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Who Runs Louisiana?

By
Sue Lincoln
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It’s 2019: a huge election year for Louisiana, and all the political messaging will be asking – openly or subliminally – “Who runs this state?” It’s a question the politicians have been forcing you to ask yourself for the past three years, as the Republican-controlled legislature (the state House, in particular) and the Republican Attorney General have wrestled with the Democratic Governor to assert party ideology and dominance over governmental policies and practices in Louisiana.

This year, voters are not only facing selections for governor and other statewide-elected officials, but will also be picking their next legislators. Those men and women will have, in addition to their lawmaking duties, the added responsibility for drawing new district lines following the 2020 Census – affecting Louisiana political outcomes for at least another decade into the future.

The potential rewards of that type of influence are immense, and so the political ads we’ll be seeing and hearing will expand beyond personal snapshots of those offering themselves for service to the state. Special interest groups are filling their war chests, stockpiling their ideological ammunition and prepping to launch their assaults via airwaves and cyberspace. These state elections will undoubtedly be the most expensive in Louisiana’s 207 year history.

Throughout Louisiana’s statehood, the question of “Who runs this state?” has been asked often.

“Queen Sugar” and “King Cotton” were the state’s earliest economic drivers, and while Louisiana indirectly benefited from the early to mid-19th century Industrial Revolution, the state also ultimately lost population as a consequence. Factories grew elsewhere, while Louisiana grew and exported the raw cotton and sugar that would clothe and sweeten the lives of the nation’s expanding population.

Deep beneath Louisiana’s fertile soil, another natural resource awaited. As commerce and industry expanded elsewhere, so did the demands for ways to fuel it.

In 1870, a night watchman in Shreveport lit a match, and “accidentally” discovered natural gas coming from a recently-drilled artesian well.

In 1901, nine months after and 90 miles east of the first Texas oil “gusher” Spindletop, an oil well drilled near Jennings, Louisiana also began gushing forth “black gold.” By 1906, the state legislature had passed its first oil and gas laws, and in 1909, the first oil refinery in the state – what is now the Exxon refinery in Baton Rouge – came on line.

Some quarter of a million oil and gas wells have been drilled in Louisiana since then (though 35% of them – some 80,000 – ended up as dry holes), and this state was a major contributor in fueling the nation’s phenomenal growth throughout the 20th century.

For most of previous century, oil and gas interests ruled in and over Louisiana.

The peak of the state’s oil production was exactly 50 years ago, however – in 1969, with more than 728 million barrels produced. It has been declining ever since. Within five years of that production peak, several scientific studies were released, showing that Louisiana’s coastal land mass has been declining, in direct correlation to its oil and gas production. It was Dr. Sandra M. Gagliano’s 1973 study that estimated 39% of Louisiana’s land loss was due to the industries’ dredging of canals through the coastal wetlands.

Realizing their influence was waning as their industry’s environmental impacts were being documented, discussed, and disfavored, oil and gas concerns developed a new tactic 25 years ago: the “economic impact study.”

Louisiana Mid Continent Oil and Gas Association released the first-of-its-kind study in 1993, showing the offshore oil and gas industry provided Louisiana with a positive economic impact of more than $3 billion each year.

That report had the desired effect.

In 1994, the state Legislature passed a massive incentive package, foregoing state revenue from severance taxes for certain types of wells – including wells deeper than 15,000 feet, and those that run horizontally. And, as LMOGA’s own “History of the Industry” proudly declares, “Oil and gas activity increased sharply after passage of the incentive legislation.”

Of course, prices for crude oil, which had been around $25 per barrel at the start of 1994, went up around then as well, increasing to over $45 per barrel by the start of 1997. By November 1998, the price per barrel had plunged again, to a low of $17.25. Nearly ten years later, though, in June of 2008, the price per barrel of oil reached an all-time high of $161.28. In late August 2014, oil dropped below the hundred-dollar-per-barrel mark, continuing to decline to $36 per barrel by early 2016. As of the end of 2018, the price was hanging around $45 per barrel.

In 1982, just over 42% of Louisiana’s total state general fund came from mineral revenues: oil and gas severance taxes and royalties. In the current budget year, those sources are barely more than 6% of total state general fund revenue. And in the current budget year, we the people – through individual income taxes and sales taxes we pay – provide 74% of Louisiana’s state general fund revenue.

Yet the power dynamic has not changed to completely reflect the preferences of who is really paying the state’s bills.

From severance tax exemptions to the industrial tax exemption program (ITEP), Louisiana keeps subsidizing the profitability of these industries, because “jobs.” That’s the threat they always use: If Louisiana taxpayers don’t give them tax break after tax break, they’ll take their businesses and jobs elsewhere. They won’t, of course. They can’t.

The last time a new refinery was built in the U.S. was 1977 – 42 years ago – and that was the Marathon facility in Garyville, Louisiana. Other states won’t offer them the opportunities to profit that we have.

As for the overall oil and gas-related jobs in Louisiana, Dr. Loren Scott, the economist who has been doing the industry’s “economic impact” studies for the past 25 years, reported the 2018 jobs total at 44,580. In 2008, it was 53,000. And in 1998, it was nearly 82,000. That’s a 46% decline over the past 20 years. What the industry seldom says is that advances in computerized controls and automation have eliminated the need for people to actually do many of these jobs.

In truth, these industries have consistently applied for ITEPs, avoiding the payment of local property taxes for up to a decade, for improvement projects that actually eliminate jobs, rather than creating them. Up until recently, they got those tax breaks nearly automatically.

Louisiana remains a petro-colonial state, with our “good masters” consistently seeking rules and laws that favor their status and keep them flush with money to propagandize the people and contribute to the campaigns of candidates who will see the issues in a way that is advantageous for the oil and gas industry.

