[Ngo-sanrm] [VIN] A Vietnamese community bounces back with urban agriculture

Mon Jun 24 21:15:01 BST 2013

There is a critical point of the story that the newspaper mentioned only in
a word.   That is, the Vietnamese community in East New Orlean is 100%
Catholic.  It is a parish by itself, and everyone lives around the church.
It is a close-knit community, with strong unity.  That makes all things
possible.

In the corporate name Mary Queen of Vietnam  Development, Queen Mary is
mother of Jesus.

Hoanh

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:59 AM, Thu Hương Phạm
<phamthuhuong1010 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear anh Chuck,
>
> I agree with you. The resilience of the Vietnamese is so strong. I feel
> glad when after disasters, now their life is developing and peaceful.
>
> Thank you for sharing.
>
> Have a good day anh Chuck and everyone,
> Em Hương,
>
>
> 2013/6/24 Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn at gmail.com>
>
>> This shows the resilience of the Vietnamese, and the community's ability
>> to adapt and embrace new and innovative agriculture (and aquaculture)
>> opportunities.  -- CHUCK
>>
>> *============================
>> CHUCK SEARCY
>> 71 Tran Quoc Toan, Hanoi, Vietnam
>> Mobile:      +84 (0) 903 420 769
>> Email:         chuckusvn at gmail.com
>> Skype:        chucksearcy
>> ============================*
>>
>>
>> http://grist.org/food/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/
>>  In New Orleans, a Vietnamese community bounces back with urban
>> agriculture
>>
>> By Jared Green <http://grist.org/author/jared-green/>
>>
>> Cross-posted from The Dirt<http://dirt.asla.org/2013/06/10/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/>
>> [image: vietfarmers]Mary Queen of Vietnam Development Corporation
>>
>> In 1975, after the fall of Saigon, many of the Christian Vietnamese who
>> supported the U.S.-allied government in the south fled. Some ended up in
>> camps in the Midwestern U.S., at least until the Archdiocese of New Orleans
>> invited them to come to the Gulf of Mexico, where the climate was more like
>> what they were used to in Vietnam. Many of the Vietnamese were also
>> fisherman, so the Roman Catholic church thought they’d have a better chance
>> if they could pick up their old trade in Louisiana.
>>
>> Now, almost 40 years later, there are 8,000 Vietnamese concentrated in a
>> one-mile radius in New Orleans East. The community of fisherman was hit
>> hard by Hurricane Katrina, and then the Deepwater Horizon debacle<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill>, but
>> found ways to come together. At a recent EPA conference on repurposing
>> industrial areas, or brownfields<http://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/overview/glossary.htm>,
>> Tap Bui, a community organizer at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community
>> Development Corporation <http://www.mqvncdc.org/>, discussed how this
>> unique community recovered with sustainable aquaponics.
>>
>> New Orleans East has 60 percent of the land mass of New Orleans but only
>> 20 percent of its population. Before Katrina, there were high levels of
>> poverty and unemployment. As the community fled the storm in late August,
>> 2005, many residents wondered what they would come back to, Bui says. The
>> storm destroyed the community’s hospital and other basic services. Still,
>> by the end of October, more than 2,000 people had returned, and the
>> majority of residents eventually came back.
>>
>> Meanwhile, implementing an “emergency master plan,” then-Mayor Ray Nagin
>> turned a green space near their community into a landfill. The debris from
>> damaged homes and commercial buildings across New Orleans had to be dumped
>> somewhere. But soon pesticides and other chemicals were being dumped there,
>> too, near a wetland and nature preserve. According to Bui, this spurred one
>> of the first “cross-racial” collaborations ever in New Orleans East, a mass
>> protest to shut down the landfill.
>> [image: Mary Queen of Vietnam community meeting]NOLAMary Queen of
>> Vietnam community meeting.
>>
>> “We rallied outside city hall,” Bui says. The group also bused in
>> protestors to Baton Rouge, the state capitol. This was the first time “we
>> Vietnamese actually felt like real Americans,” she says. “Before, we had
>> just paid our taxes. Our community had become more engaged.”
>>
>> Their efforts paid off: The landfill was closed, and more than 200,000
>> cubic yards of debris were removed. But still more needs to go. “The
>> landfill is slowly sinking into the ground. The dump site is affecting the
>> wetlands,” says Bui. Environmental remediation work is ongoing.
>>
>> Then, Deepwater Horizon, the BP offshore oil spill, struck, which was a
>> fishing disaster. Bui says 40,000 Vietnamese work in the Gulf of Mexico,
>> and a third of those are in the seafood industry. Particularly for the
>> older Vietnamese, Bui says, it’s really a case of “I fish, therefore I am.”
>> More Vietnamese were suffering from depression and drinking too much.
>>
>> In a sign of the truly resilient nature of the Vietnamese community in
>> New Orleans East, the community once again rallied. “We did power mapping
>> to determine how we were going to make BP pay for what they did to the
>> Gulf,” Bui says. The Vietnamese joined together once again with a broader
>> coalition of seafood industry groups to pressure the oil company. But while
>> the Gulf was being restored, the fishermen had to find new jobs,
>> immediately.
>>
>> The development corporation found a trainer who could teach aquaculture,
>> the practice of raising fish on land. A two-day session brought up new ways
>> to create more sustainable systems. In a pilot phase, workshop attendees
>> tested out growing koi, bluefish, and catfish. Some then experimented with
>> “aquaponics,” which uses the waste from fish as fertilizer to grow produce.
>> [image: Mary Queen of Vietnam community aquaponics]USDA
>>
>> Now, the VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative <http://www.veggifarmcoop.com/>, a
>> massively scaled-up aquaponics operation for the community, sells fresh
>> produce to local restaurants and stores.
>>
>> Amazingly, the fishermen who lost their livelihoods to the oil spill have
>> “supplemented 100 percent of their earlier incomes,” Bui says. Taking out
>> marketing and transportation costs, some “80 cents of each dollar goes back
>> to the cooperative members,” she says.
>>
>> While there are a few aquaponics plots at around an acre, the group has
>> finally been able to purchase an eight-acre urban farm site. The farm<http://www.mqvncdc.org/page.php?id=18>,
>> which won an American Society of Landscape Architects<http://www.asla.org/awards/2008/08winners/411.html>award, is expected to be finished in the next few years, once they finish
>> raising the money needed.
>>
>> *Jared Green is editor of The Dirt, the blog of the American Society of
>> Landscape Architects (ASLA). The Dirt covers news on the built and natural
>> environments.*
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Phạm Thu Hương
>
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-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, Esq., LLB, JD
Washington DC
703-969-0080

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