Archive for September, 2007

Sep 28

Michael D. Smith: My Experience at the Jena Six Rally

Cross-posted at KilgoreSmith.

The Rally in Jena, September 20, 2007.

Over the past few weeks, the story of the “Jena Six” has exploded into the mainstream media and has rekindled conversations about the quality of our justice system. Justice no longer seems so blind in America. Although unequal treatment under the law has been removed from the books, inequality remains institutionalized in practice. Since Hurricane Katrina, national attention on the State of Louisiana has provoked a lot of difficult questioning about race and class, reminding many Americans about realities they would much rather leave forgotten.

My name is Michael D. Smith. I am a native of the city of Alexandria, Louisiana, and I am white. Alexandria is the only city in Central Louisiana, with its own Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is rather progressive, especially when compared with surrounding parishes. My parents abhor racist sentiments and brought me up accordingly. Unfortunately, not all families in our community have such an open heart to all people.

I am writing this because I have been asked by a few people to put down my own experience of attending the massive September 20th Civil Rights Rally in Jena, Louisiana. Two Hispanic friends of mine from New Orleans and I drove up to Alexandria the previous night to go to the rally the following day, in order to show solidarity with everyone who is dealt injustice. Although some reports have given numbers of up to 60,000 persons participating in the movement in Central Louisiana that day, I would say that, by the time we showed up, there were up to 20,000 people marching in the streets of Jena last Thursday, a great number indeed.

It was a mostly out of town scene. I met people from all over the country and talked to people from Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, the East Coast and Southern Louisiana, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The racial makeup of those attending was about 95% Black, and 5% White, though over half of the white folks that came down to Jena were media persons. Although there were some people from Alexandria, it seemed that the majority of the locals had left town. There were hardly any cars in the garages, or white people on the roads. No businesses were open.

Although DA Reed Walters has stated that it was only by the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ in Jena last Thursday that there was no disaster, I think it had more to do with the attitude of those who came down to protest injustice. It was, by nature, a non-violent rally. Almost everyone there was from places outside of Central Louisiana, and most people wore smiles as they walked around introducing themselves to each other, finding out where they were from and if they represented an organization or came as individuals. Most people drove or came in buses, although some flew down and rented cars to get into the small town, and were happy to socialize and shout for a good cause. No one seemed like they came down for a fight, even the Black Panthers, new or old.

Besides the park in Jena and the LaSalle Parish Courthouse, Jena High School became filled with people, assembled out front or in the lawn where the infamous tree (where the nooses were hung) used to stand. Many gave speeches, others just networked in the crowd. I was impressed to see many people collecting dirt or roots from where the tree was, just as pious pilgrims in Tibet or India take bits of sand from holy places in order to enshrine back at home. There must be some universal human impulse to possess a physical piece of the mythology that informs our deepest experiences, and carry it home next to our hearts. After all, the rally in Jena is the most significant event for some civil rights activists in decades.

Some people commented to me about the quality of Jena High School. They seemed amazed by how poorly maintained it seemed, remarking to me about the tin roofs, poor paint job, lack of adjoining facilities and small area that makes up the school. Although a wing of the school had been burned down last year, the existing facilities still seemed in disrepair. When asked about it, I replied that it resembled most other rural Louisiana schools I’ve seen. These people, even ones from other states in the South, don’t realize the pitiful state of public education in Louisiana.

In my opinion, the people involved in the injustice dealt towards the Jena Six are all victims as well: victims of poor education and the poverty of an isolated community.

There were members of dozens of different social justice and civil rights organizations present at the rally, including the New Black Panther Party. Some of these younger Black Panthers made racially divisive statements in heated speeches at Jena High or in front of the courthouse, but many people in the crowd expressed their disgust at those sentiments. It was a day about unity, with each other and with the imprisoned teenagers. However, it didn’t seem like it was a day about unity with the locals, as I heard a lot of negativity about the residents of Jena. I was encouraged by a number of individuals to not buy anything in Jena, in order to not support local business. There seemed to be little interest in bringing small out of touch rural communities, where racism and intolerance thrive, into the dialogue.

Unfortunately, it is this very distance between the mainstream developments of the country and rural towns like Jena, Louisiana, that perpetuate the antiquated and ignorant worldviews that are the very root causes of prejudice. They have been left behind socially and economically, and only by investing more resources in these communities, namely through education and digital infrastructure, can we begin to address the deeper issues of socio-economic inequality in America.

(Photo credit: Eric Martinez, New Orleans, Louisiana).

Sep 27

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CenLamar Responds: NYT Publishes Reed Walters’s “Justice in Jena” Opinion Letter

LASALLE PARISH DISTRICT ATTORNEY REED WALTERS made his literary debut in yesterday’s New York Times. Walters begins his letter:

The case of the so-called Jena Six has fired the imaginations of thousands, notably young African-Americans who, according to many of their comments, believe they will be in the vanguard of a new civil rights movement. Whether America needs a new civil rights movement I leave to social activists, politicians and the people who must give life to such a cause.

I am a small-town lawyer and prosecutor. For 16 years, it has been my job as the district attorney to review each criminal case brought to me by the police department or the sheriff, match the facts to any applicable laws and seek justice for those who have been harmed. The work is often rewarding, but not always.

The “so-called” Jena Six have not just fired imaginations; they have inspired tens of thousands of people to travel thousands of miles to peacefully protest in support of what they believe to be a miscarriage of justice. However, Mr. Walters, the case of the Jena Six has also “fired the imaginations” of millions, not thousands, of people, across the world, which is probably why you wrote into The New York Times. In the case of the Jena Six, no one is doubting that a criminal case was brought to you, and no one is doubting your responsibility to review the evidence. They are doubting your “application” of the “facts” in order to determine the appropriate charges. They are questioning your prosecutorial discretion, your initial decision to charge these six young men with second-degree attempted murder and the way in which you have continued to “apply” the facts of this case.

As the judicial system is now proving, Walters’s logic falters.

Walters claims he did not question the “sincerity or motivation” of the Jena Six protesters, and he also states that he found the hanging of the nooses “abhorrent and stupid.” He explains how he and U.S. District Attorney Donald Washington could not determine any applicable laws in which to charge the three young men who hung the nooses.

Walters then explains his understanding of the fight:

Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.

I do not have to conjure any image of a schoolyard fight. Like many people, I have personally witnessed high school fights, some of them violent, during lunch at a public high school in Central Louisiana. This is what usually happened: a swift and sudden act of violence, something loud and unexpected, followed by an instantaneous swarm of students who encircle the fight.

Walters based his “facts” of the case on the conflicting and contradictory statements of more than forty “eyewitnesses” who, according to an article in The Town Talk, all claimed to have seen “everything.” Walters believes Mychal Bell threw the first punch based on the testimony of four to five students, one of whom was admittedly involved in the noose incident and another of whom did not “remember” the attacker until at least two days after the fight. He did not take into account the contradictory statement made by another eyewitness, Coach Benjy Lewis, who clearly and immediately identified “Malcolm Shaw” as the person who threw the punch that knocked out Justin Barker. The student who claimed Bell “kicked” Barker was the same student involved in hanging the nooses, and given Walters’s decision to consider a “tennis shoe” as a weapon, it appears as if Bell may have been convicted based on this testimony. Walters is quick to point out that Barker was not a part of hanging the nooses earlier in the year, but he neglects to mention that one of his star witnesses was directly involved.

The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.

