October 2007 Archives
Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park
This weekend's Voodoo Experience presents an interesting problem for the City of New Orleans: is it possible that the city's private sector is coming back too fast? Can the problem-plagued city government keep up with events like Voodoo that are growing in popularity?
If you read Da Paper's account of the festival, reporter David Hammer depicts the fest as a rousing success. Unfortunately, he decided to cross the bayou and interview people almost totally unaffected by the noise coming from over at Tad Gormley. Who knows, maybe he took the streetcar to the park and didn't know where Tad Gormley was. By the standards of both City Park and the fest's producer, Stephen Rehage, last weekend was a resounding success, with massive crowds coming to Tad Gormley Stadium to hear Rage Against The Machine on Friday night and Smashing Pumpkins on Saturday. (Memo to Rehage: City Park ain't in Bywater, cap. If you're going to act like a New Orleanian, go get Chase's book, or another easy-to-read history of the city.)
What Hammer's story doesn't discuss is the very serious problem that Voodoo has revealed: The private sector of New Orleans is coming back much faster than the public infrastructure can handle. Consider Voodoo. When this festival started in 1999, it was a low-rent headbanger experience held at Marconi Meadows, the site of the park's old golf driving range. This venue is on the northern side of I-160, in a part of the park that's all golf courses, athletic fields, "Scout Island," and an arboretum. The more populated part of City Park is south of I-610, which is where the stadium, "Storyland" and the childrens' rides, along with other park attractions, are located. While City Park is big, it's not on the same scale as Central Park in New York. When a big event is held at the south end of City Park, the surrounding neighborhoods feel the crunch.
The inconvenience of big events is something neighbors have to accept, however, if you want a facility like City Park to be your recreational green space the rest of the year. Tad Gormley Stadium has been around since 1937, having been built as one of the many WPA projects in the park. It's used almost every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night in the fall for high school football games. The stadium hosted The Beatles in 1964, Pope Paul VI in 1965, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Alice Cooper in the 1970s. Given that I attended the latter two events on that list, as well as all too many high school football and soccer games at Tad Gormley, Park Place neighbors who have a problem with events at the stadium don't get a lot of sympathy from me. After all, unless you owned your house in prior to 1937, you pretty much had to be aware of the stadium's impact on the neighborhood across the street.
But 70,000+ people on two successive nights is a but much for any neighborhood. If Hammer's numbers in Da Paper are accurate (and the fluffy-puffy feel of the piece does give one pause), that's double the official record crowd for an event in the stadium (34,345 for the Jesuit-Holy Cross football game in 1940). The official capacity listed on the stadium's webpage is 26,500 seats. While not all those people were in the stadium proper, surely both the Park and Rehage knew that putting a crowd of double that in the south-of-610 portion of the park would stress the neighborhoods.
In terms of contractural responsibility, I've no doubt that both City Park and Rehage did everything that anyone would expect of them. What neither the Park nor Rehage factored in was the below-standard support their event received from the City of New Orleans. For events like the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival or Carnival parades, the city support services are usually out in full force. Tow trucks haul cars away from the streets of Faubourg St. John and Gentilly at JazzFest time as fast as they can be illegally parked. Same goes for the Garden District on parade nights. Frankly, given the ruthlessness of parking enforcement at JazzFest time, I'm surprised the city missed the opportunity to tow away cars from Park Place this past weekend. Perhaps the residents of this neighborhood are too quiet, and city officials think the area is still just a bunch of gutted houses?
Overall security in the neighborhoods surrounding Da Park were an issue as well. We're talking about neighborhoods where NOPD presence is still well below pre-storm levels. Police patrols in most of Lakeview and Gentilly are provided by Military Police teams from the Louisiana National Guard. Given the low staffing levels in the NOPD 3rd District, it's no surprise that there was no "neighborhood policing" going on to prevent that vandalism, public urination, and general disturbing the peace that invariably happens when the crowds from a large event invade the area.
Who is to blame for that lack of external support/security? Clearly city government isn't much help. Given the crisis that the city's justice system finds itself in, nobody really expects much from this mayor for the rest of his term. City agencies like NOPD who rely exclusively on govermental funding won't be able to rise to the challenge of large events like last weekend, either. That puts the burden on those hosting/sponsoring/promoting the event. They're making the money, they should be the ones spending a bit more of it to be good neighbors. In this regard, City Park's and Rehage's reliance on support from the city has created a bit of bad blood with the neighborhoods.
The neighborhoods aren't blameless, either. There's a lot of complaints, in letters to the editor of Da Paper, on blogs, and in online neighborhood forums about the noise in particular. I'm having a hard time buying these complaints. The lineup for Voodoo Fest was no secret, and it's no secret that bands like RATM, Smashing Pumpkins, and Fallout Boy are loud.
In terms of parking, I've seen a couple of people write about how fest-goers moved the garbage cans they put out in front of their homes! Oh, the shock! When people near parade routes want to block off street parking for guests, they're out there monitoring the situation. To expect that folks coming to the Park from other parts of the city and the burbs to honor your "reservation" is naiive at best. If the neighborhood wants to prevent blocked driveways and fire hydrants (legitimate concerns), I suggest purchasing a box of Avery 5165 labels. These are the full-sheet (8.5x11) labels. Print "YOU ARE ILLEGALLY PARKED" on these labels and stick them on the front windshield of every car illegally parked. This works for office buildings with garages, it should work for you.
