Welcome to my presentation and also receiving greetings from Malawi. I'm presenting this experience of social mapping in context of emergency. After the introduction, I'll take you through the definition of social mapping, how we went through the experience and also our recommendation. Normally we say we work for the beneficiaries, but do we work with the beneficiaries in emergency if the answer is no? Why? Is it because we judge them that they have nothing to contribute or they are completely traumatized? But we need to start with believing that even in dangerous or emergencies that can erupt, the community do not remain with the nothing. They have also the capacity to give important information for our intervention. The experience that I'm going to share or the methodology that we are going to share is not new. It has been used in several contexts, like in normal context, but what is new today is using the methodology in the context of emergency. In 2014, we found ourselves in the floods, like in Malawi, that's in Sanje. It was a very difficult context. You know, those people who are already involved in emergency, it is always difficult when you get quick information that you need to go and react. And we felt the best intervention or the best way to understand the context or to engage the beneficiaries is to use social mapping. And when we used in this area, it worked and we extended the experience to seven other projects. We had, like Koraera Inigeno and the Koraera plus the oral vaccination campaign, like one leg chila, also the displacement of people like from the neighboring country. In both areas, it was also successful. Latest, we also introduced geographical information system as a matter of improving communication with the other external stakeholders. What is social mapping? Social mapping is a participatory methodology that helps to visualize the location of the households, distribution of different people together with the social structures existing in the area, including groups and organizations. This you use simple available tools like the stones just to allocate the areas. For example, you can ask the people to allocate where is their health facility. They will go and locate where is the school. They will go and locate. And you also use simple stick so that they draw like the rivers, the boundary for the area. These locations, if they are visualized, they also promote them to give ideas, their feelings for the areas where they are living. You also use just a simple ground. From what you have drawn on the ground, you transfer to a paper. Just a simple paper. This also helps to work as a reference document. How did we do it? Mostly as a facilitator, you are supposed to prepare questions that should help to identify the risks, the roles and the expected deliverables. It can be from the beneficiaries and also you as a partner. After that, you elect the representative. They can be male only or women only or men and women. That is depending on the context of what you want to discover in the area. Later, next step, you invite the people so that they do the exercise of visualizing the risk prone area. As I've already said, you normally, it's a participatory, you evolve each and every person in the area for the group so that they identify the areas. Example like, as you can see, they are women. She is coming from where she can point like where is the water source. Common question can be where is the water source? They will go and point. There can be several types of water sources and the next question can be where do you drink? And they will go and also point the specific area where they drink. For example, in this context, we found that they had boho but they could not use the boho because it was saute and they are opting to use the lake water or the river water. Within the discussion, we found that they knew the risk that they were taking but they had no option and they knew that maybe they could get the infection and that also helped us to know what we can do and they also mentioned their experience that we once used powdered water gut and in that way, we knew that okay, they know how to use the water gut and we can just reinforce. This process, as we said, is participatory. It helped also to identify some misconceptions and within there, they could clarify and if there are also some misconceptions that needs to be worked on, you could also mark them. Usually, this is the way how we normally receive the information for the context. This is not a lake. This is the river. This is flooding area. Down there, there are roads, there are houses but if you can receive this type of information, how can you know what is on the ground? The only way to understand the context as a new person for that area it means you are supposed to go down and meet with the beneficiaries so that they should share what is there. So through the experience of the social mapping, this is the outcome of the information that we got from the beneficiaries. You can see now we saw the roads, rivers and within the process we are located like the critical isolated affected area as you can see like there, this is where the people were more living but this is a new river, this was the old river but this was just a new river because of the flood and this is also an old river. So people completely cut off. We identified the high risk community, we prioritized the needs together with them and we had to know what we can do and they also know what they could also contribute. They gave ideas, they gave space, they also gave like also human resource support and we identified strategic positions that's both for medical related activities and also logistic related activities. When I say logistic related activities like distribution of food and food items we used like schools and other structures in the site. It was very interesting that there was a strong community ownership and together with them we managed to reach 70,000 beneficiaries with different types of activities like medical and non-medical. For the non-medical items we distributed almost 26,000 mosquito nets, 7,000 order treatment kits, 5,000 shelters and also clothes. Because of their participation, because of their involvement there was that strong reinforced transparency and accountability. It is a simple, low cost approach and it really helped us to understand the local context and their needs and this also promoted confidence for the people to contribute. We were really, they were really our partners, we were our true partners in the process. As we said, this is in emergency related context. What we added there is, as I said, geographical information system which they added to, it was just like a smartphone to identify the other area so that we share the information to specific individuals or organizations. With our experience we are also asking the house that please MSF Responsive Action should avoid killing existing innovative things in the areas that we work with. We need to consider scaling up like the listening and soliciting support from the beneficiaries. Like in this context we could not use our cars because it was not possible to bring the cars in that area. We used their sources. MSF has already asked, is already calling for the change and this is our time to change now. And also may I ask you again that we should join the UK MSF Director who presented yesterday. She also talked about the action. We need to act now. Like us through our experience we believe now in involving and engaging the community. We have used it. I believe now if it is a release it is your time to take this stick so that you continue this experience on the ground. It's not about trial but we need to act now. I think I should last by also appreciating all the support from the beneficiaries, the Minister of Health, the major team but also the leadership for that context that accepted us to say yes we can do it. We know in the other context if the leaderships are blocking it is always difficult to do what people can do. Thank you very much for your attention.


Forbidden Fruit is part of a series that's based on Alice in Wonderland and a friend once told me that when she looked at my work she felt as if she fell through the rabbit hole and in reading the book I recognized the similarities between the book and my work such as in my paintings I create a world that's whimsical and mysterious very much like Wonderland and also when I was reading the book I found myself grasping for meaning and most of the people who look at my work are always looking for an explanation. So the number 82 is the year I was born 1982 and 910 I use that number because it's one away from 9-1-1 which is emergency and so I kind of have crows looming over this figure's head as if something is going to happen to this person. The watermelons I use because they have kind of have a dual nature like with rays they can have negative connotations but it's a very fun fruit that's meant to be shared and kind of bring people together. The letter A it's actually like one of the hieroglyphs like it was originally it originated as an ox head was like the letter A in hieroglyphs so that is based off an ox the figure so I kind of threw that in too. And the mushrooms because this was inspired by the caterpillar story when he was smoking the hooka pipe in Alice Wonderland. I like to keep my paintings open to multiple interpretations because I feel like it keeps the painting relevant and excited.


