This was awesome

Thanks to everyone who came. Fun times.

Awesome

Link!

Is it just me or does it seem like there's some extra civic energy out there amongst the grassroots lately? Just a little bit. A few more crumbs than there have been.

Silence is Violence: City Hall Edition

I attended today's noon o'clock event in front of City Hall. Turnout was modest in terms of sheer numbers but I was heartened to see so many great neighborhood leaders, activists, and writers. It was a who's-who of people who walk the walk.


At this event, the names of all 183 victims murdered since last year were read aloud. It was gut-wrenching. It's one thing to read all these names online, it's another to hear them because of the time it takes to get through them all. It's a tale of tears.


David Winkler-Schmit brings us the story of Belinda Henderson, the mother of a victim. She's still waiting to see her son's murderer to be identified, captured, and convicted. She also wondering where our elected leaders have been,

“The mayor and the chief of police aren’t out here. Where are they?”

In fact, there was not a single representative from the NOPD present. Not even to make platitudes about the ongoing progress. More specifically, there were only three elected officials present, Councilors James Carter, Arnie Fielkow, and newly elected District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro.

Hats off to them.

But that they were the only three to grace us with their presence is absolutely shameful.

Council President Jackie Clarkson wears that same red blazer almost every day, and the one time it would have been particularly appropriate, she's a no-show.




It must have been at the cleaners.

Update:

An anonymous friend remarks:

No ribbons
No scissors
No Jackie

Ha ha! But there were cameras.

Urgent: People needed at Our Lady of Good Counsel

Head over to 1307 Louisiana Avenue.

This is getting more and more outrageous:

At Our Lady of Good Counsel on Louisiana Avenue, novelist Poppy Brite and Hunter Harris Sr. were led out of the church in handcuffs and placed in a police squad car. At least one other arrest is expected at Good Counsel.

"They broke in a door ... a 100-year-old door to get in," said Mary Alice Sirkis. "This is a very poor example of religion. Not only is it not Catholic, it isn't even Christian."

Horrendous.

UPDATE:

WDSU has video.

So does WWL.

---

Karen was there to see it all.

Save Lower Mid City

Protest @ 3:30 PM.

433 Bolivar St.

the LSU admin building.

Check out my map:



View Larger Map



Plus it's 65 and sunny out.

General Strike Called For Jan. 9th

Silence Is Violence looks to make a big statement.

As we approach the second anniversary of the SilenceIsViolence march to City Hall, it has become clear that we once again need to take action. Last year, we stood in front of City Hall and read the names of every citizen who had been killed over the previous year. We did it without a permit, because the city officials responsible for granting permits refused to return our calls. Some of you were there with us; most inhabitants of City Hall were not.

What could possibly get their attention? With their sights so tightly focused on commerce, perhaps the only thing that would get their attention is if we all stayed home and demonstrated what the city would be like without us. When neighborhoods and communities are paralyzed by crime, when tourists stay away out of fear, when young entrepreneurs move elsewhere to open their new businesses, tax dollars are lost and economic energy is stifled. A one-day citywide strike would send a very concrete message of how important our daily safety is to the city's functioning. But, realistically, few of us can afford to call in sick for a day, so we've come up with another variation.

We ask that everyone join us on Friday, January 9th in a citywide "Strike Against Crime." While this strike does NOT require that people stay home from work, we do hope that each of you will find some way in which you can participate, and spread the news to your colleagues and friends.

WWL covered it here.

It is important to me that this be more than an expression of frustration over the crime rate because crime is symptomatic of a social justice deficiency.

Calling out City Hall for its constant adoration of "commerce" at the expense of all else is a hint.

There's a lot of work to do before January 9th.

Renew-Restore-Reopen Charity Hospital

No to the LSU/VA plan to demolish Lower Mid City.

Protest tomorrow.

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM

433 Bolivar St., the LSU Administrative Office Building

--
From the Committee to Reopen Charity:

LSU's action in shutting down Charity Hospital after Hurricane Katrina amounted to a crime against the people of metro New Orleans. LSU's latest proposal to destroy people's homes in Lower Mid City - when the city has yet to recover from the 2005 storm and break in the levees - amounts to a crime against humanity.

In the same vein, Mayor Ray Nagin and the City Council can't even balance the budget and yet-despite the sorry state of the city's recovery-they propose to destroy homes in Lower Mid City.

And President George W. Bush and the VA, in one last, mad effort to stab the metro area in the back again, propose to destroy the homes of hard-working people rather than build in an area where not one home would face the wrecking ball.

For a rational and sane policy,
For rehabbing the Rev. Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital along the lines of the RMJM Hillier Report,
For saving Lower Mid City,

Come out and demonstrate at LSU's admin offices on Bolivar St.

--

City Council and the Mayor will come to an agreement sometime this week to allocate $79 million of this year's budget, amidst cross the board service cuts, to purchase properties in the LSU/VA footprint.

Independent Group Calls School Facilities Master Plan "Troubling"

So all the regular readers of this blog know very well where I stand on the school facilities master plan. I've been pushing this petition to extend the deadline for public comment on the master plan because the OPSB appears ready to rubber stamp the document when we know that some of them have not even read it. If you haven't, you should go sign that petition.

But maybe you're reluctant. Maybe you're saying to yourself,"That Eli is so smart and good looking. The analysis at his blog is so wise and interesting to read. But I still don't know if I should sign that petition or weigh in on the schools master plan. I don't know enough about it to know if he knows enough about it."

Maybe you'd be more convinced if my criticisms were buttressed by something a little bit more independent think tank-y. If that's the case, I urge you to see what is said in a brief from the non-profit and non-partisan Bureau of Governmental Research.

First, they agree that the consequences of accepting the document are wide-ranging and far-reaching:

If adopted, it will set the course for the development of New Orleans public schools for decades to come. It will guide decisions as to which schools are closed, which are built or renovated, and when and where.

Then, they break it down, emphasis mine:

The catch is that implementation depends on funding, and there are solid prospects only for Phase I, which has a price tag of $675 million. School officials estimate that they can cobble together between $100 million and $200 million for Phase II. But that leaves a gap of $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion for the remainder of the plan.

The Plan makes no assessment of whether this gap can realistically be funded. The section on finances merely provides a brief discussion of possible funding mechanisms. These include general obligation bonds, local property taxes, local sales taxes, sharing of facilities, state funds, federal funds, lease-purchase arrangements, sales of assets and public-private partnerships. The Plan does not provide revenue estimates for these sources, nor does it discuss the likelihood that they will materialize. School officials and planners confirmed that the planning process did not attempt to address these issues. An assessment of the financing for Phases II through VI was outside the scope of the Plan.

This is troubling. Facilities planning without a realistic assessment of financial resources for these phases is at best an exercise in visioning. At worst, it projects the illusion that all students will have access to world class schools. But, according to school officials, only half of the projected student population would have such facilities if Phase I alone were funded. The other half would not.

