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John McCain Was No Hero

HE WAS A WAR CRIMINAL and DEFENDER of WALL STREET

Vietnamese Children fleeing U.S. bombing with napalm. 8 bombs a minute were dropped. Did John McCain drop this bomb?

Just because you’re not the best friend of the other criminal, Donald Trump, doesn’t make you a hero.

Senator John McCain was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War— a war that took the lives of 3 million Vietnamese and 57,000 U.S. GI’s. The U.S. dropped 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It destroyed village after village. Many of the bombs dropped Agent Orange and napalm, chemical warfare that destroyed crops, forests, fields, rice paddies and tortured any human being hit by it. Decades after the bombing, Vietnamese and U.S. soldiers developed cancer and other illnesses from agent orange which took the Pentagon and U.S. government decades to admit.

McCain vigorously supported Bush’s war against Iraq and more recently backed the Saudi fascist government in their genocidal war on Yemen which both bombs and starves the people. Joining all presidents, Republican and Democrat, who do not view the lives of other people as important, McCain embraced every war waged by the US imperialist state. During his 2008 campaign for President, McCain sang the song “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.

Domestic Policy
The Children’s Defense Fund called McCain the worst Senator in Congress for children. Running against Obama in 2008, McCain promised to balance the budget by cutting social security, Medicare and Medicaid. He also supported spending billions on the profit-making domestic surveillance and homeland security. McCain was firmly against taxing big business. During 5 terms as Senator his record on labor rights, women, LGBTQ, racial equality, women’s rights and consumer rights was terrible.

And we cannot forget he chose Sarah Palin, a maniac far right racist as his vice-presidential running mate. Not that he ever made much of an attempt to conceal his own racism: this is a man who in 1983 voted against the establishment of MLK Day. The same man who in 2000 said, “I hate the g**ks… I will hate them as long as I live.”

McCain swayed in the political wind. At one point he supported a path for citizenship for immigrants. Then when running for President he endorsed the plan of the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association (giant ranchers on stolen land) to deploy armored tanks to the border and deprive immigrants of water in the desert. He accused immigrants of intentionally causing car crashes to collect money from insurance companies.

It’s understandable that the big business media would follow the script of this “great man” nonsense. But there is no excuse when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Socialist of America member and Democratic Party Primary winner for Congress from New York, chimes in: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.”

Clearly, the multi-millionaire McCain, whose father and grand-father were navy Admirals, lived a life of pandering to the rich, bombing other countries, and trying to destroy social programs. No great man, no hero, not even close.

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Gordon Plaza Residents Demand “Fully Funded Relocation Now!”

Support Gordon Plaza Residents in their Fight

By Sanashihla

On August 23 residents of Gordon Plaza and community supporters held a press conference in front of city hall to demand a meeting with Mayor Latoya Cantrell. At the press conference the residents put on display 15 jars full of toxic soil dug up from Gordon Plaza. On each jar was the name of a Gordon Plaza resident that has died from cancer. Residents have reached out to Cantrell through multiple channels, but have yet to receive a response.

The horrific environmental racism in New Orleans by publicly elected officials, and the legal system, leads to the increased demand for a fair and just relocation for the Residents of Gordon Plaza.

In 2018, the Residents of Gordon Plaza CURRENTLY live on some of the most toxic soil in all of the United States of America. They live on land that the federal government has designated as a Superfund site, with nearly 150 toxicities, many of which are cancer causing. It is egregious and shameful that at least 4 mayors and their administrations have allowed this issue to continue, as residents of New Orleans lose their lives, get diagnosed with illness, and suffer financially due to their homes no longer being worth even what they bought them for. The “Workers Voice” asked residents to share their stories. Here is part of the struggle of one of the residents:

“My name is Jessie Perkins. I became a homeowner in a Gordon Plaza sub division on top of landfill in March 1988. I lived 7 blocks away in the Desire housing project, and I thought I had an opportunity to move my mother out of the housing project and put her in a home that she can call her own, a safe clean environment. I found out shortly after moving in, a year or two, of exactly what I got myself into and I thought to myself this was supposed to be my American dream, but like all of us, in Gordon Plaza, our American dream turned into a nightmare.