Hi, I'm here at the King Street Laundry. My name is Sandy Baird and we are at this laundry at the good braces of the owner of the building Andrew Christensen and he has decided to make this very nice laundry into also public space where we could do public events especially with those events which affect this neighborhood. And that's the reason we're here tonight because if there's any neighborhood that's going to be impacted by the Southern Connector, this is it. We are at King Street and if you've seen our map that we also have been part of this show, it will show that this neighborhood a rather moderate income neighborhood full of people of color. This is the neighborhood where the Southern Connector will course through this neighborhood and have the greatest impact on this place. With me tonight is Steve Goodkind who is the former civil engineer of the city, city engineer of the city of Burlington. He was the original project director for the Southern Connector, correct? Well the last, the last project director and who was the mayor at that time? I was the project director when Bob Kiss was mayor and for a short time when Merrill Weinberger was the mayor. Okay so anyway we're here to discuss the current status of the Southern Connector and also where do we go from here about it? And Steve as I mentioned was the city engineer under all the mayors, under all the mayors, right? Starting with Bernie. Starting with Bernie and then with Peter Clavel and then with I guess who else? Bronelle, Clavel, Kiss, and Merrill. Okay so Steve bring this up to date there's a legal status, right? Well just to note I think you said it earlier there's a ground zero for the traffic from the Southern Connector we're sitting right next to it right now. What do you mean by that? Traffic from this highway will be increased as it passes and it will pass through this neighborhood. In other words unlike what the original intention of the project was where it would go around the neighborhood. Now it's going through the neighborhood. Okay so we're in the King Street and Pine, King and Pine neighborhood right on the corner, right? And so could you describe a little bit more of what you're going to do? Well just as an example the traffic in the south end of the project streets like home and Flynn the traffic is projected to decrease by over 70 percent. Decrease. Decrease when the highway is constructed and open. Traffic will be reassigned from those streets and we'll take this this new roadway. At this end of the project where there really isn't a new roadway just some it's going to end here. I won't call it even improvements. Some things will be done to the roadway up here but the traffic will come into this end of town and there'll be a 38 percent increase in traffic from this roadway. So it's kind of the flip side of the coin and now you mentioned what what's the legal issue here. Well wait a minute so could you we have a map I don't know if we're very capable of showing that are we? Okay so and we had a map on our flyer so maybe you could maybe explain the map a little bit. There's a map on the screen people can see it. So they're seeing that map if you look at the left side there's a yellow line it's got a big bend in it. That's the south end of the project and in fact part of that line the part that's farthest to the left that's what we call the road to nowhere. I think most people in Burlington that have been down to the south end have seen what looks like a interstate highway but it seems to be abandoned. It's overgrown nobody uses it sometimes cars are parked on it. That's a piece of this project that was built in about 1985-1986 but never opened because it never connected to anything. If you follow that yellow line it makes a big bend and it hits to the right that's the part of the project that they're building right now but there's one caveat to that it does not connect to the road to nowhere. So in other words that that solid yellow line would have a gap in it and they're not intending to open that until this entire roadway is completed and a project called the rail enterprise project I'll talk about that in a second is opened. So anyway the project continues from left to right and you see it's got a sharp bend and it makes another bend that's lakeside avenue. At that point the roadway is going to start it's going to stop being a new road it's going to be improvements all of improvements changes are going to be made to the existing road to lakeside avenue and then to Pine Street as we continue north to Main Street. Main Street okay right and that's the that's the project that's configured now also on your map you can see in the top right I believe you'll see like an orange line kind of a curved orange line that is the rail enterprise project that's where it will be if it ever happens. What is it? It's it was it's actually a piece of the original project that we now call the Champaign Parkway or Southern Connector when I was the project manager we did an environmental impact statement and got a record of decision that had our a project that didn't look like this instead of that last little piece of yellow line to the far right the project followed that orange line and it went around the neighborhood. It went around this neighborhood so it didn't it didn't unfairly or unwise. It took traffic out of the neighborhood just like it's going to do in the south end and that had been that had been really the basis of this project from day one this project has had many different variants I think maybe people have heard about the Pine Tree Barge for now one time it was going to go through that that's not going to happen there was designs that had this roadway out over the water at the waterfront but every concept of this project is Champaign Parkway or what I call the Southern Connector project every version of it from back in the 70s always was meant to go around this neighborhood and why why that's what the city I think truly believed should happen we didn't want to put a road through a neighborhood we wanted to put the roads around the neighborhood and in fact get the traffic out of the neighborhood not push more traffic through it and that's been the mantra for the city from day one of this project and no version ever showed it going up Pine Street all the way to Main Street until about 2008 and the federal government told us that they were only build the project if you get it that way. Okay well let's get to that because I'd like to know why that change occurred but so this is why there was a lawsuit is that correct? Lawsuit comes later. Lawsuit comes in about 2016 or so. All right so how many lanes is this as well? Well let's go back the project started out like well there's something called an MEGC project these are projects were devised back in the 70s it stands for Municipal Economic Growth Center yeah and the idea was to build highways in such a way as to encourage the growth of urban centers right? Burlington is one of them. These projects usually involve some kind of a what we call a ring road. If you ever look at a map of Boston or Houston you'll see there's an interstate there's an interstate that goes to the city but then there's a series of ring roads that go around the city right and those kind of connect other parts of the city to the interstate. Vermont didn't really have an urban center like a Boston or a Houston or something like that or Chicago but they did want to build some kind of a ring road system somewhere in the state and Chittany County was the logical place so they conceived of a series of projects that essentially would create a ring road around the city. My 289 and S6 is part of it my 189 in the south end of Burlington and out in South Burlington that's part of it. The circumvential highway which I think most people have heard about but it never got built in fact was the project has been changed drastically from what it was going to be but that was going to be the link so you would have had this continuous ring road around Burlington and then the southern connector the northern connector we're going to come to the western edge near the waterfront and in fact the northern connector is also part of that ring road system so some of it exists the circumvential highway the biggest piece though was not going to happen as a limited access highway by limited access highway think of an interstate it doesn't have curb cuts or driveways or buildings on it it's to road with limited access only at certain points usually involves higher speed travel right the just to say what happened to this the circumvential highway they made the opponents made a case that that was not necessary really needed was a road that would be what we call now a complete street a road that everyone would use would be bicycles yeah it's just more usable and not be this obstacle going through the area but something which was inevitably part of it and the state eventually said yes that's what we'll do and that's what I think they're still planning on doing you would have thought at the same time they would have looked at the southern connector and said well isn't that really the same it's just another piece of the same project right shouldn't we do the same thing here feel the complete street but no how come when so when you say you want to do it they just why okay so what is it then how many lanes how well it depends where you're looking at it here's an important thing to note originally it was going to be a four lane limited access highway very similar to 189 not a lot like 289 because it only 289 only has really two or three lanes this is going to be a four lane and maybe five or six lanes at the intersections that's what it really proposed back in the 90s Scott Johnstone was a public works director I was city engineer and Scott thought we all thought this road was just overdone overbuilt and he persuaded the state that it should be downsized to so you have two lane roads instead of a four lane road one lane in each direction and the state eventually agreed with that and so the road in different areas has different widths from from well the road to nowhere from shelvin road to home avenue that road is basically like an interstate it's got the four lanes right now at least even though they're decrepit from home avenue to lakeside was also going to be a four lane affair but now it's going to be a two lane road and then wider at the intersections and then plan sheet would be what plan sheet is now though it may in some places have a third lane for turning now and being more of a complete street so it's it's kind of a cut in half in size from what it originally was conceived as but there's one other caveat to that from home to flint avenue there are businesses there's homes there's the need for driveways and access right you can't just put a limited access highway through there and not do something with the existing streets so they have to rebuild and replace the streets on the stiff on the two sides of the connector so that there'll be a way to have access to the buildings on that side they call them service roads okay and so what you're really