How does that sound for your school system? One half has while other half does not? Sounds exactly like the type of new New Orleans we all envisioned doesn't it?

So it's very serious. This is why you and all your friends should come down to City Hall tomorrow morning at 10 AM to hear testimony on the school facilities master plan. It is the public's last opportunity to provide comment on the document - which is why this petition needs to get much thicker over the next 12-18 hours. SIGN IT!

How to Make it Play Even Better

Jeffrey says that photographs showing protesters from last night's theatrical objection to Mayor Nagin's insulting award for "Excellence in Recovery" will subvert effects of the mobilization because the protesters are white.

Yet, here is the Times-Picayune's headline:

Inside, Nagin's a hero, outside, he's a joke

And the article takes it further. You really have to read the whole thing to get a sense of its construction. The article describes the protest itself as a party and juxtaposes the party on the street with the one occurring at the Ritz.

Look:

In a scene reminiscent of a satirical Carnival parade, about 75 protesters chanted and waved handmade signs outside a posh Canal Street hotel Friday evening while inside a gilded ballroom two stories above them Mayor Ray Nagin accepted the inaugural Award of Distinction for Recovery, Courage and Leadership from an honorary committee packed with his political allies.

It then titles a subsection of the article "who's edgy," implicitly ridiculing the Nagin quote to follow:

"I think around the anniversary we get edgy, and I think we're edgy right now, and I think we'll get past it, "

Mission accomplished.

I think it was a great success.

==

But, on the other hand, I do entertain some criticism that speaks to Jeffrey's concerns regarding race and perception. And I think that with some honest reevaluation, the next time people get together to criticize the mayor, regardless of the racial diversity of the mobilization, they'll achieve an even greater success.
The thing I noticed after seeing this was the consistent mention of the high rate of crime.

While of course crime concerns everyone throughout the city and affects everyone throughout the city, it is better to consider the systems.

I don't just angrily criticize Nagin for being unable to control the city's rate of crime. In poor cities throughout the country, the crime rate has risen during the Bush administration. There are sometimes trends above and beyond the control of a Mayor and his Police Chief.

That is not to absolve Ray Nagin and Warren Riley of any wrongdoing, for certainly they are guilty of incompetence and disengagement. Riley's police force has unacceptably low morale as a direct result of Riley's poor leadership. And certainly the NOPD needs more help than it is getting.

But is the high crime rate the biggest reason why I think this recovery has been a failure?

Absolutely not.

What about housing?
What about fair wages?
What about health care?
Where are the infrastructure improvements?
What about the coddling of the tourist industry's monopoly men?
What about the misappropriation of CBDG money?
Where is the vision?
And so on and so forth.

These are the things that make Nagin's administration exceptionally bad, not the crime rate.

The high rate of crime might not even represent the most glaring failure of Mr. Nagin's leadership related to the criminal justice system. This city has one of the highest rates of prosecution for non violent drug offenses in the nation. This state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. The police department continues a 'catch-and-release' policy when it's own paid consultants have suggested the implement community policing practices with all deliberate speed.

What has made Ray Nagin's award for excellence in recovery exceptionally insulting is his pathetic execution of an even more pathetic reactionary ideology.

Saying that the crime rate is too high is a tremendous oversimplification.

Mayor Nagin deserves more blame than that.

It is more even than an ideological refusal to address the underlying social conditions of which crime is a consequence - Nagin's reactionary and regressive recovery policies exacerbate them.

Don't Kill Me Bro: A Police Murder In Central LA

I hope this evokes the same type of response as the injustices in Jena 6. I'm not looking forward to driving all the way to Winnfield, Louisiana, but I will.

At 1:28 p.m. last Jan. 17, Baron "Scooter" Pikes was a healthy 21-year-old man. By 2:07 p.m., he was dead.

What happened in the 39 minutes in between--during which Pikes was handcuffed by local police and shocked nine times with a Taser device, while reportedly pleading for mercy--is now spawning fears of a political cover-up in this backwoods Louisiana lumber town infamous for backroom dealings.

Even more ominously, because Pikes was black and the officer who repeatedly Tasered him is white, racial tensions over the case are mounting in a place that's just 40 miles from Jena, La. Jena is the site of the racially explosive prosecution of six black teenagers charged with beating a white youth that last year triggered one of the largest American civil rights demonstrations in decades. And in a bizarre coincidence, Pikes turns out to have been a first cousin of Mychal Bell, the lead defendant in the Jena 6 case.

This happened in January. It is only now beginning to generate steam as a result of foot-dragging by the justice department. This week it was picked up by CNN. This story has been kept alive by Tony Brown, a prolific radio host in Central LA that should be given more credit for the Jena 6 mobilization. He is interviewed about this case here. It upsets me that I didn't pick up on this sooner, that the national media was faster than the NOLA blogosphere on such an obvious case of injustice occurring so close to home. I was lucky enough to have had the gas money to drive up to Jena for the mobilization back in September. I thought that it was one of the most fascinating protest mobilizations in America in a decade.

So It Goes: Helplessness, Frustration, Anger, and a Call for the Immediate Resignation of NOPD Superintendent Warren Riley

One of the most tragic events that has ever occurred in New Orleans was the murder of teacher, musician, father, and leader Dinneral Shavers of Hot 8 Brass Band. This occurred three days after Christmas in 2006.

His murder contributed a tipping point. Citizen outrage over the sad state of New Orleans criminal justice lead to a massive mobilization of thousands upon City Hall.

Citizens demanded accountability from Mayor Ray Nagin, District Attorney Eddie Jordan, and Police Superintendent Warren Riley.

The Mayor's solution was to call for help.

The city received more state and national guard patrols.

DA Eddie Jordan secured one murder conviction out of the 162 killings that occurred in the year preceding the march.

It took nearly two more years, a $3.5 million lawsuit loss against his office, widespread reports of incompetence, confusion, and an inability to work with the police department to create winnable cases, and a local crime rate that remains amongst the nation's highest before he resigned. Oh, and I forgot the time he gave refuge to an armed robbery suspect at his girlfriend's house.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley still hold their jobs.

This week, David Bonds was acquitted for the murder of Dinneral Shavers.

Unfortunately, the reasons for that acquittal are painfully clear.

Blatant witness intimidation ruined this case.

In the end, the prosecution had only one witness willing to identify the defendant as the shooter.

Bonds' public defender had an easy time raising reasonable doubts in the minds of jurors. The case had been effectively castrated.

After the acquittal, on April 17th, one of the witnesses who recanted their original testimony, was shot to death in a drive-by. He was 20 years old. His name was Guy McEwen.

The NOPD now believes that this had nothing to do with the trial. To me, it makes little difference. The damage was already done, he had recanted his story in a trial besieged by intimidation.

This is a tragedy for the whole city on so many levels.

We have all be deprived of justice for the murder of a favorite son. We have lost another young neighbor to yet another senseless murder. The perpetrators still roam the streets uncaught. Our flimsy crime fighting tools have been exposed.

And perhaps most vexing, one can't help but be rendered entirely helpless.

