How long do you get to live someplace else, but still vote in New Orleans?
NAACP Challenges Louisiana Voter Purge
The NAACP filed a civil rights lawsuit Thursday challenging a purge of Louisiana voters believed to have registered in other states following Hurricane Katrina.
In the federal court action, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People contends that the purge has already begun without the necessary pre-approval of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Because of its history of racial discrimination before the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, voting changes in Louisiana and other Southern states must be approved by federal officials.
On June 15, Secretary of State Jay Dardenne announced that his agency was mailing notices to 53,554 voters saying they must give up their registration in other states or risk losing the right to vote in Louisiana. Dardenne said the state had compared Louisiana voter roles with those of other states and identified people with identical names and dates of birth.
Voters were given one month to prove they had canceled their out-of- state registrations. After that, they had to appear in person at their voter registrar’s office with documentation that their non-Louisiana registration had been canceled.
On Aug. 17, election officials said more than 21,192 people had been dropped—the majority from areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Of those, 6,932 were from Orleans Parish, which was majority black before the storm.
I think the answer is as long as the Nagin and Jefferson types still want to keep their office staff. You can BET Nagin wasn’t elected by people who’d actually returned to the city ~ I’m sure he had a helluva voting block come out of Houston/points beyond. (AND I’ll bet a bunch of those voters are still there.) “All politics AND VOTING is local” is how it should be in New Orleans. If you’re not suffering through the hard times alongside the folks in the city, you don’t need to be casting votes deciding who their elected officials are gonna be.
We were there last month, for the first time since Ivan in 2004. Take this picture, for example. It’s from the window of our room at the Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street. Pretty much the heart of the French Quarter.
The second and third floors of the buildings are empty. And it’s not just that block. They’re almost all empty. It’s like a creepy fantasy village, where most of the street level shops on the main thoroughfares are open (it’s a different story on sidestreets ~ two or three shuttered shops in a row at a time), but the floors above are a facade. People work there…but no one lives there.
We’ve been through devastation here in Bangla-cola and, from personal experience and what we’d seen on the telly, knew in our hearts that NOLA would be back, even though it would be a hundred times harder than our little success story. But now we’ve BEEN there. Now we’ve dropped down on the Irish Bayou side of the Pontchartrain I-10 bridge and SEEN NOTHING the whole way into the city. Miles upon miles of bleak abandoned apartments and condos and housing tracks by the thousands. There’s nothing scarier than the small, derelict amusement park in horror films. Look to your left and there Six Flags sits…rotting. Those massive, empty rollercoasters black against the sky. It’s all still standing ~ all the businesses, buildings, neighborhoods ~ all still standing. But now a ghost town of unimaginable scale. And for it to come back to life, it all has to come down first. UNIMAGINABLE scale. I could not stop the tears. Could. Not. From the interstate, you’ll catch a glimpse of blue tarp, the glimmer of siding from a FEMA trailer, or the flash of TYVEC housewrap from the few intrepid souls trying to put their lives back together, but honestly, all you can think is
“WHO is the CRAZY motherfucker out there in the wilderness by themselves?!”
God bless them. Honestly. There are no utilities, no neighbors, no NOTHING. And the desolation runs right up to the back of the Quarter. Locals will sit at the Monteleone bar and ask “Where you from?” and shake your hand and thank you for coming. They will ask every single person in the bar, moving from table to table, stopping to chat, offer suggestions and shaking hands. From the bottom of their hearts.
Really. Before we went, major dad and I thought they’d be fine eventually. Changed, of course. But fine. Like us.
Now we don’t see how and we love that city so much, it’s visceral. The enormity of it washes over you like a big, grey wave and you cannot visualize where they would even start. Even if they had the resources and the talent and the political will and weren’t their own worst enemies, WHERE do they start? WHO starts? Starts WHAT? Sweet Jesus, I wish someone knew, ’cause right now?.
We don’t see how.
Swill Food and Grog | Mr. Bingley | 
August 31, 2007 7:49 pm | 
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