going to have is a two lane service road on one side a two to four lane limited access in the middle and then on parts of the other side another two lane road so this thing could be as wide as six even seven or eight lanes wide in areas it's pretty crazy wow and it's not a and that's not being done in other places either not anymore it was you can go around this country and you can see places where this was done portland 60 years ago no one's doing this now no one no one is doing this now we're the last ones and I think but it really boils down to it really boils down to the reason we're doing it is personalities and it's personalities at the federal highway administration uh district office in Montpelier they just will not let this thing go and be changed the same way that say the circumventual highway was changed they just want it to be built be done with they want to be done they want it to be done it's wanted out of their hair we have a question go ahead uh can Steve talk about the storm water retention farms currently being yes yes who is that question from Diane yeah right the project does some things that are positive and have nothing to do with being a road or not in the lower the down slope areas of flin home lineman street foster street they've had flooding down there during heavy storms for years and part of what this project would do when it passes through that areas it's going to put a storm water system in for the roadway and it's going to pick up those streets also so one thing it can do is it can uh alleviate storm water problems in some of those neighborhoods and the ponds are designed to treat that storm water before it's discharged back into englesby ravine or into lake shamp plain so that part of the project is good and actually could be a standalone you could do that without building the road at all and it would work just as well now the other thing to remember about this though is they're also doing under the guides of storm water they're putting in what i call a bridge it's a giant culvert it is going to allow the roadway to cross englesby brook that part of the project has nothing to do with storm water it doesn't treat it doesn't divert it doesn't in any way do anything to be beneficial to the lake as far as storm water it's just a bridge it's just to allow englesby ravine to pass through this large culvert and a road to be built on top of it so there's a couple things going on down there now they're building a storm water system which could benefit some of those neighborhoods whether the road is built or not and then they're doing this major project at englesby ravine which has absolutely nothing to do with storm water it's totally for the road and that's where most of the work is going on right now okay we thought by the way the court had told them they could not okay well let's get to that let's get to that diane does that answer your question or do you have another one well of course i have lots of questions but um i think you oh you can't hear i can barely hear you you hope you can hear us better than i can hear you i can totally hear you good okay you know what the question was alright i didn't ask the question yet i didn't ask the question yet keep going with with where steve was headed on the um t ro yeah but we thought the judge had issued an order saying but let's go back why are there judges let me ask the question okay we thought in a recent hearing before a judge at our case and we'll talk about the case in a minute but we thought the judges said that they could this construction season only do clearing and grubbing that means cutting down trees and clearing out stumps and brush and installing this storm water system which would be beneficial to the community even if there was no road and we thought the judge was pretty clear that's what he would let them do they've like said i'll say this again the road has changed twice now in the say last 20 years the first was it was originally going to go through the pine street barge canal that route would have taken it directly north and south about 200 or 300 feet to the west of pine street a completely new road but the problems with the barge canal turned out to be insurmountable and no road is ever going to be built through there and scott jobstone was a public work director i was city engineer scott came up with a proposal that we would go around the barge canal use pine street and then in the vicinity of curtis lumber in the old street department yard we would turn back to the west again through the rail yard into battery street and thus continue to avoid the king maple street neighborhood which in the original design would have been completely bypassed so that's one change then in about 2007 the federal government said the only way we're going to support this project is if you don't go through the rail yard but just go straight up main street through the king maple street neighborhood like they like it and that's the way it's going to be and they basically said take it or leave it if you don't like that then there's no project and we tried to fight that process for about two or three years and finally at the end they said if you don't stop fighting this we're going to stop paying all the bills we're going to basically shut you down and eventually what was what was written as a decision by the federal government is this road will go from lakeside avenue to pine street and from pine street all the way to main street and that's the project now that's the way it is through this neighborhood okay i think everybody in the city that was involved with the project was disgusted with that but they didn't seem to be at the time another choice of what we could do so in your view then the problem is that going through the neighborhood and having this huge impact on this neighborhood which was not part of the original for 30 years it was never part of various designs of this project never a part of it this is the last i'll say a last minute thing and the reason i believe is this is what i think is i think it's actually a personal thing i mentioned this me gc funding earlier what that funding does it provides 95 federal money for highway projects three percent state two for city that percentage for the city is very very low very advantageous normally cities pay 10 to 20 percent so five to ten times as much as we're going to pay for this road so that gave this road kind of legs but the project has gone on for so long and all the Vermont me gc projects went on for so long none of them were ever built and now when the new federal highway administrators come to Vermont the first thing they want to know is about these me gc projects like the last of the dinosaurs no other state has these projects with active projects anymore and back in the 2000s the federal highway administrator at the time said he's going to get this off the books we're going to get this done okay so they just want to say he wanted it done and that's why he did this he thought this that was the quickest way to get it done okay but okay so is that all right i'm going to go on to the legal challenge that you have brought just as a lead into it even the city at the time just who was the mayor when just was the mayor nobody wanted us we had fought it for three years take them to take this decision back and let us go with a route that went around the neighborhood and finally they just wouldn't do it the city said okay if the only way you can have any part of the project is to do that way we'll do it i don't think that was a good decision um that was under the wine burger no that was kiss kiss now to his credit and i have many disagreements with mayor wine burger but he recognized that going through the neighborhood was not a good thing okay so then what happened now it's going through the neighborhood he had he he picked up on something we were trying to do the last waiting days of kiss administration and come up with another reason to still take the roadway through the rail yard the battery stream and he came up with a bigger version of that and promoted it and that project is somewhat alive right now though it's many many years away from being completed if that project is completed it's the rail enterprise project that would take the traffic and take it around this neighborhood just like our plans used to do it it's almost identical to it and that's a project that they're doing this kabuki dance okay so that project can happen normally that project wouldn't even be considered because it was rejected in an earlier process you can't bring an old stuff back anyway that's where it stood now in 2016 a group i was a member of it pine street pine street coalition right filed a lawsuit against the project and the project looked like it was about to go to construction then and the lawsuit contended a bunch of things some of them were environmental concerns about the project down in the south end and one of them was a concern about environmental justice okay so this is kind of a new idea this environmental justice or not we were challenging the fed's decision to go up maple and up through maple king and pine we raised the concern about environmental justice which is what environmental justice says you don't build a federal project through a low income or minority or both neighborhood and this is it this qualifies as one and that's the reason without using the term environmental justice that was always the city's position you're not going to put this through this neighborhood you never wanted to do that like like that this was an idea that was rejected by prior developers in 1997 i was project manager we did an environmental impact statement and got a record of decision from the federal government during that process they asked us if we would consider a route that went up maple the maple pine and king and we said no because of this and it just went away okay so the the theory went 10 years later when we did the next had we do another vis and the same question came up and we said again no you know we don't want to do this this is not this project doesn't look bad well we didn't say that we just said this is not what we want to do we've rejected it before and we thought they would just again take it off the table because instead instead they said no not only is it off the not gonna be off the table that is the route you're going to have to do that's how it came down wow and but there are principles aren't there in the law that state that federal projects there were principles in say 2009 but they weren't strong other environmental concerns in the environmental documents could supersede them lower let's say there was a it was a historic neighborhood versus a environmental justice issue neighborhood the historic neighborhood put over right okay so but when obama became president they changed that and they strengthened those laws and now they do trump just about everything else this idea of environmental justice correct and in our lawsuit that was a big part of it and to i think everyone's surprised the federal government through their federal attorney in burlington responded saying you've