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New Orleans Is Proving That Ending The Bail System Works

October 30, 2017 Aviva Shen, www.readersupportednews.org , ,
By Aviva Shen for RSN - The U.S. is just one of two nations in the world with a money bail system (the other is the Philippines). The system means that people are held in jail while they wait for trial, unless they can afford to pay to go free. Defendants who can’t pay their way out of jail often lose their jobs, homes, children, and sometimes even their lives. Courts across the country are starting to face legal and legislative challenges to their bail systems. And New Orleans has become a key battleground, as lawmakers try to shake its legacy as “the most incarcerated city in the most incarcerated state in the world.” The bail bonds industry has argued that financial collateral is the only effective way to ensure defendants return to court for their trial. Starting in the spring, the Orleans Parish criminal district court decided to test this theory with a pilot program that came close to approximating what it would be like if the court eliminated bail altogether. It used a risk assessment tool to identify who was most likely to return to court without incident—and then it released them without making them pay. The result? People released in the pilot returned to court at roughly the same rate as defendants in other commissioners’ courtrooms, according to a new report by the civilian court monitoring group Court Watch Nola. The rearrest rate was also comparable, although somewhat higher, at 4.5% rather than 2.9%. In all, 9 people out of 201 people in the program were arrested again after they were released without bail. The findings help debunk warnings by opponents that replacing money bail will release dangerous criminals into the streets and allow fugitives to flee from justice.

Confederate Statues Down, But Structural Racism Still Stands Tall

June 12, 2017 Ashana Bigard, www.progressive.org , , ,
By Ashana Bigard for The Progressive - Many New Orleanians celebrated at the removal of confederate monuments around the city in recent weeks. But on the same day that Robert E. Lee’s bronzed image came down from Lee Circle, two black boys (like hundreds of boys throughout the city and state of Louisiana) were not allowed to graduate for arbitrary, punitive, and potentially illegal reasons. The monuments may be gone, but structural racism continues to create barriers for students of color in New Orleans schools. Take the cases of Rahsaan Ison and Rashaad Brown, both enrolled at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. They had requested a tutor in Spanish, and one was provided to them under state and federal law protecting students with disabilities. But the tutor turned out to be so unprofessional that their school claimed he had cheated on a test by answering questions for them, and refused to accept any of their work, making it impossible for them to achieve their graduation requirements. I acted as a student advocate for the boys, and I asked for an accommodation on the 504 plan so they could graduate with the rest of the class.

Transcript Of New Orleans Mayor Landrieu’s Address On Confederate Monuments

May 25, 2017 Derek Cosson, www.pulsegulfcoast.com , , ,
By Derek Cosson for The Pulse - Just hours before workers removed a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee — the fourth Confederate monument to be dismantled in New Orleans in recent weeks — Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave a special address at historic Gallier Hall. Here’s a full transcript of Landrieu’s remarks: Thank you for coming. The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way – for both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans: the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Color, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of Francexii and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more. You see: New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures.

New Orleans’ Ninth Ward Fights Freeway Through Historic Black Neighborhood

March 21, 2017 Michael Stein, www.truth-out.org ,
By Michael Stein for Truthout - There were about 200 Ninth Ward community members in the Saint Mary of the Angels church that night to see what the Department of Transportation had planned for their home. This situation was unfortunately familiar for them. Ninth Ward residents continuously contend with infrastructure projects that disregard their well-being and ignore their input. It's these polices that isolated the Lower Ninth Ward from the rest of the city, robbed it of public resources and caused it to suffer the worst devastation during Hurricane Katrina. There was national recognition after Katrina that much of the storm's destruction was human-made

Ten Years On: Katrina, Militarisation & Climate Change

September 7, 2015 Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes, www.opendemocracy.net , ,
By Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes in Open Democracy - But the structural inequality and institutional racism that underpinned the Bush administration’s response is still there, a fact that President Obama noted on his visit to New Orleans this week. Moreover, the already bloated military and security complex that reflected these power relations has expanded enormously since Katrina – and is now using the spectre of climate change to grab yet more public resources. Two years after Katrina, in 2007, the Pentagon released its first major report on climate change, warning in no uncertain terms of an “age of consequences” in which, amongst other things, “altruism and generosity would likely be blunted.” This was followed up a year later by an EU security report that talked of climate change as a “threat multiplier” that “threatens to overburden states and regions which are already fragile and conflict prone.”

What Climate Justice Means To Me

August 25, 2015 Ruth Breech, www.ran.org , , , ,
By Ruth Breech in Rainforest Action Network - With the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina around the corner — August 29th — I’ve been thinking about justice. What do environmental justice, and climate justice, mean to me? Who are my environmental justice and climate justice (s)heroes? When I think about justice, I think about communities living on the front lines. People living on the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Miami. People living near industrial facilities — mines, refineries, and power plants. Too many of these people are sick. They are physically ill with diseases like asthma, COPD, cancer, reproductive and neurological challenges. As weather patterns drastically change, these sick people are also bearing the brunt of climate disasters. From those suffering from the recent flooding in Houston, to the farm workers in California’s drought-hit Central Valley, to the families still living with the horror of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — these people face injustice every day.

