated Press.”

The antidote to Catholic guilt is the Sacrament of Reconciliation. For want of a better story or out of sheer ignorance, most of the headlines misrepresented Newman's intention. He wasn't merely pointing the finger of blame; he was pointing his parishioners toward the nearest confessional.

There is an intimate relationship between sin, repentance and communion in the rites of the Catholic Church—and understanding that relationship makes all the difference in telling this story.

By Andrea Tabor

The oldest operating cemeteries in New Orleans are almost as old as the United States itself, dating back to the late 18th century.  They have survived citywide plagues, the Civil War, and innumerable natural disasters.  So asking how the cemeteries had weathered Hurricane Katrina didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense at first.

What had the storm wrought in cemeteries within the city limits?  I knew from my preliminary research that in New Orleans there were few sensationalized accounts of caskets creeping up from underground, as they had in outlying parts of Louisiana.  But just as the rest of New Orleans had been deeply impacted by Katrina, so were those who care for some of its most distinctive landmarks.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I had arranged for a private tour of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 on my first morning.   Joyce Cole was my guide, and I knew right away, watching her drive through so many different cemeteries and seemingly knowing every plot, that she was going to be the frame for my story.

Later that day, I went to Tulane University to speak with a geographer and a geologist who explore the unique soil composition of New Orleans, which makes the above-ground cemeteries necessary in the first place. I learned about the problems that were inherent in the city before Katrina, how the city developed, and the everyday challenges associated with living a mile above the nearest bedrock. Some of the highest ground in New Orleans has been used for cemeteries, which spared them from the worst of the flooding during Katrina. Some of the city's safest and most valuable real estate has been occupied for two centuries by the dead, while much more perilous neighborhoods have spring up around it.

I didn't include quotations from these two sources in my story.  Nevertheless, the information I gained from them helped me see beyond the generalities.  After that first day in New Orleans, I knew what I still needed to get and with whom I needed to speak.  Most importantly, I knew which questions to ask.

By Brooke-Sydney Gavins

I initially began my investigation into race and politics in New Orleans by examining a small niche group, Creoles, who are of mixed racial and ethnic heritage. I wanted to examine whether Creoles of Color (African, Spanish and Caucasian/French) would identify with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's mixed heritage. And further, I wondered whether this identification would lead Creoles of Color to vote for him. I was also curious as to how their French Catholic background would affect their vote. Would their religious beliefs make them tend to choose McCain? Or would their complex ethnicity dispose them to more closely identify with Barack Obama?

After investigating my topic, I ran into difficulties finding Creole sources. In addition, the Creoles that I pre-interviewed basically identified themselves as black, and they were all voting for Barack Obama. The story became blacks voting for a black man, which wasn't very interesting.

Next, I widened my topic a bit by focusing on African Americans and politics in New Orleans.  Several of the sources that I had developed for my Creole story were experts on the city's racial politics, so I was able to use them in my new story too.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Once I hit the ground, I immediately re-confirmed all my interviews and began looking for signs of politics all around me. One of the stories that I also covered was an early voting event, which featured local hip-hop artists and New Orleans bounce music. Although the event was a great idea, it wasn't well attended. The musical acts were mostly playing for each other. And the major bounce music draw, DJ Jubilee, didn't even show up. DJ Soul Sista, a prominent dee-jay in New Orleans, also didn't attend the event. And the second line leading to City Hall was not well organized and very small. I obtained several interviews from the hip hop artists in hopes of finding a bigger hook, but did not find one. With low attendee turnout and Obama's low profile in Louisiana, the story fell a bit flat.  

After speaking with several sources, however, I learned that the 2nd congressional district race was a real-life example of the pitfalls of voting based on race. I also realized that Obama was a less potent figure in Louisiana because the state traditionally fell into the Republican camp. Louisiana would side with McCain, although Obama could win in the New Orleans area only.