To reiterate a statement made in a previous piece, forty people claimed to see everything, Justin Barker told people at the hospital that he had been attacked by fifteen people, six people were all charged with the same crime based on the same set of “facts,” yet eyewitness statements reveal only a small handful of people were able to identify anyone by name (and those statements are fraught with contradictions and conflicts). Walters writes:

Only the intervention of an uninvolved student protected Mr. Barker from severe injury or death. There was serious bodily harm inflicted with a dangerous weapon — the definition of aggravated second-degree battery. Mr. Bell’s conviction on that charge as an adult has been overturned, but I considered adult status appropriate because of his role as the instigator of the attack, the seriousness of the charge and his prior criminal record.

The “uninvolved student” is not named, but we do know, thanks to an article in The Town Talk, of a student who claimed to “push” Shaw away, after Shaw allegedly attempted to (unsuccessfully) kick Barker. The problem is that Coach Lewis’s statement contradicts this account. If Shaw was the assailant (and not Bell) and he was pushed to the ground by another student, then the fight probably did not occur the way Reed Walters believes it occurred.

In a town in which only 13% of the population is African-American, is it possible that four or five African-American students were identified as assailants in a fight they simply witnessed as bystanders? Is it possible that one African-American student threw the first punch that knocked Barker unconscious (he has never been to identify his assailant, which corroborates Lewis’s account of a hit from behind), another white student pushed this African-American student to the ground, and a swarm of students gathered around? This would explain why forty people claimed to see everything, and this would also explain why so many African-American students were accused of “kicking” Barker. Tennis shoes were everywhere.

In a town already embroiled in racial tension, is it possible that this was simply a violent fight between two or three people that escalated into a pseudo-brawl environment (I say “pseudo” because the actual violence was isolated, but the raucous attention resembled a brawl) in which both African-American and white students pushed and shoved one another to the ground? Is it possible that, given the evidence of this existing racial tension, African-American students could have been unfairly singled out as accomplices and assailants in this fight? And how is it possible that, despite the contradictions and the conflicts in these eyewitness accounts, Reed Walters determined it to be appropriate to attempt to put six young men in jail for the majority of their adult lives?

Sep 26

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Three of Louisiana’s Top Ten Most Endangered Historic Properties Located in Alexandria

Each year, the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation recognizes the state’s ten most endangered historic properties in order to draw attention to the importance of historical preservation for our rich and varied history. The vanishing Louisiana coastline is perenially named in addition to the ten properties, given its critical importance to both our history and future. Last Sunday, the Louisiana Trust honored the City of Alexandria by identifying three local properties as being among the state’s most endangered this year.

The three local properties are the old Cotton Brothers Bakery Building, Mount Shiloh Baptist Church, and the Thompson-Hargis Mansion. The three are described in detail in a new brochure by the Alexandria Historic Preservation Commission.

The Cotton Brothers Bakery Building

This building, with its bold lines, asymmetrical composition and horizontal emphasis, is an excellent example of the Art Deco style popular in the late 1920s and 1930s. There are very few remaining examples of this style in Alexandria. The Cotton Brothers built the structure in 1932 to house their bakery. Upon relocation of the bakery in 1957, the building was expanded and made the headquarters of the Continental Southern Bus Lines, forerunner of Continental Trailways.

In February 2007, a local demolition contractor purchased the building and after failing to sell the property began demolition. Quick action by the Alexandria Historic Preservation Commission succeeded in delaying the demolition while efforts are made to locate a purchaser and develop a restoration plan. That process is ongoing and the outcome is not yet certain. The fate of this magnificent structure hangs in the balance.

Mount Shiloh Baptist Church

The Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church was organized in June 1882. The site of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Alexandria has been a meeting place for the congregation ever since. The present brick building was built in 1904 in the Renaissance Revival style. The congregation has relocated to another building and the church is listed with a local realtor. However, the congregation fully supports preservation of the church and would like to see an adaptive re-use of the building. Through grants and community support, the Alexandria Historic Preservation Commission hopes to find an investor willing to preserve the cultural and architectural integrity of this important building.

The Thompson-Hargis Mansion

Built in 1907, the grand Thompson-Hargis Mansion in Alexandria is a fine example of Greek Revival residential architecture, a style that remained popular and fashionable well into the 20^th Century. It is regarded as one of the finest homes in Alexandria, one of four within a two-block area known as “Mansion Row.”

The home was occupied by descendants of the original owners. Mr. And Mrs. B.F. Thompson, Sr., until 1993 and is still owned by the family. Unoccupied for almost 15 years, the home is threatened by severe neglect. Surrounded by deteriorating bungalows built in the early 1900s, preservation of the Thompson-Hargis Mansion would be the catalyst to revitalization of the entire Florence Avenue area.

The other properties recognized this year are Baton Rouge Magnet High School, the Bridges-McKellar House (Shreveport), Badin-Roque (Natchez), Dark Store (Natchitoches), Beauregard Parish Jail (DeRidder), Shushan Airport Terminal Complex (New Orleans), and the Vida Shaw Swing Bridge (New Iberia Parish).

The Alexandria Historic Preservation Commission presented a great slideshow in today’s City Council Economic Development Committee meeting. Their website has a number of archived photographs, such as the two below.

Not to leave anyone out, the three photos below, among many others, can be found at the Louisiana History Museum’s Picture of the Week online archive.

Alexandria Electric Railway Co. (prior to 1915).

The Bauer and Weil General Merchandise Store (circa 1880-90).

This picture was on many of Alexandria postcards up until the 1920′s (circa 1900).

Sep 25

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LSU Student Explains What Actually Happened At Public Jindal Event

Today, CenLamar received a lot of attention regarding an article I published about how my cousin, Luke White, was told to leave a Bobby Jindal rally. As I explained, Luke was simply accompanying a young woman to this rally and was not protesting or dressed inappropriately. However, I should clarify two things, in light of the additional information I have received: He was not “escorted” out, but he was kicked out of the event by a Sheriff’s Deputy at the behest of a Jindal campaign staffer. Like many other people in attendance, including nearly a dozen members of the media, Luke was filming the event, which apparently concerned Jindal’s plans for economic development. The following is a statement from Luke White, the President of the LSU College Democrats:

Recently, a couple of Louisiana blogs have made light of an incident that took place at a public event hosted by Bobby Jindal. The Congressman was on a tour of the state promoting his economic plan.

My name is Luke White. I am the President of the LSU College Democrats, and I am the person Lamar White references in his story about the incident. Since this issue seems to have opened up in the blogosphere, I feel it necessary to clarify my position and give a full and complete statement of the facts.

Kailey Gallegos, an intern with the Louisiana Democratic Party and secretary of the LSU College Democrats, documents these events for the party. This consists of going to public events and either tape recording or video taping what the candidate says, so that instant response can take place. Oftentimes, these events happen early in the day, and the various campaigns have to wait until the evening news to only see a short sound bite of the event. Documenting them provides the opportunity to have a record of the event in its entirety instantly, so that response can be made shortly there after instead of waiting for the evening news. The argument has been made to me by several Republicans that our intention is to find something and misquote the candidate. However, this holds no water. If our intention was to misquote Jindal, we would simply refer to the plethora of congressional records, writings, interviews and speeches already given by the Congressman. We wouldn’t waste our time at public events. Documenting is done by all campaigns for the same purposes.

Monday, September 17, 2007, Kailey and I attended the event together. As can be seen by the videos on the LA Democratic Party’s YouTube account, Kailey has been harassed at other Bobby Jindal events when trying to document them often to the point of intimidation. I am over 6’4, and she felt that having me there would hamper these efforts.

We arrived at the public event to find that there was no one at the door checking anyone. There were no sign in sheets. No tickets were needed. We were properly dressed and were not holding or displaying any anti-Jindal paraphernalia. We were offered Bobby Jindal stickers to wear, but we did not put them on. At no time, did we misrepresent who we were or our purpose.