The time to file a complaint isn't during or after the performances; perhaps working with the Park and the producer beforehand might have been a better idea. Frankly, I'm surprised that the Park Place neighborhood don't already have some sort of neighborhood liaison with City Park. After all, the Park doen't put on just Voodoo, but all those football games, Celebration in the Oaks, and other events. Both sides of this issue should learn from last weekend and establish some sort of permanent line of communication.
And communication is the key here. There are a number of people on Teh Internets talking about how City Park is a "bad neighbor." I'm not so sure about that. I took some of the complaints registered by members of one online forum for Lakeview and forwarded them to folks at City Park. It's not all that hard to do, you know--I went to the Park's website, looked up the "contact" page, and found e-mail addresses for the key players. Within an hour or so of e-mailing Da Park, I got a response from the CEO, Mr. Bob Becker. Mr. Becker not only gave me the courtesy of a reply, but he provided me with clear answers to several issues:
Noise: Mr. Becker conceded that the sound from some of the stages was poorly directed. His ultimate solution is the plan by the park to move Voodoo (and all other similar major events held in the park) to the South Golf Course (see map). Part of the City Park's Master Plan is to convert one of the four golf courses (North, South, East, and West), into a festival ground. The South course is on the opposite side of the park from the stadium, and Bayou St. John separates it from the neighbors.
Parking: Voodoo's on-site entrance to the park was from Wisner Blvd., similar to the set-up used for Celebration in the Oaks. Of course, many people who knew they were going to see an act in the Stadium would be likely to bypass the on-site parking and park in the neighborhood. I do this for my football games when my son plays in the Brother Martin High School band. We park along Marconi Drive rather than in the stadium parking lot. The problem here was that the city didn't take their usual stance, that such events are great revenue generators for them in terms of traffic tickets and towing fees. When you think back on some of the stunts the city's parking control people have pulled over the years with Carnival and JazzFest, I'm willing to cut the Park a break on this.
Wither the future of Voodoo? Mr. Becker feels (and I concur) that Voodoo can be successfully held on the South golf course. Given the population decline of the city post-storm, cutting back from four golf courses in the park to three is a wise re-allocation of resources. In fact, converting the South course to a festival area should be considered a prudent move, not only for Voodoo, but because it provides a publicly-owned alternative to the Fair Grounds should something ever happen to the relationship between that venue and the JazzFest folks. (Not that I'm saying such a thing would happen, mind you, but having a viable alternative is nonehteless a prudent move.)
Is City Park a bad neighbor? Overall, I'd have to say no. I'd like to think that anyone representing LCIA, FSJNA, or MCNO would receive at least as fast an e-mail response from Mr. Becker or one of his people as I did, and I'm sure they'd be willing to meet with neighborhood representatives as well. Given that the specific venues in the park for this year's Voodoo are temporary, it should be easy for both sides to move forward from here.
I know the current administration likes Muslims about as much as they like the Eebil Coloreds, but c'mon, guys:
The UK's first Muslim Minister has chalked up his second detention at the hands of the US Department of Homeland Security - with exquisite irony, at Dulles Airport in Washington DC on his way back from talks with, er, the DHS on tackling terrorism.Shahid Malik, who was also recently identified as Britain's most expensive MP, was detained by DHS officials, and he and his hand luggage were searched. He reports that he and two others, both black Muslims, were taken aside for further questioning.
OK, so they're Eebil Coloreds and they're Muslims, they must be bad, right? Even if they're holding diplomatic passports from H.M. Goverment. But it gets better:
Malik was previously held by staff at JFK in New York, last year while returning from an event where he'd been a keynote speaker on defeating extremism. Then, he claims, he was subjected to an "abusive attitude" from DHS staff.
Let it not be said that our government isn't thorough--it wasn't enough that we pissed this guy off last year, we had to do it again! And he's not the only British government official that DHS has pulled this stunt on:
The DHS' terrorist detection systems do seem to have an unfortunate knack when it comes to impressing relevant British Parliamentarians. Three years ago it contrived to demonstrate the efficacy of no-fly lists, in a negative sort of way, to a delegation from the UK's Transport Committee, headed by chair Gwyneth Dunwoody. As the impressed Dunwoody commented on the regime at the time, "it's a sort of general level of arrogant incompetence." Malik is no doubt similarly onside in the war on terror.
What's interesting is that the Right Honorable Ms. Dunwoody appears to be neither Muslim nor Colored:
"arrogant incompetence?"
nah...
"fucking morons"
(h/t El Reg)
The sign out front of Canal Station in 1963, just nine months before the Canal streetcar line was "converted" to bus service. The photographer was standing in front of the Canal Station streetcar barn building. Behind the sign is a bus parking lot on the site of the old Kemster Athletic Field. NOPSI acquired the ballpark from NORD in the 1940s. It was cleared and paved over for bus storage. The building in the background is Warren Easton High School, across N. Gayoso from the bus lot.