What can we do?

Our new DA Keva Landrum-Johnson is, by all accounts, a drastic improvement over Eddie Jordan. But what can she do?

Witness protection and intimidation is a problem all over the country and has been endemic in New Orleans before and after Katrina.

The relationship between local police forces and citizens from crime-stricken neighborhoods has been dialectic for decades for reasons that lay blame at the feet of both sides. Stop snitching campaigns against reporting crimes have become a norm. This discourages witnesses from ever coming forward, let alone standing strong against overt intimidation.

Even successful attempts for federal help for local witness protection efforts represent a drop in the bucket. ("two security assistance professionals") For the family of Mr. Shavers, these efforts were tragically late.

I don't think anyone expects there to be any one policy or person or event to make a drastic reduce our city's crime rate. There are too many problems that confront urban communities. There is history, there is poverty, there is the prison-industrial complex, there is the War on Drugs, there is culture, there is anger, there is desperation, there is so on, and there is so forth.

There is little we can do in the short term to change all of that. And it's frustrating. It makes me feel helpless and sad.

But there is something that we ought to change right away.

There is the NOPD.

I've met some of my local officers and I actually think that they're pretty on top of their stuff. They know how to carry out their missions. I think they should earn more money. They've got an almost impossible job and I'm sorry that there is so much mistrust between them and some of our neighbors.

The issue we have is with NOPD leadership.

We have an issue with Police Superintendent Warren Riley.

We have a situation where the murder rate remains amongst the highest in the country. The word amongst may even be charitable as there are plenty that would dispute the population estimates that the NOPD uses to calculate crime rates.

But I understand that there are lots of reasons for crime and not all of them can be affected by the police department.

What we cannot ever excuse, however, is the lack of accountability. It is patterned, it is disturbing, and it affects more than the Times-Picayune's ability to get quotes.

(In no particular order)

Slap in the face No. 1:

The NOPD's public information office did not respond to requests for interviews, and did not provide a tally of nonfatal shootings this year, a figure that typically dwarfs the number of murders.

Slap in the face No. 2:

The Times-Picayune filed a lawsuit Friday against the New Orleans Police Department, alleging that the department has failed to provide a long list of public records requested by the newspaper and routinely delays the release of initial incident reports intended to promptly inform the public about crime in the city.

The suit, filed in Civil District Court, outlines six written requests for records made between Dec. 18 and March 4 by two reporters and an editor at the paper in accordance with the Louisiana Public Records Act. The case has been allotted to Civil District Judge Kern Reese, and a hearing is set for May 23.

Slap in the face No. 3:

At the beginning of the year, as murders spiked and public outcry reached an apex, the New Orleans Police Department announced that a high-profile consultant would come to town to assess a police force struggling to control crime and overcome internal struggles.

The exercise produced a 188-page reform blueprint, which the department made public in July as police leaders vowed to "professionalize" operations. Police Superintendent Warren Riley assured he would act quickly on the recommendations, which relied on "community policing" strategies.

But the final product gave no clue as to the department's current state: NOPD brass and consultants had edited out a slew of findings by the consultants and the department's own officers, who pointed out systemic weaknesses. Rather, the document reads like a list of sound practices for starting a department from scratch: posing solutions to problems never identified.

There is a pattern of secrecy here. Why?

Why can't we know the truth about our crime rate?
Why can't we know how the department spends its money?
Why can't we know what policies inform police practices?

Here and here I have described a discrepancy between what the NOPD says about community policing practices and what the NOPD does to actually implement community policing practices. Lots of citizens have suggested ways to improve the relationship between the police department and the communities they struggle to protect.

Mayor Nagin, the time is now to find your friend Warren Riley a better paying job in the private sector.

Mr. Riley, the time is now for you to spend more time at home with your family.

The NOPD needs new leadership. It needs accountability. It needs a real effort to implement the community policing practices that were largely applauded during Chief Pennington's reign in the 1990s.

Why do we have one of the highest nonviolent drug arrest rates in the country?
Why do we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the country?

Why do we still have a crime epidemic?

Why won't you answer questions? Why won't you release documents?

There will never be justice without accountability. We will never begin to confront the entrenched issues that contribute to people committing crimes without a police department that will tell us the truth about what we face. Give us a police department that will create citizen crime boards.

The city marched in January, 2007. Since then, the NOPD brass remain just as secretive. New Orleans still needs basic accountability in the department.

The change must start at the top.
Or we can just type 'so it goes' every other day into perpetuity.

A Comitted Electorate

There's this story out of Texas. Burnt Orange gets chills.




More than 1,000 Prairie View A&M University students and supporters marched seven miles to the polls on Tuesday to protest the lack of an early voting place on campus for the March 4 election.

Students, local leaders, civil rights activists and elected officials walked from the campus to the Waller County Courthouse in Hempstead carrying "Register to Vote" signs. The majority wore black shirts with the slogan, "It is 2008. We will vote!"

Following After the march, some students stood in a long line to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting, while others filled out new voter registration cards in a building across from the courthouse. Early voting ended at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, and some waited for five hours to vote.

Freshman Brittney Veasey, who was voting for the first time, said she took the 2 1/2 -hour journey because she believes her vote will make a difference.

Crooks and Liars picked it up.

I love stories like this. In the face of an obvious ploy to suppress the vote, these young people stood up for their rights and showed that they will not be cowed. Republicans should be worried, because this is a committed electorate.

--


This IS a committed electorate.

Damn this talk of a cult, you just thought that Barack Obama was a pop culture trend. You thought he would crash and burn. It's just his personality, young people don't know anything about politics - they don't even vote.

Check it out:

They're voting!
They know their rights!

Or enough do. Enough know their rights and follow what's going on.

We know how to use internet tools to organize vast amounts of our peers in a matter of hours.
We know how to use internet tools to find alternative media sources.
We know hot to use internet tools to become alternative media sources.
[Right here! High-five!]

Shoot. Watch out Republicans. Here comes a committed electorate.

Sweet!

Obama sweeps!

Washington, Nebraska, and right here in Louisiana!

I like to think that my canvassing on behalf of Mr. Obama swung the tide in New Orleans precincts. Barack Obama won 75% of the vote here in Orleans Parish. That's a pretty substantial blowout, no?

Rep. William Jefferson Jefferson received 126 votes for the Presidency.
Nice to see he's looking forward to his next job and not over his shoulder where progressive Democrats are poised to have him electorally embarrassed if he's not already sitting in prison.

His speech tonight had some really compelling pieces to it.

Barack Obama's campaign in November will feature a candidate actually looking forward to representing the values of what once was the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton cannot make the same arguments because of her centrist Senate record. Check out the whole thing:



Tomorrow is Maine.

Tuesday is D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

---

Locally, there has been a moderately successful insurgent takeover of some local Democratic Party apparatus offices. The Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee and Democratic State Central Committee are receiving some fresh blood.

