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See Me

By Imanee Magee

Some say the blacker the berry,
the sweeter the juice.
Well from a cop’s point of view
I’m a dangerous hue.
This black skin that I’m in is a sin to
these blue men
Hiding fear of our unity behind the
law of impunity
The TV sees me as a flea to society-
Civil rights crippled with my brittle
grip on these skittles,
Black dung slung in the rung of mass
incarceration,
5 years young amongst the sun and
he’s stung in the lung- “Hold my tongue?”
I’m done.
This target branded on my back
Burns like the bullet shot through my
soul for being Black.
With my people under attack,
how can I not fear for my soul?
I can barely be whole trying to fit in
massa’s mold
The end is coming near.
I can hear it, ringing through these
streets
Cries from mamas burying their
babies under bed sheets,
Juries freeing killers playing dress up
as police,
Brothers not coming home, what do I
even tell my niece?
What must I do for you to see my
humanity?
Must i bleed, must i plead, must i
concede?

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Army Corps of Engineers, S&WB Destroying Florida Ave. 9th Ward Neighborhood

By a Gallier St. Resident

New Orleanians who live in the upper ninth in the Florida neighborhood are seeing our homes destroyed due to the arrogance of the city, Sewerage and Water Board and the Army Corps of Engineers. They are jointly in charge of the Southeast Louisiana (SELA) drainage project which will cost over $300 million on Florida Avenue Canal. It began several years ago and was scheduled to finish this year, but its now extended to 2020 so the cost will rise as well.

Every day 50 giant trucks speed down our streets, shaking our entire homes starting as early as 6:30 am. We have cracked walls and foundations, pipes not aligned and many breaks in water lines to the road caused by these trucks.
One neighbor, A. Collins, said “why was our street designated a main truck route? We were not notified, and it seems no one is willing to help us or inform us what is going on.”

Now they have closed off Louisa street, which is the main road connecting our neighborhood to the Chef Menteur shopping areas, forcing us to go a long distance out of our way. No notice was given that the street would be closed or for how long. Even before it was closed the street from Law to the canal was pitted with craters.

Neighbors who live on Law, Louisa, Gallier and other streets have been complaining for years. We have filed for compensation but are told that will only happen after the project is completed. And it will be subject to inspections by the same agency that is causing the problem!

For six months Gallier St. neighbors demanded a meeting to discuss ways the problems could be solved. After months of stalling, officials finally came to a local meeting and tried to give us a Power-Point on the project. They refused to have a one-on-one discussion with the community. 40 neighbors attended and poured their hearts out about the destruction of our homes, disruption to our lives, destruction of our vehicles and health issues caused by the project.

DUST EVERYWHERE
Every day our homes and vehicles are coated with dust as the streets have crumbled. They have laid down a product that when dry gives off tons of dust whenever a truck comes by. Many residents are experiencing health issues as a result. Gallier street is no longer a real road but more like a dirt road.

COUNCILMAN BROUSSARD IGNORES US TOO – DOES NOTHING
37 emails to Councilman Broussard were ignored. Finally, Broussard wrote to advise us to contact the same agencies we were complaining to him about. He has never come to the area or met with the residents.

Boh Brothers and high-paid consultants and politicians are getting rich off this project. They would never treat the French Quarter or mansion littered St. Charles this way.

WILL WE STILL HAVE HOMES? WHO WILL FIX THEM?
This is proof that working-class residents and especially predominantly Black communities must get organized to militantly challenge the powers that care nothing for us. To protect ourselves, we should put these agencies under the direct control of the people.

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Louisiana House of Representatives Moves to Criminalize Water-Protectors

By Meg Maloney

The fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline intensifies in Louisiana. The Indigenous-led L’eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp, located in the swamps of Houma, Chitimacha, and Chata Territory, have been peacefully protesting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline for several months now. Community leaders have been organizing to spread awareness on the high-risk project, which puts 700 bodies of water in danger, including our precious Atchafalaya basin, the last growing delta in the state.

Big Oil is trembling in fear of the people organizing to fight back against companies who continue to make messes in our communities. From this fear has stemmed the bill HB727, which passed the Louisiana House of Representatives in April Next it will go to the Senate. Then it will land on our governor’s desk. If passed this bill could land water-protectors in jail for up to 25 years, and a year for even “conspiring” to protest pipelines.

