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Taking Down New Orleans’ Monuments: Not What You Think

Greg Laden Science Blogs
The back and forth between Democrats and White Supremacists on one hand and Republicans and Free Blacks on the other hand had involved military and paramilitary battles, individual homicides, massive voter intimidation efforts, and so on. The Colfax Massacre was a key point in that series of events. The Battle of Liberty Place was a continuation.

Lee Circle No More: New Orleans to Remove Four Confederate Statues

Richard Rainey The Times-Picayune/The Advocate
"The time surely comes when (justice) must and will be heard," Mayor Mitch Landrieu told the council as he called for the statues to be put in a museum or a Civil War park. "Members of the council, that day is today. The Confederacy, you see, was on the wrong side of history and humanity."

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How the Ruling Class Remade New Orleans

Thomas Jessen Adams Jacobin
The language of social justice has been used to sell intensified neoliberalism in post-Katrina New Orleans. On the tenth anniversary of the failure of the federally maintained levees, the keynote speaker at the annual Rising Tide Conference on the Future of New Orleans was DeRay Mckesson, a standard-bearer for Teach For America and the New Teacher Project — education “reform” organizations that played a crucial role in the destruction of the black middle class.

The Hurricane Katrina Pain Index Ten Years Later

Bill Quigley Portside
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, the author looks at the pain index for those who were left behind. The population of New Orleans is noticeably smaller and noticeably whiter now and despite the tens of billions poured into Louisiana, the impact on poor and working people in New Orleans has been minimal. While not all the numbers are bad, they do illustrate who has benefited and who continues to suffer 10 years after Katrina.

On the “Success” of a 100% Charter Recovery School District

By Mercedes Schneider deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's EduBlog
Even with the inflation of the 2013 school performance scores, RSD has no A schools and very few B schools. In fact, almost the entire RSD– which was already approx 90 percent charters– qualifies as a district of “failing” schools according to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s definition of “failing schools” as C, D, F schools and whose students are eligible for vouchers.

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Some N.O. Charters Begin Exploring Teachers Unions

Andrew Vanacore The Times-Picayune/The Advocate
For New Orleans, the debate over charter schools and teachers unions has always been an either-or proposition. The Orleans Parish School Board voided the city’s union contract after Hurricane Katrina, and charter schools began taking over rapidly thereafter. Now, New Orleans is beginning to find out if this hard divide between charters and unions is really necessary, or if the two can somehow learn to coexist.

Don't Expect a Safe, Humane Orleans Parish Prison Any Time Soon; Here's Why

Michael Avery, Contributing opinion writer The Lens
The prison is too large; it's understaffed, and it's filthy. In 2013 federal Judge Lance Africk found conditions in Orleans Parish Prison unconstitutional. Federal law does not permit the judge to close the jail, or even transfer prisoners out of it. And yet conditions are so bad it's likely to be years before reforms can be completed. In the meantime, the prisoners must try to survive in conditions that the federal court has already declared unconstitutional.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Keeping the Commons Common

Beverly Bell Other Worlds Are Possible
One feature of recent Mardi Gras celebrations is missing this year, however. Thanks to a city council vote, the growing trend of taking over swaths of sidewalks and neutral grounds (as we New Orleanians call medians) is a thing of the past. The long walls of chairs and ladders at the very front of curbs that impeded visibility and mobility, and the roped-off areas that effectively privatized city grounds, are now illegal. It is a vote in favor of the commons.
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