With justice for some

12th January 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

We are in the midst of some serious, real-life hunger games with folks getting robbed of their groceries, ritzy neighborhoods being targeted by carjackers and residents taking their dissatisfaction with the performance of the NOPD and the Landrieu administration to the streets. Everywhere we turn, there seems to be no end to the drama and mayhem as 2015 gets off to a tumultuous start.

As we voice and display our anger, disapproval and dissatisfaction about police brutality, inequitable treatment in the criminal justice system, economic apartheid, political chicanery, wage discrimination, environmental racism and a host of other societal ills, let us be ever mindful of the fact that it’s not enough to simply get upset about these things. Don’t just get angry about these injustices and atrocities — get organized and busy changing the laws that allow these things to routinely take place. We need to be proactive in our quest for equal justice and recognition as free and equal human beings and ever vigilant in protecting the freedoms that other groups of people can take for granted. And remember, if we stay ready, we won’t have to get ready.

In the meantime, let’s talk about some of the things percolating in the minds of freedom fighters and justice advocates. Here goes:

• How does the mayor think nobody would notice when he says that the City of New Orleans and the NOPD didn’t need a federally mandated consent decree to overhaul the embattled police department because it was already reforming itself and subsequently turn around and beg the federal government for help to keep New Orleanians and visitors to the city safe?

• Do you think the mayor and most of this city’s elected officials know the difference between police protection and police occupation of communities of color?

• How does the Landrieu administration even suggest that 2014 was a good year in New Orleans when you have people getting beat down, robbed and stabbed in the French Quarter, residents being carjacked and robbed of their groceries, the NOPD still struggling to make the city a safe place to live, work and visit, cops turning off their federally mandated body cameras, and in one case shooting a suspect in the head, schools under educating and miseducating tens of thousands of poor and Black children and Black businesses still being systematically locked out of the public contract bidding process?

• What percentage of the current cops in the NOPD live outside of Orleans Parish?

• Would Louisiana be listed as one of the nation’s top five most dangerous states if New Orleans wasn’t included in the statistics?

• How does any elected official in this city expect to effectively address Black-on-Black violence without also addressing the educational apartheid that continues to miseducate and undereducate Black children and place them in schools above toxic landfills that closely resemble penitentiaries and the kind of economic apartheid that keeps the majority of the city’s Black residents stuck working low-wage, dead-end jobs that would make apartheid-era South African officials proud?

• Doesn’t exposure to lead impede cognitive development in children and cause a myriad of other health problems?

• What do you think the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and other revered leaders would think about the performance of Black elected officials in New Orleans?

• Why is the City of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana going all out to commemorate the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans while the city and state did nothing to mark the 200th anniversary of the 1811 slave revolt, the largest insurrection of enslaved Africans in U.S. history?

• Why was it heroic and laudable for whites and free men of color to fight for America’s freedom in the Battle of New Orleans but less so for enslaved Black men, women and children to fight for their freedom in the 1811 slave revolt?

• How does a city that can’t find a way to hire cops faster than it loses them even have the audacity to boast about hiring 82 officers in 2014 — and are those officers technically “hired” if they haven’t event completed their training at the police academy and decided to join the force?

• Speaking of training, to your knowledge, has the mayor even addressed federal monitor Sheppard Mullin’s report that says that NOPD recruits in the police academy are being poorly trained and taught bad habits?

• Shouldn’t the mayor and police chief have figured out on their own last year that French Quarter business owners would prefer that the Landrieu administration use $6 million in proceeds from hotel taxes to hire additional NOPD officers rather than civilian patrol officers to work in the French Quarter?

• With the NOPD continuing on its downward spiral and the city feeling extremely unsafe, don’t you really miss former NOPD Supt. Richard Pennington?

• Who thinks this mayor is good at overseeing police departments and giving this law enforcement agency what it needs to become compliant with federal standards for constitutional policing?

