New Orleans’ immigrant communities are often ignored or under-represented. But through grass-roots organising, legal action, and political lobbying, Asian and Latino organisations have won some important victories. Activists from New Orleans’ Arab population – which is largely Palestinian – have expressed hope that they can follow these examples.

Grass-roots protest into political power

The city’s Vietnamese community gained influence through post-Katrina struggles to bring their New Orleans east neighbourhood back in the first months after the storm. This effort, which also involved a fight against a city landfill located near their homes, turned grass-roots protests into political power, including the recent election of the nation’s first Vietnamese-American member of Congress.

The city’s Latino community has grown and changed as thousands of recent immigrants came looking for work in the rebuilding after the storm. Despite continuing problems, including police harassment of undocumented immigrants, grass-roots efforts have helped translate those numbers into political influence and leverage over employers who had sought to exploit them. While employers and politicians have sought to pit the city’s Latino and black workers against each other, organisers have built alliances between these communities.

These victories, together with a sense that there is a need for their community to be heard, have provoked Arab New Orleanians into action. According to Angelina Abbir Mansour, a student activist at the University of New Orleans (UNO), outrage caused by the devastation in Gaza was a catalyst. ‘When the Gaza massacre happened, the first thought that came to everyone’s head was “we can’t be quiet anymore,’” she explained. Young activists have also been inspired by successes in other cities, such as a recent successful campaign to get Hampshire College to divest from companies that supply the Israeli military as well as sit-ins and building occupations on other campuses in the US and Europe.

Mass protests

At Jackson Square, in the center of New Orleans’ French Quarter, more than a thousand people gathered on 4 January 2009 for one of the largest demonstrations this city has seen in recent years. Tracie Washington, a civil rights leader in the city and the director of the Louisiana Justice Institute, attended with her son. Addressing the crowd, she said, ‘my son asked me today about what is happening in Gaza. He asked, “is it like if I pinched you and you punched me?” I said to him, “no, its like if you pinched me and I shot you with an AK-47.’”

The cheers of the crowd were audible from several blocks away. Palestinian youth led raucous chants of ‘No Justice, No Peace,’ and ‘Gaza Gaza don’t you cry, in our hearts you’ll never die.’ Children held up signs saying, ‘This is what an Israeli target looks like.’

The Louisiana Justice Institute was one of several New Orleans social justice and civil rights organisations that Palestinian organisers have built ties with – others included the New Orleans chapter of INCITE (women of color against violence), the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative, Pax Christi, Malcolm X Grass-roots Movement, and Mayday Nola, an organisation that works on public housing issues. ‘I’ve seen a huge amount of support from the African American community,’ says Mansour, who is co-founder of a chapter of the General Union of Palestinian Students on the campus of the UNO. ‘Because they know more than anyone what it’s like to face racism. Alliances between our communities make sense.’

The 4 January march was the second of four mass demonstrations for Gaza during the Israeli bombing. The first demonstration, brought together in less than 24 hours, brought out more than 300 people. Palestinian youth from New Orleans organised and led the march, and entire families participated.

The size of the demonstrations surprised even the organisers. ‘New Orleans is a small town,’ says activist and business owner Emad Jabbar. ‘For 1,200 people to come out with just a few days notice – I’m speechless.’ Every local TV station covered the demonstrations. However The Times Picayune, New Orleans’ local paper, refused to send a reporter. In response, activists organised a demonstration the following week, bringing almost 100 people to protest outside the paper’s offices.

Beginnings

Organising in New Orleans’ Arab community is not new – it goes back to the first intifada, a time of increased activity in the Palestinian diaspora around the world. Since then, activism has surged and receded in waves, with support and trainings from national organisations such as the Muslim American Society and US Campaign to End The Israeli Occupation playing an important role.

The two years before Katrina saw mass action, as well as coalition building and education, among local Palestinians and their allies, and in some aspects today’s movement is built from that work.