I'm still not exactly sure what those committees are supposed to do but I recommend they get to work on winning this state for the Democratic nominee in November. Turnout in recent elections has been extremely disheartening. When I'm Mayor, I'm going to complain about turnout and vote. I'm a change candidate too. Our citizen participation snowflakes are going to become snowballs this summer. It ain't even an oxymoron.

Results from Orleans Parish!

Congratulations to the bloggers, neighborhood activists, and local representatives that have made the cut. Special shout outs to Cheryl Gray, Karen Gadbois, Kimberly Marshall, Ed McGinnis, Walt Leger, Deborah Langhoff and the District A trio, Natasha Hutchinson, and all you other heroes, we'll know who you are because we'll be watching.

Reform-minded bloggers Oyster and Michael Homan fell disappointingly short.

Oyster's fear of germs prevented him from attending the campaign events I had planned for him. Oh well, this just sets him up to get Cheryl Gray's State Senate seat which she will vacate to defeat William "Freezer Bank" Jefferson. (Don't answer me now, just form an exploratory committee. We can raise money by throwing a pizza party!)

Michael Homan apparently overly courted the Elvis lobby too close to election day. I mean you have to get your base out to the polls but most voters get turned off by that kind of pandering.

Beautiful weather out there today everybody.

An Unfortunate Attitude

Recently, I've become concerned with aspects of American disillusionment and the upcoming Presidential campaign of 2008...


What does "progress" mean?

How can we improve the United States of America?

--

You know, some people say that the government is broken. People say that it is more than the pro-business, reactionary tone of the neo-conservative alliance that has run Washington D.C. for much of recent memory.

Nobody absolves the Republicans, but many people also blame the opposition Democrats for giving a rubber stamp to a wrong-headed policy agenda.

They say the two-party system itself has become castrated, incapable of making substantive improvements to the state of the nation.

Certain people say that the Democrats and Republicans are too similar, too entrenched in a corporate system to be capable of making any kind of structural improvements.

Other people say that the Right and the Left are too ideologically opposed. They say that the partisan gridlock in Washington has rendered the federal government unable to solve basic problems because of a material inability to forge compromise.
l
How do people go about fixing their government?

Some decide to vote for third party candidates whose political ideology aligns more directly with their own. Sometimes these candidates fall into the group that believe that the two major parties are too similar - the Green Party and the Libertarian Party come to mind. Those that believe that the major parties are too different work to find moderate insurgencies. The Unity '08 movement surrounding Mr. Bloomberg, Senator Hagel, and others comes to mind.

Other people are disillusioned with the two party system in a different way. They believe that the US government is so broken that it is beyond repair, as far as electoral politics are concerned. Some decide that the system is so stacked against the alternative party/ideology of their liking or they decide that none of the candidates in either major or minor parties truly represents their values. They opt not to vote at all. They determine it isn't worth it to do so.
-

Then, I think about my own values, my own virtues, my own ideas.

I think about how far away we are from achieving the Utopian America that I have envisioned in my brain and in my heart.

And we are so far... so far away from reaching it. There are times I've felt we are so far away that I think about scenarios in which I might consider giving up entirely.

Some people that are disillusioned shake their heads at those that decide to back a major party candidate:

...Naive, they are. They'll never get real change with candidate X. They might make a positive adjustment or two here and there but everything will be the same, for the most part. We'll still be far far away from the ideal America and then someone else will come in and take us backward in a circle to where we started the first time...

Sometimes, these attitudes make me upset. And it's not because I think the two party system is the ideal model for good governance, popular representation, or democracy. It's not because I don't agree that this nation needs striking and substantive change at some point or another.

I do agree. I do agree this country needs way more than an oil change. It needs more than new break pads.

There are major problems with the engine. I agree.

This country does totally messed up stuff to people all over the world. Our own government does totally messed up stuff to us here at home.

I agree!

A lot of people do, t00. So many people.

---
But I think about progress and I think about how to improve the United States of America.

I realize that there are also a lot of people out there that hate my Utopian America. There are so many ignorant, hateful, misinformed, reactionary people that have an irrational fear of all adjustments that I think would improve this nation.

I know that those people will fight my attempts to make changes.

I know that there are so many changes I'd like to make that the couldn't happen in one day, even if I were king of the world. Certain things would have to wait until day two or week two or year two, I mean, a man's gotta eat and nap and catch a ball game now and then.

But I'm not king of the world (yet)...

The closest person to king of the world is the President of the United States of America. We are going to elect a new one soon.

Which candidate will get us closer to the Utopian States of We Could Be Famous?

Which one is more likely to succeed in making enough lasting change during their four or eight years in office so that in 2010 I'm typing about the NEXT logical set of changes that need to be made to get us that much closer to the US of WCBF?

Some people that I agree with on a lot of things thought that that person was John Edwards and were planning to vote for him.

I like John Edwards and I can't really be mad at people that believed his policies would represent the most progress of the major candidates. I understand arguments that Mr. Edwards would have been the strongest candidate against the Republicans in the fall.

Now that Edwards has dropped out of the election, some of his former supporters are now lining up behind Barack Obama, who has always been my choice for most capable of leading a sustained generational push for a more progressive America. He is their second choice, they believe he is at least marginally more capable of creating positive progress than the other electorally viable choices available.

Others believe that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are too similar to each other or too similar to the Republicans.

These people may not vote at all. Some might consider voting for Ralph Nader, a candidate that will not win but provides a ballot choice for those wanting to express their disillusionment in electoral form.

I like many of Mr. Nader's ideas. I like his fearlessness in expressing politically unpopular realities that neither major party has the boldness to address.

But I don't think a disgruntled, self-righteous vote for Mr. Nader or a disillusioned, self-righteous decision to abstain from voting helps one iota.

Barack Obama's candidacy, even if you think it is mostly rhetoric, even if you think his enthusiastic supporters have become irrational followers of a personality cult, even if you don't think it advocates for authentic change, represents something substantially different from the candidacies we've seen from the Democratic Party in decades.

You might not agree that his ideas are any different. Other things are different, however.

Mr. Obama's grassroots support through small donations and his ability to attract large crowds is impressive and unprecedented in the TV age of politics.

His galvanization of young voters is unprecedented in the TV age of politics.

His appeal amongst independents is something that I have not witnessed from a Democratic candidacy in my lifetime.

These things are encouraging developments. I like these things. I believe that his policies are decent. I disagree with him on lots of things. I want his health care plan to be more universal, I want him to end the death penalty, I want him to favor gay marriage.

But I think he can lead an electoral coalition that can get us closer to the Utopian States of We Could Be Famous than any other major candidate left running. I think he can get us closer than Ralph Nader could, even if Mr. Nader magically broached the magical 5% number to earn the media coverage of a major party candidate.

That marginal moral victory would bring way less change than a landslide victory for Barack Obama would.