got five issues plaintiffs four of them we think we're good with we don't think there's any issue there we know you've raised the issues but we think we're great but he said your environmental justice complaint is valid we don't say that this is the federal attorney representing the state and the federal governor okay and he said that your environmental justice concerns have merit and the review they did of environmental justice back in say 2007 or eight doesn't pass muster today since the project hasn't built you got to those rules apply so make a long story short and i don't know this ever happened anywhere else before but the federal government rescinded their record of decision which decided it was going to go project would go up main blah blah blah and went back and said you got to do your environmental impact stuff again and we have to issue a new record of decision and we'll see what comes out of that so that was for us a huge victory yeah sure we didn't even really we filed court papers but we didn't have a trial they basically conceded on that issue but as always seems to happen the then when they stayed in the feds in the city bureaucrats got a hold of this thing they basically did what i would just call a white wash i mean they they went through what looked like the motions but didn't change a thing and said it was always okay which is really contrary to the what the federal attorney had even said when he said wait a minute doesn't pass muster all of a sudden now it passes muster okay so you are are there any comments or questions at this point chris well i well i think in one thing to note is when the record of decision was rescinded that was the golden opportunity for all the people involved in the project to redo it and do it the way they wanted the mayor who i said knows better about this that was his opening to say okay let's do this right let's do a modern project the complete street let's deal with the environmental justice let's get the project out of the neighborhood could have done all of that instead with his state and federal allies they just hunkered down and said we're not changing anything i went forward they were just given the keys to the kingdom there and they would not take it and run with it they just hunkered down and doubled down and said we're not changing anything okay so now where are we at let's go back to this legal taste that the pine street coalition five well what was the basis two are well the basis was about five or six things but one of them was environmental justice and i think that's what that was the one that you thought was the strongest i think that's the judge even in one of the hearings that was held he indicated he thought that was our strength and i still think it is which is essentially that low income and minority neighborhoods which have always been impacted most by development projects should not be correct it could not be i'm trying with the exact word it's not on do unequivably well something like that in other words you don't remove traffic from a affluent neighborhood and put it into a lower right you don't build the coal plant to light the hill section of the city in a low income or minority neighborhood you don't do those kind of things you don't undo because it's not ethical in a way right whatever you want to call it it would be illegal yeah that's what it is forget about ethics it's you just don't do that anymore but it was commonly done in the past it's done all over the place it's not a coincidence that the mcneil generating plant which is closed now the old plant is where it is and if you lived in the then it was a minority neighborhood just downwind of it i used to live there every morning you wake up and you'd find the black soot all over everything but that's where they built these things yes right and build it in the hill section uh you want to build the new mcneil plant it's near the old north end it's not in the new north end it's near the old north end because that's where you build these things we don't do that anymore there's laws against that this thing this thing would seem to violate those laws because you've been to many hearings on this right some yes all right so we haven't been a lot of hearings no correct how come they control the process and they don't control the process people are building the road the city state federal government and they set the hearing schedule so there aren't a lot of hearings there's been a couple and there's been a big a long record of what was said at those hearings and they had to respond to answer those what was said at the hearings and if you look at what they they basically just blew with everything off these that everything's okay that's the only way accepted this okay so you are continuing the court it's not over right what was well back in june quite unexpectedly the judge listened to some of our arguments and issued a temporary restraining order to stop the project period just stopped it well stop it not forever just stop it at that moment we're about to go to construction yeah and he was persuaded by the city of the state construction had been halted right had started right this was the prevented from starting okay the judge held a hearing and was persuaded by the city state in the fence that the only thing they were going to do was build this stormwater system clear some trees and he said well that's going to be good for the lake it's good for the lake not in a big way in a very tiny way but it is and if that's all they're going to do now that I'll let them go that far but they don't go any farther until we have had hearings and there's been a ruling on the environmental issues and that no construction next year until that happened that's what he said and this thing has bounced around since then these issued other orders and they become at least in the minds of the city in the state more ambiguous to the point where they think now they can do whatever they want to do and they are right just about are they're down there just doing whatever they want to do and it's all claimed to be part of the stormwater system or now they're saying the angle would be ravine covert which I talked about that's part of stormwater it's not it's just not uh and we are hoping on friday that the judge will clarify what's on friday what's going to be on friday there's going to be a what do you call it now it's not a conference status conference and we've asked them to please clarify what you meant because the city and state are saying one thing and we think it said another just clarify no one way or another we don't know where to go right if they're violating the order no one's going to get arrested about it right as far as I know that kind of a thing I think what they're trying to do is the state and the city as I said to give an inch to take a mile they're just trying to do enough stuff out there that the judge just won't say there's no way going back we're just going to get that part of the project done and I think they may succeed at that I they're they're doing much more than I think he thought they'd ever do and first he thought well I can just make him undo the things that they've done but if you're doing enough stuff they're thinking he's not going to do that he's cost more money to undo it than to do it and where's that going to come from so right but on the environmental justice because no work is taking place at this end of the project I think we will win that if we can make it if we get a chance like that what would it mean if you did win it well we don't know yet it means because this is clearly the one of the lowest income neighborhoods this qualifies as a minority in low-income neighborhood which is what the also environmental justice regulations or laws are designed to protect and that's not doesn't seem to be contested now that's that's a fact we have a question is uh any citizen participation needed for Friday if people would like to come to the federal courthouse I would welcome it and I can't remember if it's two or two thirty I believe it's two thirty and it's I don't know that there'll be testimony but the judge is going to have this in open courts of kind of a conference and people are more than welcome and I would say encourage we'd like to see you there yeah yeah there are other questions oh yeah let's see can you hear me I can barely hear okay um so yes it's two thirty as far as I know um and I was typing in that Cindy Hill the lawyer will need support there um so I do think if people go that would be a great idea it would be a good idea to go say show up yes the judge would like this I think the last time we had a hearing there were quite a few people there I think the judge was impressed that there were people that cared about this it wasn't just a couple lawyers arguing amongst themselves so I say be there it would be good a good idea always is a good idea to show up in court because really important decisions are made especially on local decisions this is a very important issue okay are there other questions or comments okay um who's that we can't hear through this okay can you hear me yes oh yeah um so I think you're saying that uh Steve that this is not a hundred percent done deal um at this point that we can still fighting this it's by far not a hundred percent deal in fact I think it's very close to a hundred percent winnable winnable on the environmental justice question and but winning it not sure what the judge just say he rules on our favor what he would do would he require a whole new environmental impact statement on the whole road or would he say well this part of it's done we're not going back there we'll just look at the northern section but that would be a win anything that gets him to go back and look at the plan it requires this road to go through maple and king and not divert around it any decision that supports that would be great and I think that's very very winnable and the judge even hinted in an earlier hearing that he thought that was our strong point he didn't think some of our environmental concerns were weighty enough at the time and timely enough but he thought that the uh he thought that the environmental justice stuff that was good stuff he's not saying he's going to rule on it in our favor but he was holding that out as he thought that was a stronger strongest part of our case do we have far from over one one problem though diane as you know is that lawyers cost a lot of money and so the people who have the money and the power in this community have put a lot of money into this situation um and the opposition are just normal people like steve and we and it's difficult to pay the legal fees that are necessary to keep this fight going so if anybody cares to donate for our lawyers that would be wonderful and that would be i don't know i think now just go back a step tony reddington was a big part of this project he ran our website he ran our fundraising and he died recently and we're trying to pick up the pieces from that but if somebody's also in charge of a lot of the money was raised right yes and if people are interested in what they can do the