Note the GM "Old Looks" buses in their maroon and cream NOPSI livery behind the sign. Some of these buses remained in service as late as 1979, operating on lines such as Cartier, which existed primarily as service for students of John F. Kennedy Senior High on Wisner Blvd.
For more details on Canal Station, the A. Philip Randolph SIS facility that replaced it, and the new Canal Barn, check out our new Canal Station section.
Photo courtesy H. George Friedman, Jr. and his fantastic site, "Canal Street: A Street Railway Spectacular."
So, Cameron Henry, Representative-elect for LA State House District 82 wants to impeach Eddie Jordan. Here's what this genius has to say:
"What he has done to that office is downright embarrassing, and I think they have to get to another stage -- and he's not the person to get them there," Henry said.
The majority of district 82 is in Jefferson Parish. Henry represents a few blocks of Uptown, and now he wants to lead the charge to remove someone elected by the whole of Orleans Parish from office. When a white Republican pulls a stunt like this, the first thing that comes into my mind is, would he be doing this if Jordan was white?
The answer, of course, is a resounding no. As the WDSU article points out, this would be the second attempt at removing Jordan from office, the first coming back in July when Jordan's office refused to prosecute a suspect in a high profile murder case.
Henry says he'll enlist the help of State Senator-elect Steve Scalise, who is currently State Representative from District 82. Governor-elect Piyush Jindal says he'll call for a special session prior to the new legislature taking office. Henry wants Scalise to file the impeachment charges to get the ball rolling.
It's interesting that Mr. Scalise would feel that Jordan's conduct of late merits impeachment, but the conduct of Jordan's predecessor, Harry Connick, Sr., did not. After all, Connick allowed his prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense in at least two capital cases, those of Curtis Kyles and Shareef Cousin. Kyles spent 15 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The costs of defending the Orleans Parish DA's office in the appeals process for these men went well beyond the paltry $3.7million judgement against Jordan for employment discrimination. Who does Curtis Kyles see about getting the years he lost in prison thanks to NOPD and Harry Connick's office back? Surely these incidents rise to Cameron Henry's "embarrassment" standard.
Cameron Henry is after Eddie Jordan for one simple reason. The Orleans Parish DA's office was the last great public office bastion of hope for white racists in Orleans Parish. When Connick retired in 2002, it was clear that the next DA would be black, but at least they could get someone loyal to Connick in the office, namely former prosecutor Dale Atkins. Jordan defeated Atkins at the polls, then proceeded to fire all of the support staff in the office, because they were loyal to Connick and worked for Atkins' election.
This is the sort of thing that happens all the time with jobs in a political office. You back the wrong horse, you clean out your desk on the last day of your boss' term. The problem was, this time, the incoming office holder was black, the staffers he fired were white, and the people he hired to replace them were all black. Connick's people sued Jordan and won, and now the white folks use this as a club, referring to Jordan as a "convicted racist." Jarvis DeBerry has a great column in Da Paper today, offering his theory on Jordan:
I know it's popular among some folks to describe Jordan as a "convicted racist," but that's wrong, if for no other reason than the implication that racism is a criminal offense for which one can stand trial. It's also wrong because if he'd had such irate opposition to the presence of white people, he'd have fired the white folks on his legal staff, but he didn't.His real offense is weakness. He allowed himself to be controlled by his mentor U.S. Rep. William Jefferson and didn't put up a fuss when one of the congressman's staffers came into Jordan's office to clear enough room to place the people Jefferson wanted to bestow with jobs.
I'm not sure Jefferson is a racist in that scenario, but it really doesn't matter if he is or isn't. The only thing that matters is the discriminatory effect: 36 white employees were let go, and almost all of them were replaced by black employees.
No, I don't think Jordan and Jefferson are racists, not based on this incident alone, at least. I do think they're stupid, though. They knew they were firing white folks and replacing them with black folks, leaving themselves exposed to this litigation.
This is typical of the attitude of the white minority in New Orleans. When white politicians make political moves, it's "just politics." When black pols do it, it's "corruption."
Part of me would like to see Jordan get the boot, not only because he's not a very smart man, but also because I'd like to see a white Republican take over the DA's office. I seriously doubt any Republican can do any better at cleaning up the mess that is our judicial system, simply because they're white and "conservative." The problem is, we have a serious crime problem in the area, and we really don't have time for Republican experiments that will do no more than personally enrich them while making the situation in the city worse.
Not just Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, but anyone who is willing to take a job at CIA and live their lives by their rules, all to defend this country. Rebecca Trasiter's review of Plame's book in Salon today is good, but this paragraph struck me:
It's a shocking vision of what a life can look like when its narration is taken out of the hands of the person living it. Plame's love life, her marriage, her personal chronology ... apparently, these do not belong to her but to her former employer. Without their permission, she has no rights to them.
And she volunteered to do this. Chickenhawks and the 101st Fighting Keyboarders should be bitch-slapped with her book until they bleed.
