Louisiana

Rally For New Orleans Popular University For Gaza Arrestees

August 4, 2024 Juleea Berthelot, Fight Back! News. Resist! Campus Movement, Israel, Legal System, Louisiana, New Orleans, Palestine

New Orleans, LA – On July 30, around 40 people gathered outside of New Orleans criminal court at 2 p.m., an hour before the third court date for the 14 people arrested at the Tulane/Loyola University encampment. The 14 were arrested on May 1, around 3 a.m., by a combination of TUPD, NOPD and Louisiana state police officers. While the crowd gathered, they chanted, “Protesting Is not a crime, free, free, free Palestine” and “Not guilty, not sorry!” A Loyola University faculty member, Pablo Zavala, shared his thoughts about the encampment, stating, “The popular university rejected the logic of paying for your health, which many of us can’t afford, and instead offered free healthcare – and they didn’t like it.

A Judge Ruled A Louisiana Prison’s Health Care System Failed Inmates

July 28, 2024 Richard A. Webster, ProPublica. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Health Care, History, Legal System, Louisiana, Prison Industrial Complex

Several months ago, in a lawsuit that was in its ninth year, a federal judge blasted the medical care at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Many inmates hoped it would be a watershed moment. In her opinion, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick excoriated the state for its “callous and wanton disregard” for the health of those in its custody. “Rather than receiving medical ‘care,’ the inmates are instead subjected to cruel and unusual punishment,” Dick said in her November opinion. The “human cost,” she said, is “unspeakable.” She then ordered the appointment of three independent monitors to devise and implement a plan to reform the system.

The Air In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Is Even Worse Than Expected

June 22, 2024 Naveena Sadasivam, DeSmog. Educate! Cancer, Cancer Alley, EPA, Health Care, Human Rights, Louisiana, pollution

Since the 1980s, the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that connects New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been known as “Cancer Alley.” The name stems from the fact that the area’s residents have a 95 percent greater chance of developing cancer than the average American. A big reason for this is the concentration of industrial facilities along the corridor — particularly petrochemical manufacturing plants, many of which emit ethylene oxide, an extremely potent toxin that is considered a carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency and has been linked to breast and lung cancers.

White Residents Of Baton Rouge, Louisiana To Form Separate City

May 10, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Louisiana, Poverty, Racism, Segregation, US South, wealth inequality, White Supremacy

The State Supreme Court in the southern US state of Louisiana, on April 26, gave the city of St. George the right to secede from the larger capital city of Baton Rouge. This has cleared the way for a group of wealthy white Baton Rouge residents to carve out a majority-white enclave of the largely Black city—recalling the history in the US of segregation and white flight. Wealthy, white residents of Baton Rouge have been trying to secede from the rest of the city in some shape or form for over a decade. In 2012, a group of parents went to the state legislature to propose the creation of a separate school district which they called the Southeast Community School District. This effort failed, but the following year they tried once again and also failed.

Loyola And Tulane Students Establish Popular University For Gaza

May 2, 2024 Fight Back News! Resist! Campus Movement, Israel, Louisiana, Loyola University, New Orleans, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Police, Student Activism, Tulane

New Orleans, LA – On Monday, April 29, around 5 p.m., Students for a Democratic Society at Loyola and Tulane universities held a joint rally and march which gathered over 300 people. Students, university staff and community allies marched on both Tulane and Loyola’s campuses. The protesters paused on a sidewalk in front of Tulane’s admissions building and Gibson Hall, the oldest structure. Suddenly, the students took to the lawn in front of the building to set up their camping site. The setup process was met with clashes with law enforcement.

Court Decision Opens Door For Communities To Reject Dollar Stores

April 28, 2024 Kennedy Smith, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Resist! Dollar Store, Legal System, Local Economy, Louisiana

Towns and cities have broad authority to reject dollar store development if they believe it is not in the best interest of the health, safety, and welfare of residents, according to a court ruling in a little-noticed case last November. This could be welcome news to communities pushing back against the explosive growth of dollar stores. Chains like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar are targeting communities all over the US, expanding at an unprecedented pace. The number of chain dollar stores has soared over the past decade, putting one within a five-minute drive of almost every American.

New Orleans Tells Local Business Leaders To End Support Of Genocide

March 18, 2024 Fight Back News!. Resist! BDS Movement, Genocide, Louisiana, New Orleans, Palestine, Student Activism, Tulane

New Orleans, LA – On Wednesday, March 13, angry New Orleans residents disrupted this year’s New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (NOEW) on its busiest day. Hosted by Idea Village, NOEW is a major networking event for tech startups, with the founder of Waitr as the featured keynote this year. Protesters disrupted this event 17 times, condemning Ideal Village’s sponsorship of the “Innovation Embassy” – a technological and trade partnership between the Port of New Orleans and the Port of Ashdod in Israel.

How $9 Billion From Taxpayers Fueled Plastics Production

March 15, 2024 Sara Sneath, DeSmog. Educate! Environment, Louisiana, Plastics, pollution, Taxes, Texas

Through billions in tax breaks and subsidies, taxpayers in Louisiana, Texas, and other states have supported the construction or expansion of dozens of facilities manufacturing plastics in the United States since 2012. However, many of these plants have also repeatedly exceeded legal limits on the air pollution they release into surrounding communities, disproportionately affecting people of color. That’s according to an Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) report published on Thursday. For instance, in 2015, then-Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal welcomed Indorama Ventures — one of the world’s biggest producers of single-use plastic — to the state.