A landslide victory, a mandate would allow at least some changes. Depending on Mr. Obama's competency it could lead to a few medium-sized changes. It would allow people like me that want to see big changes to demand them in an environment receptive to arguments about change-oriented policy. A Democratic Presidency, if it succeeds in making improvements to this country, would allow a person like myself, a person that wants big changes, a better environment for the advocacy of my longterm policy ideals. A Democratic Presidency, if it fails to make this country better, puts me in a better position to criticize politicians for not offering enough change or for being too complacent.

A Republican Presidency puts in me in a place where I'll be arguing against more reactionary and backward policies. It forces me to abandon my Utopian States ideas in order to argue against the agenda of neo-conservative dystopia advocates that they'll be a better position to put forth.

Why is it stupid for like-minded people that hate the neo-conservative agenda to resoundingly unite behind a candidate, even if he's not the most perfect thing of all time? Isn't it worth it to work together to see how much change we can get? To see how far along we can get? To move this nation to a new set of debates?

Franklin Roosevelt was an awesome President that changed lots of things about this country for the better. He also made some vile and sinister decisions that violate my ideals regarding liberty and human rights.

But I'd certainly take him as President over and over again. He was able to forge a generational coalition that lasted for a long time and made substantial progress in terms of establishing a social safety net and extending civil rights.

Now I want a better social safety net and I want civil rights extended further. He didn't finish the job. I don't expect Mr. Obama to do so either. I think we could move the boulder, though.

If it isn't worth it to give it a shot, then why are you living in this country still?

I'm ready to leave when I reach that determination, myself. I want to live in a society that I respect. I think America still is that society, I'd like to think we can make it a better match.

When I don't think that's possible anymore, I'm gone.

It seems like people that are conscientiously abstaining from voting or voting for Ralph Nader have already made that determination. They're engaging in the discourse without really engaging in the discourse.

Give this coalition a shot. It's not perfect, it never is going to be. We can get closer to it though.

Why is it not worth it to enthusiastically support Mr. Obama's coalition? What is there to lose?
Don't we have more to lose by remaining disillusioned? Don't we have more to lose when an enthusiastic change coalition could mean the difference between another backward Republican administration or a Democratic one receptive to making things at least somewhat better? Don't we have more to lose when an enthusiastic change coalition could be the difference between an anemic Democratic administration that struggles to force the passage of progressive bills in Congress and one that has a mandate from the American people and wide majorities in the House and Senate?

I disagree with Mr. Obama on many fronts. I am not seduced by the hope he inspires.

But I have hope. I have hope that this country can be better if we can build a coalition of like-mined people, even if we differ on a lot of different little things. Mr. Obama provides as viable a pretext for progressive unity as I've ever experienced in the United States of America.

How could this not be worth a shot?

I'm gone if it fails and we're left in the same position we're in now in eight years. But, I tell ya, I'm gone sooner if we don't try.

Baby Boom to Fizzle

Work with me for a moment as I make some connections. Tell me if I'm force-feeding...
I've got a crazy work schedule and have had to write this in parts. And I won't have time to proofread or edit... enjoy.

When I discussed this piece by Andrew Sullivan about the significance of Barack Obama's candidacy, I was especially fascinated by the way he framed Obama's ascendancy as a fundamental change from the 40 years worth of baby boom-driven political battles:

Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

When I think about the last 40 years, I can see it all unfold. The divisiveness of the Vietnam War. The backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. White flight. The rise of political evangelicalism. Phyllis Schlafly's undoing of the Equal Rights Amendment. Roe v. Wade. The Moral Majority. LGBT awareness.... And so on and so forth... The ebb and flow between cultural liberals and conservatives. The Clintons vs. the Bushes. The Kennedys vs. Reagan....

You can sense the way that several of these cultural issues: race, abortion, women's equality, and gay rights have, in one form or another, dominated the pitched political battles of the last 40 years. These cultural battles go on to inform our other debates. (i.e. the backlash to progressive social policies as a reaction to perceived racial entitlements; the push to force religion into the public sphere and changing cultural values in regards to the role of women in the family, the morality of sexual preferences)

You can also see the juxtaposition between Hillary Clinton, disciple of the women's movement and Barack Obama, who is too young to have taken a side on these issues on a national level.

Now, you can either agree or disagree with Mr. Sullivan's paradigm. I don't necessarily consider it to be an analysis of Mr. Obama's chance at winning this nomination.

It is, however, an extremely fascinating lens with which to examine the historical significance of this nomination fight.

And a lens that I think can be extended beyond representations of the differences between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.
---
First, let's stay within the Democratic umbrella. Behold this op-ed from today's Washington Post that tracks the reluctance of traditional African American political leaders to endorse Senator Obama.

The most amazing thing about the 2008 presidential race is not that a black man is a bona fide contender, but the lukewarm response he has received from the luminaries whose sacrifices made this run possible...

...That's because, positioned as he is between the black boomers and the hip-hop generation, Obama is indebted, but not beholden, to the civil rights gerontocracy. A successful Obama candidacy would simultaneously represent a huge leap forward for black America and the death knell for the reign of the civil rights-era leadership -- or at least the illusion of their influence.

The most recent example of the old guard's apparent aversion to Obama was Andrew Young's febrile YouTube ramblings about Bill Clinton being "every bit as black as Barack Obama" and his armchair speculation that Clinton had probably bedded more black women during his lifetime than the senator from Illinois -- as if racial identity could be transmitted like an STD. This could be dismissed as a random instance of a politician speaking out of turn were it not part of an ongoing pattern.

... Taken as a conglomerate, Jackson, Young, Sharpton and Georgia Rep. John Lewis represent a sort of civil rights old boy network -- a black boy network -- that has parlayed its dated activist credentials into cash and jobs. Jackson, a two-time presidential candidate, has become a CNN host; Young was mayor of Atlanta and sits on numerous corporate boards; and Lewis is essentially representative-for-life of the 5th Congressional District in Georgia. Sharpton is younger than the others but a peer in spirit.

Hmm. One line there really struck me.

the death knell for the reign of the civil rights-era leadership -- or at least the illusion of their influence

It reminded me of something I've covered here at We Could Be Famous.

It reminded me of the way the SCLC and the BPP behaved and were received by the crowds at Jena.

And it reminded me of what was said when the SCLC threatened to boycott the city because Council was investigating some sham contracts with some waste disposal companies. And it reminded me of Oyster's response.

(Now, it turns out that the national SCLC is one of the few old guard African American movement orgs. that HAS decided to support Senator Obama, but this doesn't preclude me from using the prior bizarre actions of the SCLC to highlight the diminishing significance of ALL Civil Rights movement organizations and personalities within the African American community at-large.)

Now think about all that.

It certainly is interesting to examine the position of the many African American old guard leadership, the battles they fought over the last 40 years, and their waning political relevance today in the face of an America in which those baby boom battles look more and more like a stalemate every election cycle.
---
Now I'd like to take the lens provided by Sullivan over to the other side of the baby boom divide. There is change afoot in the Republican caucus as well. It's name is Mike Huckabee.