Have you ever decided to pass on ranting about something just because you don't want to start trouble with people you might have to work with later? I've been conflicted about talking about the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans for a couple of weeks now, in spite of some disturbing behavior I've observed. Tuesday was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, though.
There's a bit of a disagreement between residents of Lakeview and the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority of late, stemming from a proposal to extend the Canal Street streetcar line two blocks into the Lakeview neighborhood. I won't go into the details, but if you go to my streetcar website, you can get the backstory. As an advocate for public transit in general and street railways in particular, I don't view the neighborhood's objections as credible. They come off as NIMBY to me, but I've told leaders of the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association that I'm willing to keep an open mind. I feel that this is a generous position on my part, given the obnoxious behavior of Lakeview residents at a recent public meeting held to discuss this project.
Expressing their opposition to the streetcar line expansion, Lakeview residents in the audience made numerous rude and offensive comments, both socio-economic and racial in nature. The haves-versus-have-nots sort of comments come whenever a relatively wealthy neighborhood is involved in public improvements that help the working class, so those were to be expected. The open racial remarks, however, stunned me. One of the guests at the meeting was Mark Major, who is the General Manager of NORTA. Mr. Major is black, and given the political nature of NORTA, one woud assume he is politically connected to Mayor C. Ray Nagin. Nagin, being black and a Democrat, was not a very popular figure in white-bread, Republican, Lakeview before the storm, much less now. These folks got 10'-12' of water in their houses from the 17th Street Canal breach. They need someone to blame, so the black mayor, black Congresscritter with 90K in his freezer, and female Democratic governor make better targets than their Personal Lord and Savior, the disprespectful piece of crap who lives in the White House. Not many of these folks use or require public transportation, for themselves or their families. One woman actually stood up at this meeting and advocated placing a major transit terminal one block from an elementary school and a middle school in a different neighborhood (Mid City) to keep it out of her neighborhood. Let's forget rider safety, now, this one doesn't even care about the safety of children.
The shame of it is that I really like the Lakeview neighborhood. I was in Lakeview daily, riding the bus and going to friends' houses, from the time I was twelve until we moved into Gentilly when I was teaching high school. Lakeshore Drive was where we'd hang out after school, in both high school and when I went to the University of New Orleans. I could go on and on about Lakeview, and watching all that water pour into the area was very traumatic for me.
But as much as watching the neighborhood drown was traumatic, hearing the overt racism coming from the "pioneers" that have returned to rebuild the neighborhood after the storm was equally shocking. We used to say that overt racism was something for Jefferson Parish, and that at least New Orleanians were more civil. It appears that the storm has changed the rules.
Still, as I said, I wasn't going to write about this. The folks I've met and corresponded with from Lakeview don't fit the mold of the crackers in the crowd. They're working hard to make things happen in their neighborhood, and I was willing to give them a break, until Tuesday. I was having coffee and writing at the Starbucks on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview on Tuesday morning, when two men walk in and get in line. They were discussing rebuilding their houses when one mentioned that he had to send a package to someone and all they had for an address was a post office box. UPS and FedEx don't deliver to post office boxes, so that meant this person had to use the US Postal Service to ship his parcel. He went on a rant loud enough that I could hear him over NPR's Morning Edition in my headphones and the blender making frappucinos.
This person used a code-word phrase I'd never heard before. He said that he didn't like going to the post office because he had to deal with "Democrats." At first I chuckled, because the dad of one of the boys in my son's Scout troop works for USPS and is a staunch Republican. It didn't hit me until the woman behind this guy chimed into the conversation with the term "those people." It was the first time I'd ever heard someone use "Democrat" as a code word for "black." When it sunk in, it made sense. Since the storm, the closest post office to Lakeview is up on Jefferson Davis Pkwy., in Mid City. I go to that post office because it's usually not terribly crowded, and the ladies who work the counter at that post office have always been black. They're friendly, competent, and helpful when I go there, so only someone who just don't like black folks would have a problem with the place.
It's easy to dismiss one person in line at a coffee shop as a cracker asshole, but when others around the cracker join with him and concur with his racist perspective, it's a bit more of a concern.
The neighborhood leaders distance themselves from the racists amongst them, asking people like me to look at the good they do and not to judge their association by those at the meetings. Maybe I'm just old school, though, judging people by the company they keep. There comes a time when civic leaders have to stand up and be counted. Brushing racism under the rug doesn't make it go away. While the neighborhood's activists may not hold the same beliefs of their neighbors, their silence on the subject is almost as disturbing as the crackers themselves. It's nudge-nudge, wink-wink, politics. They want the city to work with them in spite of the fact that the best thing for the city as a whole might be to ignore the neighborhood altogether. Let municipal services fall off even more than they are now. Cut back even further on the NOPD and Military Police presence. Let the businesses that have re-opened fail and abandon them. Perhaps then the crackers will give up on the neighborhood and move someplace else.
OK, letting Lakeview just die isn't a viable option, but neither is continuing the nudge-nudge, wink-wink relationship. Just as Lakeview won't be allowed to die, black folks in New Orleans aren't going away, either. The racists in Lakeview need to realize this and, at the very least, stop offending those of us who don't think someone is inferior because they're black and work at the post office.
