New Orleans 4/22: Hunger Strike Calling for Blanco to Provide a Fair Election

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IN THIS MESSAGE

1) Hunger Strike Calling for Blanco to Provide a Fair Election - Call to Join/Support evacuees

2) Katrina evacuees continue hunger strike at Louisiana state capitol

3) Tens of thousands of displaced New Orleanians will be unable to vote in Saturday's municipal elections; Governor Blanco can single-handedly prevent it. But she won't.

4) 'New Orleans is our Gettysburg'; A Generation's Defining Event -- by the Editors of The Black Commentator

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1) Hunger Strike Calling for Blanco to Provide a Fair Election - Call to Join/Support evacuees

Tens of thousands of voters will be disenfranchised in the April 22nd election in New Orleans, most of them Black. State officials know it, and they know how to prevent it - by providing satellite voting for displaced New Orleanians outside the state of Louisiana. But despite large grassroots efforts demanding satellite voting, the state has refused to provide it. The only thing preventing this important election from becoming a fair election is one signature by one person: Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

On Tuesday, Hillary Charlot, 46, an evacuee from New Orleans, began a hunger strike on the front steps of the state capitol. On Wednesday, Patricia Thompson, 53 and her daughter Ariel both evacuees, made the drive College Station, TX to join him. They are calling on the governor to sign an executive order to postpone the election until out-of-state satellite voting can be put in place. They will stay until Governor Blanco takes appropriate action to ensure a fair election, or until the day of the election.

Please Join Us

For the evacuees' voice to be effective, they need as much support as they can get. If you can, please join them in Baton Rouge, either to participate in the hunger strike or to stand with them in solidarity.

Please contact James Rucker (415.505.9048 or <mailto:james [at] colorofchange.org>james [at] colorofchange.org) if you have questions or are able to provide help in any way.

And please forward this to anyone you know who might be interested in participating in or supporting the effort.

Peace,

James

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2) Katrina Evacuees Continue Hunger Strike at Louisiana State Capitol

They are calling on Gov. Blanco to interve and postpone New Orleans election, claiming that tens of thousands of out-of-state evacuees will be disenfranchised

Two evacuees from New Orleans have gone on a hunger strike to protest the April 22 New Orleans Election. Their contention is that without out-of-state satellite voting, which the Louisiana state legislature has failed to provide, many of those forced to evacuate New Orleans will be disenfranchised.

On Tuesday, Hillary Charlot, 46, an evacuee from New Orleans, began a hunger strike on the front steps of the state capitol. On Wednesday, Patricia Thompson, 53 and her daughter Ariel both evacuees, arrvied from College Station, TX to join him. Charlot said "It's simple. We know how to do this. In December, we provided satellite voting for Iraqi's in this country, affording them the opportunity to vote in their country's election from. Why can't we do the same for our own people who were displaced by Katrina?"

Their contention is that tens of thousands of voters will be disenfranchised in the April 22nd election in New Orleans, most of them black. They claim that state officials know it know how to prevent it - by providing satellite voting for displaced New Orleanians outside the state of Louisiana. Satellite voting is would place polling stations in cities with the largest number of Katrina evacuees, such as Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago. Despite grassroots efforts and several lawsuits, the state has refused provide it, and the courts have not compelled them to do so.

Their target is Governor Blanco. calling on the governor to sign an executive order to postpone the election until out-of-state satellite voting can be put in place. They will stay until Governor Blanco takes appropriate action to ensure a fair election, or until the day of the election.

For more information, please contact James Rucker at 415.505.9048.

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Hillary E. Charlot, 46
From the lower ninth ward in New Orleans, evacuated to San Diego and now living in a FEMA trailer park in Baker. Hillary is in a wheelchair after suffering two strokes. He was in the hospital in New Orleans when Katrina struck and was evacuted from the roof.

Patricia Thompson and her daughter Ariel Jeanjques, 53 and 20
Patricia is from the lower ninth ward in New Orleans and is the mother of six children and 12 grandchildren. Patricia and her youngest daughter, Ariel, were both tramatized by being housed at the Superdome and Convention Center. There were later evactuated to College Station, TX. Patricia testified before the Katrina Hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives, as one of the three evacuees sponsored by Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

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3) Tens of thousands of displaced New Orleanians will be unable to vote in Saturday's municipal elections.