A coalition of activists also organised human rights delegations to the Middle East, sending nine delegates from diverse backgrounds and communities to Palestinian cities on the West Bank in the summer of 2004. They self-published a book and a released a newsletter, made and distributed a film (chronicling one member’s journey to Palestine), and worked on several art projects, including a hip-hop show, a photography exhibition, and collaborations with the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival.

A multiracial and multi-generational coalition of Palestine activists met on the campus of Xavier University, a historically black college, and its core group included Muslims, Christians, Jews, and secular activists. The group collaborated closely with many different aspects of the Arab and Muslim community in the city – meetings were attended by representatives of New Orleans’ Muslim Shura Council, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of New Orleans, New Orleans’ Palestine American Congress, and Stop The Wall – a local group made up of more than 200 New Orleanians with family in the Palestinian village of Beit Anan.

Another core member of the group was a white Episcopal minister who had traveled to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and several members were Palestinian Christians. Nation Of Islam members were part of the group, as well as several Jewish activists, including a woman who had gone on a pro-Israel delegation organised by New Orleans’ Jewish Federation – and came home disturbed by the Palestinian suffering she’d seen, causing her to break with the federation and become an activist for Palestinian rights.

A small community

According to the US census, New Orleans’ pre-Katrina population was 67 per cent African American and 27 per cent white, with all other categories adding up to about 6 per cent. Maher Salem, a young community leader and business owner, adds that, ‘The Palestinian community is a small minority in New Orleans. The city is mostly African American and white, then you have Latinos, then Vietnamese, and Palestinians are the smallest group. We’re at the bottom of the list.’

As with many immigrant communities, New Orleans’ Palestinian community is both spread out and insular. Families are located in various suburbs on New Orleans’ west bank (on the other side of the Mississippi river), but there isn’t a particular neighbourhood where most live. The community is rarely discussed in national coverage of New Orleans, or even in the local media. ‘Growing up, I didn’t know there was a Palestinian community here,’ Mansour says. ‘I guess because we’re a small population and were not making headlines.’

Many of New Orleans’ Palestinians are from a handful of small towns and villages near Ramallah and Jerusalem, such as Silwad, Al-Bireh, Al-Mizra’a, and Beit Anan. They are often small business owners – owning restaurants, convenience and clothing stores. In the aftermath of Katrina, much of the city’s Arab community was displaced, losing both their stores and homes. ‘A lot of us lost businesses,’ says Salem, ‘and many from our community moved to other cities.’ Although they no longer live here, many of those that are displaced still feel connected to the city. ‘I know guys that are in Dallas now,’ Salem says. ‘But every time we have a protest or something else happening they call and ask what happened. They miss living here.’

For those that have returned, rebuilding has been a struggle – as it has been for other New Orleanians in this city where a third of all properties are still empty. Sandra Bahhur is a Palestinian-American woman originally from Al-Bireh, a nurse and restaurant owner, she has been a strong voice for social justice in New Orleans. Sandra’s home in the Lakeview neighbourhood was so destroyed by flooding that she couldn’t get the doors to open. Her business on Carrollton Avenue was destroyed, just days before it would have been ready to debut. They had been working all day on the restaurant the day before the hurricane, as they did many days. ‘We had just bought a new oven, new refrigerators, new kitchen equipment,’ she told me days after the storm. ‘Everything’s destroyed. Our home is destroyed, the business is destroyed. We lost everything. Everything.’

Like many New Orleanians, Sandra and her husband Luis love New Orleans, and refused to give up. After two more years of work, their restaurant reopened in late 2007 to positive press coverage and full houses. However, Sandra and Luis were never able to fully recover from the debt from rebuilding after the storm. With the recent economic downturn, the restaurant hit hard times, and closed permanently last month. Although they love the city, Sandra and Luis’ future in New Orleans is uncertain.

Changing the media

Although disappointed with local media coverage, activists have created powerful video and images documenting their own movement, and spread the word through social networking sites, email, texting, and word of mouth. 2-Cent Entertainment – a group of young African-American video activists who are responsible for some of the most exciting media organising happening in New Orleans today – made a pair of powerful videos documenting the activist uprising, which have been widely distributed online.

The young activists that organised the actions are determined to make their mark in the city, through changing the media landscape and shifting public opinion. ‘We’re a part of this city,’ says Emad Jabbar. ‘We identify with it. If you ask most New Orleans Palestinians where they’re from they’ll say New Orleans – especially the young ones.’ It was this spirit that led dozens of Palestinians to join with African American community leaders in last month’s annual Martin Luther King march. Community leader Maher Salem explains, ‘My cause, my goal is about the Palestinian people, Gaza, and freedom for everyone. However you describe me – businessman, father, community leader – what I am is someone who stands for justice.’

As they move forward, Palestinian activists in New Orleans are excited at the possibilities. ‘People call me, come to me in the street and in the mosque, and ask me what are you up to, what’s next,’ says Jabbar. ‘Our organising in New Orleans is moving forward. People in the community are passionate and have a lot of energy. We just need to keep stepping up.’

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now.

Resources:
New Orleans Palestine Solidarity

New Orleans Palestine Solidarity, updates

2-Cent Entertainment

New Orleans Workers\’ Center for Racial Justice

Left Turn Magazine

The Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for a range of offences, including keeping former members of the Black Panthers, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death penalty trial in St Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the Bush administration, the behaviour documented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary stands out – both for its brutality and the significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very top.

In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola, twenty-five inmates testified last summer to facing overwhelming violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt nearly a decade ago. These twenty-five inmates – who were not involved in the escape attempt – testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and threatened that they would be killed. They were also threatened by guards that they would be sexually assaulted with batons and forced to urinate and defecate on themselves. They were bloodied, had teeth knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions, and until they signed statements or confessions presented to them by prison officials. One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was placed in solitary confinement for eight years.

While prison officials deny the policy of abuse, the range of prisoners who gave statements, in addition to medical records and other evidence introduced at the trial, present a powerful argument that abuse is a standard policy at the prison. Several of the prisoners received $7,000 when the state agreed to settle – without admitting liability – two civil rights lawsuits filed by 13 inmates. The inmates will have to spend that money behind bars – more than 90 per cent of Angola’s prisoners are expected to die behind its walls.

Systemic violence

During the attempted escape at Angola, in which one guard was killed and two were taken hostage, a team of officers – including Angola warden Burl Cain – rushed in and began shooting – killing one inmate, Joel Durham and wounding another, David Mathis.

The prison has no official guidelines for what should happen during escape attempts or other crises, a policy that seems designed to encourage the violent treatment documented in this case. Richard Stalder, at that time the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, was also at the prison at the time. Yet despite – or because of the presence of the prison warden and head of corrections for the state, guards were given a free hand to engage in violent retribution. Cain later told a reporter after the shooting that Angola’s policy was not to negotiate, saying, ‘That’s a message all the inmates know. They just forgot it. And now they know it again.’

Five prisoners – including Mathis – were charged with murder, and currently are on trial, facing the death penalty – partially based on testimony from other inmates that was obtained through beatings and torture. Mathis is represented by civil rights attorneys Jim Boren (who also represented one of the Jena Six youths) and Rachel Connor, with assistance from Nola Investigates, an investigative firm in New Orleans that specialises in defence for capital cases.

The St Francisville hearing was requested by Mathis’ defence counsel to demonstrate that, in the climate of violence and abuse, inmates were forced to sign statements through torture, and therefore those statements should be inadmissible. Judicial District Judge George H Ware Jr ruled that the documented torture and abuse was not relevant. However, the behaviour documented in the hearing not only raises strong doubts about the cases against the Angola Five, but it also shows that violence against inmates has become standard procedure at the prison.

The hearing shows a pattern of systemic abuse so open and regular, it defies the traditional excuse of bad apples. Inmate Doyle Billiot testified to being threatened with death by the guards, ‘What’s not to be afraid of? Got all these security guards coming around you everyday looking at you sideways, crazy and stuff. Don’t know what’s on their mind, especially when they threaten to kill you.’ Another inmate, Robert Carley testified that a false confession was beaten out of him. ‘I was afraid,’ he said. ‘I felt that if I didn’t go in there and tell them something, I would die.’