“Also, as an employee of New Orleans sewerage water broad, I had the first hand opportunity to see during the excavations, the nasty stuff that was down under the surface. It was mind blowing! I was like what is this stuff? It was stuff that you can’t even identify with bottles, broken glass, car fenders. The ground was even smoldering in some cases, and I knew it wasn’t good.

“Eventually we learned that the land fill that I used to play on as a child, when I left home my mother didn’t know where I was going. I thought it was just a landfill okay? As a kid playing on it, I had no clue whatsoever that I was playing on top of the landfill that contain over about 149 contaminants that was cancer causing, carcinogens, okay, some pretty nasty stuff.

“Me being the type of person that I am, an avid runner, I try to eat well, I take care of myself. I became very concerned about what the stuff was, the impact that it could have on not only my health, but the health of my mother, my neighbors, my family that visited often. It became a really big concern of mine. It was at that point we knew that we were in trouble, but what could we do?

“We went forward with our lawsuit, thinking that we had people that was going to act in our best interest, and maybe in the beginning that’s what supposed to have happened, but things didn’t turn out very good. We won the law suit. However, the compensation we received was literally a slap in a face. It was something you could do nothing with, so I really feel what the city did was exploitation of people of my community. Essentially what they did was they hid behind the laws so they legally knew we won this lawsuit claiming diplomatic immunity, okay, so they legally knew we won. We won this lawsuit but morally, physically, and economically, they didn’t stand up and do the right thing so here we are stuck with this thing.”

This is a horrific case of environmental racism in New Orleans! So here is what YOU can do to support the Residents of Gordon Plaza in their demand for a fair and just relocation:

  • Join the FIGHT for a fair and just relocation for the residents of Gordon Plaza. Call Mayor LaToya Cantrell at (504) 658-4900 OR (504) 658-4945 to demand a fair and just relocation for the residents of Gordon Plaza E-mail Mayor LaToya Cantrell at mayor@nola.gov to demand a fair and just relocation for the residents of Gordon Plaza.
  • Follow The New Orleans Peoples Assembly Phase 2 on social media to stay up to date on actions pertaining to this issue.
  • Join the Residents of Gordon Plaza on Sunday, September 9th at 3:00pm for a Healing Circle in Congo Square to do at least three things: honor the lives lost due to toxicity at Gordon Plaza, support the residents in their demand for a fair and just relocation, and learn about the organizing efforts to fight for this issue to be resolved. Get actively involved!

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Katrina Anniversary: “If I Knew Then What I Know Now”

By Sally Jane Black

If I knew then what I know now…

Hurricane Katrina, the failure of the levees, the subsequent violence, negligence, and opportunism, all look different through class conscious eyes. What once looked like incompetence now looks like predation. What once looked like mistakes now look like intentional actions. What once looked like a lack of resources now is understood to have been an intentional allocation because of callous disregard for working class people. What once looked like racist bias now looks like white supremacist propaganda.

Seeing history repeat itself in Puerto Rico (most notably) only verifies the intentional nature of the “disaster capitalism” that comes after these storms. It’s a misleading phrase–this is just normal capitalism. It’s white supremacist. It’s patriarchal. the vast majority of the people affected by the storm were black, but the recovery money mostly came back to white neighborhoods. The media called black people looters and white people concerned parents. The police murdered and covered up the deaths of black residents. The disproportionate denial of resources to cis women, queer, and trans people led to disproportionate obstacles for us after the storm–many of them fatal. It’s capitalist. The working class bears the brunt of the exploitation and negligence.

Since the storm, everything has changed. The landlords and other parasites have raised housing prices alarmingly. The jobs are paying the same or barely more than they were 13 years ago. There are still people who yearn to come home but can’t; there are still 800 people without names, buried anonymously. Stories like the charity hospital being abandoned, despite being perfectly functional, in favor of an expensive new hospital that displaced hundreds of black residents are not uncommon. This has happened many times over.