best i could say now is if you go to our web page which is um i don't know if this can be shown anywhere no because where people show up five-week coalition's web page and it looks a little different for some reason when i printed it out it didn't print the box it said email but you could email us and ask us questions or say you'd like to donate and we would get back in touch with you we're trying to set up a new way to donate now uh i think it's in my post office account well no i'd rather just email us and we'll have a communication we don't want to just accept checks at this point or anything we would want to you know where it's going and make sure we have a bank account that we control that it's going into so that's that's my suggestion that people want to help that's the best way and show up for instance at this uh this status conference right right so um i should say that that um in meetings um steve is now sort of in charge of where tony was in charge in terms of this pine street coalition and it's critical that the money um go into a new account um because what we learned was that some of the accounts that had been set up on websites um really weren't useful um i can hear you yes you make it that right point diane i'm i'm now picking up from tony but i have a long way to go to get fully up to speed but one of the first things we're going to do is instead of an account a bank account probably an opportunities credit and everything will track through there and there'll be just an easy way to know what came in and where it went and that's uh that's something it's about to happen but it doesn't it had not happened yet so i would encourage people if they're interested in donating or participating to email us and we would give them instructions when this is why don't you say what your email is i don't have the uh there's a box here this is one of the things tony knew but there's a box on the on the web page and it says email us if you click that box you would be able to email us i don't even know what email is that's something he set up and i have to learn more about it which shows in my name is email so something we have to correct this something we're working on and don't don't do anything unless you've heard from us as i guess the right but that shows how many people are indispensable and tony reddington certainly was for these projects we're trying to replace him right there's going to be a memorial service for him there was it was going to be last saturday but there was a some illicit his family they canceled it i think that will happen but it's it's hard because he died unexpectedly and there was not a the ability to have some kind of a smooth transition all of a sudden he was gone he had all his passwords he had all the rights to everything and we slowly begin to piece that back together so that we can continue with the same framework but other people now taking over some of the responsibilities so um i will ask another question unless somebody else has anything to say or a question yes eric someone has uh okay that's good if i mute the cell sally ballin has her hand up i can't really i i'm just wondering if there is some counter proposal um in in people's minds if if you're thinking along the lines of what might instead of having this carving another highway into burlington what alternative there might be for moving people i think i hear what you're saying you're wondering what alternative would it be to the court fight and well with the having a highway and relying on i can't hear you very clearly i'm wondering what alternative there would be to having highways and more automobiles of if this isn't the moment to what so court fight alternative to highways and automobiles oh okay that the only way that could happen is if a judge ruled there needed to be a new environmental impact statement for the whole project and that would be a topic there'd be what would be called a no build option but i think the way that they're setting this up that's getting less and less likely because they by the time the judge makes a decision they'll have built half of it and you're not going to i don't think you're going to unbuild it fortunately so i i think that was always something to think about but that train may have left the station because they're they're building it right now if the judge had stopped them and then it should uh order that to be a new environmental impact statement i think that could have happened but i think it's looking less and less likely by the day but we may be able to at least save everything north of lakeside in this neighborhood through our actions and the environmental justice criteria okay maybe some other stuff too but you don't know there are other questions i do want to ask about uh other cities i think you mentioned to me once that other cities are not doing this kind of project any longer and that they're being actually taken out of those cities some cities are taking out why why then is burlington going backwards i think it's just personalities and egos i don't know what else to say about it i mean what other cities are well boston had something they called the big dig the big dig right they took a road right through the city and it was a separated grade so this thing was lower than the rest of the roads around it and eventually they ended up putting it underground and built parks and other stuff on top so there's no more roadway separating the neighborhoods and the vicinity of boston so that's an example about undoing this pete budicek who is the secretary of transportation now has talked about undoing some of these super high in the past that have been done some of them you can undo but some you probably can't and you're going to see that happen it takes a lot of planning a lot of time but that's the direction nobody's actually building new things like that today like except burlington except burlington and we're using this old funding mechanism from the 70s and 60s which is what that's the me gc funding yeah so it's everything's old about this project it's a dinosaur and it really didn't have to happen i think we gave them as i said when we got the federal attorney to say you gotta redo this eis that was the moment this thing could have really turned around just like the uh circumvent your highway has turned around but they just wouldn't do it and by they who you make state the city wow three of them each one would say if the other one wants to do something they'll consider it and the other one would say well no you have to choose it it's like just pointing the finger at each other saying you're gonna decide whether we can do this or not and nobody decided but they really would do it behind the scenes is sticking together and making sure nothing changed and this thing just pulled ahead and got built that's what they intended to do that's what the documents we have show that they basically said we're not going to consider anything the way it changes to cost money or time and almost anything you do cost money or time so they basically said we're just sticking with it and that's the way it's going to be and they just covered everything up whitewashed everything they're going ahead now and they're trying to do it as fast as they can so before a judge tells them to stop and make so undo it and i don't think he i have to say it but i don't think he will so having just been it um Curtis Lumber they said that they were that the road the way it's designed now for the future to go through Curtis Lumber was incredibly upsetting to them it took out more buildings than um they can afford to have happen and that they were now starting legal process so i thought that was interesting because that's the other end end of the road and i think what has to happen is a different route may have to be found or some way to make them whole i think that could be a problem that's right because they need that space but with the problem with that though is of course once they build this version and they build the version that goes up pine to main and cross king and and maple once they do that if people are going to contest the rail enterprise project which would reroute the traffic around the neighborhood it'll never happen they'll never this neighborhood will just have this new traffic imposed on it and there'll never be any relief and that's part of the problem what's going on today everyone's got to get on the same page we have to find a way if we don't then all the promises that the rail enterprise project will take care the problems of the connector causes with traffic is not going to happen and that's what we're concerned about they can say they're going to do the project but if you're going to have legal challenges that's going to delay it i also know that the recent meeting or hearing they had at city hall about that project was very clear from the engineers for the city who are managing the project that there's no money anywhere near enough money for the project right now the money does not exist for that project and as the mayor apparently has said if the school if the high school tax or the high school bond passes there probably will not be any more capital money in the city for these 10 years so that includes any capital money that might go to the rail enterprise project so our concern is that the rail enterprise project now is being held up as the answer to the problems that the something connected will create for king and maple but it's a pipe dream something has to change it's a pipe dream and they probably should not have built the piece of building now if it's dependent on that rail enterprise project because it's going to be the second road to nowhere it's just going to sit unused and one interesting fact people should know also back in the 90s they were about to build the same section of roadway they're building now and at the time governor dean at the last minute they were ready to go out the bit he personally intervened and said you're not going forward with the project until you figure out what you're going to do with the north end so we've been here before the governor stopped it but somehow memories get fuzzy and the feds in the state go back to their old ways and keep pushing the project again and now we're trying to do the same thing stop it and I wish we'd stopped it before they spent a lot of money on what they're doing now because that could be another road to nowhere for a long time and when people see how big a project it is that it's not one road but it's three roads in some areas it's just going to blow some lines with this of the waste and the and the archaicness of this thing at this point but it could be so much better so much better right any final thoughts comments show up friday yeah all right so I just want to say I sure wish we were building a light rail system or something sensible for this era in the future and not the destroying neighborhoods you're right but what one of the roads and more cars one of the curses of this has been sometimes when a project has money you end up with a worse project a project has to work for its legitimacy you end up with something