Knowing how quickly our elected officials fall in line behind corporate sponsors, this bill is very worrying. The HB727 bill is meant to hyper-criminalize water-protectors, fisherfolk, environmentalists, journalists, justice organizers & anyone who wishes to exercise their First Amendment rights in relation to defending their lands and waters.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the organization guilty of writing the HB727 bill. ALEC is an organization that has over 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the Koch brothers, AT&T, and Exxon Mobil. ALEC uses their corporate contributions to draft legislation that legislators across the country take back to their states and introduce as their own “reform” ideas. ALEC is known for promoting privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, including education, healthcare, the environment, voting rights, etc.

If the HB727 bill is passed our tax dollars will be used to protect private companies who are destroying our waterways, wetlands, and crawfish habitats. Our wetlands are vital in protecting us from storm waters, and we’re losing a football field worth of land every hour. Protecting waterways and wetlands should go without saying in South Louisiana. We should be focused on restoring them, because our culture and livelihood depends on it. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported the HB727 bill. It is not an issue of party; it’s an issue of whose pockets are getting filled by big oil.

Cherri Foytlin, an indigenous community organizer at the L’eau Est La Vie camp, says they’re not backing down. That if the people can’t put their bodies on the line to protect the water, on the route of the pipeline, they will bring the fight to the offices of all our corrupt politicians. Our officials can stand on the opposing side of the people, but when organized & united the peoples power will always win. The question is how far our corrupt politicians are willing to take it.

If you wish to support the work against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, visit nobbp.org. Donate, sign up for camp, and help spread awareness in your community. Call your representatives and say no to bill HB727.

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We Need Socialism!

By Gregory William

Deep poverty is on the rise. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. Every year, police kill nearly 1,000 people, mostly people of color. Sexual harassment in the workplace is commonplace. Both Democrats and Republicans slash every program benefiting working people, while wasting our money on war. We are hit by one economic crisis after another.

We know things don’t have to be this way. We can fundamentally change society by overthrowing capitalism and building socialism. These problems do not come out of nowhere: They are byproducts of capitalism.

But what’s the basic difference between capitalism and socialism? Does it make sense to have a society where there are a handful of mega-wealthy billionaires, and the majority of people are just scraping by? Couldn’t we workers run the society without bosses, and make decisions that benefit the majority? Do we really have a “democracy” or do the rich just buy the policies they want?

We Need Socialism!
Under socialism, ordinary working people like us run the institutions of the society, including the government. Major property (like factories, infrastructure, and hospitals) are owned collectively by the people. There are no billionaires hoarding all the wealth and running things for their benefit alone. When workers make revolution, all of this becomes possible. We wouldn’t have high rents. We could make sure that health care, education, childcare, and housing are guaranteed free human rights! This is not simply a pipe dream. At one point or another in the past century, working people from Russia, to China, to Cuba have taken power, and proved that things can be different.

New Orleans, Cuba, and Hurricanes
In 2018, in socialist Cuba, people are in fact guaranteed to have access to health care, education, childcare, and housing. Cuba is a “poor” country compared to the United States, but there are no homeless encampments like we have here. LGBTQ rights are enshrined in the law. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is lower than ours. All of this is well-documented by trusted global institutions like the World Health Organization. But I want to focus on the issue of hurricane response. The difference between the United States and Cuba couldn’t be more extreme, and it shows the superiority of socialism over capitalism in a way that is important for us in Louisiana. It is a matter of life and death.

All of us are familiar with the failure of the government to respond to hurricanes Katrina and Rita and Maria. Over 1,400 people died during these storms, and millions more were displaced throughout the Gulf Coast. In the aftermath, the city, state, and federal governments colluded with corporations to turn New Orleans into an experiment in the most mercenary forms of contemporary capitalism: public housing demolished, Charity Hospital closed, and public education destroyed. Puerto Rico still has not fully restored electricity, jobs and income

In Cuba, on the other hand, the whole society is mobilized to deal with hurricanes, and the aftermath is about recovery, not greed. Hurricane preparedness drills take place regularly everywhere. The focus is on risk-reduction with an integrated response from local fire departments, health, transportation, and other public services. Before storms occur, government officials, police, and military personnel help people move their personal property to safer locations. The government also guarantees replacement of all lost property.

Cuba has a fraction of the wealth and resources of the United States and is directly in the path of many storms. Almost no one in Cuba dies as a result of tropical storms and hurricanes, gets evicted, or loses pay. The past 17 major hurricanes to hit Cuba only resulted in 35 deaths. When Katrina hit Cuba, only two people died.

The socialist organization of society allows for the possibility of tackling major problems. The Cubans decided to take on the problem of storm preparedness, which is essential for the island. Such a massive reorganization is impossible in the U.S., where people are intentionally isolated from one another and the motives of the ruling class are based in profits. It is socialism which gives to people the means to bring about progressive change.