13 years ago today, the vultures began circling. They have taken away everything they can from the working class people of New Orleans. They are attempting to make a playground for rich tourists, ignoring the fact that as they price the working class out, there will be no one to serve them. They have changed the landscape of the city, and while they would have been trying some version of this anyway, their callous disregard for the working class opened the door to this.

Meanwhile, the united states continues to fight wars around the world and spend trillions on weapons while levees, schools, and hospitals remain underfunded. The united states was at war in Afghanistan 13 years ago, too. The united states was occupying Iraq back then, too. In New Orleans, we’re still holding our breath every time a storm enters the Gulf.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have somehow been angrier, but I would have understood who was responsible, why no one was helping, why the pumps didn’t work and the levees failed, why the police committed murder instead of rescues, why charity was closed, why Gretna barred its doors, why the media seemed to demonize working class (especially black) New Orleanians, why it happened the way it happened. If I knew then what I know now, I would have known about who was fighting it, too. If I had known then what I know now, I would have still felt lost, trapped, grief-stricken, confused, but I would have known, too, that the source of our pain was not incompetence. I would have known who the enemy was, and I would have known I could fight. We can fight

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Disaster Capitalism Keeps Puerto Rico Suffering

By Marie Torres

When we read mainstream bourgeois media, it is easy to feel that there is heartache after heartache. What we see are the patterns in the way that the rich ruling class moves through the world — how the rich profit off of the suffering of the working class, and how the rich profit off of disasters. Borinquen (Puerto Rico) after hurricane Maria is looking a lot like New Orleans after Katrina. Thousands are left without necessities and are dying while wealthy corporations are vultures waiting to feast. A little over 6 months since the storm, people on the island are still without electricity or proper roofing, The U.S.-imposed government is closing schools and has begun privatization (charter schools). Jobs are few.

The island is a U.S. colony that pays U.S. taxes, follows U.S. law, and every Boricua is technically a U.S. citizen. Between 1990 and 2009, when it went into severe economic crisis, the island paid $73 billion in taxes– more than several U.S. states. Additionally, Congress passed the Promesa Act under the Obama Administration that aims to force Boricuas to pay an illegitimate debt of $74 billion. As you can see, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are equally responsible for this mess. Boricuas can’t vote for the president and have no congressional representation, but they can die fighting in U.S. wars.

The history of the U.S. government’s treatment of Boricuas is not pretty. Like in New Orleans, the richest get tax breaks and are free to conduct their business for massive profit by exploiting workers. Wealthy (white) stateside businesses treat the island like a corporate playground, leaving scraps for the natives.

Hurricane Maria hit on September 20 2017, and it was the worst storm in over 100 years. The storm passed through the entirety of the island and left utter destruction behind. Maria caused the second-worst blackout recorded in world history. Many were left without clean water, food, medicine or gasoline. Government negligence has killed over 1,000 Boricuas not far off from the devastating number of 1,800 in New Orleans from Katrina. Since Maria, there have been extreme increases in deaths from diseases such as sepsis, pneumonia, emphysema and diabetes. Many of these deaths were preventable if food, clean water, electricity and medicine were available and if hospitals were fully functioning.

Like during Katrina, the government increased military occupation of the island and brokered deals for private corporations to profit off of disaster. The president visited only to bring up how the island’s debt was screwing up the U.S. budget. The government gave a Montana electricity company, WhiteFish Energy Holdings, a company that had only one truck, a $300 million contract. On April 18th, the island went into another complete blackout. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been as disappointing as it was from Katrina.– a hideously delayed response, FEMA employees are seen partying in San Juan casinos while Boricuas die in the mountains, and large shipments of supplies are not distributed to those who need it most. All the while, ads call for white tourists to swarm the island’s beaches and buy up real estate from right under poor Boricuas.

The impact on the Boricua’s mind and spirit has been heartbreaking. A forgotten people abandoned by the white supremacist U.S. government during their highest time of need, Boricuas are suffering from the daily struggle of living in 90-degree temperatures without electricity, clean water, enough food and with death all around. The suicide rate has spiked 30% since the storm. Since January, there have been over 3,000 calls of suicide attempts to the Puerto Rican crisis hotline, a 246% increase from last year. This is a tragedy that those who survived Katrina know well: following the 2005 storm, mental illness rates more than doubled, with disease rates increasing as well. However, to the rich ruling class, depression of poor and working-class people is of no concern.

