10 top stories of 2020 to have mattered the most to NOLA
28th December 2020 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
The Power of Black Women Voters (and how quickly it can evaporate)
On November 3, 2020, a wave of African-American female judicial candidates in Orleans Parish unseated long-time incumbent Caucasian male judges, despite their white opponents possessing ubiquitous political support, greater funding and laudable records in office. Black women decided that they wanted office-holders reflective of them in New Orleans. Moreover, this tide of female African Americans literally decided the presidential election nationally. The 20,000 and 12,000 vote margins of victory in Wisconsin and Georgia respectively came mostly from a surge of Black women voting in Milwaukee and Atlanta at levels equaling – and often surpassing – 2008. However, by the December 5 runoff in Orleans Parish, African-American female turnout collapsed in comparison to other demographics, dooming DA candidate Keva Landrum.
No Riots in NOLA
Mayor LaToya Cantrell has not earned enough praise for her careful management of 2020’s summer of protests. She carefully followed NOPD advice, and instituted a policy that both allowed Black Lives Matter protests, yet kept public disorder to a minimum. New Orleans set the national standard for keeping demonstrations peaceful – unlike many other cities across the nation. This occurred even as New Orleans kicked off the pandemic with the worst levels of infection in the world, triggering an almost complete collapse in the local tourist economy and throwing nearly 40 percent of the local population out of work.
Triumph of Progressivesin DA’s Race
With the election of Jason Williams and the full implementation of criminal justice reform, a more permissive criminal justice system has graced Orleans Parish. The biracial movement key to the councilman’s election developed from a recognition of institutional racism – which saw African Americans imprisoned at a rate multiple times those of Caucasians in Louisiana, despite constituting just a third of the population. However, the political backlash to the reforms may already have begun to build, even before Williams’ inauguration. A recent surge in crime has begun to change opinions, according to surveys, and if crime stats continue to rise, a political backlash could follow. Jason Williams stands currently under indictment. If he is convicted, and a special election results, a “Law & Order” candidate might upset this progressive revolution before it really begins.
Changing Demographics in the City and Suburbs
The election of the first African-American female judge on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish, Sharlayne Jackson-Prevost, elucidates the demographic changes transforming the state’s largest suburban parish. Black voters now account for a plurality of the electorate on the West Bank, and Jefferson may be only a decade or so away from losing its Caucasian majority entirely. In contrast, there has been a drastic increase in the percentage of white voters in Orleans Parish. The fact that more Caucasians than African Americans voted on November 3 in the Black majority Fifth Senatorial District, Karen Carter Peterson’s seat, illustrates the impact of gentrification in the Irish Channel, Central City and Lower Garden District. The 46 to 44 percent white/Black voter participation stat, in the highest turnout election of African Americans since 2008, shows that gentrification has already begun to change the demographic balance of this part of Orleans Parish. And it is also happening elsewhere in the City. Similar in-migration of affluent Caucasians has been equally felt in St. Roch/Bywater and Gentilly, with potential political impact in the coming years. The decrease in African-American representation on the Orleans Parish School Board may be just one leading indicator.
Port of New Orleans Moves Downriver
The purchase of a massive piece of land in St. Bernard Parish by the Port of New Orleans to build a $1.5 billion state-of-the-art container terminal, adjacent to the Port of St. Bernard, has tremendous implications, not only for the local economy but also for the quality of life in Orleans Parish. The new facility, which would be connected to six Class I railroads via the New Orleans Public Belt, would allow Louisiana to compete for container business coming through the widened Panama Canal. Cargo Ships too tall to travel under the Crescent City Connection to the Napoleon Ave. wharf would be able to come here – rather than divert to Houston or the East Coast. Likewise, the massive port investment downriver also allows the promise that the existing wharfs from the Audubon “Fly” to River Garden may one day transform into a riverfront linear park for the people of New Orleans to enjoy. Building a new facility downriver, closer to the Gulf, with a river depth of 120 feet, makes more sense than putting funds in older warehouse space. So those docks could become playgrounds, as Crescent Park has evolved into in the Faubourg Marigny and down into the Bywater.
No Return to Normalcy
The greatest long-term danger of the pandemic is that the fight against potential infection could trigger something else: a social recession – a fraying of social bonds which further unravel the longer we go without human interaction. This harmful effect on New Orleanians’ mood, health, and abilities to work and learn, might threaten our sense of community. Could the battle against COVID-19 lead us to be more hesitant to gather and party in the future? What will that do to our musicians and hospitality workers who already struggle to survive? How will such reticence to gather affect the joie de vivre which constitutes living in New Orleans? French Quarter Fest is likely to be delayed until October, and other festivals may die, along with so many of our restaurants and theaters. Will the coronavirus permanently change our social habits? Will social distancing become the norm even when we can assemble once more, in part because our options to celebrate our culture may have withered away in the meantime?