Shortly after Bobby arrived, I took the camera out and began filming. Kailey normally does the filming; however, Jindal supporters recognized her and moved in front of us with their signs, although no one directly approached us. The reason I filmed is, again, because of my height. I was able to look over the signs of the staff. There were plenty of media there, all with cameras and many cell phones and digital cameras, most with video capability.

Immediately after Jindal took the podium, I was tapped on the shoulder by an East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s deputy and told to put the camera away or leave. After Kailey and I mentioned that there were members of the media and other supporters with cameras at the event, he warned us again and walked away. We left, not wanting to disrupt the event or further inflame the situation. For the record, the deputy was polite and never put his hands on us (only to tap on my shoulder). I am quite sure that he was not on his regular detail, but hired by the campaign as private security. Still, it is important to note, a man with gun asked us to leave.

Later that afternoon, I text messaged my friend Joey Cooper, a staffer for the Jindal campaign who was present at the event. He called me back, and we talked. He admitted that he had me “thrown out.” He literally had to go behind my back to the deputy. We were in plain sight at a public event, and not until a staffer informed the deputy that they didn’t want us there, were we thrown out.

As can be seen from the videos on YouTube, this is not the first time something like this has happened at a Bobby Jindal event.

I personally was embarrassed by the incident, especially considering that this seems to be standard operating protocol for a US Congressman from Louisiana and possibly our next governor. This is indicative of the fear the Jindal campaign has of what their own man will say. It is also egregiously disrespectful to all citizens of this state because obviously, Bobby Jindal only wants to represent those who support him. No member of the opposition will be tolerated, and the staff of his campaign has engaged in undemocratic tactics. They maintain a moral high ground, which in their minds allows them to run over members of the opposition. They want no participation by those who disagree, and they have no interest in communicating with them. The era of “you are with us or against us” politics is tradition brought down from the Bush Administration and seems to be infecting Republican campaigns everywhere.

Let me be clear, any such behavior by other campaigns is equally immoral. Democracy is about the free exchange of ideas, not about removing the opposition from participation. If we want to really fix Louisiana, we have to do it together. We can no longer tolerate governing by those with a sense of moral entitlement. Bobby Jindal is crossing the state with his message of bringing back ethics to the Louisiana. Maybe he should start with his own campaign, because the actions that took place that day are contrary to the ethics of a sound democracy. This cowardly disrespectful behavior must stop. I fear what Bobby Jindal and his staff will do to limit the voice of the opposition should they stumble on the power of the Governor’s office.

Luke White

President, LSU College Democrats

Lwhit19 at lsu dot edu

Sep 25

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Video Footage of “Alleged” Jindal Staffer Blocking and Intimidating Young Woman at Jindal/Vitter NRA Event

As former Senator George Allen taught us, when you’re on the campaign trail, you should be mindful and respectful of people who are attending your public events, even when they are there to document your speeches on videotape and even if they may not support you.

Campaigns should also make a concerted effort to tell supporters to be mindful and respectful of everyone in the audience. In Allen’s case, no one pushed or shoved the young man who was recording; Allen himself attempted to publicly humiliate the young man, an Indian-American, by referring to him as “macaca,” an obvious ethnic slur.

Campaign events are typically free and open to the public. They typically encourage people to bring video and photographic cameras; they want people to document the event. It has become an important component of the campaign process: documentation, uploading campaign photos onto the Internet, viral videos.

And because campaign events are often free and open to the public, they are also free and open to people who wish to document the event, like the young man at the Allen event, to help the opposition. Allen had known this young man was there at the behest of Jim Webb, but he also understood that it was the right of this young man to document a public event held by a sitting United States Senator.

But, in this year’s race for governor, there have been at least two instances of Democrats either being harassed or thrown out of Jindal’s events, events that were free and open to the public, events that featured an elected Representative of the State of Louisiana, for simply attempting to document what was being said. It is important to note that other people were allowed to take photographs or videotape, and the media had been invited so that they too could document these events.

Five days ago, the Louisiana Democratic Party uploaded a series of three videos documenting a young woman who attended a public event in Lake Charles at Barney’s Police and Hunting Supply on April 5, 2007. This young woman had been somehow identified as a member of the Democratic Party. I do not know this young woman, but I am told that she is petite and that during this event, she was pushed, blockaded, and stepped on by NRA supporters at a public event featuring at least two elected officials, Bobby Jindal and David Vitter.

The footage is somewhat jumbled. At the 46 second mark of Volume One, the young woman whispers, “They pushed me into the guy behind me.” At 2 minute and 38 second mark, we hear another voice tell someone nearby, “You gotta move over, tiger. This young lady behind you can’t see.”

Volume 3 shows the comical efforts of these supporters to prevent this young woman from capturing any footage. Notice the way in which two people hold up clipboards in order to purposely block this young woman’s view. Such actions were meant to be intimidating, and much like the story of the LSU student removed from the Jindal rally (more on that later), this type of behavior should not be endorsed or tolerated by any candidate or elected official, regardless of their party affiliation.

Ironically, during this event, we hear Senator Vitter speak about our fundamental freedoms and “the core of our personal liberty as Americans.” I wonder whether Vitter, Jindal, or the NRA have the same passion for the First Amendment as they apparently have for the Second Amendment.

Sep 24

3 Comments

PointeCoupeeDemocrat Joins CenLamar

TODAY, NOTED LOUISIANA BLOGGER PointeCoupeeDemocrat (PCD) joined the team of bloggers at CenLamar. PointeCoupeeDemocrat, as his name suggests, was born and raised in Pointe Coupee Parish. PointeCoupeeDemocrat was previously a regular contributor on the popular Louisiana website The Daily Kingfish. PCD is unafraid to tackle controversial and complicated issues. He is a highly-educated academic professional, having studied at two of the nation’s most prestigious universities, and we are delighted to welcome him as a frontpage contributor and guest editor.

Recently, PointeCoupeeDemocrat has been primarily concerned with the upcoming elections, offering detailed, thorough, and insightful analysis district by district. On CenLamar, PointeCoupeeDemocrat will also be concerned with identity politics, the built environment, the visual field, political subjectivity, and Louisiana modernism.

Sep 23

The Bourgeois Blues

At CenLamar, we often champion a renewed focus on Alexandria’s Downtown and inner-core neighborhoods. We believe that the national trend towards the suburbanization of the city’s outlying areas represents an unhealthy and unsustainable scenario for Alexandria. As the city’s footprint expands, citizens run the double risk of stretched public services and a greater number of people living outside of city limits, taking advantage of Alexandria’s infrastructure but avoiding the city’s taxes. By looking inwards, Alexandrians can not only invigorate the city’s existing tax base, but promote the walk-ability and attractiveness of areas like the Historic Garden District and Downtown, which originally relied on other transit means before the car became king.

Government officials of the City of Alexandria have in recent years voiced their commitment to invigorating in the inner core of our city. Our leaders have already begun to explore plentiful opportunities for joint public-private investment and grants for historical preservation, transit projects, and community development covering the area from Lower 3rd and Bayou Rapides to MacArthur Drive. Given the significant investment in our city’s western suburbs, represented most visibly by Operation Fast Track to connect Versailles Boulevard to Highway 28-W, it is consensus that much should and can be done to balance development on both the inner and outer areas of Alexandria.

There exists another reason beyond fiscal responsibility and historic preservation for Alexandria to become involved in inner-core revitalization: social justice. The term justice suggests that a wrong has occurred, and though the civil rights victories of the previous generation gave everyone an equal legal opportunity to pursue the American Dream, the structural and systemic legacy of history remains. Placing blame is counterproductive. Fortunately, the City of Alexandria is currently led by a racially-balanced government and administration that know to celebrate the richest aspects of our past without forgetting its most egregious misdeeds, to focus on the present, and to use the lessons of history to prepare for a prosperous future.

Many of the most economically depressed neighborhoods in our city exist within or near our inner-core. The current poverty of these areas is related directly to the history of the way in which our city developed. Lower 3rd is, as the name suggests, located downriver of Downtown. Lower 3rd and the Sonia Quarters flank old spurs of the railroad. Old heavy industries such as the Ruston Foundry and a steel mill were built adjacent to the neighborhoods, which existed to house these industry’s workers and their families. These areas have been facing population declines since the expansion of middle-class neighborhoods across MacArthur Drive began four decades ago, when Charles Park was first planned. Moreover, the construction of the Alexandria Mall and Jackson Street Extension diluted the economic significance of the corridors between downtown and the Garden District.

As previously discussed on CenLamar, the construction of I-49 served an increasingly suburbanized city but isolated many inner-core neighborhoods physically from Downtown Alexandria. Numerous streets were dead-ended, facilitating economic stagnation in the area. Examine the proximity of the Sonia Quarters (below) to downtown (just north) and the Ruston Foundry (due east), and the way it is completely blocked on its east side by the interstate.

Alexandria currently has the vision to make significant progress with these areas of our town. It will require examining our current traffic strategy and ways to recenter investment not only in Downtown Alexandria but along the traditional commercial corridors of Bolton Avenue and Lee Street. It will also take something I learned while working with Tibetan nonprofits in Western China: stakeholders themselves must be involved as participants and managing leaders in order to make projects successful and sustainable, because no one understands and is committed to an area more than the people who live and grew up there.

And when people don’t fit into their native home, they sometimes get the Bourgeois Blues.

Sep 23

1 Comment

CenLamar Welcomes Newest Contributor, LAMediaWatch

CENLAMAR IS PROUD to welcome the newest member of our team of writers and our first anonymous contributor, LAMediaWatch. While a guest writer at The Daily Kingfish, LAMediaWatch wrote a series of sensational and thoroughly researched essays on the media, Bobby Jindal, David Vitter, and the upcoming election. Many of these essays have now been cross-posted right here on CenLamar, even the scandalous ones:

The Conservative Response(s) to the Vitter Scandal

Is Team Vitter Behind Operation Red November?

Vitter and the LA GOP Cover-up: “We Discussed That Exact Fact.”

The Question Mark: Louisiana Republicans Support Vitter?

Vitter’s Campaign Commercials and Why They Matter Now

Introducing Jeffrey Sadow: The LA GOP’s Favorite Professor

A Lesson for the Professor: Sadow Lies Again

LA-GOV: Jindal’s Website Payoff Scam

Bobby Jindal: The Story They Don’t Want You to Hear

LA-GOV: Jindal is Lying on His Record on Health Care

LA-GOV: Jindal’s Texas Gold: Who is Nancy Kinder?

LA-GOV: Jindal’s Texas Gold: The Texan Oil Lobby

Welcome to LAMediaWatch, an old friend and our newest contributor. To contact, grill, and/or harass LAMediaWatch, e-mail LAMediaWatch2007 at hotmail dot com.

Sep 23

2 Comments

Bobby Jindal and the “Freedom” of Assembly

SEE UPDATE: LSU STUDENT EXPLAINS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT PUBLIC JINDAL EVENT

LAST WEEK, MY COUSIN (and a good friend of mine) claims he was escorted out of a Bobby Jindal event by uniformed police officers. My cousin is a student at LSU and a well-known Democrat on campus, but he was not escorted out of the event for asking any questions or calling any attention to himself in order to distract Representative Jindal or his supporters. My cousin was well-dressed and had been invited to the event by a female friend who simply wanted to hear Jindal speak. One of Jindal’s campaign workers, a fellow LSU student, had identified my cousin in the crowd and apparently informed the Jindal campaign and police security, who then escorted him out of the building. My cousin is not a radical. He often reminds me that he considers himself to be more “centrist” than he considers me to be, and having known him for my entire life, I have no doubt whatsoever that he would never grandstand or disrespect a rally for any political candidate. Anyone who knows him knows that he is not capable of such a thing. He’s a dynamic and intelligent guy, and he has always been respectful of people regardless of their personal political beliefs. His only crime, it seems, was being an interested, engaged, and well-known LSU Democrat, a tall guy who is easily recognizable.

As a young college student who is deeply interested in the upcoming election and the political process, he attended the event to hear Bobby Jindal, an elected representative of Louisiana, speak about his views on the gubernatorial race. But instead, Jindal’s campaign staff ensured my cousin was humiliated and escorted out of the building, as if he were a criminal, by uniformed officers. But my cousin did not commit any crime or threaten anyone or disrespect or disturb the Jindal rally. He was simply, quietly, and respectfully accompanying a young woman.

Americans should not be used to this, but unfortunately, we are. President Bush and his team have been known to “filter” their audiences for rallies and so-called “town hall meetings,” ensuring that their is little room for productive discourse during events ostensibly billed as a part of the democratic process (“Quarantining dissent: How the Secret Service Protects Bush From Free Speech” by the San Francisco Gate). On August 17th, the federal government paid $80,000 as a settlement for arresting a couple who wore “Anti-Bush” t-shirts during a rally in South Carolina.

Jindal’s campaign, it seems, may be taking a page out of the President’s play book; however, my cousin was not sporting an anti-Jindal t-shirt or causing any type of dissension or disruption.

Republican apologists may question this, as if my cousin was a nuisance by virtue of his own personal political beliefs and therefore deserved to be humiliated and escorted out of an event sponsored by and featuring a man who would like to become our governor. But my cousin was not there to ask any questions or to voice or express any protest. He was simply accompanying a young woman who had invited him to hear a speech by a candidate for governor.

Representative Jindal has a history of avoiding debates and difficult questions, including questions about his close professional relationship with embattled US Senator David Vitter. If this man would like to be our governor, then he should allow for a free, open, and transparent exchange of ideas. Otherwise, he is attempting to subvert the healthy discourse and debate on issues and ideas to which we are all entitled as Louisiana voters.

If this was some type of colossal mistake or misunderstanding perpetrated by renegade members of the Jindal campaign, then Representative Jindal should immediately distance himself from and fire the campaign workers who ordered the use of our police force to engage in an act that of intolerance and discrimination against a college student who simply wanted to accompany a young Jindal-supporting woman to a campaign event.

I honestly hope Jindal and his campaign have the human decency to apologize. If this is cleared up, I will gladly publish Representative Jindal’s response. Please leave a comment with a legitimate e-mail address (or send an e-mail to lamarw at gmail dot com), and I will be happy to direct you to my cousin, a compassionate and understanding person who simply deserves an apology.

Sep 22

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Questioning The Context Of The Story: Was This Really Six On One?

THE JENA SIX IS NOT a story about six African-American students assaulting one white student. It is a story about six African-American students allegedly assaulting one white student. During this avalanche of media coverage about the massive peaceful protest, this has been the one crucial point missing from many of the descriptions of an incident that the world is now talking about. For many, this may be a minor point, a rhetorical clarification, but in this case, it is important to remember, because the burden of proof is on the district attorney and not on the six young men accused of this crime.

During the past few days, CenLamar has received a number of comments from people who seem to take for granted that the six young men accused are all equally guilty of the crime of which they are accused (or at least all guilty of participating in the fight) , but they seem to forget the reason people are calling attention to this story is not merely because of the district attorney’s initial decision to charge all six students with second-degree attempted murder, it is also because the nature of the altercation, the context of the series of prior events, and the numerous conflicting eyewitness statements, none of which are able to identify all six students by name as participants in the fight. Again, the burden of proof belongs to the district attorney.

Pursuing Holiness gives this some perspective. It is not as if the fight occurred out of the blue. There is an issue of provocation, and moreover, simply because the DA is alleging that six young men were involved does not mean that the fight was actually six on one. There are some serious conflicts in the eyewitness reports, and at least three (excluding Bell, who is currently being tried, and another minor, who is being charged as a juvenile and to the best of my knowledge has not made any public statements) members of the Jena Six have publicly claimed to simply have witnessed the fight as bystanders.

This is an excerpt from a Town Talk story, via Pursuing Holiness:

“Investigators from the LaSalle Parish Sheriff’s Office have gathered statements from more than 40 people — a number of them students — who told investigators they saw everything that happened. Many of these statements were included in court documents.”

When I was in high school, I witnessed a handful of school fights during lunchtime. Students swarm around fights. And not everybody can possibly be at the same place at the same time, which means every single one of those witnesses had a different angle on the fight. Yet we are told that amazingly forty people “saw everything that happened.” The problem is that when you read through those forty or so witness reports, you find a number of inconsistencies.

“When I heard a black boy say something to Justin, I turned my head and I saw somebody hit Justin,” one student wrote in a statement. “He fell in between the gym door and the concrete barricade. I saw Robert Bailey kneel down and punch Justin in the head. … Then Carwin Jones kicked him in the head. … Theo Shaw tried to kick him so I pushed Theo Shaw down. I also saw Mychal Bell standing over him.”

According to this witness, who admits participating in the fight by pushing one student (who he alleges “tried to kick” Justin Barker), someone (who is not named) hit Justin Barker, Robert Bailey punched him, and Carwin Jones kicked him. Theo Shaw was pushed to the ground by this eyewitness, and according to him, Mychal Bell was simply “standing over him.” By my count, this student implicated three people, excluding himself, in this fight, not six. The admission that this student pushed another student to the ground also provides evidence that this fight involved a swarm of students, pushing and shoving one other, and may actually indict the witness himself as a participant in the fight. This student’s account is later contradicted by the testimony of a coach who witnessed the fight and specifically named Shaw, the young man this eyewitness apparently pushed to the ground, as the person who hit Barker and did not identify Bailey, Jones, Bell, or the other teenager being charged as a juvenile as participants.

When a school fight occurs, students sometimes push and shove one another to get a closer angle on the fight. Many of the eyewitness statements simply referred to a group of black kids. Only one adult was able to name more than three participants in the fight and only after she had immediately read from a list written by another faculty member concerning students who had “misbehaved” during gym.

“Phrases like “stomped him badly,” “stepped on his face,” “knocked out cold on the ground,” and “slammed his head on the concrete beam” were used by the students in their statements.

“Robert Bailey said this past week that he and the other boys weren’t around when the fight happened and that the teachers and principal were making students say what they wrote in statements.“

Bailey’s allegation may seem conspiratorial, but consider this report about Mychal Bell’s trial from Friends of Justice:

At trial, special education teacher Kristy Martin listed off the names of the boys who surrounded Justin Barker as if they were clear in her memory. Although she was forced to admit that she never saw a single student touch Justin Barker, Martin’s ability to name names seemed very convincing. Martin is the only witness thus far who has provided a list of attackers longer than three names.
* In a written statement, given immediately after the incident, Coach Wayne Spence states that he was taking names of rowdy students in the gym during the lunch hour. “I had a list that Ms. Martin obtained from me,” he wrote. This suggests that Kristy Martin specifically asked Spence for the list of names the day of the fight. This explains why she is the only witness to remember more than two or three members of the Jena 6. Most eye witnesses can’t identify a single assailant by name. Most of the students who gave eyewitness statements after the December 4 altercation at the school make references to “a bunch of black kids”.

Despite the fact that forty eyewitnesses reportedly “saw everything,” not one of them was able to name all six of the alleged as participants in the fight. It almost seems as if the names of the Jena Six could have been produced simply as an amalgamation of disparate eyewitness statements. Again, the only person able to remember more than three of the alleged attackers’ names was a teacher whose testimony may be compromised by the fact that immediately after the fight she read a list of names of “rowdy boys” in the gym that was written by Coach Wayne Spears.

Repeated calls to Jena High School Principal Glen Joiner went unreturned.

“It was a rowdy day at school because of what had happened over the weekend,” Bailey said of earlier fights at the Fair Barn and Gotta Go convenience store. “The fight (with Justin) happened so quick. But those of us arrested weren’t even around. Once the fight broke out, we all ran to see what happened, but I wasn’t around when the fight happened.”

Bailey’s statement does reflect the typical nature of school fights, particularly when they are conducted in full view of authority figures: They are quick and sudden, and students tend to quickly swarm around them. This also corroborates the testimony of one of the only adult eyewitnesses, Coach Benjy Lewis. From Friends of Justice:

Coach Benjy Lewis gave two statements immediately after the school incident in which he clearly states that Justin Barker was facing him when Malcolm Shaw (not Mychal Bell) struck Barker from behind. “I saw Malcolm Shaw hit Justin Barker with his right fist to the right side of Justin’s head, right around the temple,” Lewis wrote. “Justin went down face first, knocked out . . .” Most witnesses agree that a single punch knocked Barker out cold. The only adult who witnessed the punch says Mychal Bell didn’t throw it.

According to Lewis’s testimony, Robert Bailey didn’t knock Justin Barker out, and neither did Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, or the 14-year-old juvenile defendant.

On Dec. 1, Bailey said he was jumped by six to seven white men at the Fair Barn and that only one was arrested and charged with simple battery.

Two days later, he and friends ran into one of the men involved in the fight at the Gotta Go and the man pulled out a shotgun, Bailey said. Bailey said he wrestled the gun away, but was charged with aggravated battery and theft.

That is injustice and racism, Bailey said.

Last week Jones said that when he went to school on Dec. 4, he could tell something was going to happen, it just felt that way, he said.

He was sitting in the boys gym after lunch, he said, and when everyone left to go back to class, he was in front of Justin and didn’t know what had happened until he “heard the first lick.”

“I wasn’t involved,” he said. “He got hit once, fell to the ground, and that was the end. Everyone just ran up when someone yelled fight, and it seemed like he was getting kicked.”

Both Jones and Bailey said they did not see who hit Justin Barker.”

This is an important piece of the puzzle. A few days before, Bailey had been involved in an altercation in which he allegedly wrestled a shotgun away from a white student who had pulled the gun on him and a friend(s) while they were in a convenience store. Instead of charging the white student, Bailey was charged with theft of a firearm, disturbing the peace, and second degree robbery. Initially, the white student claimed that Bailey and his friend(s) were yelling and running after him, so he had to retrieve his gun. Bailey claims that as they were leaving the store, the white student confronted them by pulling out a shotgun.

The white student had apparently been present at a large party a few days before where Robert Bailey had been assaulted by a white adult (According to Bailey, the attack involved six to seven white men, though only one was charged). Bailey and his friends were trying to get into a party at the Jena Barn. They were told by a white woman they were not invited guests and asked to leave. Then, a white man, later identified as Justin Sloan, jumped in and instigated a fight. The white woman kicked Bailey, his friends, and Sloan out of the Jena Fair, and outside, Sloan broke a beer bottle over Bailey’s head. Sloan was later charged with battery.