Governor Blanco can single-handedly prevent it.
But she won't.

We're here to demand that she change her mind.

If the New Orleans municipal election proceeds as planned on April 22, tens of thousands of New Orleanians, most of them Black or poor, will be disenfranchised. Governor Blanco knows this, and she has the power to prevent it. But she has refused.

The obvious solution to protect displaced voters' rights is out-of-state satellite voting. It's how citizens of Iraq, Mexico, South Africa and Armenia have all been able to vote from the US in their country's elections. The solution has been on the table for months. Survivors, along with civil rights and voting rights groups have asked for it. It's the one sure way to provide access to the vote for folks who haven't been able to return home. No one has provided a good reason why it can't be done, but several legislators have fought to prevent it. And Blanco is tacitly supporting them.

This important election can become a fair one with one person's signature. With the stroke of a pen, Governor Blanco can protect the voting rights of all New Orleanians by signing an executive order that calls for satellite voting outside the state and postpones the election until reasonable, fair access to voting is provided.

Please help! Join us or use your cell phone to give Governor Blanco's office a call right now. Ask her to stand up for voting rights for all displaced New Orleanians by signing an executive order that postpones the election and calls for satellite voting. You can call her at (866)-366-1121, (225)-342-0991, or (225)-342-7015.

Stop The Attack on Katrina Survivors' Voting Rights

As survivors of Katrina we have lost a lot-our homes, our jobs, friends and family. But we refuse to lose our right to participate in the most fundamental process of democracy-voting. This is an attack on our rights as citizens and our ability to make decisions about our future as a community.

This is about basic democracy
Our government has protected the voting rights of Iraqis, Armenians, South Africans, and Mexicans through satellite voting. Why can't it do the same for its own? What does it say about this country, if we pay taxes, fight in wars, but our leaders will protect the voting rights of others while it refuses to protect ours?

Absentee balloting is not a reasonable or practical solution
The process for requesting an absentee ballot is cumbersome, the instructions have changed over time, and given the performance of the mail service, thousands of absentee ballot requests already made won't have the time to get to voters and back before the deadline.

In-state satellite voting has failed
During the early voting period in Lake Charles, only 288 people voted. Lake Charles is the satellite polling station closet to Houston, where 150,000 displaced New Orleanians live. Those numbers should scare us all. New Orleanians outside the state, folks who are disproportionately Black and poor, are days away from completely losing their political voice.

Blanco knows better and can do better
Some members of the legislature are seeking to suppress the Black vote for political gain. Governor Blanco needs to stop pandering to them and take a stand. Under pressure from Legislative Black Caucus members, who walked out when the Legislature refused to pass in-state satellite voting, Blanco made the case for satellite voting eloquently:

"These are unusual times that demand unique solutions. Without this bill, the election may lose some of its legitimacy. Without this bill, tens of thousands of citizens could easily be disenfranchised through no fault of their own. Without this bill, we deny a basic right to some of our citizens."

Clearly, with more than 175,000 displaced residents outside Louisiana, satellite voting is meaningful only if it occurs outside the state. Survivors have been begging for satellite voting in cities with large concentrations of evacuees (like Houston and Atlanta) for months. Why won't Governor Blanco stand up for her beliefs and expand satellite voting beyond the state?

Please help! Join us or use your cell phone to give Governor Blanco's office a call right now. Ask her to stand up for voting rights for all displaced New Orleanians by signing an executive order that postpones the election and calls for satellite voting. You can call her at (866)-366-1121, (225)-342-0991, or (225)-342-7015.

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4) The Black Commentator

Cover Story
'New Orleans is our Gettysburg'
A Generation's Defining Event
by BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble

This Saturday's elections in New Orleans represent yet another element of the vast crime committed against Black America. With as many as 300,000 residents, overwhelmingly African American, strewn about the country in government-engineered exile, the elections are an insult to the very idea of democracy, and to the dignity of all Black people.

This farcical exercise in faux democracy will no doubt be followed by corporate media declarations that New Orleans is returning to "normalcy" -- the same term that the media bandied about when the city held a shrunken Mardi Gras, in February.