I've written about him a lot lately. I've tried to cast his meteoric ascendancy within the Republican Presidential nomination fight as somehow linked to the change movement put forth by Senator Obama. If you follow that link, you'll read my argument about the increasing political empowerment of grassroots evangelicals and their growing frustrations with their historic alliance with the Republicans of Wall Street.

Now, read this article from the New York Times. It's title sounds remarkably similar to those discussing what is occurring on the Democratic side:

"Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Guard"

Then go back and read Andrew Sullivan's article again.

Pretty interesting stuff, huh?

The baby boom is so 40 years ago.

What Huckabee Means

There's been a lot of back and forth chatter about the significance of Mike Huckabee's rise toward the top of the Republican field for their Presidential nomination.

Check me out. Check oyster out. Check Jeffrey out.

Oyster and I, especially, have been debating Mr. Huckabee's chances at getting the Republican nomination in the end.

I've argued that he has an excellent shot. In my more passionate moments, I've come close to outright predicting his nomination.

Oyster, in the meantime, has argued that Huckabee's economic populism is an anathema to the traditional Wall Street Republicans that need to be on board financially for a Republican candidacy to work. Here's what he said today:

I never said he didn't have "appeal". He's got a lot of it. But he hasn't fully received the media "treatment" yet, and he's got powerful enemies in his own party.

Here's what I wrote over at Library Chronicles:

For all Huckabee's political talent, and his admirable "intimacy" on camera and in person, his enemies in the GOP are legion. They are some of the most powerful and effective elements in conservatism. They will work hard so that he won't redefine "their" party, and they'll cede a Presidential election if need be, in order to regroup.

Huckabee won't raise a ton of money, won't energize national turnout, has no foreign policy advantage, his dumb sales tax idea undercuts his "populism", and he won't attract independents with his fundagelical social extremism.

I was teasing Oyster about Huck's convincing win over the economic establishment choice, Mitt Romney because I'd been arguing all along that Huckabee represented a grassroots movement more powerful than the divided and uninspired Wall Street Republican preferred candidates.

I would now like to expand upon those thoughts and maybe, in the end, synthesize the points that Oyster and I have been discussing into something that everyone can cherish forever.
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It all started in the 1960s.

As Democrats worked to thrust the New Deal coalition into a working political majority for that decade, Republicans reinvented their party. As conservative southern democrats became increasingly unwelcome because of their reactionary stances to the Civil Rights Movement, the Republican Party opened their arms. Barry Goldwater's "law and order" rhetoric spoke in code to Americans upset about African American empowerment. He lost big in 1964 but set up the Republican Party for the next 40 years.

Fiscal conservatives, having made MAJOR concessions during the FDR Presidency, were extremely alarmed at LBJ's Great Society's pledges to redistribute a certain level of wealth via social programs. They huddled down and figured out how to create a new coalition for victory by convincing poor whites to vote against their own financial self-interest in order in exchange for promises to correct the "social injustices" of racial preferences and the other relaxed social moors of that emerged in national discourse during that era.

The Dwight Eisenhower model, the rational patrician Republican, no longer captained the Republican ship. Gerald Ford was a special case for a variety of reasons. By 1966, Ronald Reagan was governor of California and Democrats began to lose grip of Congress. A powerful, largely exclusive alliance was born between social and fiscal conservatives.

One book that changed my life is called Chain Reaction. It was written by Mary and Thomas Edsall and it provides the best historical account of how conservatism came to power from a top-down perspective.

For a bottom-up perspective, let us consider What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank. In it, his thoughts on the Conservative stranglehold on middle America are quite revealing.

Essentially, economic conservatives were able to argue that the social programs of the Democratic Party ignored "average Americans" because they were geared mostly to the minorities and rights groups that were fueling the social unrest of the 60s and 70s. Voters concerned with these changes to the social fabric put aside their economic self-interest to vote for Neocons that promised to deliver on issues like gay rights and abortion.

Frank argues that the Republicans have largely done little to reverse the course of social change in America but have been able to reek economic havoc on these small town communities through economic deregulation, etc. He argues that there exists a cycle of sorts because the inability to get results on issues like abortion and homosexuality allows Republicans to further insist upon the pressing need to elect more neoconservatives to office.

-

President Bush is a PERFECT example of this style. His 2004 reelection campaign relied heavily on the turnout of social conservatives highly motivated by the Bush team's cultivation of homosexuality as a national emergency and by raising the possibility of changes to the Supreme Court that might reverse Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, his top post-election priority was an attempt to privatize social security. His most defining domestic "accomplishment" has been his tax cuts to the wealthy, not any particular reaction to any of the social issues that his grassroots base find so important.

Things, however, are changing. The coalition between Wall Street Republicans and Main Street Evangelicals has begun to fracture. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, though it ultimately failed, enraged the evangelical base of the party. Another example is the gang of ten compromise that saved the filibuster option and made the nomination of a explicit anti-abortion judge unlikely. Religious conservatives were mad at their Republican representatives, disillusioned by promises not kept again and again.

Meanwhile, the Republican apparatus had just spent the last 40 years building up the religious right, empowering them, giving them a voice. They reached out to poor whites that felt disenfranchised by Great Society Democrats perceived to answer primarily to minority voters and hippies.

So now, they're empowered. Individual churches and fundamentalist leaders know how to get out the vote, know how to raise money, know how to write letters to Congress. Grassroots religious conservatives in the South and Midwest have become more important as an electoral base than the traditional fiscal conservatives from New York and New England. Because they were largely credited with bringing victory to W. Bush in 2004, there must indeed be a reasonable perception amongst evangelicals that they can drive the Republican Party themselves.
--
That brings us the the Republican field for the 2008 nomination. The Wall Street Republicans seem to have fallen in behind either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani. They were the first to begin aggressive campaigning and fund-raising and have been considered the two front runners for the nomination for the majority of 2007.

How do you think grassroots evangelicals felt about those two guys?

Not great is my guess. I think they took it as a big F you. They see Romney's past as a social liberal. They see Giuliani's present as a social liberal. They largely have not benefited financially from the economic policies of the candidates they've supported in the past. Why support Giuliani or Romney when they're to continue to screw you economically without even making any promises on the social end?

Throughout much of the run up to yesterday's Iowa Caucus, every poll showed remarkable Republican disinterest in the race and dissatisfaction with the candidates available.

On the Democratic side, voters have been largely enthusiastic about their top choices, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama. Edwards, and especially Obama, have created a social movement buzz about their candidacies by stressing connections to the grassroots, enhanced by an incredible campaign organizations, personal charisma, etc.
--
Along came Huckabee.

Without any kind of Iowa organization or campaign bank account, Mike Huckabee was a real long shot candidate. Because of his own extremely impressive charisma and charm, Huckabee was able to sneak into second place at the Ames straw poll over the summer. The fund-raising and media attention boom thrust Huckabee into the spotlight.

Grassroots religious conservatives, the electoral base of the Republican Party, have responded resoundingly to him. Why? Well, he's an evangelical minister that is right with the base on every important social issue.