New Orleans Nurses Fight For A New Union As Hospitals Merge

February 13, 2024 Jesse Baum, Scheer Post. Resist! Louisiana, New Orleans, Nurses, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Heidi Tujague works 12-hour shifts as an emergency room nurse at New Orleans’ University Medical Center (UMC), just outside the Central Business District. The hospital is part of a massive nonprofit, LCMC Health — which held assets of $3.57 billion in 2022 and operated over half of New Orleans’ hospitals in 2023. But despite those resources, Tujague says nurses sometimes have to scramble for supplies to care for patients. Even wheelchairs can be scarce. “You have to ask a patient, ‘Would you mind standing up and shifting to this chair so I can get this wheelchair — while you’re waiting for your X-ray — so I can get someone else to their X-ray?

Queer Louisianans Are Fighting Book Bans And Winning

January 3, 2024 Katie Jane Fernelius, In These Times. Resist! Book ban, LGBTQ Rights, Libraries, Louisiana

St. Tammany Parish, LA.— The governing board of St. Tammany Parish Library is meeting one August evening in the squint-inducing fluorescence of council chambers. The agenda includes the summer reading program, the latest financial reports, and whether a young adult novel about two teenagers seeking to break a world record for kissing should remain on shelves. There has been a public complaint. “We’ll move on now to the statement of concern regarding the title Two Boys Kissing,” says Rebecca Taylor, board president of the library, which is in southeastern Louisiana. “As a reminder, your public comment must directly relate to this agenda item.”

How Oil Money Turned Louisiana Into The Prison Capital Of The World

December 28, 2023 Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Truthout. Educate! Big Oil, Capitalism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, History, Louisiana

On October 14, 2023, Louisiana elected far right candidate Jeff Landry to the governor’s mansion. As the state’s current attorney general, Landry (a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy) has made headlines for his creation of an anti-crime policing task force for New Orleans, suing the state to block clemency appeals by those on death row, and advocating to make public the criminal records of juveniles in predominately Black areas of the state. Landry’s dedication to “law and order” has been matched by his commitment to extractive industries. As a climate change denier, he has pushed for more aggressive off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and sued the Environmental Protection Agency for overreach.

Activists Decry FERC Rush To Construct Liquefied Gas Terminal

October 21, 2023 Julie Dermansky, DeSmog. Resist! climate crisis, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Liquefied Gas, Louisiana

On my latest flight surveying fossil fuel industry sites in southwest Louisiana at the end of September, I photographed liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities, signs of drought, fire-scarred stretches of marsh, and a salt dome site at risk of collapsing. The visuals illustrate issues climate advocates publicized this week related to impacts fossil fuel industry sites are having on the environment. First, on October 19, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade called out the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) for granting Venture Global’s request to construct its Plaquemines LNG gas export terminal on a 24/7 construction schedule.

Teenagers’ Detention At Angola Exposes Fractured Juvenile System

September 16, 2023 Candice Norwood, Scheer Post. Educate! Angola, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Juvenile detention, Louisiana

This week the state of Louisiana was expected to transfer a group of mostly Black boys out of the former death row unit of Louisiana State Penitentiary — a maximum-security adult prison also known as Angola. But a federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily paused a judge’s order requiring the state to move the children out of Angola by Friday. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and several law firms, pushed for a year to stop the state from detaining children at the prison, which is located on a former slave plantation. The legal advocates praised a federal judge’s mandate last week that Louisiana officials move the teens out of Angola and back to a juvenile-focused facility by September 15.

Marathon Refinery Fire: How Industry Goes Quiet During A Crisis

August 31, 2023 Sara Sneath and Julie Dermansky, DeSmog. Educate! Disaster, Louisiana, Media, Public safety

Thick black smoke billowed and flames rose from two chemical storage tanks at the Marathon Petroleum refinery between Reserve and Garyville, Louisiana, on Friday. Geraldine Watkins saw the towers of smoke through the passenger seat window of a car that morning, while she was on her way to a court hearing about whether another tract of land in St. John the Baptist Parish, where Garyville is located, would be zoned for heavy industrial use. Despite the alarming view, no community-wide alarms had sounded when a naphtha leak started a fire at the refinery earlier that morning.

Fighting Industrial Development In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

July 18, 2023 Daja E. Henry, In These Times. Resist! Black America, Cancer Alley, Environmental Justice, History, Louisiana

Wallace, Louisiana - There are only a handful of homes situated on Alexis Court, but there are a whole lot of memories. At one end of the short street, facing the Mississippi River, is Fee-Fo-Lay Café, run by twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner. The Fifolet, according to local lore, is a spirit that haunts the swamps and guards the treasures of pirate Jean Lafitte. Growing up, the Banner sisters heard a variation of the myth from their grandmother, and the café bears its name as an homage to their grandparents’ stories. Inside, the walls hold the stories and pictures of at least four generations. Many of their family members live around Fee-Fo-Lay — the family has been in the town of Wallace since its beginnings.

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