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Spend Money on Youth, Not New NOPD Headquarters

By LaVonna Varnado-Brown

The NOPD is pushing the city council for a new headquarters that would cost taxpayers $37 million. With the budget already choked, Mayor Cantrell names her top four priorities as: “Public Safety as a Matter of Public Health, Infrastructure, Economic Development, and Quality of Life Initiatives”. Claiming public health and safety as a top priority is pure hypocrisy, given the fact that Cantrell still has not drawn up an actionable plan to provide the residents of Gordon Plaza with a fully funded relocation. The police building located at 715 S Broad Avenue is old, but at least it’s not lethal.

In the Upper Ninth Ward, residents of Gordon Plaza live amidst toxic carcinogens as they fight for a fully funded relocation that is long overdue. For nearly three decades, residents have continued to file lawsuits and demand that elected officials be held accountable for selling them property on a toxic waste landfill. And to think that the NOPD, which regularly terrorizes black and brown people in the streets, is demanding that the city fund new headquarters! “We know we need a new building, and we need it fast,” said NOPD Deputy Superintendent Christopher Goodly in a budget meeting with city planning officials. “It’s basically time to consider looking at a new headquarters instead of spending the resources to repair a dilapidated building.”

The new building would have to be built on an alternate site so that the current headquarters can continue to operate during construction. Construction will likely cost an average of $350 per square foot. The money for the new headquarters is stolen money. This money belongs to the workers, who generate the revenue for the city budget. Currently, 63% of the budget goes towards cops, jails and reactive programs, while only 3% is invested in children and families and 1% in job development. We cannot stand by and watch those in power continue to repress workers and people of color. No more fully funded luxury office buildings while hospitality workers fight for a living wage!

No more high-tech police facilities while working parents drown in debt over childcare and transportation! The city of New Orleans belongs to us, the workers. We need affordable healthcare, childcare, and reliable public transport. Not a new police building!

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Abolish the Death Penalty

Do Not Let the Rich Control Who Lives and Who Dies!

On July 25, 2019, the U.S. “Justice” Department reinstated the federal death penalty after a 16 year break. This comes at a time when people are being held without trial in concentration camps, states are trying to make abortion and miscarriage a capital crime, the government is criminalizing protest, and workers’ rights are being stripped away one by one.

Under the capitalist state, the death penalty is a weapon against the working class. The rich should not be deciding who lives and dies.

The United States has nearly 3,000 people on death row. Most of them are working class whites and working class people of color (41% of death row inmates are Black, while only 13% of the population of the U.S. is Black). Many of them are women who stood up for themselves against abusers, many are disabled. Some of them were sentenced as children. Since 1973, 144 have been found to be innocent.

The U.S. capitalist class uses the death penalty not for justice, not to make communities safer, not to prevent serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles from preying on us, but to terrorize the working class. The death penalty is used selectively. The rich and powerful never suffer the consequences of their actions, and those who hurt the poor and oppressed often get away with it. This benefits the ruling class by keeping us controlled by fear, divided against one another, and allowing the ruling class to get rid of those that oppose them.

The deaths of migrants in concentration camps go unpunished. Police murder black people with impunity. Trans women of color are being murdered and almost none of their killers have been caught. Gay panic and trans panic laws are legal in 45 states. Stand Your Ground laws don’t seem to apply to women defending themselves against abusers. Banks, bosses, and landlords take peoples’ homes, and medical and insurance companies deny poor patients life-saving drugs and procedures. Corporations murder thousands through the destruction of the environment, creating cancer-causing zones like in Gordon Plaza, where 54 Black households are still fighting for relocation. And the U.S. military is destroying whole nations around the world. There is little accountability for those who prey on or divide the working class.

The announcement that the four people chosen to be executed are child murderers is a distraction from the true intent of this policy reversal. They want to be able to deflect criticism of the death penalty by claiming that its opponents support child murder or other horrible actions. This is cruel exploitation of terrible circumstances to justify the use of capital punishment and misdirect from the truth: this is an act of terror against the working class.

We must stand up against their continued war on the working class and the control of the death penalty by the rich. This will be used against innocent people. This will be used against those who organize for liberation. This will be used against immigrants, the homeless, the mentally ill, and others who the current U.S. capitalist regime is targeting. This is part of their preparation for the inevitable economic crisis that will hurt millions of workers and the fascist policies they will enact in its wake. They fear our power, and they want to be able to protect their wealth and power at any cost.

The capitalists cannot have this weapon. We must stand up against it and demand it be abolished.