Coming Home: The Dry Storm

In honor of Human Rights Day, December 10, 2011, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) is pleased to make Coming Home:  The Dry Storm available online free to the public.

Coming Home: The Dry Storm is a moving film that takes an intimate look at one community’s battle against the government’s attack on public housing.  Co-produced by Mayday New Orleans, NESRI, and Rada Film Group, Coming Home, in 2010, won the Jury Prize for Best Film in its home city at the PATOIS New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival, screened at the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, and was used across the country by housing organizers to initiate conversations on privatization, human rights, and the importance of public housing across the United States.

Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights member Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) released a video spotlighting the importance of showing Coming Home, a film with an intimate focus on New Orleans, in the Los Angeles community. Asked why it is important to connect the struggles of New Orleans public housing residents with those in LA, Leonardo de Vilchis of the Los Angeles Right to Housing Collective said:

“New Orleans is a place where everything that the United States government has wanted to do for the last twenty years has been implemented…It’s very important for us to be able to see what could happen to us if we don’t defend our rights, prepare, and organize.”

The award-winning documentary, Coming Home: The Dry Storm is continuing to gain momentum across the country. After a successful showing at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 2010 Annual Legislative Conference Independent Film Series in Washington D.C. on September 17, the film will travel to two new destinations. Groups throughout the country are using the film to initiate public dialogues on national housing policy, demonstrating how much can be learned from New Orleans’s experience. On Friday, October 15, the documentary will be shown in both New York and Philadelphia.

In New York, the film will be shown at The New School, 66 W 12 St., Room 404. Doors open at 5:30 pm, film and discussion 6-8 pm. Light refreshments will be served.

See the Facebook event page here.

In Philadelphia, the film will be shown at the Media Mobilizing Project office, 4205 Chestnut St. The film will show at 6 pm.

Coming Home:  The Dry Storm screens tomorrow, Friday, September 17, at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 2010 Annual Legislative Conference Independent Film Series.  Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights members are present at the Congressional Black Caucus Conference to speak about the Coming Homedocumentary and the ways in which it addresses their serious concerns about the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Preservation, Enhancement and Transformation of Rental Assistance Act (PETRA).

The film screening will take place during a session entitled “Devastation and Recovery”from 2:00 pm to 4:50 pm at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Room 146-C, 801 Mount Vernon Place, NW in Washington, DC.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters will be joining Campaign members on a panel immediately following the screening.

Below is a new Coming Home trailer that underscores the concern that if passed PETRA will turn public housing, a public good, into a real estate commodity thus causing serious harm to low income communities.

The Northeast Pennsylvania Organizing Center, a close colleague of Mayday New Orleans, will host a screening of Coming Home in cooperation with the Peace and Justice Center and the King’s College Economics Department on October 5.

Join the Los Angeles Human Right to Housing Collective
on Friday, September 24, 2010 for a Film in the Park

Join Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights member LACAN and the Los Angeles Human Right to Housing Collective at the first-ever LA showing of Coming Home, The Dry Storm, highlighting longtime public housing tenants fighting for their human right to housing in New Orleans. Watch the Coming Home trailer here.

This event is part of a week of national screenings, launching in Washington, D.C. at the Congressional Black Caucus’s Annual Legislative Conference. Other screenings planned include New York, Chicago, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; and New Orleans.

There will also be a group discussion about public housing in Los Angeles and the Collective’s efforts to promote and defend the human right to housing.

Friday, September 24, 2010
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
MacArthur Park’s Levitt Pavillion
(NW Corner of park, near 6th and Parkview)

Suggested donation: $5 – $25 (no one will be turned away)
Buy tickets online in advance at http://wordpress.uniondevecinos.org/ or pay at the park.