Huge waves of Boricuas were forced to leave their homeland since 2009, and again after the storm, with those left behind facing a blow to the children. The government has proposed shutting 283 schools. The plan of the rich is to impose charter schools and private school vouchers and we know what that means–issues of transportation, special needs students, and limited access to quality education for working class and poor families.

However, Boricuas are fighting back. The Puerto Rico Teachers Association (Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico) composed of 30,000 teachers, has filed a lawsuit against a bill to implement a charter schools program and offer private school vouchers to 3 percent of students starting in 2019-2020. Teachers, students and parents throughout the island are demonstrating, calling for public education funds to be used for children, not to profit private companies!

On May Day, Boricuas took to the streets in mass to protest austerity measures. They were met with heavily militarized police (U.S. trained), were tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets and arrested without warrants. We must stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Borinquen. This attack on Latinxs’ poor and working-class people is unacceptable, and we cannot take it sitting down. The time for the people to unite to fight back against the rich ruling class is long overdue. As many Boricuas say, “Pa’lante por siempre!” (Always forward!)

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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!
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Community Solidarity Makes the Difference Rodneka Shelbia – Stood Up to Police Abuse

By Antranette Scott

I first met Rodneka Shelbia over a year ago at the Peoples’ Assembly Community Sing as she shared her song ‘Thankful’ with the group. As her voice rose, her hands clapped, and she expressed that every moment is something to be grateful for, I found myself nodding in agreement. Then she shared her story with us.

For coming to the aid of a young woman and infant who were being abused by an NOPD officer in the name of an unwarranted arrest, Rodneka was falsely accused of battery on a cop and resisting arrest. In her pleas with the cop to “be human”, Rodneka stood firm in her unwillingness to be desensitized to police brutality and injustice. Rodneka knew that she needed support and solidarity but was unsure of where to turn to for it. After the Sing, I introduced myself to Rodneka and invited her to the People’s Assembly weekly organizing meeting. I knew that the Peoples’ Assembly could offer on the ground support, magnify her story to our working-class community, and most importantly, provide comradeship and solidarity. When Rodneka joined the PA, the motion to stand with Rodneka’s fight for justice was overwhelming. With many other justice organizers, we created social media outreach for her upcoming court dates, formed community coalitions to get folks to fill the court room, and a variety of other tasks to get Rodneka’s story out to the working-class community.

We stood with Rodneka through a yearlong struggle of 12 court date postponements, subpoenas being served back and forth, change of legal representation, and a myriad of other obstacles. Rodneka was just as much a pillar of strength for the PA as we were for her. It was a symbiotic relationship that affirmed that only through collective strength is our liberation guaranteed. A few weeks ago, Rodneka closed that chapter of her life a free woman who has now welcomed her warrior daughter Iamme into this world, and I gained a beloved comrade and sister heart friend.

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Take ‘Em Down NOLA Takes on Mayor Cantrell’s Backwards Ways

By A Scribe Called Quess

After Take ‘Em Down NOLA’s groundbreaking summit last March, welcoming Take Em Down organizers from around the country and ending in the disruption of Mayor Landrieu’s book signing, the coalition celebrates the one-year anniversary of forcing the city to remove four monuments to white supremacy by continuing to charge unapologetically forward. This time, TEDN’s sights are set on mayor Latoya Cantrell. TEDN recently issued a letter and held a press conference calling Cantrell out for her latest flubs regarding white supremacist monuments.

It’s not the new mayor’s first time being on the wrong side of this issue. During the infamous monument hearings of 2015, the former City Councilwoman earned the nickname Latoya “Cant Tell” for refusing to pick a side as pro or anti-monument removal. She recently revisited her compromised stance by allowing leaders of the pro-monument movement to set up a committee to determine what to do with the four monuments removed last year. That committee included renowned racist Tulane professor Richard Marksbury, bigoted Monumental Task Committee president Pierre McGraw, and multi-millionaire Frank Stewart, who publicly faced off with Mitch Landrieu over the former mayor’s attempt to remove monuments.

TEDN’s letter informed mayor Cantrell that “we are very disappointed and angry that [she] would set up a secret working group to discuss the fate of these monuments, not meet in public.” On May 16, TEDN cofounder Malcolm Suber stated that “we are calling on Mayor Cantrell to get rid of that committee and to have a public forum where she discusses with the public what are her plans not only towards the removed statues, but what is her attitude toward our ordinance that mandates that the rest of these white supremacy monuments be removed from our city.”

Cantrell’s enlistment of these men to make decisions about the future of this city is reminiscent of the Yankee government that squashed the progress of Reconstruction after the Civil War by compromising with racist white militias that carried on the legacy of the Confederacy. By removing federal troops from the South in 1877, the US government allowed groups like the KKK to rise as monuments to white supremacy went up all over the South. Likewise, Cantrell has chosen to compromise with the present day losing defenders of white supremacy. And their ideas promise harm for the city’s future like their ancestors’ did for the city’s past. They proposed to put Robert E. Lee up in Greenwood Cemetery and make that place a landmark for Confederacy defenders nationwide. This would only turn New Orleans into a hub for the lowlife types that swarmed Charlottesville in August of last year, leaving Heather Heyer dead under the wheels of a racist’s car.

TEDN’s next step this summer to push the ordinance to remove all signs, symbols and statues to white supremacy will be a large public forum. Community members will be informed and speak their piece on next steps around dealing with the already removed monuments as well as the remaining symbols. Mayor Cantrell and other community politicians will be invited to this forum and thereby be forced to pick a side in the fight for racial and economic justice as opposed to hiding in back rooms making deals with the oppressive ruling class.

Take ‘Em Down NOLA invites everyone to come out and be heard and take a stance against the symbols that represent the system that continues to oppress working class Black, brown and white poor people in the city. If Cant Tell—ahem, Cantrell’s actions show nothing else, they show that she, like so many New Orleans mayors before her, will bow down to the money system of the ruling class rich white elite unless we the people force her to do otherwise. Take ‘Em Down NOLA encourages you to come out, be heard, and take part in shaping the future of this city to be free from the chains of its past.

Take Em Down NOLA’s next moves: Take Em Down NOLA Zine is looking for experienced educators, writers and copy editors interested in contributing to our first Zine. Email us at info@ takeemdownnola.org for more info.

In June, TEDN will hold a public forum to speak on the remaining monuments and our ordinance to remove ALL remaining symbols to white supremacy.

TEDN continues to support its comrades in other cities and states making major moves against white supremacy. To that end, shout out Take Em Down JAX, who completed 40- mile march against white supremacy in May. This is the largest march against white supremacy by a Take Em Down coalition and we are hugely inspired by their efforts!

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Jefferson Parish Residents Demand Justice for Black Youth Choked to Death

By Malcolm Suber

Hundreds of Jefferson Parish residents have poured into the streets demanding justice for 22-year old Keeven Robinson, who was choked to death by 4 Jefferson Parish Sheriff Office (JPSO) narcotics agents on May 10. Keeven Robinson died after he fled from detectives at a Shell gas station in the Shrewsbury neighborhood of unincorporated Jefferson Parish. At some point the four detectives caught up with him, choked him, put him in handcuffs, and he wound up dead. None of the detectives were wearing body cameras, so one can only  surmise what happened when the detectives caught up with him.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto immediately began an attempt to create a cover for his detectives by claiming that Keeven Robinson had asthma and that his death was probably due to his breathing problems and not any thing such as choking that his detectives had done in apprehending Robinson. The family and the Black community were in no mood to accept this rationale given the brutal history of JPSO deputies and the almost daily killing of Black victims by the police forces of the USA. Family and friends immediately organized a rally and vigil on Robinson’s block and demanded an independent investigation. This action forced the Jefferson Parish coroner to issue his findings on the cause of death. He ruled that Keeven Robinson’s death was a homicide caused as result of asphyxiation. In other words, he was choked to death, just as Eric Garner was. Reformist organizations such as the NAACP have been active in their role of containing the spontaneous resistance. They are advising the masses to be patient and let the so-called wheels of justice prevail. But the masses recognize that only militant struggle will get any measure of justice for Keeven Robinson. They have witnessed time and again cops being indicted, tried for murder, but still get off.

