Editors of The Nation: Suppressing the New Orleans Vote

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Issue of May 1, 2006
Posted online Thursday April 13

Editorial: Suppressing the New Orleans Vote

New Orleans has long been pivotal in the struggle for black voting rights. During the Civil War, free blacks there demanded suffrage; their efforts resulted in Lincoln's first public call for voting rights for some blacks in the final speech of his life. Once these rights were won, New Orleans blacks took an active part in politics, leading to the establishment of the South's only integrated public school system. But rights once gained aren't necessarily secure; after Reconstruction, blacks in New Orleans lost the right to vote. As Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote at the time of the Civil War, "revolutions may go backwards."

This is what we are seeing now, as New Orleans prepares for municipal elections on April 22. These elections are set to take place even though fewer than half the city's 460,000 residents have returned and the vast majority of those displaced outside Louisiana are African-Americans--the result of what Representative Barney Frank calls the Bush Administration's policy of "ethnic cleansing by inaction."

How did this happen? How did New Orleans become the most obvious symbol of the "backwards revolution" in voting rights that's been going on for at least twenty-five years? The answer is a states' rights mentality that pervades not just the Louisiana legislature but also the Bush Administration. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote recently, the Administration "seems intent on suppressing the African-American vote in New Orleans and in Louisiana."

Read more.

[BOSSHOG]

1. I just don't see it

People from across the country are already voting in the city's election. They are being bussed in to do so. The state has spent 4 million bucks to aid voters (10 times the normal amount, alot for a cashed strapped state.) There are satellite voting sights around the state. Folks can vote absentee. I find it incredibly ironic that voters rights is a big issue now but in the last mayoral election less than 50% of registered voters bothered to vote even though they were living in the city at the time. I applaud Jackson getting citizens to come back to vote. I'd applaud louder if he got people to come back to help clean up the city. My wife and I helped with some home cleanups in New Orleans East. The city is filled with volunteers from all over the country. I need a helluva lot more evidence before I buy any argument that New Orleans residents are being kept from voting.

[xxqqqzme]

2. if any group is likely 2 vote

democratic, you can be assured the rethugs are working 2 either suppress the vote or have it counted as rethug. It is going on right now in CA. Voting records are being 'purged' w/ disastrous results if you're not white. What, you ask, is the CA Democratic party doing about it? Why absolutely NOTHING!

Be prepared for steroid boy's election in Nov.