Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana.

And the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting with support from viewers like you.

Do what you can to protect not only yourself, but protect the people that you love.

An alert for pregnant women, those individuals at the local level know that they can count on United Way.

The long process of hurricane recovery.

Louisiana has quite a few locations that were featured in the green book.

The Smithsonian showcases the history of the green book.

It's not absolute, but it's still pretty good odds in favor of the vaccine.

The ongoing push for vaccinations.

Hi, I'm Kara St. Cyr.

And I'm Andre’ Moreau.

Governor John Bel Edwards extended the Covid indoor mask mandate this week for another month until at least October twenty seventh.

The mandate was reinstated in August as Covid hospitalizations peaked at three thousand as of today.

Eight hundred and thirty eight people in the state are hospitalized with Covid.

That is the first time in consecutive days the numbers have dropped below a thousand.

That since July.

The Louisiana Department of Health says there is still reason to be concerned with the current number of Covid cases.

Tuesday, Dr. Joseph Kanter said hospitals have seen an increase in unvaccinated pregnant women dying from COVID 14 unvaccinated pregnant women caught Covid since July.

Almost half of them died from Covid complications and 10 of the unborn babies died as well.

We'll have more on this in a moment.

And now, though, to other news making headlines across the state.

70000 students remain out of school a month after Hurricane Ida rampaged through southeast Louisiana.

That's nearly one in 10 of the state's K through 12 students in Terrebonne Lafourche Jefferson, St. John, the Baptist and St. Charles parishes out of class.

Internet service remains offline in many areas, making virtual learning impossible.

People will have three extra days to apply for disaster food stamps related to Hurricane Ida.

The Department of Children and Family Services has been swamped by calls and says the application period will run now through October 13th so they can meet the needs.

Six people were injured in an explosion at the Westlake petrochemical plant late Monday night.

Four of those six have been released from the hospital.

The blast happened in the part of the plant where ethylene is produced.

LSU reports record numbers of students this year.

The university says the freshman class set records for size diversity and accomplishment.

It's the first freshman class with at least 7000 students.

Overall enrollment is also at an all time high, just shy of 36000 students.

Louisiana has recovered a missing lunar rock that turned up in the hands of a man who recycles wooden plastics in Florida.

The rock is from the 1972 Apollo 17 landing on the moon, and it's now in possession of the Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge.

It was returned late last year, but the return was not revealed until this week.

This week, the CDC issued an alert urging pregnant women to get the Covid vaccination.

I talked with Dr. Pamela Simmons from Woman's Hospital in Baton Rouge.

She's the maternal fetal physician who just recently had a baby herself.

I think the percentage is only like thirty one percent of pregnant women are vaccinated.

That seems like a really low percentage.

It is a very low percentage.

I think the things that I can talk to you about and to talk to women in the community about is just the unique role that I have is that not only was I pregnant throughout this pandemic, but I was also taking care of these women that were very, very, very sick.

And so I think we all think that if I get COVID 19, I'll do fine and that I won't be very sick or I don't think I'll get it in general.

And so you're trying to kind of play the odds there.

But I think what I bring that's very unique to this is that I've seen the flip side of that.

I've seen extremely, extremely sick mothers.

I've seen the sadder part of this pandemic with effects to the pregnancy and effects to the patient and to their family members.

And so I think there was just being able to say, do what you can to protect not only yourself, but protect the people that you love and to go ahead and get vaccinated if you haven't yet.

The CDC, along with the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine, have both urged pregnant women to go ahead and get vaccinated.

The studies that are showing in the statistics that are out there is that if you were to be pregnant and unvaccinated, you are at an increased risk of having pregnancy complications versus if you are pregnant and vaccinated, less risk of having complications with your pregnancy.

And so even though women were not included in the original studies, there's been many thousands of women that now have undergone vaccinations and have been able to collect data on them and have shown that it's safe.

And so urging pregnant women to go ahead and get vaccinated.

And now I'm coming up on to my booster.

And so we'll also be getting my booster vaccination as well once that timeframe comes for me.

And then just also say that I've been breastfeeding while getting my booster.

And so what the CDC has said is whether you're thinking about getting pregnant, you are pregnant or even postpartum and even breastfeeding at that point in time to all safe to go ahead and get the vaccination in pregnancy.

What is it that would concern women the most who are pregnant and getting a vaccination?

I think a lot of women, what they have voiced is just the uncertainty of longevity and long term outcomes of the vaccine.

I think there's misinformation throughout the the community, not only locally, but also nationally, in that people can get information from anywhere.

And so they wonder if this is going to be safe.

And I think moving forward and making sure that we're listening to the CDC and the society, maternal fetal medicine, American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology, who are are truly out there looking for the safety of pregnant women that this is recommended.