We in the New Orleans Workers Group urge on resistance to police murders while we also try to spread the understanding that these police murders of Black victims is part of capitalist rule. The police serve the rich exclusively and  attempt to keep the rest of us in our place. The entire justice system, including the  police, is organized to protect the state apparatus that serves the ruling class  alone. This scourge will only be ended when the workers organize a fight against the capitalist oppressors, become the rulers and control a state apparatus that will serve exclusively the interest of working people.

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Rock ‘N Bowl Hosts White Supremacists

Rock ‘N Bowl, a bowling alley on Carrollton Avenue, will be hosting a fundraiser for the Monumental Task Committee and the Beauregard Monument Association this January. These two organizations have for years been at the forefront of defending the city’s white supremacist monuments. They openly glorify figures like P. G. T. Beauregard or Robert E. Lee, who fought to defend the South’s brutal plantation slavery regime. The Monumental Task Committee openly brags on its website that it’s polished the Henry Clay and Jefferson Davis monuments. It can’t be easy for them to defend against the accusation of being white supremacists while they’re so busy licking slave-owners’ boots.

Rock ‘N Bowl is donating its parking, lunch, bowling, and bar funds to these organizations. This isn’t the first time either—Rock ‘N Bowl organized a fundraiser in March of last year for the same cause. The mask is off, this mom and pop shop is complicit in these organizations’ white supremacy.

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Blood in the Cane Fields: An Interview with Chris Dier

By Gregory William

Chris Dier was born and raised in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. He was displaced by Katrina, but returned home in 2010. Like his mother, he is a history teacher at Chalmette High School, and author of a new book, Blood in the Cane Fields: The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre.

W.V.: What was the St. Bernard Parish Massacre?

Chris Dier: In St. Bernard Parish there was a massacre in 1868, right after the Civil War. Following the war, many black males had gained the right to vote and that threatened the economic relations of these parishes, where white supremacy ruled the land. Around New Orleans, there were sugar-producing regions where black people were the majority, and had been locked into slavery. When they were emancipated and gained voting rights, many voted for the Republican Party, which in that time had sided with liberation. This threatened the white political and economic elite. That elite pushed the narrative that all the problems after the Civil War were caused by the freed people and a lot of poor whites bought into it…1868 was the first presidential election after the war. The Republican candidate was Union veteran, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Democratic candidate was Horatio Seymour, an opponent of Reconstruction and rights for African Americans…Days before the election, armed white groups, many poor planters – not the elites themselves, who had been stoking the fire – carried out one of the most violent episodes of the Reconstruction era in Louisiana. These groups went from plantation to plantation and executed up to 135 people in the streets.

W.V.: So this was a reaction to Reconstruction, which was coming down from the federal level, but did you also uncover information about what freed people were doing in the region at a grassroots level to secure their rights?

Chris Dier: Yes. The first Republican meeting in St. Bernard was a group of freed people coming together. They had their own processions and meetings. There were a lot of grassroots efforts in Louisiana. Interestingly, 19 years after the massacre, in 1887, black and white St. Bernardians marched in unison against the planter elite. That unity is terrifying to the rich…The idea of race had to be strongly imposed over the centuries, going back to the 13 colonies, where there were many instances of poor whites joining in struggle with enslaved people… During the labor movement in New Orleans, blacks and whites came together in 1892 and 1907 along the Mississippi River fighting for their common rights, and this is what brought about some of the harshest reactions from the rich…There are many lessons in this history for the struggle now.

W.V.: How have your students responded to this research?

Chris Dier: My students have been very eager to explore this event. Many see their last names in the book. Some of the last names of perpetrators as well as victims are those of students sitting in the same classroom today. This is their history and most knew nothing about it…It is so important for young people to learn about history, because they are the ones who are going to carry struggle forward.