Well, the sun is out after a couple of days of nasty monsoon-style afternoon/evening thunderstorms here in New Orleans. It looks like the good weather will continue at least into tomorrow. On the up side, this means my mandatory attendance at tonight's performance of the Brother Martin High School Band at Tad Gormley Stadium will be dry. (Oh, there's a sporting event being held in conjunction with this band performance. Before and after the music, the Brother Martin football team plays the team from Jesuit High School). The downside to nice weather this weekend is that clear skies usually means higher voter turnout.
There are several major factors affecting voter turnout tomorrow:
Weather: It's going to be a gorgeous day in metro New Orleans, and that will bring the Republicans out to vote in East Jefferson.
Hunting Season: Tomorrow (20-Oct) is opening day of hunting season. Hey, they don't call Louisiana "Sportman's Paradise" for nothing. This is a very simple equation: a lot of hardcore gun guys aren't going to vote. They're packing up today to go to their camps tonight so they can get up early and do what they enjoy. Odds are, a lot of them won't be home by the time the polls close at 8pm.
LSU vs. Auburn: The reason we have elections on Saturdays in Louisiana is to allow working folks to have a better chance to get to the polls than on a workday. Sometimes, however, this creates interesting conflicts. LSU plays Auburn in football tomorrow. The game is at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. At a meeting I attended Tuesday night, one guy said, "yeah, there will be 92,000 people in that stadium." Another guy added, "and there will be another 100,000 tailgating in the parking lot!" OK, the 100K outside is a bit of an exaggaration, but there will be that many people in the stadium and a buttload of people outside. There will be people in bars and pubs across the state. A lot of people have all-day festivities at their houses for a big game.
The game and the hunters are a huge concern for Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (R-Kenner), the endorsed Republican candidate in the race. Since incumbent governor Kathy Blanco decided not to stand for re-election, the conventional wisdom has been that Jindal had a very good shot of winning tomorrow's open primary with 50.1% of the vote, bypassing a runoff next month. The hunters and LSU fans are thinking, "oh, Bobby's got it made, I don't have to go vote. He's gonna win outright, or for sure get in the runoff." The problem is that a runoff scares the bejeebus out of Piyush's people, to the point where the campaign put out a massive GOTV push two weeks ago, to get people to do "early voting." Jindal was supposed to have the runoff against Democrat Blanco in the bag four years ago, and Blanco pulled it out in the last week. The under-the-radar racial vote is a major concern for the Republicans. More on the racial factors in a moment.
"The Black Vote:" The racial factors in a Louisiana election used to be easy to sort out. Before the storm, there were two big concentrations of black voting strength, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The storm has wiped out the voting strength of blacks in Orleans Parish. Many thousands of New Orleanians are still living in the area, in Jefferson, St. Charles, and St. Tammany parishes. The catch is that, while they live in the burbs, their "domiciles" are in Orleans Parish. They'll have to drive anywhere from 10-50 miles to get to a polling place. Tradtional neighborhood polling places in Da Ninth, Gentilly, and Lakeview have vanished, replaced by consolidated polling places for entire wards. The confusion and inconvenience will do more to supress black turnout than any stunt ever attempted by the LA Republican Party. Polls show Jindal actually making gains in black vote over his numbers from four years ago, but polls call people where they are now; they don't factor in whether or not they'll drive back into the city to vote.
The lack of a race on the ballot that will rouse the interest of New Orleanians also plays into what may be low black turnout. The biggest item on the ballot other than statewide races for Orleans Parish is the race to replace former At-Large City Councilman Olvier Thomas (D-Markey Marc). Thomas, you may remember, is the idiot who took bribes from Morial-connected businessmen, negotiatied a plea deal with the DoJ, and is now off to Club Fed. The candidates to replace this fool are the usual suspects, a couple of district councilmen and some other community leaders. There are no personalities in this race that will electrify any part of the community. The individual candidates will do what they can to get out their people, but there's nothing about this race that's excited the community as a whole.
The mess that is polling places in Orleans Parish will also contribute to lower white turnout as well as black. It's important to remember that homeowners in the Lakeview neighborhood of the city were overwhelmingly white Republicans. Lakeview homes got an average of 10' of water in the storm, and the majority of the neighborhood isn't back home.
The Under-The-Radar Vote: This is a very serious problem for Jindal. Many of the folks that vote Republican in Louisiana just don't like black people. Jindal is Indian-American. While he's not African-American, he is still Not White. The phenomenom of under-the-radar racism goes back to the 1991 race between Edwin Edwards (D-Club Fed) and David Duke (R-Sturm Abteilung). From a 1991 NYT article:
Public opinion polls, in which statisticians have tried to adjust for the reluctance of voters to state their preference for Mr. Duke, show Mr. Edwards in the lead. But almost no analysts are willing to make a prediction about the race because of the difficulty of gauging Mr. Duke's support and because of the mixed emotions expressed by many voters Mr. Edwards needs.
