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Louisiana

Locals Fume As Meta AI Data Center Upends Entire Community

The tiny town of Holly Ridge, Louisiana will soon be home to a massive $27 billion artificial intelligence data center being built by Facebook parent company Meta that, when finished, will be the largest in the world. However, residents of Holly Ridge do not feel honored that they are at the epicenter of Meta’s ambitious data center buildout, which they say has upended their entire community. As reported by New Orleans-based public radio station WWNO last week, the nonstop parade of trucks driving through Holly Ridge has led to a 600% increase in vehicle crashes over the last year, including three truck crashes that occurred just outside Holly Ridge Elementary School.

On Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Residents Fume As Insurers Hike Rates

“I’ve never seen it this bad.” Eddie LeJuine has been fishing and shrimping along the southwestern coast of Louisiana for about four decades. The garrulous 62-year-old can talk for hours about the best fishing spots and the quiet moments at dusk when the ospreys glide through the marshes. He’s raised a family in Cameron Parish, the heel of the boot, as the state is known, with five kids and 10 grandchildren, one of whom just joined the local sheriff’s office. But his life and livelihood have been upended in recent years by the proliferation of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the region — once the largest producer of seafood in the entire country. The LNG activity has devastated the environment and polluted the water, leading to significant declines in catches for fishermen.

The Fifth Circuit Ruled That The NLRB Is Unconstitutional

For the last year or so, federal district court judges in the Fifth Circuit have been enjoining the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing unfair labor practice charges against employers in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I’ve written a couple of pieces about this including this one in September of last year. Three of these district court cases were consolidated into an appeal that recently went before the Fifth Circuit. Unsurprisingly, the Fifth Circuit, which is dominated by conservatives, endorsed this particular legal theory and upheld the district court decisions enjoining the NLRB from processing unfair labor practice charges against the involved employers. At this point, the practical significance of this ruling is essentially zero.

Community Shows Up At ICE Check-Ins To Support Undocumented Immigrants

St. Rose, LA – On June 17, over 20 activists and community members showed up to monitor a building in Saint Rose, Louisiana where ICE called in a large number of people for immigration check-ins. The action was called with a hope to video and deter the ICE kidnappings. “A couple weeks ago, people were getting a text that they have to report to this office at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, June 4. A lot of people were in the waiting room, about 40 people, which is more than usual and seemed really suspicious. It was confirmed that they are detaining people and taking them out back into vans,” Catalina Gallagher, an ICE-watch participant explained.

Gulf Coast Communities Take On Insurers Backing Fossil Fuel Facilities

Promising U.S. “energy dominance,” the Trump administration is moving to accelerate fossil fuel production. Key to this agenda is the approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities across Gulf Coast communities that are disproportionately Black, Brown, and low-income, long treated as expendable “sacrifice zones” by the fossil fuel industry. Just recently, on May 23, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reauthorized the massive CP2 LNG in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, which will be the biggest LNG export facility in the U.S. Local organizers and climate groups have been fighting the expansion of these “methane export facilities” which they say will intensify climate chaos and environmental racism.

Louisiana Gas Tax Break Could Cost Local Communities $2.8 Billion

When Australia’s Woodside Energy Group announced April 29 that it plans to move forward with its Louisiana LNG export terminal, the state hailed the move as the “largest single foreign direct investment and greenfield project in Louisiana history.” It could also create perhaps the largest single local tax giveaway in U.S. history, under a Louisiana law offering corporations property tax breaks worth billions of dollars, a new Sierra Club study shared with DeSmog finds — representing a massive subsidy from Louisiana communities for exporting fossil fuels from the U.S. to Europe and Asia.

Why Protesters Are Being Sent To For-Profit ICE Prison In Rural Louisiana

In recent weeks, students Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Alireza Doroudi were abducted by ICE and are being held in ICE detention centers in rural Louisiana. Khalil’s powerful statement connects multiple realities that demonstrate how state repression is activated to support the rise of authoritarianism.  That Khalil and others are being sent to detention centers in remote towns across Louisiana is not an accident. Rising authoritarianism requires a police state, and the expansion of prisons, police, and detention centers is extremely profitable. As the current U.S. government disappears people to a brutal prison camp in El Salvador, they are also moving people to rural Louisiana in attempts to disappear people within the United States borders. 

