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Worker Correspondence

By M.M.

I am a hospitality worker, one of over 88,000 in New Orleans, the seventh most popular tourist destination in the world. The New Orleans economy relies overwhelmingly on restaurants and hotels. Hospitality workers generate $7 billion a year, yet we don’t receive a living wage, we receive no sick pay, no vacations, no affordable childcare, no maternity leave, no job security, no pensions, and no protection for immigrant workers. Many of us can’t afford the rising rents. We wait hours for buses, and if we do have a car there’s no safe, free or affordable parking. We are subject to unpredictable scheduling and hours. And we receive no protection from racism, sexual harassment, or other forms of discrimination.

My last job was at a crawfish and catering restaurant in mid city. When I was hired, I was particularly excited because the owner said they would train me as a cook. Escaping the customers and the sexual harassment that often comes with them sounded great. Unfortunately, sexual harassment is just as common in the back of house. Workers are expected to brush off sexual harassment; owners, management, and male co-workers alike claim that’s just the way restaurant kitchens are. Despite this normalization when a co-worker touched me inappropriately several times during my time working there, I slapped him and kicked him out of the kitchen. We deserve better protection from sexual harassment in our work environments.

I would start sweating the moment I entered the kitchen, which reached temperatures as high as 110 degrees. The kitchen staff was expected to cook for everyone in the restaurant, while also preparing pans of jambalaya, red beans, and other local cuisine for catering orders. The owners would often tell us to prepare dishes that were not on the menu for catering events, throwing kitchen workers into a frenzy to prepare unknown recipes, while also in the middle of a dinner rush.

The owners claimed kitchen staff would get tipped out for preparing catering dishes, but we rarely saw those tips. They hired part-time or occasional workers to send on catering jobs; these employees made $10 an hour plus tips. I asked for full time catering work; however, the owners claimed they needed me to stay in the kitchen. They promised I’d get a raise if I stayed. Two weeks later, everyone in the kitchen including me got a pay decrease to $6 an hour. After the pay decrease, our workload grew; they added more and more catering jobs overwhelming the kitchen staff during our busy crawfish season in the restaurant. This kind of exploitative labor must be eradicated. That’s why I joined the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee! We are working to unite all hospitality workers and fight for our rights. Give your support and join the fight!

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New Orleans Disgrace: Statue Venerates Andrew Jackson, Slaveholder and Mass Murderer of Native Americans


On March 15, 2017, Trump laid a wreath on an Andrew Jackson monument in Nashville, giving a ten-minute speech in which he declared himself a “big fan“ of Jackson. Previously, he had hung a portrait of Jackson, his “hero“, in the Oval Office.

Ten Reasons to Tear Down the Jackson Statue:

1. Using his position as a colonel in the Tennessee militia, Jackson seized land by force from poor farmers to benefit slave holding plantation owners. He personally acquired over 640 acres and set up the Hermitage Plantation and owned over 300 slaves.

2. Jackson acquired land reserved for Cherokee and Chickasaw, in violation of law, to found Memphis Tennessee.

3. Jackson whipped slaves and sent troops out to capture runaway slaves.

4. To acquire more land for slave owners, Jackson stole land from Indian nations across the Southeast. As President, Jackson enacted the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Although the Supreme Court ruled against this policy, Jackson defied the court and ordered the removal.

5. Jackson represented the slave states that voted to enact the removal policy. The southern state governments destroyed Indigenous governments, banned assemblies, denied Indians the right to sue or testify in court, or dig gold on their own land.

6. Jackson drove 17,000 Cherokees from their farms and force-marched them to Oklahoma in winter, which came to be known as the Trail of Tears.

7. Jackson’s Trail of Tears caused the death of 8,000 Cherokee and Chickasaw and 4,000 Choctaws. They died from brutality, hunger, exposure, and disease in prison camps.

8. In 1816 Jackson ordered the horrific massacre of 330 free Blacks, men women and children at “Fort Negro” in Florida. This was a thriving farming/herding community of free Blacks. Jackson wrote “it ought to be blown up…destroy it and return the stolen negroes to their owners.”

9. While in the military, Jackson invaded Florida in 1818. He carried out wars against the Seminole, Creek and Muscogee Indians. Jackson’s purpose was to acquire Florida for slave owners and prevent runaway slaves from joining the Seminoles. Jackson burned the homes and crops of the Seminole and others.

10. Jackson was opposed to treaties calling them “an absurdity” and said, “the government should simply impose its will on them.”

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Notes on Louisiana: The Colfax Massacre

By Malcolm Suber

One of the bloodiest incidents in the struggle of the newly freed African people in Louisiana occurred in Colfax, LA (Grant Parish) on Easter Sunday, 1873. This assault is one of the largest racist massacres in US history. The Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists organized by the Democratic Party as the White League sought to destroy the political rule of the Black majority Republican Party that controlled Grant Parish. More than 150 Black men were murdered by the white supremacists, 37 of whom were executed after surrendering.

In the wake of the contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and for local offices, a group of white Democrats armed with rifles and small cannons outgunned Black Republican freedmen and the Black militia of Grant Parish who were trying to defend Black office holders in the Courthouse. The white supremacists had sworn they would execute any Black elected official they apprehended.

Historian Eric Foner described the masscre as the worst instance of racial violence during Reconstruction. According to Foner, “every election [in Louisiana] between 1868 and 1876 was marked by rampant violence and pervasive fraud.”

Under the 1870 Enforcement Act, federal prosecution and conviction of a few Colfax perpetrators was appealed to the Supreme Court. In a key case that led to the abandonment of the freedmen by the federal government, the court ruled in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) that protections of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to actions of individuals, but only to actions of state governments. After this ruling, the federal government could no longer use the Enforcement Act to prosecute paramilitary groups such as the White League, which had begun forming chapters across Louisiana in 1874. Intimidation and Black voter suppression by white supremacist organizations were instrumental to the Democratic Party regaining political control of the Legislature in the elections of 1876.