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Take Back Pride

Two years ago, local LGBTQ organization BreakOUT! pulled out of the local Pride parade. After the Pulse nightclub shooting, the New Orleans Pride organization decided to increase police presence at the parade, and the organizers at BreakOUT!, led by LGBTQ youth of color, felt unsafe with more NOPD officers at the parade. Instead of providing security, they posed a direct threat to many BreakOUT! members who had been subject to harassment and abuse by NOPD. Despite this notable act of defiance, Pride continues to ignore the needs and history of local working class queer and trans people, especially LGBTQ people of color.

New Orleans Pride this year has the theme of “300 Years of Diversity,” tapping into the attention focused on the tricentennial to cash in. They have chosen the CEO of the New Orleans Tourism Board as their Grand Marshal, and they boast of many corporate sponsors, including Walgreens and General Electric (GE). As in past years, the parade will feature NOPD and members of the US military.

Though “efforts” have been made within NOPD to “address” accusations of anti-LGBTQ violence, no real changes have come. Though the US military boasts of its inclusion of gay soldiers, it continues to cause the oppression of LGBTQ communities around the world as they bomb countries in Africa and the Middle East and prop up right-wing governments that target LGBTQ people. Corporations like GE profit off of the military industrial complex while using their allegedly enlightened hiring practices to distract from the exploitation of working class LGBTQ people. While New Orleans Pride brings in money to the tourism capitalists, the rest of us struggle to get by because we have no money for health insurance, can’t get jobs, and don’t have access to basic needs.

Pride was born out of struggle: out of resistance against police brutality and solidarity with oppressed people around the world. For 300 years, white supremacy has defined New Orleans. Colonial violence and slavery denied queer and trans lives among the indigenous and enslaved people here, and violence against LGBTQ Americans has disproportionately affected people of color in New Orleans and around the country. “300 Years of Diversity” is an insult to those who resisted this oppression.

We are organizing to continue the struggle against homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and racism present in New Orleans. All working class LGBTQ people are welcome to join us in making sure our voices are heard and the original spirit of Pride is honored in this city. For more information on this new Pride Committee, contact us at: queerworkersnola@gmail.com.

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Stonewall: A Turning Point in LGBTQ Struggle

On June 28, 1969, a battle broke out.

The police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York, and the queer and trans people there and in the neighborhood fought back. The raid began as many others had, with the police separating people in the bar, focusing their abuse on those who least conformed to their ideas of gender. The resistance was immediate, but as the night continued it grew.

At the height of the resistance, the police had to barricade themselves inside the bar they had come to raid, taking a hostage and trying to turn a fire-hose on the crowd. The crowd responded with bricks and fire until more cops arrived. By the second day of the battle, the LGBTQ people of New York were joined by allies, including local political and anti-war organizers, and groups of trans and queer people fought police in the streets. Days of tension followed, until a third and final day of violence brought an end to the Stonewall Riots.

For decades, LGBTQ struggle in the United States had been building, but Stonewall served as a turning point and the birth of new movements. Inspired by working class and anti-colonial struggles around the world (especially Vietnam, China, and Algeria) and the civil rights struggle in the United States, the LGBTQ community in America formed the Gay Liberation Front within a week of Stonewall. The modern gay rights struggle was born in opposition to the most violent oppression.

POLICE RAIDS
The police raids at Stonewall were not unique. Being gay was a crime in almost every state, and in most places anyone caught wearing less than three pieces of clothing that “matched” the gender they were assigned at birth could be arrested. In 1966, a similar riot broke out in California as black drag queens and trans women fought back against raids. Across the United States, LGBTQ people arrested in the raids of their bars (often the only safe spaces they had) were subjected to sexual assault, police brutality, and public humiliation as they were exposed by the local papers. Many lost their jobs and their families. Many lost their lives.

NEW ORLEANS CONNECTION
According to many accounts, a New Orleans-born woman, Storme Delarverie, threw the first punch at Stonewall. As the police dragged her away, she is reported to have called to the crowd to fight back. In other accounts, a “butch, black lesbian” unidentified by name not only threw the first punch, but fought her way back to the bar three times before being captured, inspiring the crowd to begin throwing bricks and trash at the police. A working class woman, Delarverie was known to others in the neighborhood as a protector of their streets.

WORKERS & OPPRESSED PEOPLE FIGHT BACK
Most of those who fought at Stonewall were not activists or community leaders at the time. They were working class queer and trans people, most of them black or LatinX. Many were homeless youth that lived nearby. They had been assaulted and harassed by the police. Future leaders in the LGBTQ struggle like Miss Major, Marsha P. Johnson, and Sylvia Rivera were all part of the fight.

It was a response not just to oppression of LGBTQ people, but to racist violence as well, as the people most targeted in the raids were the black and LatinX people.

PRIDE
Many radical queer and trans organizations were born in the wake of Stonewall. The GLF, Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and more formed. People around the country–and the world–were inspired to begin fighting back.

Militant actions were the heart of these early resistance organizations, and people of all ages, races, and genders were welcome in most. They were working class groups that fought not just homophobia and transphobia, but racism, imperialism, and capitalism.

Modern Pride celebrations, sponsored by corporations, overwhelmingly white, with police and military featured prominently in their parades, have strayed from the original spirit of queer resistance. As rights won in struggle are reversed by the courts and law-makers, there is an urgent need for LGBTQ resistance, inspired by the revolutionaries of Stonewall.

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The Next Five Targets for Take ‘Em Down NOLA

E.D. WHITE
As a Supreme Court Justice, White ruled with the majority in Plessy vs. Ferguson, legalizing the Jim Crow system. He was a member of the Crescent City White League, which murdered Black and white police officers in an attempted coup. He was a former Confederate soldier and segregationist.

ANDREW JACKSON
A genocidal, lying racist who owned 150 people as slaves, Andrew Jackson betrayed the enslaved people to whom he promised freedom after the Battle of New Orleans. He led military forces against the “Negro Fort” in Florida where 270 Black people were murdered in 1816. He authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which caused the ethnic cleansing and forced migration of 60,000 Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole and other indigenous nations.

MCDONOUGH
The famed plantation owner whose name is on many local schools, McDonough’s statue in Lafayette Square serves as a monument to a man who owned slaves, fought to protect slavery, and wrote that slavery was good for African people. The money he donated to public education created the first separate and unequal schools in New Orleans.

BIENVILLE
Credited with founding New Orleans, Bienville brought the first enslaved people to the city in 1708. He used enslaved and convict labor to build the settlement after it was established in 1718 and stole millions of acres of land from Choctaw, Chickasaw, Chitimatcha, Natchez and other indigenous nations for France. He expelled Jews from the colony and restricted the rights and freedom of African people in Louisiana through the Code Noir colonial laws.

HENRY CLAY
A statue of South Carolina slave-owner Henry Clay stands in Lafayette Square, honoring a man who was responsible for the Missouri Compromise that upheld slavery until the Civil War.

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Peoples’ Assembly Women’s Dinner Wednesdays

The New Orleans Peoples Assembly Organizing Committee meets every Wednesday. The first Wednesday of every month is dedicated to our monthly Women’s Dinner Wednesday. On Women’s Dinner Wednesday, we gather as working class women to connect, build in strength, and become informed about the specific systems that affect our lives most, and how to overcome oppression that hinders and harms our abilities to be healthy and whole. We are bold in the fact that we center working class women, which includes those impacted by homelessness.

During our first two meetings, we focused on the history of International Working Women’s day and what it means to us now, and also the “Work Week Ordinance” that the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee is advancing on behalf of the 88,000 hospitality workers and all other workers in the city. This is important because women make up such a large force of the working class, and the impact on our lives, children and families is straining and oppressive.

Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” This is why we call out to all working class women to join forces to organize on behalf of our collective liberation.

Contact us at:
Facebook.com/NewOrleansPeoplesAssemblyOrganizingCommittee/

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Residents of Gordon Plaza Fight Decades of Environmental Racism

RELOCATION IS THE ONLY OPTION

By Sanashihla

Around the world, people are dealing with the impacts of environmental injustice. Of course, Black and Brown communities deal with it more, because these are the communities most vulnerable to being targeted for oil and other corporate plants. What used to be known as the plantation, is now too often the corporate plant, which come with their toxicity.

Whether dealing with climate change, or blatant disregard for the earth and communities across the United States, we never have to go far to come up close and personal with environmental injustice.

Let us examine the daily experience of the residents of Gordon Plaza, who are entire community of predominately Black residents who were sold homes built on a TOXIC dump. Periodically, they have seen trash work its way up from the depths of the soil, up through their grass into their yards. Their soil was tested, and over 100 high level TOXINS were found.

What is the story of the residents of Gordon Plaza?
“Residents of Gordon Plaza, Inc. is a group of neighbors that purchased houses in good faith only to find out that our houses were constructed on top of hazardous waste. We are New Orleans families, African American, trapped in homes built on the Agriculture Street Dump, a former city waste dump that was designated a Superfund site for high levels of contamination, including hazardous waste that can cause cancer. We suffer and some have died from cancer. We want to relocate.

