Overseeing standing

29th May 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

About the same time that the NFL was introducing a new anthem policy, Milwaukee police were releasing body cam footage of a Milwaukee Bucks basketball player being tasered several times. His crime? Taking up two handicap parking spaces with is car.

I’ll leave it for you to decide whether he deserved to be tasered. What I will say is that this anthem issue is bigger than football, basketball or sports in general.

It cuts to the core of our right to be recognized and treated as free and equal human beings in this society. Our right to enjoy every Constitutional right enjoyed by every member of this society, including equal protection under the law.

The NFL may have thought it was making progress with its new policy, but it may have very well added fuel to the fire. Essentially, the NFL told athletes who are motivated to address social injustice; “You can exercise your First Amendment Rights as long as we don’t have to look at you do it”.

Nicely done, NFL team owners.

Anyway, I got some questions fro y’all. Here we go:

• What do you think about the defacement of the local Buffalo Soldier memorial?

• Are you happy that Mayor LaToya Cantrell reneged on her promise to conduct a national search for a new Police chief?

• Have you heard a peep from Gov. John Bel Edwards or the State Legislature about Entergy’s use of paid actors?

• Is state Attorney General Jeff Landry going to go after Entergy New Orleans the way he has gone after Mayor Cantrell and other council-members?

• Have the state AG and Governor reached out to the family of Keeven Robinson yet?

• When did the levees in New Orleans that were built to be better and stronger after Hurricane Katrina suddenly become problematic?

• Has Mayor Cantrell said how many deputy mayor positions she will keep in this cash-strapped city?

• How is the state going to find money to renovate the Superdome when it is threatening to kick elderly residents out of nursing homes?

• With all of the festivals conceived and created by Black New Orleanians over the years, why do Black artists and entrepreneurs continue to get such a minuscule piece of the economic pie?

• How many more centuries will have to pass before local Black elected officials realize that Black people are free and have the constitutional right to put things in place that benefit and empower people who like them?

• Why do we continue to allow state legislators, congressional leaders and local elected officials to repeatedly sell us out to casinos, utility companies, chemical plants and other entities that are hazardous and harmful to both our health and our way of life?

• Why is it appropriate for the City of New Orleans to remove the Battle of Liberty Place monuments and statues of Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis from public spaces across the city but perfectly fine to keep up statues of slave-owner John McDonogh and white supremacist Andrew Jackson?

• After three centuries, why s the City of New Orleans still struggling to achieve racial equity, democracy and equal justice?

• With all the money Jefferson Parish generates from the incarceration of inmates and the many expenses associated with being locked up in a local jail, why wouldn’t parish officials provide body cameras and dashboard cameras for JP sheriff’s deputies?

This article originally published in the May 28, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.