And so I think a lot of that is just speaking with a physician to make sure that.

Those questions and those concerns that the patients are having are being able to be addressed.

So just by being pregnant itself puts you at an increase of a higher risk category, right.

So you're more likely to get hospitalized.

And if you are hospitalized, we are seeing more oxygen requirements, more in the realm of what we call in the medical world, morbidity and mortality, meaning more sicker disease and also more death because of that.

And so I think whenever we think about the risk and the benefits there, right.

Like we all want to stay healthy and we all want to be there for not only our family, but also for our future children.

And so the best thing to do is to stay out of the hospital.

And the best way to do that is to get vaccinated.

Dr. Simmons, thank you for that.

And for much more information, you can go to CDC dot gov.

We are just a month since Hurricane Ida changed lives for so many of us and for many, recovery hasn't even come close to beginning.

But United Way of southeast Louisiana is working in harmony with United Way nationwide among the groups pushing to make sure that help is happening.

I talked with Charmaine, Cassiopeia, vice president and chief operating officer for United Way of southeast Louisiana.

The town of Randolph Falls within our seven parish region.

We are responsible as United Way to help work to meet the needs of that community.

I have to tell you, the frustration of the priest on Grand Isle that said, how in the hell do you think people in this area with no Internet, no electricity can appropriately without boots on the ground from the agency to help these individuals get the answers that they need to be able to get the funding they're entitled to?

You know, those are 4500 community citizens that live on that island.

They're multigenerational families.

They need this assistance.

And I think the mayor has an obligation to be on the ground as much as possible.

You know, before Ida, we've now been for the last two years dealing with Covid.

In addition to that, we have close to 52 percent of our population.

That qualifies as what we call Alice asset limited income constrained and employed.

What that means is these individuals, many of whom have been devastated by the impact of this hurricane, are now having to face the very complicated and often burdensome.

I mean, you just lost the house.

You've got to have documentation that you have to present.

I mean, somebody is going to have to hold your hand and get you through.

That United Way of southeast Louisiana has certainly been through this before.

You have a 100 year history.

And we understand that in times of emergency and crisis, we actually established right before Ida made landfall.

The IDA Relief Fund, because we knew, given what we thought was going to be a Category four hit from this hurricane, we were going to be facing monumental needs on the ground.

We've done 17 pop ups.

And by that, I mean, we have more resources, water supplies, ice cleaning supplies, anything that local municipal officials have told us need to be deployed in order for these individuals who are finally now able to return to their homes that have been devastated.

This enables us the opportunity to give them what they need to try to recover as much of the damage they've experienced when we were in Golden Madem last week.

Senator Bill Cassidy's staff was on the ground helping us at the pop up that we did.

They are serving food and handing out supplies.

I can tell you that we have been working very closely with all of our parish officials.

I have been on daily phone calls with all of the mayors, the parish presidents, our local municipal governments, because we cannot go there and not supply them what they are hearing from their constituents .

So we think this public private partnership that we have had as a not for profit with local municipal governments is paying us in spades.

Not only do we have strong relationships, those individuals at the local level know that they can count one United Way.

They are calling us and asking us if there's a faith based community in an area that's lacking certain supplies.

Something that we need desperately is making sure that Louisiana's most vulnerable.

Our children have their needs met.

So we have been working so diligently to get baby formula, diapers and anything that our children need.

You know, some of them have special needs.

We have been working to make sure that if individuals have lost, for example, a wheelchair, how do we replace that?

How do we meet the crisis that is facing these precious families who have lost everything, including expensive hardware?

Sometimes that means the quality of life for their children.

So many thanks so much for help.

You can go to United Way, C.L.R.

dot org.

That's hashtag Hurricane Ida.

Local and national economies took a hit with the closing of businesses around the nation due to Covid.

Now, over a year after the pandemic began, the job market is slowly starting to rebuild.

Andrew Fitzgerald, the senior vice president of business intelligence at Brek, gives us insight on job market trends and projected economic growth.

Some economists predicted that 2021 economic growth will be stunted by the pandemic.

While the state's unemployment rate is still higher than four percent, which is the average economist call full employment.

Andrew Fitz-Gerald with Brack says the numbers have changed for the better.

The projections were kind of interesting because we're from at the beginning, people had no idea it was going on.

They were very pessimistic in their projections, thinking this could last for years near the end of last year, around August, September.

Things were looking good.

If you'll recall, the economy is reopening.

People are feeling a lot better about it.

Our GDP was huge and people thought we'd get back to normal a lot more quickly, the beginning of twenty, twenty one.

Then things stagnated throughout the end of the year through December, January, February 2021, at twenty or twenty, twenty to twenty, twenty one.