From 1967 through 1984, city land use decisions approved residential developments on the Agriculture Street Dump. These developments included the Gordon Plaza single-family homes where we currently live, the abandoned Press Park townhomes built by the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), and the abandoned Robert Moton Elementary School built by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB). The fact that homes and a school were built on the Agriculture Street Dump was not a concern for city officials. Families who bought homes in Gordon Plaza were never told that the land was a former city waste dump. Again, our families are predominantly African American.

Beginning in 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dug up, piled, and hauled off a portion of the contaminated soil on the Agriculture Street Landfill Superfund Site, while our families still lived in our homes. Public health and environmental experts criticized the EPA for jeopardizing the health of residents and failing to provide an effective and humane solution. Although the EPA detected 17 feet of highly contaminated soil, the agency removed only two feet. Today, at least 15 feet of the contaminated soil remains beneath homes, yards, streets, and other areas of the former Agriculture Street Dump.

There was a class-action lawsuit that ended with a $14.2 million settlement award in which the lawyers and a court-appointed administrator were paid $7.1 million, one-half of the settlement award. The remaining half was distributed among the 5,053 people represented in the lawsuit, resulting in an average pay-out of less than $2,000. With a few thousand dollars, the families living in Gordon Plaza cannot relocate from this toxic neighborhood. We cannot purchase new homes, nor can we sell our current homes for what our homes would be worth if we were not on a toxic Superfund Site.”
The city of New Orleans is responsible for giving permission to developers to build these homes on the Agriculture Street Landfill, and now take no responsibility. THIS is an inhumane environmental injustice, Black Lives Matter, lack of equity issue. The New Orleans Peoples Assembly organizing committee stands with the residents of Gordon Plaza in their call for complete relocation.

This is a Complete Injustice

We Stand with the Residents of Gordon Plaza

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Police Murders Continue Non-Stop. We Must Demand Justice.

By Gabriel Mangano

The police murders of working class and oppressed people continues without end, rising to 277 by early April.

Especially targeted are African Americans who are 31% of police murder victims but 60% of unarmed victims. In Brooklyn, 4 police shot Saheed Vassel, a mentally ill Jamaican immigrant, 10 times within 10 seconds of confronting him. He was holding only a showerhead and was known as harmless and helpful to people throughout his neighborhood. Demonstrators demanded justice and condemned the lack of mental health services.

In late March, police in Sacramento, CA shot Stephon Clark, a 22-year old father of two, 8 times in the side and back in his grandmother’s back yard. He was holding a cell phone. Thousands demonstrated against this murder blocking freeways and forcing the cancellation of two NBA games. And in Louisiana, right-wing state Attorney General Jeff Landry refused to indict the cop who murdered Alton Sterling. Even after a video shows Officer Salamoni telling Mr. Sterling that he would murder him if he moved, he was not jailed, just fired.

As of yet none of these murderers have been indicted.

In California, state legislators proposed a law that would change when lethal force can be used to “only when necessary” from “when reasonable”. All this will change, however, is the language the police will use to justify their killings.
Since the murder of Trayvon Martin, millions of people have demanded justice for these police and vigilante killings. And many reforms have been proposed and put into practice. However, all of these reforms are doomed to failure. For example, civilian review boards have been highly touted as a way to control brutal “bad apples”. Yet after years of struggle, the Newark, New Jersey civilian review board was effectively broken by a judge’s injunction restricting its subpoena and investigatory powers. Body cameras are another minimal solution that has proven unworkable as police routinely turn them off. As well, district attorneys often fail to indict, and juries rarely convict those who are indicted despite overwhelming graphic evidence of what would clearly be murder for anyone but a cop.

These reforms and other false cures cannot succeed because they are based on the lie that the police are here to serve and protect everyone equally. The role of the police is to serve and protect the ruling class, the owners and their property. And they can only do this by reigning terror on working class and minority communities. The rich know they stole their wealth from our labor, and they will use every means to keep us down.

While the revolutionary workers know that these reforms, although they may save a few lives, will not solve the problem of police terror and that the murder of working class men and women will continue unabated, we still fight for these reforms. Only in this way can we expose the rottenness of the capitalist system and the murderous thugs who help protect it. Only the overthrow of capitalism can finally end this plague on working and oppressed people.

Black mothers and babies die at more than double the rate of white mothers and babies.

Criminal racism, cuts to healthcare are to blame.

Black Lives Matter