BlueCross/BlueShield: Slow Pay, Low Pay Or No Pay

On a late afternoon in November 2017, Witney Arch told her 1-1/2-year-old son to stop playing and come inside. Upset, he grabbed her right breast when she picked him up. She experienced a shock of pain but did not think it was anything serious. A week later, however, the ache had not subsided. After trips to several doctors, a biopsy revealed that Arch had early-stage breast cancer. Her surgeon told her that it was likely invasive and aggressive. By the end of January, she had made two critical decisions. She would get a double mastectomy. And she wanted her operation at the Center for Restorative Breast Surgery in New Orleans, a medical facility renowned for its highly specialized approach to breast cancer care and reconstruction.

New Orleans Rallies For Mahmoud Khalil Outside ICE Field Office

New Orleans, LA – Around 60 people gathered outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in New Orleans to protest the illegal detention of Mahmoud Khalil. Attendees rallied around speakers and chanted as a judge – hours away in rural Jena, Louisiana – would decide if Khalil could be deported for his activism for Palestine. Speaking for the Palestinian Youth Movement, Majdi Jaber said, “This ICE office that we’re outside right now directs operations in all of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama. Every day for the last month, these people have chosen to do nothing about Mahmoud’s incarceration.”

Chevron Ordered To Pay More Than $740 Million To Restore Coast

Pointe a la Hache, LA. — Oil company Chevron must pay $744.6 million to restore damage it caused to southeast Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, a jury ruled on Friday following a landmark trial more than a decade in the making. The case was the first of dozens of pending lawsuits to reach trial in Louisiana against the world’s leading oil companies for their role in accelerating land loss along the state’s rapidly disappearing coast. The verdict – which Chevron says it will appeal – could set a precedent leaving other oil and gas firms on the hook for billions of dollars in damages tied to land loss and environmental degradation.

What We Know About The Tufts University Student Kidnapped By ICE

A Tufts University student is being held at an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, and there are growing questions about how she was taken into custody and the timeline of sending her out of state. One major issue is whether federal authorities defied the court order to keep Rumeysa Ozturk in Massachusetts, as it was issued just hours after her arrest Tuesday night. Video shows Ozturk, a Tufts University PhD student from Turkey, screaming as plain-clothes agents surrounded her and grabbed her on a Somerville sidewalk just off campus before taking her away.

Black Prisoners Organize For Dignity In Angola

This Black History Month, Peoples Dispatch is exploring the history of the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, the site of centuries of Black struggle—first against slavery, then convict leasing, and now the US prison system, which some label as slavery in the modern day. At the helm of the US’s notorious system of mass incarceration sits Louisiana State Penitentiary. Apart from being the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, this prison, nicknamed “Angola” after the former plantation site that it sits on, is an example of the conditions of modern-day slavery that the US prison system inflicts upon its disproportionately Black incarcerated population.

Students Demand Administration Declare Sanctuary Campus

Baton Rouge, LA – On Friday, February 14, about 30 Louisiana State University (LSU) students and community members rallied in Free Speech Alley to demand that university administration make LSU a sanctuary campus for immigrant students. LSU’s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized the rally to fight back against ICE activity in the Baton Rouge area and Trump's executive order that allows ICE to operate in previously protected places like college campuses, churches and courthouses. Students gathered near the center of Free Speech Alley, their signs turned towards the masses of people in the surrounding area.

Louisiana Issues Arrest Warrant For New York Doctor Over Abortion Pill

A grand jury in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has indicted and issued arrest warrants for a New York physician who prescribed abortion pills to a pregnant minor in Louisiana, which has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. The case directly targets the most common abortion method in the U.S. and challenges protections for out-of-state providers in Democratic-led states. In addition to physician Margaret Carpenter and her company, Nightingale Medical, PC, the grand jury unanimously issued an indictment and an arrest warrant for the minor’s mother.

Amid Bad News For Workers, Win In New Orleans Offers Hope

There’s a little bit of hope in the city, even with grim election results and a grimmer start to the year. A Workers’ Bill of Rights was overwhelmingly approved by voters on Election Day. More than 80% of those who cast a ballot voted to enshrine workers’ rights in the city’s Home Rule charter, the first step in the process of building a real framework for enforcing higher minimum wages, employer-provided healthcare, paid family and sick leave, vacation time and the right to organize. In a state where President Donald Trump won 60% of the vote and where a far-right legislature and governor have preempted many of the possibilities for local action, the Workers’ Bill of Rights offers a blueprint for forward motion under conservative governance.
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