There are some glaring problems with the statements of the white student who pulled out his gun. According to Bailey, this white student had been involved in the fight at the Jena Barn, though the student has apparently never made such a claim (He states he was merely present at the party). Supposing that Bailey and his friend(s) yelled and chased after this student, apparently, they chased him directly into the direction of his conveniently placed shotgun, which he then pulled out. How does one “chase” somebody from the doors of a small convenience store on a small lot to their parked vehicle from which the “victim” retrieves and displays a “concealed” weapon?

Either way, the events at the Jena Barn and the convenience store placed Robert Bailey on the radar. His name became known in a town of 3,000 people, only 13% of whom are African-American. And when the fight broke out, his name was tossed around, and Robert Bailey was charged with attempted second degree murder, despite his claim of being a bystander and despite the conflicting eyewitness reports. From Friends of Justice:

Justin Barker was taken by ambulance to LaSalle General Hospital’s emergency room, arriving at 12:25 p.m., according to court documents. A report from the ambulance company stated Barker “denies any pain other than his eye.”

Once in the emergency room, Barker told medical personnel that he had been “jumped by 15 guys” and was unsure of what he had been hit with, according to the emergency physician’s record in the court file. The record noted an injury to Barker’s right eye requiring follow-up medical attention and injuries to his face, ears and hand.

A Computed Tomography scan of Barker’s brain showed no abnormalities, but there were reports of him losing consciousness during the attack, according to hospital records.

Barker was discharged about 2½ hours after being admitted to the ER. Later that night, he attended a ring ceremony at the school, where he was presented his class ring by his parents, something Kelli Barker said her son really wanted to be a part of, even though he was still in pain.

“All that keeps being said is that he was just in the hospital for a little bit and not really hurt,” Kelli Barker said of Justin. “I thank God he wasn’t hurt more than he was. But we have medical bills to show that he really was hurt.”

According to court documents, the initial trip to the emergency room cost $5,467.

Justin Barker was knocked unconscious and has never been able to name his assailant. Eyewitness reports, however inconsistent, do make it clear that a large number of people swarmed around the fight, which may explain why Barker, after being knocked to the ground with one punch, believed he was being attacked by as many as 15 people. A coach who witnessed the fight claimed to have clearly seen and was able to identify Barker’s assailant, but he did not name fifteen people or six people; he named one person.

Forty people claimed to have seen everything. Barker initially said he was attacked by fifteen people. The District Attorney charged six people. Yet the coach who was present named and identified only one assailant.

No one is denying a crime occurred. Justin Barker was clearly assaulted, and the person or persons responsible should be adequately charged. But the subjective determination made by hospital administrators of the expense of a two-hour visit to the emergency room is not “proof” of the severity of one’s injuries; it is proof of the costs incurred by emergency room visits, which, in Barker’s case, included expensive tests. And this hardly justifies the decision to charge anyone, particularly a teenager involved in a school fight, with a crime that could put them away for life. But that is not what happened in Jena, because the district attorney did not just decide to charge one teenager with an offense that could put him away for the rest of his adult life; he charged six teenagers with that crime. Six teenagers, all of whom happened to be black and one of whom had been involved in two previous and controversial altercations with white students, were charged, despite the conflicting eyewitness testimonies and despite any basic recognition of the nature of this school fight.

If the blogosphere and the media want to be honest about this story, then we need to acknowledge, first and foremost, that six teenagers are being charged with allegedly assaulting one young man and that the burden of proof is on the district attorney and not on these young men or their families. And there are many good reasons people are publicly questioning these charges. They seem egregious and vindictive, particularly considering this man’s previous comment to Jena High School students about ending another human being’s life with the stroke of his pen. And there are many good reasons to publicly question the evidence. It seems built on a false foundation of primarily unreliable eyewitness statements. Only a fraction of these statements construct a descriptive sequence of events, and of those, some are burdened by inconsistencies and even admissions of personal physical involvement with one of the accused.

(H/T to the insightful and informative Friends of Justice article “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel: What Blane Williams Should Have Known,” which was written by a man who has been on the ground in Jena and following this case from the beginning).

Sep 22

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Alexandria in Danger of Mischaracterization by Mainstream Media

by Daniel T. Smith

The miscarriage of prosecutorial justice and subsequent peace protest in Jena, Louisiana has now officially been crowned a major national news story. The prosecution of the Jena Six is only beginning, relatively speaking, and that it is now being featured by CNN in primetime specials this weekend speaks to its staying power. Americans interested in social justice are paying close attention to ensure that LaSalle Parish and the State of Louisiana will not over-prosecute—or convict on insufficient evidence—any of the individuals accused with injuring fellow student Justin Barker.

Friday evening on Anderson Cooper 360, guest hosted by Soledad O’Brien, Alexandria was introduced for the first time as being centrally connected to the ongoing story in Jena, Louisiana.

There is a reason that Alexandria was chosen as the place from which to stage the demonstration. There is a reason that the elected representatives of our city met with national civil rights leaders and accommodated them with logistical and moral support. There is a reason our businesses and workers and communities opened our doors to the droves of state and national visitors to Rapides Parish. Alexandria hosted tens of thousands of activists without incident. The rally this week was a testament to the inclusive and forward-thinking spirit of the City of Alexandria.

In spite of all this, Alexandria did not enter the national media spotlight in a positive light. After briefly passing over the day’s most significant update to the story—that Mychal Bell was yet again denied bail—Soledad brought up an isolated incident perpetrated by two out of town teenagers in downtown Alexandria in the same breath as neo-Nazi web postings that called for violence against the incarcerated African-American teens in Jena. When introducing the Alexandria segment, she did nothing to contextualize what was made into a sensational aspect of the story:

Nooses, dangling from the back of a pick-up truck, unmistakable symbols of hatred and racism in the Old South. Two men arrested in Alexandria, Louisiana, after repeatedly driving past groups of demonstrators who were in nearby Jena earlier in the day in support of the so-called Jena Six.

Soledad O’Brien completely failed to mention that the eighteen and sixteen year old involved in the incident are from Colfax and Dry Prong, respectively. Both towns are in Grant Parish and are a significant distance from Alexandria, considering the size of our city. And yes, Alexandria is indeed a city with a racially-balanced elected government, not a small backwards “town” from the “Old South” as it existed on Soledad’s script.

She then proceeded to interview Richard Cohen, the CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, for a general legal interpretation of hate crimes. Hate crimes and inflammatory bigotry was the day’s juiciest possible angle for the Jena Six. Cohen explained himself well, but he is a go-to guest on CNN for judicial issues and the South. He and Soledad came off as so completely unfamiliar with Central Louisiana and the background of the Jena Six that they seemed to have not been following the case for very long.

CNN also went with the citizen reporting of an auspiciously-named Alexandria native. Thursday night, Casanova Love took personal video from the Main Street A-Trans station near which Jeremiah Munson and his underage accomplice circled with yellow extension cords tied into nooses hanging from the back of their truck. Love’s impressive recording from a centerpiece of our riverfront has been successfully mediated into a sixty-nine second CNN video clip viewable after a thirty-second advertisement.

CNN’s David Mattingly also interviewed Alexandria Police Chief Daren Coutee, but only for an opinion on whether or not what the boys did on Thursday night constitutes a hate crime. They were not interested in airing any comment or making any mention of the nearly Herculean job Alexandria law enforcement performed in order to support the week’s visitors.

Alexandrians watching 360 tonight may have found themselves in the all too common position of being mischaracterized by an unfamiliar American national media. The local media earlier in the day had covered the story in a far more responsible way. This is a situation in which many of the residents of Jena now find themselves, their whole town now implicitly linked to a series of racially toned incidents in their community. Former and current residents of New Orleans have understood this for years, and many are well familiar with Anderson Cooper due to his personal diligence in distilling the complicated events that surrounded Hurricane Katrina.