Behind that bland word, "normalcy," lies a wish list and narrative that sees white rule as normative in America -- the way things should be -- and Black electoral power as an aberration, a kind of organized pathology in which people are assumed to be up to no good. Despite Katrina's vast damage to Louisiana infrastructure and commerce, there is a current of elation among white elites and common folk alike, at the winds and waters that cleansed New Orleans of its two-thirds Black majority, which was seen as a sore on the body politic, a den of Otherness and iniquity.

The white American narrative, which begins with national "democratic" elections after the birth of the republic in which only a tiny fraction of the population -- white male owners of substantial property -- could vote, bestows mythic significance to the electoral exercise, no matter how bogus and profoundly undemocratic. Thus, two ink-dipped elections in U.S.-occupied Iraq are heralded as benchmarks of progress, despite the deepening and widening conflict and misery that afflict the Iraqi people. In New Orleans, the mystical mantra of elections in which the majority of the population cannot fully participate, is equated with a kind of "recovery" from the storm and flood -- when no such thing has occurred.

But the whites of New Orleans are free of the overwhelming Black presence -- free at last! -- a prerequisite for the creation of a "new" and "better" city. Some speak openly of the new lease on life that the dispersal of Black residents has afforded the high-ground whites that have found themselves the new majority. (See "New Orleans Elections Fever," April 20, 2006). When their rule is sanctioned by this weekend's elections, "normalcy" will be just around the corner.

"At the same time that they were talking about holding elections, they were holding evictions," said Rev. Lennox Yearwood, chairman and CEO of Washington-based Hip Hop Caucus, who has immersed his organization in New Orleans political organizing and relief work. "What needs to happen is the organizing of our people, wherever they are."

The task is formidable, because the entire national and state white power structure is determined to be permanently rid of those exiled by Katrina. The Louisiana state legislature has rushed to put New Orleans schools up for sale, to preclude the return of Black families. The bill states that "the recovery district may sell any property which the school district determines will not be used for providing educational services on or before August 29, 2006."

"Recovery district." What a deformation of the English language. The white powers-that-be want only to "recover" New Orleans for themselves, and ensure that there will be no place for even the most determined Black exiles to return to. The white search for "normalcy" is, in reality, an ongoing crime against humanity. Saturday's election is intended to bestow respectability to the crime.

However, a bleached New Orleans will never be legitimate to African Americans, who understand that they have been collectively raped of their personhood, not by weather, but by man. Bogus elections provide a false facade of due process -- a fragrance to hide the stench of raw expulsion of a people -- but it does not fool a single African American anywhere in the nation.

In the words of University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson, Katrina "could very well shape this generation of young people in the same way that the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King shaped our generation" -- the men and women who developed their political consciousness in the Sixties.

Rev. Yearwood agrees. "People are becoming much more political," said the 26-year-old minister. "The common person in Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans is much more engrossed in politics, in the spirit of self-determination. I'm encouraged."

Katrina is becoming a rallying cry for all of Black America, creating a new generation of activists. "I'm beginning to see more Fannie Lou Hamers emerging," said Rev. Yearwood. "People don't need more organizations telling them what to do. They are saying, Just give me the tools and I'll get the job done."

While the powerful conspire to make a fait accompli of the New Orleans diaspora, the results of which will be certified by the most undemocratic election since passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the political consciousness of Black America is being transformed. A horrible lesson has been relearned: Katrina "suggested to Blacks the utter lack of the liberal possibility in the United States," says Prof. Dawson. We must strike out on our own path, with whatever allies are willing to make common cause with us. The New Orleans election will never be "closure" for us.

"New Orleans is our Gettysburg," said Rev. Yearwood. "If we lose there, we lose all the marbles."

The forces arrayed against a Black return to New Orleans do not realize that they have set in motion the entire national Black polity. Just as President John Kennedy inspired western Europeans when he declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") in 1963, all Black people see their fates entwined with the New Orleans diaspora -- "I am a New Orleanian."

We understand that the enforced exile of hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters is an assault and disenfranchisement of us all, and that we cannot afford to lose in this twilight struggle. Defeat is not an option. As Rev. Yearwood put it: "You can live in LA -- you lose. You can be in New York -- you lose. If we lose in New Orleans, we lose it all."

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BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a book to be entitled, Barack Obama and the Crisis of Black Leadership.

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