• What good is a fresh coat of paint on a chronically corrupt and abusive police department in a city where every facet of the system is broken and racial injustice flows “like a mighty stream”?

• What percentage of public contracts in city government and public education in the majority-Black City of New Orleans are held by white businesses from surrounding parishes like Jefferson, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and St. Bernard?

• When are the Feds going to get around to investigating local and statewide elected officials’ systematic exclusion and mistreatment of Black-owned businesses?

• What percentage of public contracts in St. Tammany, St. Bernard, Tangipahoa and Jefferson parishes are awarded to New Orleans-based Black businesses?

• Why do five members of the New Orleans City Council think it is okay to build a community center for Black senior citizens on top of the same toxic landfill where Booker T. Washington High School once sat — and why do Black folks have to choose between having a community center and high school built above the former Silver City Dump site and getting nothing at all?

• Why does City Councilwoman Latoya Cantrell think it is wrong to force workers to be exposed to cigarette smoke in local restaurants, bars and casinos but sees nothing wrong with elders in the Black community being exposed to mercury, lead, zinc, and at least five other toxic metals?

• How many white high schools or community centers for senior citizens in this majority-Black were built above toxic landfills over the past three centuries?

• Do you agree with Oprah Winfrey’s comments about those protesting police brutality needing to be peaceful if they want to be heard?

• What do you make of rapper Nicki Minaj’s comments about Black entertainers being afraid to take a stand on issues or speak out against injustice after the way fellow rapper Kanye West was treated after he said during a Hurricane Katrina telethon that “George Bush doesn’t like Black people”?

• What do you suppose local Democrats, Black people in New Orleans and throughout the state and the Obama administration think about U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond’s statement in which he said that GOP congressman Stave Scalise “doesn’t have a racist bone in his body”?

• Why was Congressman Richmond compelled to publicly voice his support for a fellow Louisiana congressman who has vigorously opposed and criticized everything that President Barack Obama has tried to do since he was elected? And do you think Scalise would have done the same for Richmond?

• Why is it Congressman Cedric Richmond was so quick to defend U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise without being asked to but has said nothing at all about the NOPD’s failure to follow up on 86 percent of the sexual assault cases reported between 2011 and 2013, NOPD police officers’ refusal to use body cameras despite a federal consent decree, the city’s 38 percent rise in violent crime or plans to build a Black high school and community center for Black senior citizens above a toxic landfill?

• Don’t you wish the so-called “liberal media” would turn up the heat on Congressman Scalise so that former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke would name the names of all the elected officials who have been in bed with white supremacist organizations?

• Why does David Duke feel the need to defend Congressman Scalise after the congressman denounced white supremacist beliefs?

• If David Duke had been elected to Congress to represent Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s district, how radically different from Scalise’s votes on domestic and international policy would the former KKK Grand Wizard’s have been?

• What would have happened if David Duke had been Mary Landrieu’s opponent in November’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race?

• How many of Congressman Steve Scalise’s colleagues on Capitol Hill care about the Keystone pipeline damaging sacred and irreplaceable Native American artifacts?

• Is New Orleans businessman Sidney Torres wrong for seeking to hold Mayor Landrieu accountable for failing to keep residents and tourists safe in the French Quarter, especially after the mayor told the Department of Justice that the City of New Orleans and the NOPD didn’t need a consent decree to overhaul the department and refused twice to launch a legitimate national search to attract the best and brightest minds to run the NOPD?

• How does the mayor one day tell the Feds that the NOPD doesn’t need a consent decree because it is reforming itself and later ask the Feds and the Louisiana State Police for help in keeping the city safe from violent criminals?

• What ever happened to those so-called “Trailer Trash” cops, exiled by Mayor Landrieu and former NOPD Supt. Ronal Serpas to do tedious work every day in a FEMA trailer in City Park?

• What constructive, community-building plans have you made to commemorate the 2015 Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday?

This article originally published in the January 12, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.