New Orleans: Recovery Or Removal?

August 21, 2015 The Laura Flanders Show, www.grittv.org , ,
By The Laura Flanders Show - Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, a new documentary from The Laura Flanders Show and teleSUR English explores the race, class and gender outlines of the reconstruction of New Orleans. At least seventy-one billion dollars in federal money has been spent. But has every opportunity been seized to bring back not just the place, but its people, so they’re stronger and healthier than before? We explore, from the grassroots, systemic changes in housing, economic development, and policing. How have federal, state and city policies affected the people of New Orleans? Featuring interviews with Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, the commander of military relief operations during Katrina; former New Orleans city council president Oliver Thomas; current city council president Jason Williams; developer Sean Cummings; activists and former public housing residents Alfred Marshall and Toya Lewis; Brice White of the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative; spoken word artist Asia Rainey; youth activist Milan Nicole Sherry; and Rosana Cruz of Race Forward.

The Long Road From C.J. Peete To Harmony Oaks

October 15, 2014 Kerry Reckdahl, www.community-wealth.org , ,
By the time her organization landed a contract to do work in New Orleans, Sandra Moore had felt the city’s tug for more than a year. Moore is president of Urban Strategies, a nonprofit community development company that often partners with developer McCormack Baron Salazar, which specializes in mixed-income and affordable redevelopments. Urban Strategies got a contract in early 2007 to provide services for residents from C.J. Peete, a shuttered New Orleans public-housing complex. When she thought of New Orleans, Moore vividly recalled images broadcast during the wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Orleanians were pleading for water, medical help, and long-delayed buses to take them out of the devastated city.

Officer Turns Off Camera Before Shooting Man During Traffic Stop

August 30, 2014 Matt Agorist , www.thefreethoughtproject.com , ,
Armand Bennet, a 26-year-old man from Algiers, LA was pulled over by NOPD officer Lisa Lewis on August 11th, 2014. During the stop Bennet was shot in the forehead by officer Lewis, and survived. Bennet has since hired attorney, Nandi Campbell, who claims that Bennet never resisted. He did try to run away after the first time he was shot, like any sane person would do, and that’s when, Campbell says, Lewis shot at him a second time. An attorney for officer Lewis claims that she turned off her body camera because her shift was about to end and she was on her way back to the station. Is powering off a body camera some sort of long and drawn out procedure which requires so much time that officers begin said procedure prior to clocking off? Was she also taking off her shoes or her bullet proof vest? Apparently she thought her pistol was still worth “keeping on.”

New Orleans’ New Civil Rights Leaders

August 18, 2014 Bill Quigley, www.southernstudies.org , , ,
Like many cities in the South, New Orleans has a proud history of civil rights leadership -- along with an equally grim history of civil rights violations. That history is repeating itself today. The African American community is again facing economic injustice and abuse from law enforcement. But, this time, the immigrant workers who rebuilt New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are also the targets of brutal civil rights violations. And those same workers are showing extraordinary bravery in fighting to end them. In November 2013, I was proud to stand alongside immigrant workers and community leaders engaging in peaceful civil disobedience in New Orleans to expose a brutal program of stop and frisk racial profiling-based immigration raids called CARI (Criminal Alien Removal Initiative), which targets Latinos. Squads from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), together with local police, have been conducting race-based immigration raids anywhere Latinos gather: stores, apartment buildings, churches, laundromats. The raids have led to constant terror for the immigrant workers and families who rebuilt the city we live in and love. The blatantly unconstitutional nature of the raids led to a Congressional inquiry and front-page coverage in the New York Times. Yet ICE continues to rely on them to meet its massive deportation quotas.

USFWC: Ten Years of Achievement

July 17, 2014 Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo, www.geo.coop , ,
In 2008, a year after the 2007 ECWD conference, Hurricane Katrina battered the city of jazz and Mardi Gras. Quite a few cooperatives, along with musical bands and community members, lost homes and businesses. At the ECWD conference in Asheville, grassroots organizer Shakoor Aljuwani and former Collective Copies member Erin Rice made a strong plea for the next USFWC national conference to take place in New Orleans to help in rebuilding efforts. The Federation board not only took up the challenge, but also organized cooperators to stay an extra week, called a work week, to offer New Orleans residents skills on cooperative building, and to help in locally determined ways. Cooperators helped the Latino Farmers Cooperative, building community organization strength particularly through Common Ground, the coalition of groups working to help poor people get back on their feet. In addition, Jessica Gordon Nembhard led the organizing of a "Showcase of Cooperatives" to explain to local folks what kinds of cooperatives were now functioning, and to model what could be done. That program was a huge success--enjoyed by the locals and the veteran cooperators alike--as everyone got a chance to learn details of what others were doing around the country. That practice has now become a standard part of conferences.
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