Maybe more importantly, Huckabee represents something else.

The very fact that Huckabee's economic populism has made him a problem to the establishment Wall Street Republicans is a plus for the grassroots evangelicals.

As Obama and Edwards have won big big big with the rhetoric of change and promises to buck the old way of the Democratic Party, Huckabee has represents an anti-establishment Republican. His charisma is remarkably Obama-like. He's young, he's an outsider. For grassroots Republicans, he's clearly disconnected from a presidential administration and republican mainstream that has sandbagged party popularity for the upcoming race and stabbed evangelicals in the back by failing to produce results on any number of social issues. This makes, for grassroots Republicans, Huckabee just as "electable" in a general election as a Rudy Giuliani or a Mitt Romney or a John McCain.

I've previously referred to it as Obama-envy.

But it could be even more than that. This is from today's New York Times:

Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, rode a crest of evangelical Christian support to victory on Thursday over his rival Mitt Romney, capping a remarkable ascent over the last two months from near the bottom of the Republican field. A poll of people entering the Republican caucuses on Thursday showed more than 8 in 10 of his supporters identified themselves as evangelicals.

The same surveys showed extraordinary turnout among evangelicals, who represented some 60 percent of Republican caucusgoers. In years past, Republican Party leaders in Iowa put evangelical turnout at about 40 percent.

That's seems to be a pretty significant point. There could be very enthusiastic, very real Huckamania amongst grassroots Republicans energized by this candidate's ability to coalesce support by utilizing the on-the-ground networks of evangelical churches instead of the ad money of Wall Street.

----

Oyster argues, with a great deal of validity, that Governor Huckabee still faces monumental obstacles in a wide-open primary race. Certainly. The Republican field is still much too fluid to call winners now. Oyster has said, in essence, that Huckabee has yet to receive the full treatment of media scrutiny. This is true. Oyster has said that there are powerful legions within the GOP that consider Huckabee's economic populism to be dangerous and will do everything they can from preventing his ascendancy to the top of the party, even if it costs them 2008.

I may also agree with this. If Wall Street Republicans are unable to take Huckabee down in favor of Giuliani or Romney, they may indeed ditch the Republican party for 2008 for an independent run by their own man, Michael Bloomberg.

I think so. I think they would do this. They'll need to flex their muscles to take back control of the GOP, put evangelicals back in their place, dictate the policy down to the grassroots instead of take policy up from the grassroots.

The question for now, however, is whether or not grassroots evangelicals can continue this show of power through the primary season. Huckabee will certainly finish outside of the top two in New Hampshire, but South Carolina could be a resounding victory. What happens after that? Will he be able to get the money necessary to compete on Feb. 5? I don't know.

I do know that the roots, the most likely Republican voters, those most empowered, outraged, fearful, and activist will be out for Huckabee and out for Huckabee with pride. He will indeed continue to be the evangelical choice. The challenge for Huckabee is to mobilize those evangelicals in enough numbers to trump whatever Giuliani and Romney and McCain can put up on television.

I think he can be the Republican nominee for the Presidency. Will he? I don't know. But I do know that the movement mobilization of grassroots Republicans was underestimated by Democrats and the punditocracy in both 2000 and 2004. It is happening again now, perhaps more naively than ever.

---

One last side note, an interesting observation about Republican voters.

When I made my prediction for the Republican Caucus results, I, in the end, gave Huckabee only the smallest of victory margins over Romney. The reason I did this, instead of picking the convincing Huckabee victory that I had been anticipating for months, was because of some truly bad foreign policy blunders by the Governor from Arkansas over the last two weeks of the campaign. Here's a link to one of those stories. Given that Republicans have relied so heavily on advantages in voter perception of foreign policy credentials, I thought that Huckabee's factual mistakes would bring him down significantly.

This did not happen and I began to think about why.

And I realized that Republican voters don't look for foreign policy credentials, they look for tough-talk rhetoric. It didn't matter that Huckabee didn't know that Pakistan had lifted martial law, it didn't matter that Huckabee made up that Pakistani illegal immigrants were a major threat.

I remembered the 2000 election and I remembered one little story that came and went without much fanfare. A reporter gave Bush a simple foreign policy quiz in which he was asked to name some leaders from some world hot spots. He flunked it, badly. But who cared, really? Many probably thought the President was ambushed by those questions, I mean how could anyone be expected to know foreign people's names anyway?

And I remembered statistics that I've read about Americans' knowledge of the world. In 2002, as we prepared to go to war, only about 13% of Americans between 18-24 could find Iraq on a map. I don't imagine the percentage of all adult Americans to be too much higher than that.

I realized that rank and file Republican voters don't care even a little bit how much you know about other cultures, other countries, world events because grassroots Republicans themselves know so very little about these things.

So maybe Huckabee's assertion that Benazir Bhutto's assassination more than anything else proves we need a border fence was more shrewd than I originally thought. Because it so played upon the fearfulness, ignorance, and bunker mentality of grassroots evangelicals, it may have even been a genius "gaffe" that gained him more votes than it cost. If he had only said that it justified our second amendment and that more Americans should arm themselves...

Public Housing: Sensationalism by Power Structures Rules as Direct Action Tactics Fall Flat

As consistent readers are well aware, I've been writing a lot recently about the now impending demolition of the four largest New Orleans public housing projects.

Since City Council unanimously approved the demolition plans last Thursday, I've kept on thinking about how this whole process unfolded.

I've got a bad taste in my mouth. Let me try to rinse and spit.

Way back on December 5th, I wrote a post called "ENTIRELY UNRELATED HOUSING NEWS" in which I called on progressive New Orleanians to be supportive of advocate efforts to halt the demolition process. My argument was that given the high rent crisis, the homelessness epidemic, and the impending eviction of thousands of FEMA trailers in May, the city needed to reevaluate the demolition plans given that redevelopment blueprints promised a net decrease in the number of public units. I encouraged people to get involved and put up numerous links to defendneworleanspublichousing.org, the website of the Coalition to Stop Demolition, a network of housing advocates and residents.

On December 11th, the day after the HCDRC (the rubber stamp demolition committee) hearing on the public housing units, I wrote another post, called "Mobilization Tactics Thwarted By Crazy." In it, I was extremely frustrated. It seemed that so much media/blog attention that should have been paid to the hearing and to the issues being raised by opponents to the demolition plans was instead going toward something else entirely. Instead, people got caught up in a mainstream media-driven hysteria. I'm talking of course, of the "threat" posed by a poster around City Hall that pledged to destroy condos in retaliation for any public housing demolitions. I outlined how politicians, talk radio, and the two mainstream daily papers seized upon the "threat" to drive a wedge between everyday New Orleanians and housing advocates by making the advocates seem like a primary danger while the legitimate questions they raise about the nature of HANO's plans were brushed aside. The poster became the story of the day not just because the T-P, talk radio, and City Business went wild with it, but also because so many New Orleanians and so many bloggers went for the bait.