And then you had, you know, the wave and winter.

Then you had the delta wave here in Louisiana.

Then we had several hurricanes in that amount of time.

So all these other factors came in and slowed down the rapid recovery.

But we're still in a place where Baton Rouge is right at five percent unemployment right now.

And that is a huge improvement.

Baton Rouge is unemployment rate was at twelve point four percent in May.

Twenty twenty.

The construction industry took a huge hit during quarantine, knocking out about 7000 jobs, which accounts for about a third of the unemployment rate, while construction companies are still not fully recovered.

The city is seeing rates closer to the pre pandemic average, which was four point nine percent in New Orleans.

A similar story.

The unemployment rate was at sixteen point seven percent in May 2020.

But now it's dropped nearly 10 percentage points to about six point nine.

It was near four point five pre pandemic.

Fitzgerald says there are lots of reasons for these changes.

The people, the labor force is just much smaller than it was pre pandemic.

So that's pretty significant, too.

And so that could be because of retirements, because of people just not seeking work.

It could be a lot of things.

People that were in, let's say, gig, gig, economy, job, maybe Uber or delivering food, they decided just not to opt back into working at all for the unemployment rate to return to normal.

Fitzgerald says two things would need to happen.

Business and commerce would have to rebuild naturally, which he says may happen in the next few months.

And employers would need to adjust their business models.

Employers need to just figure out what their market looks like.

Post pandemic, I mean.

Restaurants need to think about are more people cooking at home themselves or having takeout rather than dining in?

And does that need to change our model?

Obviously, if people smart restaurants went to an all takeout model during the pandemic that worked for them.

How much of that remains?

And so what is their staffing need to look like going forward?

So do we now need more delivery drivers than we do waiters and waitresses?

That's a question a lot of these employers are going to have to sit down and look at.

Louisiana's unemployment rate is improving, but slowly.

The labor force is much smaller than we saw before the pandemic, which Fitzgerald says impacts these numbers.

Traveling during Jim Crow was not easy and often dangerous for African-Americans.

But in nineteen thirty six, Victor Green created the Negro Motorist Green book, which listed locations that were safe for African-Americans to visit , including sites around Louisiana.

ExxonMobil partnered with the Smithsonian to create the Negro Motorist Green Book Exhibition.

The exhibit will travel to 12 cities nationwide, including the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge, where it's on display until November 13th in 1936.

Travel by airplane was expensive and reserved for the most elite social circles in America.

But the car industry, on the other hand, was booming.

Let's look at these new cars as they pass before the camera.

There's diol and beauty unequaled by the 1940s.

The road trip was the most popular way to vacation, and Americans were vacationing more than they'd ever been, especially after World War Two.

No where they live.

But now a family of Hollywood is going vacation at a wonderful American institution of going new places and doing new things.

But this type of travel wasn't accessible to everyone.

The time period between the 1930s to the early 1960s was Jim Crow's peak, which meant that black people weren't welcomed at most restaurants, hotels or even gas stations at some locations in the south.

You couldn't even get out of your car or stay past six p.m..

These places were called sundown towns.

Making the wrong decisions here could cost you your life.

But there was a way around it.

Victor Green, a postal worker from Harlem, put together a travel guide that showed African-Americans where it was safe to drive.

We've been able to share the entire exhibition with all of our people and really celebrate this story of triumph.

The Negro Motorist Green book was a book that was created by Victor Hugo Green, and it was in production from 1936 to 1967.

The book was created as a guidebook to allow black people to know where they could stay.

Different hotels, different areas where it was safe to traverse, alerting people to sundown towns and also where they could grab a bite, just how to have that positive quality of life and travel without incident.

Rodnina Heart, the division director of the state museum system, helped put together a Smithsonian exhibit featuring this book.

The exhibit explains the story of the green book from beginning to end, starting with how the book was developed.

According to Hart, Victor Greene's job as a postal worker gave him access to black businesses all over the country.

He enlisted the help of other workers who could add to that list.

The book saved lives by giving options for safe travel, but it also created a network of successful black businesses, several of which were in Louisiana.

The exhibit highlights some of the most popular spots.

Louisiana has quite a few locations that were featured in the green book over the course of its years.

Everything from the Hotel Lincoln to the Dewdrop and Dooky Chase, lots of places all throughout the the state were featured in the Green book.

One place in particular was the Esso Standard Oil Station, or ExxonMobil, as we call it today.

The oil and gas company partnered with the Smithsonian to bring this exhibition to light.

Dave Alderete, the refinery manager for Exxon, says the green book story is personal for the company.

Well, Exxon has a long history supporting the black community and supporting the actual green book.

So stations were the first gas stations in in the green book itself.

And we distributed the green book nationally in the early 30s.