So I decided to focus on the pitfalls of voting based on race and juxtapose that issue to the challenges that Obama has faced due to his race. Since the beginning of his historic presidential bid, Obama has encountered people who would not vote for him simply because he was black.  The story captured various racial challenges distinct to New Orleans, such as the perceptions of racial prejudice during and after Katrina; a majority-minority city with predominantly black leadership until the years after Katrina; the battle for power between whites and blacks; the ascendance of Hispanics, a new minority; and residents voting for candidates because of their race.

Visit Pop&Politics to check out the story based on Brooke-Sidney's reporting in New Orleans.

By Kyla Cullinane

It started with a phone conversation.

“The real story that no one is really covering is the fight to reopen Charity,” explained journalist and New Orleans native Jason Berry.

I called Berry to find out more about Catholic Charities' Operation Helping Hands project, but by the end of his passionate monologue, he had convinced me that I must look into Charity Hospital. Berry gave me a brief summary of the situation: most of the poor, who happened to be African-American, relied on Charity for their healthcare. With the hospital closed, they were left with few choices.

Berry mentioned that two citizens' groups were actively fighting to reopen Charity, which seemed like the beginning of a compelling narrative. Sister Vera Butler and community activist Brad Ott were leading the campaign to bring healing to a broken city. Sister Vera saw Charity's closing as a class issue; Brad thought it was a race issue.  While they cited different reasons for getting involved, their goal was and is the same: to make sure poor African Americans in New Orleans have access to quality healthcare at a properly staffed public hospital.

As I delved deeper into Charity's closing, I found another valuable source: Dr. Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. An expert on race relations, he has studied David Duke extensively as well as the racial composition of New Orleans post-Katrina. He was not sure whether the motivations behind the closing of Charity were racist, but he did see the impact of racism in the consequences of the city's plan. He felt the hospital's closing was part of a larger scheme that effectively prohibited poor African-Americans from returning to the city after Katrina.

Hill pointed out that in New Orleans, before Katrina, the majority of the poor people were African-Americans Who were often living paycheck to paycheck and relying on Charity for free or reduced healthcare. After Katrina, when jobs and healthcare virtually disappeared and rents soared, many in the African-American community felt banished, Hill explained. Even if they wanted to come home, for many a return to the devastated city was not economically possible.  Hill also says white liberals feel uncomfortable talking about race because they encouraged poor African Americans to stay in other cities.

Others, like Sister Vera, are less comfortable pointing to race as a reason behind Charity's closure. She pointed out that poor white people are also impacted by the loss of the hospital. Because race is an especially divisive issue in New Orleans, she feels it is counterproductive to bring up racism in the movement to provide affordable healthcare to the city's poor.

By Nicky Loomis

In writing about New Orleans, I was interested in understanding whether Hurricane Katrina had diminished the vitality of the city's famous music scene. 

Three years after the storm, jazz clubs and juke joints are alive and well – and perhaps more important than ever to the city as it continues to rebuild itself.  From the French Quarter to Frenchman Street to the neighborhood of Tremé, music pours out of bars and into areas both thriving and struggling.

On any given night, legendary jazz musicians such as Henry Butler or Ivan Neville can be seen playing in their favorite haunts.  The setting is always intimate, the musicians approachable.  The more musicians I spoke to, the more I began to realize how close they are to each other.   

Many of the performers I interviewed said that closeness comes from growing up together, from learning to play the trombone or the bass guitar at neighborhood gatherings when they were young.
And while many neighborhoods remain half-empty, music continues to be an important legacy that each generation passes on to the next. 

Though an estimated 75 percent of the city's musicians have returned, bands have decreased in size, and some members are still unable to afford to come home. 

The community of musicians has been supportive of its own during difficult circumstances, and many grassroots organizations, such as Sweet Home New Orleans and Habitat for Humanity's “Musicians Village” have  provided steady outreach.

To some musicians, Katrina is the defining influence on their music these days.  Yet for most, the killer storm is a blip in the history of a city that has withstood the test of time. The music, then, keeps the culture of the place intact.