It was at this point that it became clear that the direct action protest tactics of the Coalition to Stop Demolition were becoming counterproductive in the face of the public outcry encouraged by the authorities. The next day, December 12th, I wrote another post about the back and forth on public housing. In it, I discussed the unnecessarily diametric nature within the rhetoric being used by issue partisans. I even apologized for the part my own passion played in creating improper perceptions regarding the position of those that oppose the demolition plans. I tried to debunk this sense among many pro-demolition pieces I came across that those in the opposition were trying to restore the projects as they were before Katrina. Within that post, I brainstormed some alternative proposals to prove that some kind of affordable housing game plan with vision could forge compromise on this issue.

The stop the demolition movement seems to be much more about forcing government to somehow address the housing crisis BEFORE going ahead with demolition plans, given that many argue these projects could be viable short-term emergency housing options. There is no reason there can't be compromise on this issue. Why not increase aid vouchers to give people a better chance of finding market apartments? Why not quickly remodel one or two of the project complexes and while taking down the others? Why not force developers and HANO to have a redevelopment contract in place before beginning demolition so that we can guarantee that these land tracts will not sit empty (like Magnolia)? Why not begin a program in which salvageable homes slated for demolition are distributed to working families so that our city is not dismantled into empty lots? I mean have you read what Karen Gadbois has been saying?

Yet the perception that demolition opponents wanted to restore the projects to their pre-Katrina form continued to perpetuate as if it were a fact.

Something else happened too. The demonization of the public housing advocates themselves by everyone from progressive bloggers to reactionary right-wingers further served to undercut debate on whether or not these demolition and redevelopment plans ultimately serve the interests of New Orleans residents. Stacey Head's historically loaded "outside agitator" label proved to have a powerful adhesive. (It was ironic how angrily people insisted that this was not a racial issue while still using that exact language, but I'll let that go for now)

Of course, this had a lot to do with the tremendous short-comings of the coalition and its leadership. Their inability to adjust their tactics to respond to media coverage, political backlash, and the public speaks volumes about their larger inability to mount resistance to the demolition plans.

As a result, many bloggers began to question the direct action advocates more than HUD, HANO, and the private developers. After a Sunday T-P devoted several pages and a full headline to HUD and HANO's position on the matter, Oyster hit advocates hard:

Either call HANO/HUD on its claim about the 300+ available units, and/or divert some protest energy towards immediately filling them up! Either you catch HANO/HUD in a(nother) lie, or you help 300 families who are suffering from this crisis, and demonstrate the urgency of the situation. You just got thumped by a front page Sunday morning feature titled: "FAR FROM FULL: Lost in the debate about the demolition of N.O. housing developments is one fact: There are hundreds of units available right now". What's the response to that? "They're lying"? "We don't believe those numbers"?... That's not going to get it done.

And certainly Oyster was correct to take the advocates to task. Why were they chaining themselves to the HANO HQ, as I asked, instead of helping displaced residents to occupy the "ready" units that HANO claimed to have available?

These questionable anti-demolition tactics were a tremendous distraction that became exasperated on December 19th by what was perhaps the most sensational distraction story in this whole series of events. Oyster's post on 64inchtelevisiongate has drawn a whopping 64 comments. Other message boards that lack the traditional skepticism of Right Hand Thief regulars were awash in disturbing commentary decrying all public housing residents, let alone the activists.

Thus, on December 20th, when advocates and residents were locked out of City Council and then pepper sprayed and tasered by police, many were unsympathetic. (Certainly less sympathetic than the national mainstream media as I'm sure you'll find, as I have, if you do a quick survey of their stories and photographs)

It was the housing activists themselves that were decried again and again. The quiet regarding the council's pro-demolition decision of council was deafening.

Even usually thoughtful New Orleans bloggers seemed to be more inclined to attack activists as anarchists, hippies, hipsters, outside agitators, etc. instead of the actual demolition plans.
(Y'all know who you are)

For Instance:

New Orleans is becoming more for the wanna-be protesters than for the natives or locals. At this rate in another few years it will be down to the murderers and the white boys from Portland with their blond deadlocks.....

or

The most frustrating part is that in the sea of protesters I'm seeing, I'd be willing to bet about 90% of them do not presently, and have never, lived in a project. The blind do-gooder mentality can do much more harm than good when misdirected.

(You know, as opposed to this outside agitator... or the equally compelling argument that nobody is allowed to oppose the war because 99% have never been to Iraq)

This type of "criticism" of the protesters is a stark contrast to that offered at YRHT here, though I wish he'd been able to post this four or five days sooner. In that piece, Oyster uncovers a chronology of inconsistent "available unit" numbers offered by various pro-demolition agencies and questions why the Coalition didn't fight back harder against the HUD allegations.

Why didn't activists press hard on this dubious, evolving HUD number upon which the T-P based so much of its reporting and editorial opinion? Wasn't this a politically exploitable "soft spot"? If the T-P was forced to retract its false subheading about the "fact" that "hundreds" of units were available "right now", and if HUD was shown to be lying about the 154 unit number-- a distinct possibility in my view-- wouldn't the activists be in a very strong position to demand a second opinion on, say, HUD's rehab vs. redevelop cost numbers? Couldn't any HUD number be credibly disputed at that point? What if the activists presented 154 displaced families who were willing to fill up the available units, and what if HUD was unable to come up with the 154 units that they claimed? How would that look? How would the T-P look? Wouldn't that be a political winner?

Well right on, Oyster, I just wish you posted this a few days sooner. Notice how he avoids calling them anarchists and hippies.

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My mouth still tastes awful. I can feel bits and pieces of this all stuck in my teeth. Girls don't want to kiss me. I just can't get it out. I still don't think people really get what housing advocates were trying to accomplish. I don't think people understand why the rush to demolish public housing projects has been both suspicious and short-sighted.

More personally, what upsets me the most is trying to think about why the New Orleans "progressive" community whiffed so bad on this issue. So many stayed on the fence. So many failed to see past the sensational nature of the T-P's biased coverage. So many that chose to express outrage at the "outside agitators," the use of the "race card," the "threats" of violence were, at the same time, irresponsibly silent when it came to:

1. The homelessness epidemic

2. The rental property shortage and accompanying rent increase.


3. The ethical questions surrounding HUD chief Alphonso Jackson

4. The ethical questions surrounding HUD chief's no-bid contracts in New Orleans

5. The upcoming eviction of several thousand people from FEMA trailers.

6. Unclear "pledges" for the number of affordable housing units available in redevelopment projects.

7. Questions over displaced residents' ultimate right of return have gone unanswered

8. That these plans were in place before the storm speaks to suspicions that they do not address post-Katrina housing needs and realities

9. Karen Gadbois' exposure of the city's demolition of private homes without owner consent and the HCDRC non-plan to add as many vacant lots to this city as possible

10. The Magnolia projects at C.J. Peete were knocked down ten years ago and the property still sits empty.

11. And so on

13. And so forth

15. I could go all day

77. It's Christmas. I'm glad I live in a house.