I submit that those same voters haven't left the state. This time, their reluctance to state their true feelings is not because they don't want to be associated with a Grand Wizard of the KKK, but because they don't want to admit they won't vote for a candidate who is Not White. This is why Jindal's campaign in the north focuses so much on religion--he can't change the color of his skin, but he spends a lot of time talking about his Christianity and faith, hoping to make a distinction between the godless Democrat (Campbell), the city slicker (Boasso, even though he's from Da Parish), and the Greek guy (Georges). Still, he may be Christian, but it's a tough sell for a guy who is Not White to convince people who were willing to vote for a Klansmen they should vote for him. Given this reverse race card, along with Vitty-cent's sexual indiscretions and hypocrisy, the upstate "values" crackers may just stay home and watch LSU-Auburn on the boobtoob.
The Candidates: There are four first-tier candidates in the LA-Gov race.
Walter Boasso (D-Chalmette) - A businessman and State Senator from storm-ravaged St. Bernard Parish, Boasso led the effort to reform the way Louisiana manages flood control. His work on reforming the political infrastructure of flood control in the state have produced mixed results, but he has molded himself as a reformer. Boasso was elected to the State Senate as a Republican, but switched to Democrat to run for governor. Some say Boasso wanted the GOP endorsement, and switched when it was clear that the powers-that-be on the dark side went with Jindal. Boasso has certainly embrased his "inner Democrat," however, running some very sweet attack ads, giving Jindal ownership of his Personal Lord and Savior, George W. Bush. The memory hook for the commercials is, "Bobby Jindal - Big Brain. No Heart." That wraps up commercials attacking Jindal for his atrocious record as head of the state's health and hospitals department, as well as his congressional voting record (97% with Bush-Delay). The Republicans decry the use of attack ads, but we all know how powerful they can be. Boasso's total lack of credibility in the progressive sphere is his downfall, though.
Foster Campbell (D-Elm Grove) - Campbell is the favorite of most progressive Democrats. He's from Boissier Parish, which is up in the northwest corner of the state, next to Shreveport. A lifelong Dem, Campbell is a good-ol-boy who is on the state's Public Service Commission. Campbell's visibility in the southern part of the state has improved, but not his credibility. His commercials, showing him hanging out with northern LA farmers, riding his horse, etc., do nothing to inspire city folks. The Louisiana Public Service Commission has a reputation as essentially a do-nothing body. They're best known for refusing almost every rate request put to them by a utility doing business in the state. This puts them in good stead with the voters, but it punts the true decision-making to the courts, when the utilities sue. The actual rate hikes are then worked out in back-room settlement conferences, avoiding sunshine laws. The net result is that most voters don't think of PSC commissioners as leaders.
Campbell's also been a big disappointment as a Democrat. He's letting Boasso do the heavy lifting against Jindal. One can make an argument that letting the guy who is polling lower be the pit bull, but Campbell is the candidate with the backing of the progressives in the party. Progressives on various dem blogs and mailing lists attack Boassao as a Dem-of-convenience, but he's acting more like a Dem than the good-ol-boy they're endorsing.
John Georges (I-Metairie) - I don't know exactly why Georges is in the race and spending the kind of money he is. Like Boasso, Georges was Republican before failing to get the party's endorsement. A businessman, his company, Imperial Trading, is one of the biggest cigarette distributors in the metro area. He is also one of the owners of a large distributor of video poker machines in the state. (In Louisiana, the distributor puts the machines in the restaurant or bar. Players pump $$$ into them, then the state takes 25% of the gross. The distributor and establishment split the rest, usually 50-50.) Jindal is spending a good bit of money (commercials during the evening news and prime time) to paint Georges as corrupt and sinful. Georges is the guy Jindal's trying to beat, because he's the biggest threat to Jindal not getting 50.1% of the vote tomorrow. The fear is that Georges will siphon off vote from East Jefferson. Georges is a Metairie homeboy--Imperial Trading has been around for generations, he's a community leader, and well-respected. Jindal is still viewed by many as a carpetbagger in Jefferson Parish. Sure, the suburbanites love him as a Congresscritter running against token Dem opposition, but now he's running against a guy they see in church, at the playground, etc. Georges is Greek Orthodox, and that community sticks together. He's more attractive to Catholics than Jindal, even though Jindal's ostensibly Roman Catholic, because Piyush has essentially forsaken mainstream Catholicism for the political expedient of evangelical Christianity. He runs a local business, as opposed to being a professional politician. Georges is the scariest candidate in the race as far as Jindal's folks are concerned. Jindal's responses to Boasso's attack ads are to decry the tactic. Piyush's people save the real venom for Georges.
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (R-Kenner) - The frontrunner. The "anointed one." Congresscritter from LA-01. When Blanco decided not to stand for re-election, the Dems had a helluva time trying to find someone to run against him. The weakness of Campbell and the opportunism of Boasso is testament to this. The Jindal campaign's drive to win this outright tomorrow is serious, and justified. The things that can go wrong for Jindal in a runoff are serious concerns for his backers. Republicans see Jindal as a chance to re-capture the Governor's mansion. The big business and medical establishment money is behind him. Jindal's not without baggage, though. His voting record is totally with Bush and the K Street Republican establishment. His stance on "values" issues is severely tainted by his support of brothel-boy David Vitter. This morning's headline in Da Paper is about Vitty-cent restructuring a $100K earmark destined for a pro-creationism education foundation tied to Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council. This creates a problem for Jindal, because it reminds the "values voters" that Republican politicians are really just scum that use them when convenient.
