This article originally appeared in LeftTurn.
The coming days will bring another step towards the new New Orleans.
On April 22, voters in the city (absentee and in-state satellite
voting began last week) will choose between 22 mayoral candidates,
as well as sheriff, city council, and other positions. If
no candidate in a race receives more than 50%, there will be a run-off
between the two highest vote-getters on May 20. Elections have always
been a big deal here in the state that gave the nation Clinton campaign
manager James Carville and Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile,
but this election feels more weighted with significance.
While local media has made a division between the “serious” candidates
and less likely contenders such as Manny 'Chevrolet' Bruno (“A troubled
man for troubled times”), the truth is that in New Orleans politics,
even the front runners are, if nothing else, uncensored. “Early
on, the media sorted based on name recognition and financial backing,”
says community organizer and mayoral candidate Greta Gladney. “But
they haven’t presented the full picture. Yes, we have some
crazy people who qualified. But there are also some important messages
from candidates that aren’t receiving attention. And among
the main contenders, you have some crazy people running too.”
In a city where the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow-era racist
laws are still alive and well, where former Klansman David Duke
received alarmingly high percentages of the vote in the city’s white
neighborhoods when he ran for governor, where Mardi Gras parades
were desegregated just over 10 years ago, and most schools and neighborhoods
remain deeply segregated, themes of race are bound to dominate the
mayoral contest.
Peggy Wilson – a white former city councilwoman who is seen as
one of the leading candidates – so obviously represents white racist
New Orleans, it’s almost refreshing. Phrases other white politicians
might say in an unguarded moment are her talking points. With
her relentless racially coded attacks on public housing residents
and “welfare queens,” she sends a clear message about the real themes
of this election, and what’s at stake.
Wilson clearly feels that the Black vote will be suppressed. "I
figured the demographics might have changed now and I could run,”
she told the Times-Picayune in a recent interview. Wilson’s
political future, and that of the other candidates, will ride on
the answer to a question everyone is asking: how many of New Orleans’
former residents will be able to vote.
Everyone expects far less African Americans to vote in this election
than anytime in decades. Congressman John Conyers has
called it “the largest disenfranchisement in the history of this
nation.” According to a local voting rights coalition that
includes the ACLU of Louisiana, NAACP, ACORN and others, the guidelines
for absentee voting “are unclear, complicated, and conflicting.”
Looking at the hurdles placed in the way of potential voters,
I have no doubt that if I were displaced and attempting to vote,
I would give up. As one advocate told me, “you practically
need a legal consultation to figure out how to vote. It would
be easier if they just instituted a poll tax.”
The changed demographics of the city, brought about by the forced
expulsion of most of the population, has complicated surveying.
Ron Forman, who in recent surveys pulls one percent of the
Black vote, is seen as one of the front-runners, and received the
endorsement of the Times-Picayune, our daily paper.
The
paper’s enthusiastic endorsement of Forman is indicative of the
city’s divisions. The Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer recently for
its breaking news reporting and its public service, and while their
reporting in the months post-Katrina was breathtaking, excellent
and vital, many Black residents question what public the paper actually
serves. “There is an historic disconnect between the community
and the paper,” one former Times-Picayune reporter told me. “I
don’t think they reflect the city and I think most people inside,
working at the paper, would agree with me… I know 50% more about
the city now than I ever did when I worked as a reporter.”
“There was a moment, post-Katrina, where all of us in the city had
the same interests and concerns,” a long-time community activist
confirmed. “During that time, the Picayune finally became
the newspaper of the whole city. That time has ended, unfortunately,
and they’ve gone back to their old ways.”
At a debate last month sponsored by the African American
Leadership Project, issues of race were front and center. Before
candidates spoke, community organizers, including Steve Bradberry
of ACORN,
Beverly Wright of the Deep
South Center for Environmental Justice, and Khalil Shahyd of
the People’s
Hurricane Relief Fund, gave powerful commentary on the racial
contours of the disaster and aftermath. During the debate, candidates
often spoke candidly about race in the city, such as when mayoral
candidate Tom Watson, a community leader and outspoken advocate
for evacuees and criminal justice reform, said “I live in a mixed
neighborhood uptown, and white people won’t talk to me. I
walk my dog, and they’ll talk to my dog and not to me.”
Mayor
Nagin, who was elected four years ago with a minority of the Black
vote, is now seen by many as their only chance to keep Black control
of city government. “People of color think if they don’t vote for
Nagin they’ll be completely cut out of the process,” Gladney tells
me.
