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City Budget Ignores Youth, We Must Fight for Youth Services Not Jails

63% of City Budget goes to cops and jails, only 3% to children and families.

By Malcolm Suber

New Orleans mayor Latoya Cantrell and arch-racist DA Leon Cannizzaro have teamed up to announce yet another scheme to supposedly curb an uptick in crimes committed by youth, especially young Black men. They are using sensational reports of youth crimes to call for more funds for the NOPD, more police patrols and more police contact with our youth (meaning more unwarranted stops and searches).They are also calling for stepped up enforcement of the citywide youth curfew.

The mayor and DA paint a picture of Black youth as predators in need of rounding up and locking away from the majority of law-abiding residents; so they call for an expansion of the juvenile lock-up as well as the trying of more juveniles as adults.

We workers should not be taken in by this ruling class propaganda. Youth crime is tied to the lack of gainful employment opportunities and lack of recreational and cultural programs that provide youth with positive things to do in their non-school hours. Why don’t the Mayor and DA address the root cause of juvenile crime instead of offering a band-aid on the cancerous conditions which exist for New Orleans youth? The working class community is rightly frustrated by the almost nightly barrage of reported criminal activity by alienated youth. But the Mayor and DA are only playing to this frustration in order to get the public to consent to their plan to lock up more youth. These youth in many cases are lashing out against the rich white ruling class and their politicians who have written them off as nothing more than a public nuisance.

Where is the money for more programming at our recreational centers? Where is the money for hiring full-time coaches? Where is the money for counselors and for youth employment? Rather than ‘disrupting’ the pipeline to prison, the Mayor and DA are actually facilitating the mass incarceration of our youth. They would rather spend more money on surveillance cameras and give fat contracts to their friends to monitor ankle bracelets on the growing number of youth arrested by the NOPD.

“What we are seeing and the rhetoric we are hearing from the political elites is because the system continues to fail our communities. We do a great job of holding vulnerable youth and parents accountable, but who will hold the system accountable? WE WILL THAT’S WHO!”
— Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC)

Even though the capitalist media claims the USA economy is robust and nearing full employment, Black youth unemployment is nearly 50%. Many of their parents and guardians are forced to work two jobs and the youth are left to raise themselves. By allowing these conditions to fester, we show that we are not really concerned about saving these youth from the path to enslavement in the USA prison system.

Our task is to help our youth build a movement that champions their demands for a quality of life that gives them the freedom to explore their revolutionary history of struggle for Black liberation. This movement will train our youth to avoid the modern day slave catchers and give real meaning to being woke and the understanding that Black Lives Do Matter.

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Peoples’ Assembly Continues Fight Against Mass Incarceration City Budget

By Sanashihla

Elected officials who have control over public tax dollars compromise with white supremacists and owners of major corporations who operate with capitalistic greed and a desire to maintain a white power structure.

After $7.5 billion dollars in wealth was generated for the year by tourism, the city of New Orleans should not have the extreme levels of poverty and disparities that exist here. Yet poverty is pervasive, even though many of the people living in poverty are folk who get up and GO TO WORK every single day.

The newly elected mayor, LaToya Cantrell, who is Black and the first woman to be mayor in the 300-year history of a colonized New Orleans, said “New Orleans is a city with two truths — the first is one filled with promise, while the second is one filled with crime.” Let’s take a moment to get clear what these crimes are.

New Orleans has a $647 million dollar budget, and 63% of it goes towards cops and jails that have shown NO evidence of making our city any safer. This demonstrates that the city’s primary existence is to feed mass incarceration, to exploit the labor of prisoners, fill the pockets of privatized prison owners and build the wealth of the rich ruling class on the backs of “free” working class people. Yet how free are working class people really?

Nearly 50% of children live in poverty, and only 3% of the New Orleans city budget is dedicated to children and families. This right here is a crime. A 3% investment is NOT the way to ensure New Orleans children have a fair start in life. Therefore, if such a LOW amount of money is invested into the lives of families and children, then clearly in a predominantly Black city, made up of predominantly Black families with predominately Black children the elected officials of New Orleans do not care about the overall well-being of Black families or Black children.

In New Orleans, nearly 50% of Black males are unemployed. So, to invest only 1% of the entire city budget on job development is also criminal. Investment in job development through a public jobs program that pays a living wage and provides quality “on the job” paid training would be a way to ensure residents are working and able to care for themselves and their families, in healthy, proactive, productive ways.

The city cries poor, saying that the $647 million-dollar budget is not enough to do all that is needed in the city. But does not redirect the 63% of the budget that is invested into cops and jails.

The city GIVES at least $140 million tax-dollars dollars directly to the biggest tourism corporations each year, bypassing the city budget. Rather than invest this money into the needs of the people, the city of New Orleans rings every tax dollar out of working class people and does not invest that money back into the working class. The city also refuses to pass/push/or demand an ordinance for a living wage for the same working-class people of New Orleans who keep the city running. The city should take back the $140 million into the city budget to serve the people who serve this city best. For New Orleans to make the kind of progress that it needs (symbolically & systemically), there must be:

  • no more compromises with white supremacy!
  • no more compromises with oppression!
  • no more compromises with economic exploitation!
  • We must DEMAND that elected officials stop using OUR money and OUR resources to keep the white power structure in place. 
  • We must DEMAND that our tax dollars be used to invest in children, families and job development. 
  • EVERY time the city allocates resources, we must remember, those resources are ours. 
  • Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance!