Category Archives: protest

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Friday protest activities

FRIDAY, JANUARY 20

1. Jazz funeral for Lady Liberty’
The “funeral” will convene with other marchers outside Louis Armstrong Park at 10 a.m. to depart at 11 a.m. on the route that journeys from Rampart Street to Canal Street and then back down Peters Street toward the Moonwalk. There, Lady Liberty’s coffin will be symbolically doused in the Mississippi River.

2. J20: anti-Trump inaugural protest and march marchhttps://www.facebook.com/events/723927517772803/
Starting Location: Duncan Plaza, Perdido Street, Time: 3 p.m.
Ending Location: City Hall, Poydras Street
Route: Duncan Plaza to Canal Street, turn onto Magazine Street, turn onto Poydras Street, ending at City Hall on Poydras Street.

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Stand with Standing Rock

Join the national day of solidarity with Standing Rock as they lead the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
All Nations – All Generations – All Water – For All Generations!
The pipeline is designed to bring Bakken shale oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast. We are all living downstream.
We will gather on the steps across from Jackson Square and will perform a water ceremony.  Bring your signs.

Tuesday, September 13 at 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM Decatur Street steps side of Jackson Square

 

 

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Weighing In On A Confederate Past

It’s amazing to be alive at the moment of the tipping point for a social movement: For my lifetime, they already include the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid in South Africa, Arab Spring, the extension of legal rights for women and for same-sex unions among many others.
What all of these have in common is that they happened well before the formal governing entity signaled that it was ready for the change or even in some cases, before the solid majority had decided to back the change.
All were hard-fought and seemed destined to fail at many points in their campaign. All had active opposition.

The removal of statues of Confederate leaders from public space is another tipping point in a country that is heading toward a time when whites will be a minority (by 2043).
The affronted use mockery (“Why don’t we remove all traces of Washington? HE owned slaves! Where will this end?”) or condescending treatises on what they view as “the real history”, as understood through a lifetime of racist schoolbooks and likeminded family members (“The war was about states rights and not about slavery, duh.”)
To me, the arguments stated above mask the bigger truth: The public lionization of the Confederate past of the South is a barrier to working together for the future and signals to people of color that whiteness is a privilege earned, when it is not. I don’t care what version or scope of history you subscribe to, although I may pity you; have a statue of Lee in your backyard, but holding on the “Lost Cause” narrative in public places is a recipe for the continuing disintegration of our region. It also masks the true vibrancy of the South: that it is based on a multi-cultural, multi-generational belief in place, extreme socialization and culture handed down from person to person.
I wish we had the ability and forethought as a people to have created realistic evidence of the world of slavery and the brutality of the Civil War as Eisenhower ordered to be done with the concentration camps after WW2, but we did not. Instead we have inherited this soft and “heroic” narrative that does not truly represent the history of that ugly time.

Statues of those who brought a civil war to defend a system that allowed people to be sold as chattel should not be kept in public spaces.
Keep all of the statues and throw some Mardi Gras beads on em if you’d like, but put them in the Custom House or another place to properly frame their history as those who ignored the opportunity to expand human rights for their neighbors, along with information on when the statues were commissioned and by whom.

And thank you to Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “The Warmth Of Other Suns:The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” for writing this piece in the NYT about how symbols do help to define their time:

With the lowering of the Confederate flag in the state that was the first to secede and where the first shots were fired, could we now be at the start of a true and more meaningful reconstruction? It would require courage to relinquish the false comfort of embedded racial mythologies and to open our minds to a more complete history of how we got here. It would require a generosity of spirit to see ourselves in the continued suffering of a people stigmatized since their arrival on these shores and to recognize how the unspoken hierarchies we have inherited play out in the current day and hold us back as a country.

“Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God’s airth [sic] a free woman— I would.” — Elizabeth Mumbet Freeman secured her freedom in a precedent setting court case on 8/22/1781.