To their credit, CNN did a better job on their website in a story on the incident titled “Two Arrested in Noose Incident Near Jena, Louisiana.” The online angle at least includes mention of the fact that the racial agitators arrested in Alexandria were not native to Alexandria:

Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy said those involved were “from around Jena” and not from the same parish as his city. <See where the incident occured>

Roy said he is looking into whether the incident was a hate crime.

A photograph of the truck was sent to CNN by I-Reporter Casanova Love, 26, who said he is in the U.S. military. He’s visiting his family in Louisiana and said he witnessed the event.

After the arrests, Roy came out to address the crowd and apologized, saying he does not condone racism, Love said.

Love added, “If the police had not stepped in, I fear what might have happened.”

Love explained why he sent the photo to CNN: “People need to see this. It’s 2007, and we still have fools acting like it’s 1960.”

Roy said the matter is “not indicative” of Alexandria and that local authorities will look into it “completely, thoroughly and transparently.”

In spite of immediately following Mayor Roy’s clarification that the accused teens were not even from Rapides Parish, the picture following the link <See where the incident occurred> shows a Louisiana map with only three cities labeled: Baton Rouge, Jena, and Alexandria. The map doesn’t even have Alexandria properly placed, showing it far south of the banks of the Red River.

By failing to report their actual places of residence (which we know thanks to KALB, a local news affiliate), both cable and online CNN news leave national readers to connect the recently arrested teenagers with one location: Alexandria, Louisiana.

To be clear, those of us who has been following the Jena Six story for months are very happy that CNN has led big box media in bringing this story to the national fore. On the other hand, we know that Anderson Cooper’s people and other national media staff have been in Jena and Alexandria gathering information for weeks to prepare for this story. CNN waited to use this week’s demonstration to actually lead with Jena Six on primetime cable.

Knowing all of this, it’s all the more insulting that on the eve of a weekend of specials on the Jena Six, CNN would allow Soledad O’Brian to completely mishandle the issue on Anderson Cooper’s show. CNN and Soledad O’Brian could have emphasized the role of Alexandria’s businesses and government officials in ensuring that the march organized in part by Friends of Justice could be a peaceful and historic landmark for our region and culture.

Ultimately, CNN is right to have reported heavily on the incident in Alexandria, but a responsible media must not let two potentially violent individuals overshadow the success of thirty-thousand peaceful protesters. Indeed, spoiling such an incredible gathering of political activism was their very motive.

Alexandrians are not ignorant of the embedded racial and social injustices in our country and area, and the current leaders of our city are not ignoring their duty to do everything possible to foster an inclusive, prosperous and united community. Alexandria celebrates diversity, and is re-envisioning itself as a leader in progressive social policy and community-based planning. We are only asking that the national media not undue all of our efforts in their rush to cut a big story before the deadline.

UPDATE: CNN has rectified their error in the above map, which I had linked to in order to better get their attention. The initial incorrect map is below:

Sep 22

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Grant Parish Teenagers Drive Into Alexandria With Nooses Strung From Vehicle At Conclusion of Massive Peaceful Protest

AFTER THE THOUSANDS of peace activists caravaned out of Jena, Louisiana yesterday afternoon, many of them attended a second rally in Downtown Alexandria.

Alexandria is not Jena, which is why event organizers shifted their peaceful demonstration to Alexandria, after symbolically marching in Jena earlier in the day. The event in Alexandria was attended by a delegation of political representatives, civil rights activists, and American citizens from all across the nation. Rev. Al Sharpton conducted his nationally-syndicated radio show from the steps of Alexandria City Hall. The event was orderly, the mood was positive, and there was not a single incident reported by the police.

That is, until around 9PM, when two teenagers who had driven in to Alexandria from another parish, a trip that probably took them an hour, drove around Downtown Alexandria with nooses strung from the back of their flatbed pick-up truck. Although most of the protesters had already left, there were around 200 people still left– a group from Nashville, Tennessee who had driven over 12 hours to join in the demonstration.

The teenagers, one of whom is a minor, were quickly arrested by the police, and the Mayor of Alexandria, Jacques Roy, drove back to Downtown to address the crowd. The story made national news this morning. One of the young men apparently branded himself with a Ku Klux Klan tattoo, and the other young man, Jeremiah Munson, is pictured on the right.

Americans have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and yesterday, American citizens celebrated these fundamental rights through a powerful expression right here in Alexandria. But those teenagers, one of whom was arrested for driving while intoxicated, had intended to disrupt this event by taunting peaceful protesters with a hateful symbol of a dark and evil chapter in America’s history.

And as the world’s attention descends upon Central Louisiana, people need to know that Alexandria is not the type of community that condones or tolerates hate. Nooses, whether draped from a tree or tied onto the back of a pickup truck, are a clear and blatant symbol of hatred; they represent the criminal and senseless murders of thousands of African-Americans and the shameful legacy of slavery.

Alexandria is a diverse and inclusive community, a community with a majority African-American population, and though we have struggled and continue to struggle with the vestiges of institutionalized racism, we are a city that celebrates its diversity. As witnessed yesterday, we are also a city that welcomes and encourages the fundamental rights of people to peacefully protest about an issue in which they believe. A peaceful protest, by definition, precludes individuals from engaging in taunts of physical violence, even when those taunts are contained in symbols. Such threats should be treated seriously, with the full force of the laws we have enacted to protect us.

Hopefully, we will not allow the isolated incident of two hateful people who are not members of our community to distract us, disturb us, or define us.

Sep 21

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Tens of Thousands Peacefully Demonstrate in Support of Equal Justice for the Jena Six

YESTERDAY NIGHT, I hosted three people from New Orleans who had driven up to Alexandria so that they could get up incredibly early in the morning and drive another hour to Jena, Louisiana. The hotel rooms were all booked around here. The newspaper reported traffic delays in Alexandria at 7AM this morning. That never happens here.

CNN knew what was going on in Jena. They’ve been following the story here for weeks. They’ve been on the ground, scouring through evidence, learning about the area, and interviewing a cross-section of Central Louisianans, including Alexandria’s own Tony Brown, about the case of the Jena Six. And maybe that is why CNN seemed best prepared to cover what happened in Jena today. They were listening.

The State Police estimate that 20,000 people marched on the streets of Jena today, though event organizers claim the numbers were much higher (At one point today, The Town Talk reported that 60,000 people were in attendance). Either way, the event today in Jena was unprecedented, arguably the largest civil rights demonstration in the American South since the 1960s. It was peaceful, it was orderly, and it was an incredible symbol of the power of numbers– a representation of a powerful grassroots movement, people who are committed to expend their own time, energy, and money to support the civil rights of fellow Americans they have never even met before, and a movement that somehow managed to sneak below the radar until suddenly the media collectively realized that the numbers were simply too large to ignore.

CNN also understood that the tens of thousands of people who congregated in Jena today were not inspired to drive into the small town because of mainstream media coverage. The story did not really take shape in the mainstream media. It took shape on the blogosphere and on urban talk radio. And this demonstration did not occur simply because of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, though their celebrity and passion for this case lent it credibility. It took place primarily because of people like Alan Bean and his organization Friends of Justice, who have been here since January. It took place because people from Louisiana, both black and white, were inspired to inform people about this story. It took place because of programs like Democracy Now and independent journalists who uncovered an important story that nobody else was interested in.

The story is not over yet, but now, the world is watching.

On a personal note, thank you to the people at National Public Radio, CNN, and PBS for linking to the Jena Six Compendium in order to spread awareness about this issue.

