Defend New Orleans
| Defend New Orleans on YouTube | Defend New Orleans on Flickr |
| Defend New Orleans on MySpace | Defend New Orleans on Facebook |
Watch The Defend New Orleans Interview on Ellen Degeneres
NEW: Defend New Orleans Video Site!!
Defend New Orleans began in 2003, and has since been adopted as a symbolic mascot for the cultural preservation movement there.
Originally, it was a t-shirt graphic created by and for friends as a celebration of local pride. Long before the media exposure of New Orleans post-Katrina, there was a need to guard the city from aggressive homogenizing forces. Developers and national chains began
moving in with a goal of swift exploitation without a care for the intricate history
of the city.
Defend New Orleans stepped up as a subversive guerilla protest movement. Soon hundreds of bathroom mirrors, walls, and cop cars all bore the now-iconic graphic. Two stores, Turncoats, in the bohemian Lower Garden District, and Rocks Off, a record store on Magazine Street, began carrying the merchandise to an ever-growing base of like-minded locals who were ready to fight back to save their city.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I was in New York trying desperately for days to maintain contact with my family and friends in New Orleans. In my shell-shocked haze, the enormity of the situation seemed impossible to grasp. Finally sick of being immobilized by the images of the destruction of the city I love, I decided to take action. It was obvious to me ten days after the storm that Defend New Orleans as a brand had a role to play.
Since then it has become a local charity project, the proceeds of which are donated to the preservation of cultural institutions. Enlisting friends and family to spread the word, and without any formal advertising or press, we raised over ten thousand dollars in the fall of 2005 for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, Habitat for Humanity, the New Orleans Restoration Fund and the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Defend New Orleans continues to evolve and maintain relevance. As things continue to decline or remain unimproved, we feel that it is as important as ever to fight for our city at home and to show people around the world what is really going on in New Orleans today. We see no end to the need for Defend New Orleans and no limit to what we can accomplish.
-Jac Currie
While in exile after the Storm my wife ran across a Defend New Orleans sticker on a lightpole in New York city. Just seeing it raised our spirits immensely, and I immediately hopped online to seek out the person responsible. A few days later we met up with Jac in Union Square to do an audiocast with him for HumidCity. Thus began an ongoing association which has now culminated in our joining forces to bring Defend New Orleans to a new level.