Educated White Republicans Abandoned Trump
There is a theory that Trump lost the presidential election in the first debate. A key constituency of female Republican voters in suburbs opted to early vote for Biden in the aftermath (and yet still often voted GOP downticket). Whether this theory holds water as historians look back at the 2020 election in the coming decades, there will be little debate that the level of education possessed by the voter proved a key indicator of how that person would vote. Trump may have picked up the white working class electorate from the Obama coalition, but they were replaced by affluent Caucasians in growing suburbs. This was particularly true of Republican white women. If the GOP continues to be the Party of Trump in its policies and attitudes, this college-educated gender gap will become a chasm, erasing the Republicans’ Electoral College advantage.
The Triumph of Andrew Yang and the UBI
It is an indication of how much we’ve become accustomed to receiving checks from the government amidst the pandemic that the universal basic income seems as possible a policy to be implemented in the future as it appeared equally impossible at this time last year. The $1,200 direct payments in the spring of 2020 proved a bipartisan triumph, and their on-going political resonance was only further proven last Wednesday. President Trump demanded that the $600 relief checks in the new COVID relief package be increased to $2,000, and threatened a veto of the bipartisan package if denied. Almost instantly though, Nancy Pelosi endorsed Trump’s proposal – as did Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Josh Hawley.
Repurposing of Shopping Malls
These large zones of commercial real-estate were already struggling before the pandemic – until Amazon.com’s convenience and social distancing uttered the death blow. “Ghost Malls” threaten to blight our community, as they do elsewhere; however, innovative leaders have proposed alternatives for these spaces. Clearview Mall shall soon transform into a vital “Metairie Town Center,” and Esplanade Mall may become the new Kenner City Hall and Municipal Gathering place. On the latter, Mayor Ben Zahn proposes that the old Macy’s building become the new government complex, saving the Kenner budget thousands in commercial rents for city departments. With the new City Hall anchoring the complex, and Target and Dillard’s still within, the Esplanade Mall could become an internal ‘town square” with residential, professional and medical options. Kenner has already moved part of its recreation department into the mall as part of the plan. On the former, lacking a government anchor, Clearview Mall still seeks to become the center of Metairie life, so much so that the owners are removing the roof, and putting in a medical complex. The dormant shell of a Sears in Metairie’s busiest commercial corridor will be transformed by Ochsner Health System into a 185,000-square-foot “super clinic.” That will join a new hotel and apartments on the property, along with restaurants and retail options. These two transformations harken redevelopment possibilities of other malls throughout the metro area.
Renaming of Local Streets from Confederate Politicians and Generals to African-American and Civil Rights Luminaries
It started with the statues’ removal, yet by the end of 2020, over 50 New Orleans streets will also receive new names. Lee Circle will become Leah Chase Circle; Robert E. Lee Boulevard will be re-dubbed for Allen Toussaint. Mostly, the list contains confederate generals or politicians who stand aside for Black leaders, but a few of the changes go beyond Civil War era leaders. Extending the mandate to cover Martin Behrman, New Orleans’ longest-serving mayor and a member of the Regular Democratic Organization (which sought the end of Reconstruction and promoted segregation and voting restrictions), drew only tepid opposition. Algiers thoroughfare Behrman Place is renamed for P.B.S. Pinchback, the first Black governor in U.S. history; Behrman Avenue becomes Rodolphe Desdunes Avenue after one of the founders of the Comite Des Citoyens, a civil rights organization that fought segregation through a variety of legal challenges including the Plessy v. Ferguson case; and Behrman Park transforms into Morris F.X. Jeff Sr. Park, after the first head of its Colored Division of the New Orleans Recreation Department, who spent his career working to create recreation opportunities for Black and disadvantaged youths. However, the other changes with more tenuous connections to the Civil War have created an uproar. They include renaming Sophie B. Wright Place, currently named after the well-known educator and advocate for poor and sick people, because she was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. It will become John “Jack” Nelson Place, renamed after the civil rights lawyer who sued to integrate Tulane University and helped found the Save Our Schools movement, which resisted anti-integration efforts to close schools. Tulane Avenue, named after Paul Tulane donated the money that converted the public University of Louisiana into the private Tulane University, loses its moniker because its namesake donated significant amounts of money to erecting Confederate monuments in Louisiana. Instead, it will become Allison “Tootie” Montana Avenue after the chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe of Mardi Gras Indians, who turned a tradition of violence into the competition for artistic expression now seen in its members’ suits. Capdevielle Street, a one-block street in the Central Business District named for Paul Capdevielle, who served as mayor of New Orleans from 1900 to 1904, will become Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle Street. Though not an official or general, Paul Capdevielle served in the Confederate Army as a young man. Lemelle is the third Black jurist appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He is the only living person recommended in the current process for a street renaming. Lastly, Comus Court, a one-block street in the St. Roch area named for the city’s oldest Mardi Gras Krewe (which stopped parading in the wake of an ordinance pushing for the integration of parade organizations), will become Julia Aaron Humble Court. Humble, who died in 2016, was a civil rights activist who was arrested more than 30 times in protests against segregation.
This article originally published in the December 28, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