better but this project had this MEGC funding which was like just reigning money do whatever you want doesn't have cost the city hardly anything and that's been a curse in the end because the city has come up with this boondoggle that they don't have to worry about the public supporting it or not because the feds are paying for almost all of it and you end up with something like this which seems like it's sort of out of control and instead of looking at something like what were the alternatives and we gave them that chance to do that again in the last few years and they refused to do it they could have looked at the whole thing again looked at it in light of 2020 designs and 2020 needs and 2020 understandings no they're looking at it in terms of 1960 and 1970 understandings that's what we're stuck with and it's it's egos again you have a mayor who knows and I don't I'm not a big fan but he knows what's right here this isn't like he thinks this is really good and no problem let's do it he knows it's really bad and he's trying to come up with ways to fix it later when they should have just stopped it and not gone forward until they could do it right the first time which is sort of our motto let's not do it and then have to fix it let's just wait take a breath redesign and do it right I just want to add that as as Steve knows the problems are from one end to the other and and we're no longer talking about the first leg of it um because that's sort of underway but the dead ending of pine street as it arrives in south burlington is one of the really critical pieces that's missing in this whole puzzle as well so as you said from start to finish it's problematic and one thing to note that's of interest I've seen correspondence where the mayor and the public works director have asked the state and the feds if they can change that they know that's wrong now maybe it looked pretty good 20 years ago 30 years ago it doesn't look good now they asked if that could be changed and they were told no so they know better they want to change it too why they aren't fighting harder for or why they didn't I don't really know but they do know that that's not good and they also know that this stuff that's going to happen up at king maple and pine is not good yet they somehow feel they'll be able to fix it sometime in the future maybe maybe okay we're almost out of time are there any other questions last I have a question I have a question Steve right here you go ahead so my question is regarding the rail yard enterprise project I'm told that 90 of the costs will be covered by federal and state funds for the rail yard enterprise project but I'm curious what they're saying yes yeah that's what they're saying still I mean that's 10% of something that could be a very large sum of money do you know what the estimated cost is for that rail yard enterprise and how much we would be on before because I saw it was pushing for that to alleviate the traffic flow from the maple king neighborhood at this meeting that I was at month or so ago they had some numbers and it was in the 25 or 27 million dollar range but then one of the city engineers stood up and said but we know that's wrong we know it's much much higher so they're going they're doing some numbers preliminarily now but they know it's much higher and the one wild card is when you do these projects well most of the money might be covered by the state of the feds anything to do with dealing with pollution dealing with contamination in the ground that will not be covered by them that's solely on the city and if you know anything about rail yards they are about the dirtiest places because the rail companies have been exempt from most of the environmental pollution laws forever and so a lot of stuff can happen on those properties and they don't have to be accountable for them but if you're going to build a road and start digging and doing other activities out there you're going to have to deal with it so that cost alone even if a lot of the regular stuff is being paid for by the state and the feds the pollution stuff is all on us and god knows what's out there so it could be quite a unfortunately quite a bill we don't know yet though they haven't done that work but even their own engineers are saying at the hearing that the estimate now was way low and there is not enough money currently identified to build this project rail enterprise project right i appreciate i appreciate your answer okay go ahead i i'm sorry oh i appreciate your answers my my other question is the mode of conveyance is is are we talking about a raised a road that goes through the rail yard or are we talking about cars that are going to have to share the right of way with trains coming through no no it's if you had a road if you have a lane road okay connecting from basically killburn street roughly going diagonally to battery street thank you all right well thank you very much for joining us this evening again if you would like to support uh steve and his pine street coalition was trying which is attempting to make a better uh road here for the neighborhood in particular please you could send us go to this website and click the email and see if we can get back and figure out maybe a way that you could donate for our legal expenses or for steve and the pine street coalition's legal expenses and thank you very much for joining us and we will be back in a couple weeks again thanks andrew christensen who is now the owner of the king street laundry and he has made this space available to us and to other people who will use this laundry as a laundry as you can all tell from the people coming in but as a real place to do real educational events so thank him thank the king street laundry and thank everybody for being with us tonight thank you


where, for example, if we earned $100,000 gross, but it took us $80,000 to generate the $100,000, it wouldn't make sense to tax the $100,000 gross income, but only the $20,000 net income. Because if you tax the $100,000 gross income, you're really going to be giving a huge benefit to those types of businesses that don't have expenses that they need to invest in order to generate the revenue, right? So it only makes sense to tax the net income. When we talk about the W-2 wages, it's kind of harder to see that because if you're an employee, the assumption is that your employer is providing the expenses and therefore we're including the W-2 income on the top line, and possibly they might be arguing that the standard deduction will be large enough to pick up any other kind of deductions in that kind of scenario. The itemized deductions, you'll see the IRS using the tax codes sometimes to do things outside of that natural thing. I mean, in other words, if taxes was only intended to generate revenue for the federal government, because we're talking about federal taxes, so they can do what they need to do, which is to defend us with the military and instead of our business, if that was what they were trying to do, then you would think they would just allow deductions that were necessary to generate revenue. However, the government likes to try to nudge us and manipulate us with other types of things. And so you can argue whether that's good or not, but it does add complications to the code. And you can see the itemized deductions, you have a lot of that going on. So you get to deduct medical expenses and whatnot. What does that do? It subsidizes the medical industry and whatnot. Now, the argument that they would give is that they're giving it, but you get to deduct mortgage interest. Mortgage interest on your personal home is a personal expense. So you would think that you wouldn't need to deduct it as a personal expense, but the government's argument was, well, they're trying to get everybody to be able to own a home because it's the American dream or whatnot, probably more likely that the lobbyists for the home builders got that in there because it propped up, again, supplemented the housing market and so on. And then if you have charitable deductions, again, they're trying to incentivize people to give to charity, which again, you could say, well, that's a noble cause or whatever and whatnot. But I would still, to me, I would still think the idea of giving to charity shouldn't be to give a tax deduction for the gift to the charity. But you can see what's happening here. We have all these kinds of deductions happening that really have nothing to do with just taxing people based on their net income in order to do what the government's supposed to do, which is just make sure that we're not getting attacked by Britain, the King of England coming over here and trying to take my land or something, right? Or whatever. So that's going to be so that's the general idea. Now, that means it also gets confusing when some of those schedule a deductions conflict with where they could legitimately be written off as a business expense. So for example, with a schedule C, you might actually work from your home, in which case it's not just the personal expense, the mortgage interest on the home, your paying as basically an office in that case, because you're working in part, at least in part of the home. That means you should be able to deduct some of that as a business expense, not on schedule a, but on schedule C. But if you deduct it on schedule C, you can't deduct it again on schedule a, because you would be I would call that double dipping, right? You'd be deducting two places the same amount. So then you run into these problems of okay, I was able to deduct it more naturally as a business expense somewhere else, like a schedule C. And therefore I can't deduct it also on the schedule a, and we'll talk about some of those scenarios later. So what's new with the form, you got the standard mileage rate, that's going to be something updated all the time, because we have the massive government induced inflation that we're dealing with these times that they try to hide with shrink inflation. It's the it's the company's fault because they put less chips in the back. No, you caused it. It's the same thing. What are you, either they raise the price or they put less chips in the back? What do you want them? I mean, anyway,


