‘Hands up, don’t shoot’
2nd September 2014 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Michael Brown didn’t deserve to get shot down by police.. He didn’t deserve it, Wendell Allen didn’t deserve it, Justin Sipp didn’t deserve it and Ezell Ford didn’t deserve it. Nor did Oscar Grant, Steven Hawkins, James Brissette, Ronald Madison or Henry Glover.
None of us deserve to be exterminated like dogs.
Nor do we deserve to be bombarded with lethal drugs, alcohol, semiautomatic weapons, joblessness, unemployment, miseducation, incarceration and the deadly use of force by police.
We know that and on some level our oppressors know that.
The issue becomes what are we willing to do to liberate ourselves from lives of misery, peonage and oppression? What are you willing to risk and/or sacrifice to get free?
How many of us are willing to give up the tenuous safety that comes with pretending not to see the glaring racial injustice and economic exploitation that maintain the status quo in New Orleans? Are you willing to risk your social status and economic stability by speaking out against the city’s shameful legacy of economic and educational apartheid?
If you are, I have a few questions for you. Here goes:
• Who has faith in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office to mete out justice fairly, consistently and equitably?
• How many times will Black voters in New Orleans allow themselves to be bamboozled and manipulated by Black and white elected officials who can never seem to give the Black community a second thought until election time arrives?
• How many elected officials — Black- white, red, brown or yellow — have you heard say anything about the Recovery School District’s ongoing efforts to build a new high school for Black children on a toxic landfill that once housed Booker T. Washington Senior High School?
• How many of those brave and outraged folks gathered in Lafayette Square last month to protest the Ferguson police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown have shown up to protest the white-supremacist practices being employed by local elected and appointed officials and the genocidal efforts of the Recovery School District and the NOPD?
• Who thinks former NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas did a great job?
• Who thinks the mayor will actually listen to the Black community this time around when considering a permanent replacement for Chief Serpas?
• Why is the mayor trying to trim the fat from the budget by reducing the number of juvenile court judges but refusing to even consider reducing the number of deputy mayors being paid six-figure salaries at City Hall?
• How many of the City of New Orleans’ civil service employees think that they were forced by the Landrieu administration to give up too much in job security and other benefits for a bump up to $10 an hour?
• After taking it down five years ago, why hasn’t the City of New Orleans returned the statue of civil rights hero, state legislator and statesman Rev. Avery C. Alexander?
• Why do you suppose our Benevolent Oppressor who loves children, justice and the wobble said anything about plans to build a school for Black students on a toxic landfill?
• If the former Booker T. Washington Senior High School was part of your City Council district, why would you say absolutely nothing about it and refuse to even acknowledge plans to build a school on the former Silver City Dump that has been found to contain at least eight toxic metals including mercury, lead and zinc?
• Now that former U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré and his “Green Army” are getting involved in efforts to prevent the building of a new school for Black kids on a toxic landfill, how are local elected officials going to continue to pretend that they know nothing about it?
• How many members of the Black community are satisfied with Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s handling of Merritt Landry’s shooting of 14-year-old Marshall Coulter?
• Who thinks the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office can and should be doing something to bring former NOPD officer David Warren, the cop who shot Henry Glover because he thought Glover had a gun, to justice?
• Prior to last month’s “State of the Criminal Justice System” address at Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School, when was the last time Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro visited the Lower Ninth Ward?
• Is anybody out there buying D.A. Leon Cannizzaro’s new chummy partnership with The Innocence Project?
• What does it say about conditions in New Orleans when even Lakeview residents are forced to deal with faulty street lighting, potholes and inadequate police protection?
• How many members of the New Orleans Police Department are allowed by top brass to get away with turning off their body cameras before interacting with civilians, the way NOPD Officer Lisa Lewis did before shooting Armand Bennet in the head?
• How many people who voted for Louisiana Gov. Piyush Jindal during the last gubernatorial election would vote for him again?
• How is the Ferguson (M0.) Police Department different from the NOPD?
• Who thinks it is interesting that La. Gov. Piyush Jindal tried to prevent the state;s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) from hiring legal representation to make its case in the ongoing dispute over the use of the Common Core curriculum but has now filed a lawsuit against President Barack Obama over La.’s use of Common Core?
• Nine years after Hurricane Katrina, why are we still letting federal, state and local elected officials get away with spending funds earmarked to rebuild flooded areas on unflooded areas of the city?
• With a white mayor, white district attorney, until recently a white police chief and a city council controlled by the white business community, doesn’t New Orleans feel an awful lot like Ferguson, Missouri?
• When was the last time a law enforcement officer killed an unarmed white teenager?
• What do you think about Southern University not extending S.U. System president Dr. Ronald Mason’s contract?
This article originally published in the September 1, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