ESSO hired James Jackson, who will be instrumental in the green books distribution together, Jackson and Green devised a strategy to sell the books at several ESSO stations which were one of the few places black people could stop to get gas or use the bathroom.

This ensured that the book could be published annually, and also that people were continuing to add content, different locations that would come on the market or go off.

Because if you look at the green book, there was there were times where certain places were at a location and they were featured and then sometimes whenever they were not , also you see that they relocated, that there was just a lot of a thriving business.

Sometimes they'd move to a bigger institution, sometimes smaller.

So it's definitely something that was used as a an economic engine and a way for black commerce to really gain in momentum.

But besides promoting black businesses, the book promoted joy and freedom in a way that hadn't existed before in that time period.

And Jim.

Era.

There's a lot of conversation about the difficulties, about how hard it was to just exist as a person of color, especially a black person in America.

But what this exhibition does in a really triumphant way is that it highlights joy.

It shows that beyond whatever is being thrown at the individuals, that they are resilient.

That this book, this guidebook was this ingenious way to still have a positive quality of life.

When the book was written in 1936, Green wrote, There will be a day sometime in the near future when the sky will not have to be published.

That is when we as a race will have equal rights and privileges in the United States.

His dream eventually came to fruition.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 helped bring an end to segregation.

African-Americans would be allowed access to businesses and transportation facilities, even if the book was only published for about 30 years.

Its influence on black travel, entrepreneurship and civil rights will always be remembered.

ExxonMobil, Baton Rouge is proud to support Safe Haven.

Louisiana's Green Book For more than 100 years, ExxonMobil has made a commitment to workforce diversity and the belief that reflecting on historic race relations is key to shaping a better future.

In honor of the exhibit, LPB has created the digital first series Safe Haven, where I visit eight different sites listed in the green book here in Louisiana.

The first episode of Safe Haven premieres October 8th.

Look forward to that.

Thank you.

Vaccine hesitancy in Louisiana.

It remains high even as we come out of the fourth wave of peaking Covid numbers and evidence showing that vaccines work and that they're safe.

This week, Andre and I hosted a Louisiana public square on vaccines, freedom, fears and facts.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Louisiana Public Square.

I'm Andre Wawro, host of tonight's very important special Vaccines, Freedom.

Fear and Facts.

My name is Nathan while I live in South Louisiana.

Raise alligators for a living.

Been doing that since 1986.

Along with alligators.

But we've also done a shrimp crab.

We trap fur.

And mom and dad raised us up in church.

And I've been known to myself starting in April, this past April, felt led to start a church here in Springfield, Louisiana.

So I'm a pastor here.

Victory in Christ also.

I wasn't against the vaccines, but I didn't necessarily think it was necessary for vaccine since I already got the Covid myself.

I go visit three people in the hospital before I got there.

One lady passed two hours before I got there.

She was a middle aged woman and very good health and go to the next individual to pray for them.

That Monday, they passed.

But while I was praying, the nurse come got me.

And she said, Sir, I don't know you, but I see you praying.

Would you be willing to come to this room?

A family just lost their dad a week ago.

Their grandmother two weeks ago.

And their mother is about to pass.

Would you be willing to try to come in to comfort the family?

And as we're praying, she literally passed.

In my hands.

And to see the daughters and the son weeping.

A such desperation of losing their dad and their mom.

It broke my heart.

All right, we've got certainly a number of questions from our students that are here with us.

The first question from the group, introduce yourself.

Tell us where you're from and your question, please.

Hello.

I am Chair and Sinclair from Opelousas, Louisiana.

And my question is, why should someone get the vaccine if they know that they can get Covid and spread it to others?

Can and likely are two different things, and one of the things about medicine is very few things, if any, are absolutely nothing in my practice of medicine is 100 percent.

It's all shades of percentages.

Can you get Covid after getting the vaccine?

Yeah.

Are you likely to you're much less likely.

Much less likely if you're vaccinated.

About eight times less likely if you're vaccinated when you're in a surge.

And we're coming down from our dout to surge right now.

And Covid, if Covid is all around you, those chances go up a little bit.

But when you look at the overall numbers, you're about eight times less likely to get infected with Covid if you are vaccinated.

You're twenty five times less likely, by the way, to die or be hospitalized with Covid.

So when you look at those odds, I mean, it's not absolute, but it's still pretty good odds in favor of the vaccine.

There's a rebroadcast Sunday morning at 11 October 3rd, and you can also catch it online or at lpb.org/publicsquare.

and everyone, that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB any time, wherever you are with our LPB app.

You can catch LPB News and Public Affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Andre’ Moreau.

And I'm Kara St. Cyr.

Until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Entergy is proud to support programing on el and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting with support from viewers like you.