“I’m not confident any of the front-runners will do anything to
help African Americans and in particular the lower 9,” says Gladney,
referring to her neighborhood, the lower ninth ward. “I’m seeing
a reluctance towards bringing Black people back.”
I recently visited Renaissance Village, an evacuee community of
over 500 trailers located north of Baton Rouge on land owned by
a youth prison. Residents I spoke to were aching to come home.
“Last year I was a middle income American, a homeowner – I
never imagined I’d come to this,” said Hillary Moore Jr, a former
city employee and New Orleans property owner exiled in a small trailer
in the middle of the complex. Living alone, Moore barely fits in
his trailer. When he talks about the family of five living
next door, I can’t imagine how they could possibly squeeze in.
As with all of the residents I spoke with, Moore was unhappy in
his trailer home. “Why would they buy this for as much money
as they paid? This thing is designed for a weekend – can you
imagine someone trying to live in here for 6 or 7 months?” he asked.
I asked him why he agreed to move in. “When you’ve been living
in a gymnasium with 100 plus people, a travel trailer sounds like
a mansion to you, and when they tell you sign here so you can end
standing in line to get a shower, you don’t question anything, you
sign and you jump at the opportunity.” An over-capacity housing
market from Baton Rouge to New Orleans makes other options scarce.
On the day I visited, residents voiced some of their recent complaints,
most involving the logistics of living in this isolated, underserved
community: the cafeteria serving the complex is scheduled to be
closed; and management had threatened to stop fixing the washing
machines, which were being vandalized. Many of the occupants
had no means of transportation in and out, and the only bus service
was to Wal-Mart and back.
Residents, displaced from their own neighborhoods, are attempting
to form new community in the camp, but there are obstacles, high
among them being the stress and pressures of living in such close
and uncomfortable conditions. “Living here, you meet people
under unusual circumstances,” Moore explains politely. Many
people I spoke with complained about children running wild in the
camp. Imagining the youth, already traumatized from the disaster
and evacuation, trying to adapt to life in these prison-like conditions
(we had to be signed in by security guards, and press are not permitted),
behavior problems seem inevitable.
Not long after moving in, Moore and others organized
a resident’s council. “We got tired of a lot of things Keta
(the contractor company managing the park) was doing and we decided
to organize because we realized there is strength in numbers,” he
tells me. The residents’ council has an elected board and
open meetings every week.
Despite all obstacles, New Orleans’ survivors keep organizing and
fighting, whether exiled in FEMA-paid trailer parks, or internally
displaced within the city. Two weeks ago at the St. Bernard
housing development, located just a few blocks from where Jazz Fest
happens every year, former residents and supporters confronted the
police and broke through the fence surrounding their former homes.
For some, it was the first time in months they’d been able
to see their apartments.
Terry Scott, a Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) employee
working in the complex was sympathetic. “We want them back.
Without them living here, we don’t have jobs.” However,
Scott told me, at the current pace, it would be years before most
residents would be allowed back. “It’s been seven months,
and they’re still working on Iberville (the smallest and least damaged
complex). Every corner of New Orleans, you have HANO housing,
but they haven’t even started on the Lafitte,” he said, referring
to another mostly-undamaged complex, second in line for repair.
For now, thousands of livable units, including those at St
Bernard, sit empty, with fencing around them and guards patrolling.
“We’ve been having mold, mildew and backed up sewers for years,”
Pamela Mahogany, a St Bernard resident told me. “I’ve been
here 42 years and it’s been a hazard the whole time. They never
cared before. This is part of their goal to tear our development
down.”
For residents like Mahogany, community is what they miss most about
their homes at St Bernard. “They say it’s unsafe here. When
I lived here I didn’t have a burglar alarm. Now I have one,
‘cause I don’t know the people around me. They say people
here didn’t have jobs. Guess what. I’m a nurse. I
go to work every day.”
Terry Scott, the HANO employee, agreed. “People say this is
a high crime area. The truth is you could’ve walked right
through here any time and be fine.”
These elections are vital. But the truth is, what’s really
going to bring people back to our city are the people themselves,
fighting on the front lines to come home. In hundreds of small
struggles, in grassroots organizing and demonstrations around the
city, the fight continues. As Beverly Wright, director of
Dillard University’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
said during the African American Leadership Project’s mayoral forum,
“they’ve underestimated the determination of people like me to fight
to our last breath”
Jordan Flaherty is a resident of New Orleans, an organizer with
New Orleans Network and an editor of Left Turn Magazine where his
previous
articles from New Orleans may be found. |