New Orleans Visions – King’s Candy & Living with Water

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2017

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robert King Wilkerson (aka Robert Hillary King) was imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana for 31 years. Twenty-nine of those years he was in solitary confinement. During that time he created a clandestine kitchen in his 6×9 cell where he made pralines, heating the the butter and sugar he saved from his food tray over a tiny burner concocted from a Coke can and a toilet paper roll. King’s case was overturned in 2001 and he was released. He was living in New Orleans during Katrina, refused to leave his dog, and weathered the storm in his apartment. Today he lectures around the world and makes candy — which he calls Freelines — to bring attention to issues of prison reform and the story of his comrades and The Angola Three.

In “Living with Water,” journalist Julia Kumari Drapkin, director of ISeeChange, a community weather and climate journal project, takes us on a tour of her flooded neighborhood in New Orleans after a recent storm. She talks about the vision of creating water gardens, floating streets and other water projects that look towards living with water in New Orleans rather than continuing to completely drain and sink the land.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Tophia, Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters Presently.
0:04.0	We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nicki Silva.
0:09.0	Before we get going, I want to tell you about a show I really like, our fellow radiotopia show,
0:14.6	this day in esoteric political history.
0:17.9	As you may have noticed, this is an election year, a very, very strange election year.
0:23.0	Luckily, history can help provide some context.
0:27.0	This day is doing a number of special election-related series all alongside their regular collection of fascinating and informative stories
0:35.6	from the past.
0:37.2	This day is hosted by Jody Avergan, formerly of 30 for 30, and two actual historians, Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley and Nicole
0:46.3	Hammer of Vanderbilt. Stories are serious, silly, from recent history and from
0:51.7	way in the past.
0:53.2	Check out this day in esoteric political history,
0:56.6	wherever you get your podcasts.
0:58.5	When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and New Orleans was flooding, emails began to appear.
1:08.0	The latest storm updates, evacuation instructions, people searching for the missing.
1:14.0	We saw this message go by from ERISA Arons.
1:17.0	She was pleading for any news of Robert King Wilkerson.
1:21.0	We recognized those names. A few months before, ERISA had called the Hidden Kitchens
1:26.0	Hotline we'd opened up on NPR asking people for stories of secret underground below the
1:31.6	radar kitchens.
1:33.0	Today on the Kitchen Sisters present, King's Candy,
1:36.0	a New Orleans kitchen vision.
	...

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