There's a great saying that says don't judge people because they sin differently than you. Well I have also learned in my life not to judge people because they pray differently than you. A teacher I had once pointed out that all the trees in the forest look different. Come from different tree families and different tree lineages. But all the trees in the forest have one thing in common. They are all reaching up to the same light. One thing that this time period has taught me, a beautiful thing that this time period has taught me is that instead of judging others we should learn from others because we've all been taught inaccurate information about each other and it's time that we take our power back and start to learn things for ourselves. But before we go any further you know what to do please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always thank you so so so much to all of our patrons and our producers on this channel. Without you we could not do what we do. If you would like to join our patreon community there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to esoteric Atlanta my name is Bryce and today on part one on our deep dive into voodoo we are going to be talking about Congo Square. Now as you can see I have disabled the comments on this video. As most of you know I personally along with many other researchers on this journey have experienced extreme from people who claim to be Christians. Mostly from people who come from fundamentalist Christianity. This and bullying will absolutely not be tolerated. So by disabling the comments on this video I am putting up a boundary for those people who think it's okay to be that horrific to other people especially when the other people are just looking into something and especially since it has come out that people who are big in the Christian movement are allegedly guilty of crimes that are far more horrific than the alleged crimes of those who practice voodoo.  He also reminded us not to judge others. So that tells me that it is my job and your job to not condemn other people especially if you don't have any proof to back up the crimes you are accusing someone of. Most of what we hear about voodoo is hearsay a smear campaign. Again our job isn't to condemn our job rather is to love and to try to understand. Before we get into Congo Square I'm going to go through a couple of misconceptions about the voodoo faith. We know that the powers that be have often used scapegoats to cover up their dastardly crimes. We know that New Orleans was founded as a hot spot for the House of Bourbon. Again if you missed all of our deep dives into the House of Bourbon and their satanic practices I will place those links down in the description box below. The more and more and more I research into voodoo the more similarities I see between the true faith of Christianity and the true practitioners of this religion that comes from Africa. And I have also found that while the powers that be from the House of Bourbon and the Catholic Church were laying claim on places in Louisiana they were allegedly and from my own opinion and from my own research smearing the voodoo practitioners as their scapegoats so that no one would figure out what they were actually doing. The practice of voodoo made its way into the Americas with the West African slave trade. You still prominently see a voodoo practiced in Charleston, South Carolina and along the rest of the low country like Savannah Georgia as well as of course in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans, Louisiana has definitely made more of a market off of its history of voodoo than say Charleston or Savannah. In fact I don't know if many people knew that voodoo was practiced in Charleston or Savannah until the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil came out back in the 90s. Now if you've been on this channel for a while we have discussed parts of the low country on the Atlantic coast including the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. As most of you know this is where my family is from. My mother's family comes from the low country of South Carolina. We would spend our summers on the coast of South Carolina in the low country. I grew up around this religion so for me the religion of voodoo has never really scared me and from what I see and what I've experienced and what I've researched it shouldn't scare you either. Again as we have learned the powers that be in our world have gained their power by two really big tactics. One is infiltration and the other is to conquer and divide. I definitely believe the information that we've been told about voodoo was a tactic used to conquer and divide. Now over the course of history from my understanding there are different sects of voodoo, different lineages. Kind of like in the Christian faith you have the Presbyterians, you have the Baptist, you have the Catholics. The basis of the faith might be the same but they might do certain things a little bit differently. Now in New Orleans you will see a lot of intermixing with the spirits of voodoo and the saints of Catholicism. In fact there are a lot of similarities between the spirits of voodoo and the saints of Catholicism. Still to this day in New Orleans you might see voodoo altars with Catholic saints. If you remember from our video where we broke down the Cajun people and the Creole people, the Creole people got their name because they are an eclectic combination of many different cultures coming together as one. In my opinion that's most of the deep south. And when the slaves were brought into New Orleans they were forced to be baptized into the Catholic faith. And at that point you started to see this marriage between the voodoo faith and Christianity. Now notice I said they were forced to be baptized. There was no choice about it. It was either get baptized into Christianity or risk your life. So as survival mode crept in along with the need to hold on to your own heritage, we again started to see this merging of two different religions. Now before we go any further I do want to give a special thank you out to two different people. Besides reading loads and loads of articles and reading loads and loads of books. On the subject there were two individuals that also helped guide me. One I know personally and one probably has no idea who I am. The one I know personally is a dear friend of mine. I'm not going to say her name in order to keep her privacy but she has really helped me a lot dive through this information and understand what is misinformation and what is actually correct involving the faith. The other person is a tour guide down in New Orleans called Robi. He is a voodoo priest and I am going to link one of his videos down in the description box below. When I am able to actually get to New Orleans I definitely want to set up an interview with him or at the very least take one of his tours. When people think of voodoo a lot of times they think of black magic. They think of people putting out spells against other people and even though all religions carry an element of white and black magic the heart of voodoo isn't really about that.  Our friend Cindy who comes on this channel often has said that any time you're spell casting you have to actually embody the essence of that demand into the universe yourself first. So if you're trying to curse someone or put something bad on someone you have to harbor that as well. Now yes spell casting can involve rituals but it also can be in the form of a that you send to somebody who shares a different opinion from yourself. As I said on David's show on Tuesday when I personally receive emails from fundamentalist Christians I know that they are harboring a lot of hate and pain and hurt inside of them in order to be able to project that onto me.  That's why I've been saying don't judge least you be judged. But on the other hand if you're sending somebody a beautiful email saying I love you or I'm wishing you all the many blessings in the world that's white light magic. That's the essence of God the higher vibration of the heavens not the lower vibration of hell. Now the word voodoo translates into ancestor or spirit. However the word voodoo is not actually the word for this faith. Just like the powers that be changed Jesus's name and basically changed everything about Jesus's life so the powers that be have also changed the name voodoo. Now forgive me if I say this wrong if you are a voodoo practitioner but I believe the correct way to say voodoo is voodun and that basically means pure light. Now I'm going to go ahead and continue saying voodoo because that's how we all know it even though we are aware that that's not its real name just like I have continued to use the name Jesus even though we know that was not actually his name. This is just simply a means for us to all continue to be on the same page as we deep dive into this information. But all in all I do want you all to remember that the official word voodun of voodoo means pure light. And as you guys know as I've said in almost every episode Genesis 1 3 God said let there be light that was divine spark and so already we're starting to see some similarities It seems to me that this practice from Africa is celebrating that divine light that comes from God. You also see things in religious ceremonies called the Vive. Again I hope I'm saying that right and that is like this mural that is painted on the ground. Now in a lot of my research there wasn't a whole whole lot I could find about each Vive because they are specific to specific practitioners and there is something very sacred for them and so with that being said I don't want to try to dig too deeply because I do want to respect boundaries as I myself am not a practitioner of this faith. But from what I see this Vive is very similar to the Scottish coat of arms. A lot of times practitioners will also use what is called Florida water. This is a concoction of different things within the water. Some people have compared this to the Christian holy water. Blessings are done with Florida water just like blessings are done in the Christian faith with holy water. These blessings are done by priests who are held responsible for healing. These blessings are also done for people to find peace. A lot of the priests of this religion are also responsible for understanding herbs, how to use herbs to heal people. So as you can see as you start digging deeper into this faith you find a lot of similarities and a lot of actually really interesting stuff. It seems that at the heart of this faith there is a great need to heal people and to help people connect higher to God through their own pure light or divine spark. For many voodoo practitioners the woman is actually the voodoo queen. It's very much a matriarchal society for the woman is responsible for caring on life. The woman is the element of water and earth while men are the elements of air and fire. This sounds again a lot like the way Jesus taught the original teachings of Jesus not the edited teachings of Jesus where Jesus worked with women too where he anointed women to also teach the joining of the divine feminine with the divine masculine. In the gospel of the holy 12 or the gospel of the Nazarene way as it was originally called we see Jesus refer to God as father mother the joining of two different divinities but one of the biggest similarities that I found between the Christian faith and voodoo is an entity known as papa legba. Now papa legba himself has gone through a complete sneer campaign by Hollywood and again we we know what Hollywood really is it's not just there for our entertainment it's there to tell us things sometimes things that aren't true in order to again conquer and divide we saw papa legba in season three of american horror story coven papa legba was shown as this demonic entity who funnily enough like to I mean talk about projection but that's not true that's not who papa legba is papa legba is the master of the crossroads the crossroads between the