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Petition · Cancel plans for development of the “Championship” level golf course in Northern City Park

Especially for downtown residents and visitors, City Park is a necessary amenity and is conveniently located only a few easy miles down Esplanade by bicycle, leg or vehicle. As a FQ teenager, I rode my bike to City Park regularly, learned how to drive there and generally used it to escape from my fabulous but often trying daily life of the Quarter. Because of all of that and more, it remains one of my favorite places in the entire region.
This new golf course will take away what has been a much-loved and well-used space since the 2005 levee breaks. There is no doubt that City Park management has had to find ways to monetize/program much of the park, and has done so by offering many great amenities (i.e. 24 hour beignets, putt-putt, Botanical Garden/music, soccer fields, stables, Grow Dat Youthfarm) but they also need to balance that with open space that encourages a wide variety of beneficial insects, wildlife and plants that add diversity and won’t be attracted to a golf course. People need diversity of spaces too, and the space in question has served as a recuperative spot for thousands who rebuilt the city and were here in the gloomy days after 2005. I believe this need was clearly defined by that use and the management should attend to the felt desire to offer non-programmed or non-monetized space that benefits its residents, visitors and the rest of the natural world.
Please consider signing the petition and sharing it so we can show the support for balanced uses of our beloved City Park.
Petition · Cancel plans for development of the "Championship" level golf course in Northern City Park · Change.org.

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December 17, the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers

“In the spirit of remembrance and healing, SWOP joins sex workers, allies and advocates from around the world in recognizing December 17, the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers. As we approach this day, we seek to come together to remember those who we have lost this year, and renew our commitment in the on-going struggle for empowerment, visibility, and rights for all sex workers.”

The march will begin at 4:00p.m. at the intersection of Bourbon Street and Canal Street and parade through the Quarter to Frenchmen Street. NOLA’s traditional costuming is not involved in the march, but participants are encouraged to wear red. Planners note, “Though the reason for our event is sober and serious, you don’t have to be.”IDEVASW-2014-MAP

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Experts ask if New Orleans’ ‘exceptionalism’ masks grimmer reality

Writer Katy Reckdahl covers New Orleans with her usual tact and fair approach in this article from the Advocate. I wish there was more of the story covered here, but at least the idea of examining New Orleans’ “exceptionalism” has been raised along with comparing that assertion to its massive challenges. Certainly, the larger idea of American exceptionalism and its etymology should be examined as well. In other words, only reminding ones citizens about “positive” indicators-what for us is tied up entirely in our culture-seems to blind or restrict a more in-depth conversation about the systemic inequalities that also characterize life in New Orleans. Or as one astute online commenter said : let’s not keep falling for bread and circuses.

Allison Plyer, of the Data Center, who has crunched the city’s demographic numbers for nearly two decades, said the city is exceptional “only in terms of culture.” For the few indicators the Data Center keeps about culture, New Orleans is “well above the national average,” she said.

“We’re also well above the national average in incarceration,” Plyer said. “But we’re not different than other places in other measures of hardship, and those are glaring and need to be addressed.”

For all of New Orleans’ numerical similarities to places such as Cleveland, when Plyer looks up from her spreadsheets and PowerPoints, she sees a city that is special, she said. “And because it is special, I am interested in working to address issues of hardship and well-being here,” she said.

Tony Recasner, who heads Agenda for Children, said that because of the city’s small size and tight geography, the problems of the poor are often in plain view, just like the brass bands and parades. That proximity among people of all income levels contributes to high levels of volunteerism here, he thinks.

Experts ask if New Orleans’ ‘exceptionalism’ masks grimmer reality | News | The New Orleans Advocate — New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Size does matter

Our friends in the Faubourg Marigny need some help. One of the city’s most politically connected developers/destroyers is working his Rolodex to get a height variance of 25 feet for a condo development in the Marigny. This neighborhood, next to the French Quarter has maintained most of its historical charm and mixed use through volunteerism, hands on owners taking care with their preservation work, and entrepreneurial business owners using what was there to build their businesses rather than adding another monument to American greed. Condo developments are the interstates of the 21st Century: an attempt to divide and isolate more people from each other while making more money for a few.
The FMIA is a active organization and has rallied their membership, but ALL citizens need to stand up to this developer and his cronies, telling them NO once and for all.
Please read up on this issue through the link provided below and sign if it matters to you.

http://www.faubourgmarigny.org/sizematters.htm