It's a pretty melodramatic statement, but Bobby Jindal currently represents everything that is wrong, immoral, and downright evil about the state of Louisiana. And it's damned likely he'll be our next governor.
My prediction: Jindal-Georges in the runoff. Outside chance Campbell beats out Georges. If Campbell gets in the runoff, he's our next governor. As much as he disappoints me, Campbell's got my vote.
"Patriot" seems to be one of those words that's always been politically-charged. Nowadays we see that with the PATRIOT Act and the extreme nationalism put forward by the current presidential administration. It's not just a modern thing, though. In 1864, the Union Army needed a place to bury their dead in the New Orleans area. After a brief naval engagement won by the US Navy, the city surrendered itself to Union forces, who occupied the area for the majority of the Civil War.
The area in Chalmette where the Battle of New Orleans was fought had been preserved as a memorial area since the 1830s. (It's now the Chalmette Battlefield, a part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park). Since this land was already federal property prior to the war, it was easy for the Union Army to convert a strip of land in the back of the battlefield into a cemetery.
The cemetery was accessible from the Great River Road, but a side entrance was also constructed. This side entrance included the archway you see above, with the "patriot" label.
Originally both Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors were buried in the cemetery. A large number of the Union soldiers buried there were "Colored Troops." Combine that with the sign proclaiming those resting there as "patriots," and many New Orleanians were very offended. After the war, the Daughters of the Confederacy raised money to build a tumulus in Greenwood Cemetery at the head of Canal Street. The Confederates buried in Chalmette were re-interred in that tumulus.
The wooden fence and archway were replaced by a brick wall in the 1880s. The cemetery is still there and is a wonderful thread in the historical fabric of New Orleans.
I now officially declare a moratorium on Godwin's Law with respect to the Bush Administration, thanks to this tidbit from Frank Rich of the NYT today:
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
Some parallels to the Nazis are just extreme, like using "Lebensraum" to describe Israeli settlements on the West Bank, but what scares me about things like the reference above is that I don't think that these guys are smart enough to be students of the Gestapo. They came up with this shit on their own.
From the Rebuilding-Lakeview mailing list:
Today, I realized that the contractor was sanding to bare wood with a rotary sander the house two doors down from me. This house is over 80 years old, so there is a good possibility there is lead paint involved. The wind was blowing and I sat and watched billows of fine lead dust scatter all over the place. I have two young children, and this is a very harmful health hazard. I called the guy who was sanding the house and expressed my concern. He either didn't speak English or simply didn't care about what I was saying, because he just walked away and continued sanding. I then contacted Bayou Contracting at the 342-4736 number. I expressed my concerns to the lady who answered the phone, who said she was the owner of Bayou. She told me I should just close my windows. I told her that I already had closed my windows, but that there was a law against this, and that they should follow the law by creating a plastic barrier so that the dust did not scatter into my yard. She then asked me how I knew the paint was lead, she asked me if I had the paint tested. I told her I didn't have to have the paint tested, the house is old with many layers of paint and it was THEIR responsibility to have the paint tested. I told her that violating this ordinance could have them shut down on this job. She laughed and said "Let's see if you have the power to do that, then!" and she promptly hung up on me.
I've contacted Bayou Contracting to see if they have a response to this complaint.
clicky image for larger version
Peley A. Thomas streetcar 866, on Tulane at S. Carrollton Avenue. The direction and roll sign indicate that 866 is running on the Tulane Belt line. The railroad grade crossing gates and the switch tower in the neutral ground are for the tracks leading into the Illinois Central's Union Station at Loyola Avenue. There was a small station at Carrollton Avenue so Uptown passengers could board or leave trains without having to go all the way downtown. (Union Station was torn down in the 1950s to make way for the Union Passenger Terminal complex.) NOPSI 866 ran on various lines in the city, including Canal and St. Charles, until the Canal line's discontinuance in 1964, when it was scrapped.
The stadium in the background is Pelican Stadium, home of the New Orleans Pelicans from 1915 to 1957, when it was demolished. The Pelicans played two seasons at Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park, before the team shut down in 1959. The "Pelicans" name was used again briefly in the 1970s, when the city had a AAA team playing in Da Dome, but that venture failed. The current AAA team for the city is the New Orleans Zephyrs. They kept that name when the team moved from Denver. Because the wooden roller coaster at Pontchartrain Beach was named the "Zephyr," the name stuck.
Pelican Stadium was also home to the "New Orleans Black Pelicans" of the Negro League. For more information on baseball in New Orleans, check out www.neworleansbaseball.com, by S. Derby Gisclair, who has written two books for Arcadia on the subject. (Arcadia was my publisher for the Canal streetcar book.)