living world and the world on the other side of the veil he is described as taking the high road not the low road in christianity we have a figure just like papa legba and this is saint peter at saint peter's gate we are taught in christianity that saint peter is the guard of the crossroads he is the one that lets you into the realm of heaven or cast you down into the pits of hell and again when you start to see papa legba in this way you realize we're not so different after all as you are all very well aware a lot of the voodoo ceremonies involved dancing and eating this was again a celebration of the light and the divine spark of god to me and in my opinion this is all a misunderstanding of culture in the western culture we dance and eat to celebrate as well however our dancing looks very different white people dance differently than black people it's just cultural you even see this in churches there's quite a difference between a white church and a black church usually the black church or the african-american church is way more animated there's way more dancing in fact black church seems way more fun to go to than the white church so if we start to understand this cultural difference that's when we can start to see how the powers that be were able to manipulate what was actually going on in voodoo ceremonies there were not possessions there were not any of that stuff it was just literally a celebration while the people in europe were waltzing in their celebrations the people in africa were also dancing the way they culturally dance too just like westerners eat with cutlery asians will eat with sticks just like asians eat with sticks indians eat with their hands none of them are wrong and none of them are right it's just a cultural thing and as our friend liz on tiktok said so eloquently her husband being from africa has expressed that our cultures are something we should be proud of and something we would want to share with other people well this idea of ceremony is what made congo square and new orleans so famous in the year 1808 a law was passed in new orleans that you could not dance at the public markets again they would see dancing in the markets because as the africans were coming into new orleans they were doing everything they could to hold on to their culture now this to me is extremely fascinating because i find human beings to be very very fascinating and i am very intrigued by other people's cultures i'm even intrigued by my own culture i find it simply fascinating just like i find psychology simply fascinating now for us who are in america who are of european descent or a k a white people you can see where different areas of europe settled in the new world for example again where i am from in georgia and south carolina the whole eastern side of the deep south was mostly people of english descent this is why a lot of people down here in the deep south still have english last names like jones smith thomas watson but if you go up north to the northern side of the east coast you're going to see a lot of people of italian descent like in new jersey you have a lot of people with italian last names just look at the real house why is of new jersey most of them carry italian last names you also have areas where dutch people settled german people you find a lot of german people up in the west consen michigan area and so within these different pockets of america you are going to have the overall american culture but you also are going to see remnants of the old european cultures you're going to see us doing a lot of things down here in the south that mirror what the culture was in england you're going to see a lot of things happening up in new jersey that mirror the culture of italy well the same thing in new orleans with the french and the spanish and also the african slaves now in this time there were more slaves in new orleans than white people in fact it was like three to one so the white people had to be very very careful about how they went around working with their slaves so after they passed the law in 1808 they designated an area for the slaves to congregate and dance this area became known as congo square and a lot of people believe that it was congo square in the evolution of the music and the dancing that came from congo square that started the sensation of jazz now if you remember from our past videos especially the ones we did on delphine la larie we spoke about the code noir now again i will place a link to the new orleans playlist down in the description box below in case you missed any of those videos but in new orleans because it was a french settlement and not an english settlement there were different laws involving this type of slave labor and one of these laws was that on sundays the slaves were off of course they were required to go to mass in the morning because as i said earlier they were forced to be baptized once they got brought into the port into new orleans but after mass was over they would hop a wall and meet and congregate in congo square this was a chance for them to catch up with their friends and perhaps even some of their extended family members who had been sold onto other property now congo square is located in armstrong park in the neighborhood called the tramé we are going to be looking into the tramé later on in this series now over time congo square became known as a must-see attraction in new orleans from the 1800s into the 1900s it became a show for people who were not used to seeing this kind of dancing or this kind of ceremony but what was a show for them was essential to the african americans again even though on the outside they had to be catholic they were still able to meet on this one day a week to continue to tell younger generations the stories of their heritage and celebrate the religion that they knew from their homeland now i know most of us are fortunate that we've never been in the situation where we were stripped of everything that was ours and forced to take on a new identity i can't imagine what life was like for the slaves anywhere in the world but i can understand a little bit how important this day of sunday became to them it was again the one day where they could truly be who they were with each other and so the power in this congo square the joy the celebration grew and grew and grew in congo square still to this day there is a tree called the agoon tree this is the ancestor tree this tree has been there since the 1700s and i don't know about you but if the tree could talk to me i would love to hear what it had to say because a tree that's been there since the 1700s has definitely seen a lot this tree was a place for people to meet and to pray and it's still a place for voodoo practitioners in new Orleans to meet and to pray if you go to congo square you might see offerings left at the tree and according to roby with the offerings left at the tree that involve food the voodoo priests will then come and collect all the food that's left as offering and cook it and then go and feed the poor according to him this was supposed to be a celebration of feeding the village but in a country like america where we're all pretty privileged anyway in our villages they take the opportunity now to feed the less fortunate kind of like soup kitchens in a church within congo square lies a monument it's called the congo square monument this monument was built as a tool to help descendants of slaves understand their own history now again i have to thank roby for pointing out things on this monument that someone like myself would have probably missed there are chains at the bottom that represent that they are slaves but however on this monument the chains are off the feet because sunday they were off now the main dominant person on the monument is a woman again this represents the matriarchal society that lived within this voodoo faith you also see a man with marks on his face that represent an initiation into the faith and if you look closely you'll see a native american woman this is because in new orleans the native americans and the africans have an alliance in the early 1700s if a slave were to run away the only place they could go that would be safe would be into the native american nations at this time the africans and the native americans became very very close they too started sharing in their culture and the native american nations were also very influential in the culture around congo square in fact the alliance between the africans and the native americans grew so much that under spanish rule of new orleans africans were not allowed to wear feathers i guess that speaks volumes for how afraid of this alliance the powers that be were we can also see the power of that alliance in mardi gras today there is a crew called the mardi gras indians made up of mostly african americans who dress in the way of the native american nations out of respect for the alliance that the two communities held together the mardi gras indians celebrate the same way that their ancestors celebrated in congo square they sing by call and repeat there is no sheet music and it's open dancing as i said this is allegedly the birthplace of jazz and it's for sure the birth place of the brass band funerals a cultural side of new orleans that has been shown in many many movies and something that i think is quite fantastic and when i pass away one day i think i would want to brass band funeral as well it also reminds me a lot of the funerals that i see in india where they parade with the deceased relative in almost a celebration now again this is only part one into our look into voodoo and as always i do suggest that each person do his or her own research again after all that's what this time period is all about and i hope as we start to research more and more and more we start to realize that we are way more similar than we are different and i hope that as humanity we start to realize that we are not each other's enemies but we are each other's friends we are not our brother's keeper but our brother's brother and our sister's sister and i hope as we move forward into the dawn of a new day that we learn to celebrate and appreciate each other's cultures to watch the beauty of the differences between us instead of condemn each other for the differences between us all right guys thank you so much for sitting through this video i'm dropping this video a day earlier i was planning on dropping this on a friday you know our normal schedule is monday wednesday friday with videos that i do myself and the other videos i do with other people are kind of scattered throughout the week however i have a very special video that i'm going to be dropping tomorrow instead so i wanted to bump this one up a day now this afternoon i will be back with john claude on beyond mystic for another episode at 4 p.m i believe that's going to be live so make sure you tune in so you can be interactive within the conversation on the live show again if you can't make it at 4 p.m obviously he will have it up on his channel so you can watch the replay all right guys have a fantastic day and i will talk to you all soon bye