Inmate Kenneth ‘Geronimo’ Edwards testified that the guards, ‘beat us half to death’. He also testified that guards threatened to sexually assault him with a baton, saying, ‘that’s a big black … say you want it.’ Later, Edwards says, the guards, ‘put me in my cell. They took all my clothes. Took my jumpsuit. Took all the sheets, everything out the cell, and put me in the cell buck-naked … It was cold in the cell. They opened the windows and turned the blowers on.’ At least a dozen other inmates also testified to receiving the same beatings, assault, threats of sexual violence, and ‘freezing treatment’.

Some guards at the prison treated the abuse as a game. Inmate Brian Johns testified at the hearing that, ‘one of the guards was hitting us all in the head. Said he liked the sound of the drums – the drumming sound that – from hitting us in the head with the stick.’

Solitary confinement

Two of Angola’s most famous residents, political prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have become the primary example of another form of abuse common at Angola – the use of solitary confinement as punishment for political views. The two have now each spent more than 36 years in solitary, despite a judge recently overturning Woodfox’s conviction (prison authorities continue to hold Woodfox and have announced plans to retry him). Woodfox and Wallace – who together with former prisoner King Wilkerson are known as the Angola Three – have filed a civil suit against Angola, arguing that their confinement has violated both their eighth amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment and fourth amendment right to due process.

Recent statements by Angola warden Burl Cain makes clear that Woodfox and Wallace are being punished for their political views. At a recent deposition, attorneys for Woodfox asked Cain, ‘Lets just for the sake of argument assume, if you can, that he is not guilty of the murder of Brent Miller.’ Cain responded, ‘Okay. I would still keep him in [solitary] … I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them … He has to stay in a cell while he’s at Angola.’

In addition to Cain’s comments, Louisiana attorney general James ‘Buddy’ Caldwell has said the case against the Angola Three is personal to him. Statements like this indicate that this vigilante attitude not only pervades New Orleans’ criminal justice system, but that the problem comes from the very top.

The problem is not limited to Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola, similar stories can be found in prisons across the US. With the abandonment of prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison during Katrina to the case of the Jena Six, Louisiana’s criminal justice system, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, US prisons seem to be functioning under plantation-style justice.

Torture and abuse is illegal under both US law – including the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment – and international treaties that the US is signatory to, from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1992). Despite the laws and treaties, US prison guards have rarely been held accountable to these standards.

Once we say that abuse or torture is okay against prisoners, the next step is for it to be used against the wider population. A recent petition for administrative remedies filed by Herman Wallace states, ‘If Guantanamo Bay has been a national embarrassment and symbol of the US government’s relation to charges, trials and torture, then what is being done to the Angola Three … is what we are to expect if we fail to act quickly … The government tries out it’s torture techniques on prisoners in the US – just far enough to see how society will react. It doesn’t take long before they unleash their techniques on society as a whole.’ If we don’t stand up against this abuse now, it will only spread.

Despite the hearings, civil suits, and other documentation, the guards who performed the acts documented in the hearing on torture at Angola remain unpunished, and the system that designed it remains in place. In fact, many of the guards have been promoted, and remain in supervisory capacity over the same inmates they were documented to have beaten mercilessly. Warden Burl Cain still oversees Angola. Meanwhile, the trial of the Angola Five is moving forward, and those with the power to change the pattern of abuse at Angola remain silent.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now. He can be reached at neworleans[at]leftturn.org.

Additional research by Emily Ratner

Resources:

The Angola Three

Safe Streets Strong Communities

Families and Friends of Louisiana\’s Incarcerated Children

Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90 per cent black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them – Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas, for example, even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

Now that the money is flowing in, and the world’s eyes are focused on Katrina, it is vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.Jordan Flaherty is a union organiser and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He is not planning on moving out of New Orleans.