This part of New Orleans was still referred to as "back of town" by many, as Mid-City was still a developing neighborhood. Now, Mid-City is a neighborhood in recovery, still working through the aftermath of the storm.
The Louisiana State Legislature is pretty much getting turned upside down and shaken out this election cycle. Term limits are kicking in for the majority of incumbents, so the number of real races is much higher than usual. I live in LA house district 80. There are two candidates looking to represent the neighborhood in Baton Rouge next year, Glenn Lee and Joseph Lopinto.
They haven't even buried Harry Lee yet, but his legacy will continue on for at least a generation, and this race is a good example. Glenn Lee is Harry's nephew, and worked for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office for 13 years. Lopinto was also one of Harry's deputies at JPSO, his last position being that of Narcotics Detective. So, I've got the choice between someone in Lee's family or someone in Lee's extended family.
Up until yesterday, I was leaning towards Lopinto, for two reasons: First, he went to the same high school I did, and second, I didn't really trust Harry Lee, and that distrust (right or wrong) extends to his family. But that changed when I went out to get the mail, and found this piece from Lopinto:
OK, it's a fairly harmless-looking piece at this point. He says the things most Republican candidates do, and flaunts his endorsements. Then I flipped it over and looked at the back:
Here's the list of groups that Lopinto's upset got money from the state this year:
Rho Omega and Friends, Inc. $ 50,000
Delta CD program development $ 150,000
Volunteers for Youth Justice in Shreveport $ 100,000
Martin Luther King, Jr. Assoc.
Neighborhood Development Foundation, Inc. $ 150,000
North St. Antoine Service, Inc. $ 300,000
Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Council $ 15,000
Community Awareness Revitalization and Enhancement Corporation $ 130,000
Just the Right Attitude in New Orleans $ 50,000
Newcorp $ 100,000
Community Coordinating Council, Inc. $ 100,000
Men of Vision and Enlightenment, Inc. $ 50,000
Progress 63, Inc. $ 300,000
Serving People District 40 $ 300,000
Society Advancement of African American Males $ 20,000
The Elisha Foundation $ 10,000
Epsilon Psi Lambda Chapter $ 100,000
Urban Restoration Enhancement Corporation $ 75,000
Rebuilding Our Community, Inc. $ 350,000
Just Willing Foundation $ 75,000
Louisiana Ballooning Foundation $ 50,000
Purple Circle Social Club $ 50,000
Israelite Baptist Church in Crowley $ 100,000
When I read this, I handed the flyer over immediately to my 13-year old son, who attends the same high school that Lopinto attended. I asked him what he thought these groups have in common, and it didn't take more than a minute for him to respond, "with names like 'Martin Luther King,' and 'Society Advancement of African American Males,' they must be mostly black community groups."
So obvious an eighth grader figured it out.
Now, railing against pork-barrel spending is almost required for non-incumbent candidates. Complaining about budget overruns and excess spending rarely turns off voters. But if you look at a full list of these "special projects" that got money in the capital outlay budget in 2006-2007, you can see there are more programs here than just for black folks. Yet Lopinto cherry-picked the list and printed up just programs that benefit the Eebil Coloreds. This is code-word racism at its best. Lopinto lists how blacks are sucking up the tax dollars of hard-working white folks in Jefferson Parish, and he's going to keep it from happening. Does he appear to be upset that the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Cooperative got $50K, or that the parks department in the City of Kenner got $200K, or that the Jefferson Parish Sports and Scholastic Foundation got $200K? Nope. Funny thing, though, that's $450,000 of the tax dollars of hard-working Jeffersonians that went to mostly white people. What a coincidence.
What I don't get here is why Lopinto felt it necessary to send out a piece like this. It all but screams, "vote for me, I like black people less than my opponent!" And that's saying a lot when your opponent is running on his uncle's name and Harry Lee's the guy who said he would make sure that "young black men in rinky-dink cars" would be stopped and not allowed into Jefferson Parish.
So, Lopinto's not going to get my vote on 20-October. It's difficult to tell if he's an outright racist or if he's just ill-served by some pretty dumb consultants. Either way, it doesn't look like a good idea to trust this guy with any sort of authority. Even though I didn't like the politics of Lee's uncle and he's trying to play off that relationship (his campaign signs all have a star motif, a clear allusion to his association with the Sheriff and the JPSO), I ran into Lee in a coffee shop last week. He jumped at the opportunity to take over the table from where I was getting up because it was near a power outlet. I figure any guy who works on his laptop in a coffee shop like I do most mornings can't be all that bad, even for a Republican. :-)
Charity Hospital Cemetery, which is located on Canal Street, just behind Cypress Grove.
Everyone is used to seeing New Orleans cemeteries with the above ground tombs. They're quite a contrast to classic graveyards that consist of plots marked by headstones. This cemetery is neither. It's a burial ground with all unmarked graves. It's where Charity Hospital buries cadevers donated to the medical school for research purposes.
The cemetery is unmarked and unremarkable, but the ground is surveyed and records kept on when and where burials took place.
Lois Maxwell has died at age 80.
What a gal.
And that's two high-profile deaths today, who will be the third, i wonder?
