Bayous of hope

Dear friends,

The morning I left for New Orleans last summer, the headlines could only evoke despair.

National Guard troops were occupying Los Angeles. The Senate had voted to cancel funds to public broadcasting. Smoke from the uncontained Dragon Bravo fire was billowing over the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. ICE was making arrests in courthouses. Connie Francis had died.

Like many of you, I was fighting not to be swallowed by the news. One strategy: to team up with my photographer friend John Noltner for a series of interviews with people who were trying to keep Louisiana—its wetlands, its culture, its Black-owned farmland, its fishing families—from disappearing.

You’ve already seen the results: our 10-part multimedia series “Still Here,” published by John’s non-profit, A Peace of My Mind.

https://apeaceofmymind.org/2025/08/21/still-here-stories-from-a-fragile-coastline/

Today, I want to tell you about one piece of the interviews. I asked everyone we met what gave them hope in these dispiriting times, and what impelled them forward.

I asked as a journalist, but I also had more personal reasons. I needed their wisdom.

All 10 people we interviewed gave solid responses. What I couldn’t have predicted was the cumulative impact of their answers on my psyche.

This was particularly true of those who grew up in families of color that were rooted in the Deep South. For them, bad news was nothing new; they never relied on the government to protect their interests. Survival came from generations-deep community, from building relationships with allies, from raising youth to become effective advocates, from looking way ahead (and way back).

I want to share some of what they said.

Rashida Ferdinand

Executive director, Sankofa Community Development Corporation, New Orleans. She gave up a career as a sculptor to transform her flooded Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood.

“A friend of mine just sent me this note about turtles. A turtle just takes its time and keeps moving through the ocean. And it’s moving slowly, but it’s going somewhere, and it ends up where it has to go. It just takes its time and keeps moving. And it compels me that we all exist, and we have a right to exist, and there’s nobody who can stop the true life that we’re supposed to have from happening.

“I try to understand: Why do people do these things they’re doing? What is the catch? What are they getting out of it? What’s their stimulant? 

“And I’m going to believe that we can prevail by being honest and authentic and positive, and speaking the truth. You know, I’ve been told by many of my elders, ‘We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen worse before.’ People who’ve lived a long time can see that cycle. Because it’s present to some of us right now, and we didn’t know that, it is scary. But I’m not afraid, because I think there’s enough folks in a community of goodness, in care, and love and kindness, and intelligence, just basic intelligence, that we still do this work that we’re doing. I don’t think we should just allow a few monsters to scare us out of our beautiful light.”

Rosina Philippe

Elder, Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe, Grand Bayou Indian Village. Her tribe is developing new ways to flourish even as its land crumbles.

“I see things unraveling and it's daunting. A lot of it is beyond my control. But I try to maintain the perspective and integrity of self and try to instill that integrity in others that I have an opportunity to engage with, just to maintain a posture of truth.

“We have to maintain our position. Hold your ground. Even if I don't move forward, I refuse to be pushed back. I refuse to relent and release the ground that we've worked so hard to claim and to stand on. And when I say ‘ground,’ I don't mean a physical place. I'm talking about all that makes us who we are and where we are. 

“And so I may not be moving forward. Or if I move forward, maybe at a snail's pace. But always embracing truth, always holding onto those truths, and every opportunity that I'm given to speak the truth, not to allow myself to be intimidated by the so-called powers that be or the larger forces around me. Because you know what? Truth is power. And so holding that spot. And when change comes, be ready to move forward.”

Bruce Sunpie Barnes

Musician, bandleader, and naturalist. He sees Louisiana’s natural and cultural geography as inseparable.

“When I started to work and become a part of the communities that are around here, it  gave me a sense of the importance—and uniqueness in this particular area—of how well people have created survival skills over the years. And when I leave here and go out into other parts of the world, it just becomes more apparent, especially around the continental 48 states in the U.S., that, yeah, a lot of things homogenize in different ways. But this is still a place where community organizing, the preservation of culture, is done with the least amount of financial wealth and goods.

“It’s not like we have fantastic arts programs all over the city of New Orleans in every public school or private school. They are here, but it’s actually in the communities that the people still do it and they do it in a miraculous way. It’s done by spirit and effort that has not that much to do with monetary gain or anything like that. It’s not about that.

“It’s how people learn to survive. It’s how they survived moving to this country from other spaces to try and build a new home. It’s how they survived being captured and brought here.

“And it’s the same way that people come here with what’s known as the American dream to try and become a part of something, but also to create a platform for knowledge of tradition for future generations of people. That’s real preservation.”

Chief Devon Parfait

Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw. He’s a climate refugee who is using his science background to lead the tribe.

“In this moment, where so much is happening and all of these political shifts are crazy, and there’s a lot of direct and indirect violence that’s happening, I still remain really optimistic about the future because I know that the general arc of history is positive. This is only one moment in time. And as humans, oftentimes we can get too caught up in our short life spans that we live. The way that I’m thinking about right now is generationally. This is only one moment in time that we will have to deal with. What comes in the future, I believe, as the pendulum swings, will be so much better and greater than we can ever imagine. 

“We’ve seen how much people have evolved over these years. The growth. The positivity. The historic investments in climate and the environment. The recognition that we need to put people and the environment first. I’ve seen that in so many different ways. And even in some of these institutions that people have said will never change, people have been in positions where they’ve actually done some good work.  

“I see us in the future recognizing that we need to have a relationship with our planet, not just an extractive one, but one where we recognize the value. I think back to what this place in the United States looked like before colonization even happened. I read stories of European settlers who would walk into forests that looked like parks with paths of berry bushes and fruit trees there. It was because the Indigenous people knew that taking care of the planet came first, because if you didn’t, then it wouldn’t take care of the people. And I am very optimistic that all of the momentum that we’ve experienced as a society moving forward isn’t going to go away just because one guy wants it to.”

On finding encouragement to move forward

It’s not like I returned from Louisiana with naïve optimism. But I was filled with encouragement and even hope. You’ve seen me quote Vaclav Havel, the jailed playwright and dissident who later became the president of the Czech Republic. He distinguishes hope from optimism:

The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it's a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and it is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

There’s a fuller quote here, three paragraphs worth reading.

Since my return, I’ve tuned my antennae toward others who warn against leading with despair. Recently, my friend Misha Angrist pointed me to this 2024 interview with climate scientist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. “Climate action needs way better vibes,” she told journalist David Marchese. “This is an opportunity to live a different and better life.” Take some time and listen to the conversation.

A song about hope

This pandemic-era duet by Catalan musicians Alguer Miquel and Xavi Sarrià. The song, “Esperança” (“Hope”) originated with Miquel’s (late great) band Txarango.

Esperança
We will start again
We are a river that always advances
We will make a dance out of war
From the Black Sea to Gibraltar
Hope is boiling
Let our sea tremble!

You’ll hear from me at least twice more this year. Stay warm.

All best,
Barry Yeoman