Today, we were reminded of the power of numbers and the power of a movement– a new movement– composed of passionate, intelligent, and motivated Americans, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, Northerners and Southerners, people from all corners of the nation who converged in a small Louisiana town to peacefully demonstrate in support of equal justice.

Sep 16

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Foster Campbell’s Plan for “Collecting on Past Debt”

ON DECEMBER 19, CenLamar featured a small news item about Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell‘s decision to run for Governor. At the time, Campbell had not formerly announced, but he had stated he was “99.9%” certain he would be entering the Governor’s race. Shortly thereafter, Campbell made it known that he was, in fact, a candidate for Governor, and he was in the race to stay.

During the past eight months, Campbell has been actively raising money and traveling the State in support of his candidacy for Governor of Louisiana. Although Campbell has campaigned on a number of different issues, the hallmark of his campaign is a bold plan to eliminate the state income tax and “update the 1921 severence tax on oil and gas produced in Louisiana.” (Note: severence tax is defined as “A tax imposed by a state on the extraction of natural resources, such as oil, coal, or gas, that will be used in other states.”) Quoting from his website (bold mine):

The Campbell plan will replace the money given back to Louisianans (with the repeal of the state income tax) by updating the 1921 severance tax on oil and gas produced in Louisiana. He’ll institute a 6 percent user fee on ALL oil and gas produced, processed, refined or distributed in Louisiana. Although Louisiana is now an oil and gas processing state instead of a major producing state, the system adopted 86 years ago collects a tax ONLY on minerals produced in Louisiana. But 95 percent of oil and gas produced and processed in Louisiana–most of it from foreign oil companies and companies owned by foreign nations–is untaxed. That’s unfair to producers in Louisiana and allows foreign companies to use our offshore waters and coastal wetlands without charge.

The processing fee will produce $5.5 billion each year. Even after eliminating the state income tax and the severance tax, Louisiana will gain an additional $1.7 billion in revenue every year. Foster will devote $1 billion a year to restoring coastal wetlands, damaged in part by mineral extraction and the thousands of miles of canals dug in our marshes to aid offshore exploration and production.

The remainder of the new funding obtained through the Campbell plan will be devoted to highway construction, improving our schools and other critical needs.

As Campbell notes, our State Treasury has long relied “on severence taxes and mineral royalties” as a steady source of revenue, but unfortunately, Louisiana is limited on what, where, and who we can tax for using our state’s infrastructure to refine and produce oil and gas. Campbell explains the current structure (bold mine):

The state receives royalty payments for production from State-owned lands and water bottoms, but receives severance-tax revenue from all oil and gas production on any property within state boundaries. The state offshore boundary extends three miles from the coastline, beyond which is federal territory. The only revenue the state receives for production in federal waters is 27 percent of the revenue for the 3-mile-wide band of water that extends from 3 miles to 6 miles from the state coastline, which is the first 3 miles of federal waters. Beyond that, the state receives no revenue from the vast production in the federal offshore area.

Essentially, oil and gas companies can bypass paying any Louisiana severence taxes by focusing their production in “federal offshore areas,” despite the fact that these companies utilize Louisiana’s expansive infrastructure to refine and process oil that was technically drilled just far enough away from the Louisiana coast in order to avoid taxation.

Currently, Louisiana natural-gas production is a meager 23 percent of its 1970 level, and Louisiana oil production is 14 percent of its 1970 peak. During this same period, imports of foreign oil and gas and from federal offshore waters increased dramatically (ibid).

The significant decline in-state oil and gas production has resulted in dramatic decreases in revenue for Louisiana, while foreign oil and gas continues to “flood” the market without having to pay equitable taxes for production. Essentially, the system is rigged in favor of foreign oil and gas companies. It seems to encourage these companies to set up massive oil rigs a few miles outside of our coast in order to drill for our natural resources without ever having to pay the same severence taxes that other companies, located nearby, are required to pay. (And we have not even considered the environmental impacts).

As Campbell points out, the current structure imposes a high severence tax on oil production (second only to Alaska), which primarily targets “struggling in-state producers,” while completely ignoring the vast quantities of oil and gas imported into our State by foreign companies. He writes (bold mine):

Importing oil and gas from outside Louisiana relies upon the people, infrastructure, and resources of the state to process it so that the rest of the country benefits from its availability to fuel their automobiles and heat their homes and businesses.

Louisiana production is only 4.5 percent of the oil processed in the state. The remainder is 24.9 percent OCS, 12 percent imported from other states, and 58.6 percent foreign oil. For natural gas processed in the state, the source is 24.3 percent Louisiana production, 46.3 percent OCS, 27 percent imported from other states, and 2.4 percent foreign imports.

Campbell’s solution seems quite simple and intuitive (bold mine):

…replacing a 12.5-percent-of-value oil severance tax and a 6.2-percent-of-value natural-gas severance tax – both paid only by Louisiana producers — with a 6-percent-of-value processing fee on all oil and gas produced or processed in the state, would reduce taxes for Louisiana producers while raising $4.8 billion annually in new revenue.

Critics have argued that the imposition of such a tax would cause oil and gas companies to divert off-shore production away from Louisiana, but Campbell contends that ultimately such a massive diversion makes little financial or economic sense for these companies. If oil were to be diverted, “the 434 million barrels of crude oil currently coming into Louisiana” would “fill up to capacity every refinery in the entire eastern half of the United States (bold mine).” The national shortage of natural gas processing and refining facilities, along with the public opposition for the construction of new facilities, likely means that “few communities would allow such development outside of Louisiana.”

Campbell already has a detailed plan that addresses how his proposed processing fee would be administered; “The fee would only apply to refined petroleum products (typically fuels) that are imported into the state and are further processed, but not to petrochemicals.”

Other critics believe Campbell’s plan may face some Constitutional challenges, particularly relating to the Supremacy clause and the Commerce clause of the United States Constitution. The Commerce clause or Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution states: “The Congress shall have Power …To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” On its face, it appears as if a new 6% tax leveled against “all oil and gas produced, processed, refined or distributed in Louisiana” should not conflict with the Commerce clause, which was designed to allow the Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations. If critics believe the Commerce clause would prohibit Louisiana from taxing commercial activity within its own State, then wouldn’t the Commerce clause also prevent states like Alabama from levying taxes against their new Hyundai plant without the expressed approval of Congress, considering Hyundai is a Korean automobile company? Others have suggested the Campbell plan could violate the Supremacy clause of the Constitution, but most likely, this argument is based on an erroneous interpretation of the Commerce clause.

Louisiana citizens should have the right to expect foreign oil and gas companies who drill off of our evaporating coastline and who refine and process oil in our State, utilizing the infrastructure that our taxdollars paid for, to contribute an equitable amount in taxes back to our State.

For far too many years, we have sat idly by as foreign oil and gas companies have exploited loopholes in the arbitrarily defined borders of state and federal off-shore waters in order to avoid paying the same taxes that hard-working Louisiana-based industries have had to pay.

And how has this ever helped the State Louisiana? Keep reading.

Archive for September, 2007

Three of Louisiana’s Top Ten Most Endangered Historic Properties Located in Alexandria

Video Footage of “Alleged” Jindal Staffer Blocking and Intimidating Young Woman at Jindal/Vitter NRA Event

PointeCoupeeDemocrat Joins CenLamar

CenLamar Welcomes Newest Contributor, LAMediaWatch

Bobby Jindal and the “Freedom” of Assembly

Grant Parish Teenagers Drive Into Alexandria With Nooses Strung From Vehicle At Conclusion of Massive Peaceful Protest

Tens of Thousands Peacefully Demonstrate in Support of Equal Justice for the Jena Six

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