Consider what we now know of Exxon’s subterfuges, for example.

In the 1970s, even as they were funding LSU’s initial research and studies into remedies for Louisiana coastal land loss, the petrochemical giant was also conducting pioneering research into global climate change. Yet after one of Exxon’s senior scientists informed company executives that, in 1977, there was general scientific agreement that burning fossil fuels was accelerating the global warming phenomenon, Exxon continued their climate modeling research, but they quit speaking of it openly. Ultimately, in 1982, Exxon’s scientists determined that “significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change.” The internal report to Exxon executives also noted, “There is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects (of climate change) are measurable, they might not be reversible.”

Bless Exxon’s heart: they didn’t tell any of us. Instead, they poured profits into an intentional public campaign of disinformation –questioning the science and fact of global warming, utilizing the same strategies previously employed by Big Tobacco regarding smoking and lung cancer, and – along with Koch Industries – provided climate change-denying organizations with tens of millions of dollars in support.

Here in Louisiana, the oil and gas industry paid lobbyists to argue against alternative energy proposals. They ultimately killed off the state’s solar energy tax credit program, which benefited homeowners and the environment, while arguing to keep their own industry’s corporate concessions intact. They sought and received designations of refineries – and now pipelines– as “critical infrastructure,” protectable at gunpoint and making protesting those developments a felony.

They have battled and defeated every piece of proposed legislation to limit – or even study – industrial groundwater usage. And they’ve defeated every attempt to require facilities install fenceline air quality monitors, even as the oil and chemical companies “settled” EPA lawsuits citing them for decades of excess emissions in violation of the Clean Air Act.

The industry fought tooth and nail in 2014 to kill the Southeast Louisiana Levee Board lawsuit which accused 97 oil, gas, and pipeline companies of damaging the wetlands. They continue to try and buy elections of parish officials in an effort to kill off the 42 coastal land-loss lawsuits now pending trial in federal court. All this, despite the companies having signed agreements before dredging all those coastal canals – agreements which promised they would follow state law requiring proper maintenance of the rights of way and eventual restoration of the land to its original condition.

Photo courtesy: Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana

This coming year, the oil and gas companies – and their allied chemical industries, all of which would continue their power and control over Louisiana – will once again be pushing “tort reform” measures in the legislature. 

These industries are now utilizing portions of their profits to promote the narrative that “Louisiana is a judicial hellhole” because “trial lawyers are running the state” (with the unspoken, but implied addendum of “into the ground”).

Gov. John Bel Edwards is – by trade – an attorney, and he is running for re-election this year. An opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal in March of 2018 previewed the tactics oil and gas interests will be using to try and defeat him – branding him as a trial lawyer who wants to retain power, along with all his trial lawyer friends. The author of that commentary, Allysia Finley, is rated “right” for her media bias, according to allsides.com. Certainly, right-wing bloggers and columnists with other publications picked upon her commentary, and over the following week amplified it, with statements such as “The trouble with trial lawyers is that for the most part, they suck the life out of the economy.” And they all re-iterated the oil and gas industry’s mantra: “The oil industry is booming in Texas while it is stagnant or declining in Louisiana. Blame it on the state and several parishes filling lawsuits against the industry.” 

Unsurprisingly, ExxonMobil, Shell, PPG, and especially Koch Industries have been longtime heavy funders of the American Tort Reform Association – the group that publishes an annual “Judicial Hellholes” report. Louisiana is usually ranked near the top of this report, with accompanying statements such as, “The Pelican State’s legal climate has suffered at the hands of powerful trial attorneys and the politicians they have controlled for decades. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a trial lawyer, has helped further stack the deck against defendants down on the bayou, and Louisiana is unlikely to escape this litigiously fevered swamp anytime soon.”

The most recent “hellhole” report, issued Dec. 26, 2018, ranks Louisiana number five – up from number eight the previous year. California is number one, followed by Florida, New York City, and St. Louis, Missouri; then Louisiana. TopVerdicts.com’s most recent list of the 100 highest court awards in civil lawsuits does show California with 33 of the top 100 verdicts: Florida has 11 on that list. But the highest awards, and the greatest number in the top 100 – 42 – were in Texas, including the top two verdicts. One was for half a billion dollars, with the biggest verdict being for more than $8-billion. Both of those cases were for business-to-business breach of contract.

Texas did not make the “Judicial Hellholes” list at all. Louisiana, ranked number 5, did not have a single case among the top 100 verdicts. 

Yet the oil and gas industry keeps telling us Texas is doing things right, while Louisiana suffers because trial lawyers are the problem.

Texas, ironically, is also the example these same industry apologists use as an example of successful tort reform initiatives. 

Oil and gas isn’t the only business sector trying to attribute Louisiana’s problems to trial lawyers. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry has long been engaged in demonizing trial lawyers as the bane of Louisiana business, while they’ve waged a campaign for “civil justice reform” (as they’re now calling it). LABI has long been the primary financial funder of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch, which claims to be “a citizen watchdog group dedicated to stopping lawsuit abuse that threatens local businesses and jobs.”  All they seem to do though, is recycle “reports” from other questionable sources, in furtherance of the campaign for tort reform.

LABI will be making tort reform their top issue during the upcoming 2019 legislative session. LABI president Stephen Waguespack – who was former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s executive counsel, and is himself a lawyer by trade – wrote a column October 3, 2018, titled “It’s Time for Some 1-800-LEGALREFORM.”

In it, he said: “It’s all about the incentives created by the State Capitol over the years to promote a lawsuit culture in Louisiana. What has never been honestly discussed with the public are the laws the Louisiana Legislature has put in place and protected over the years to intentionally incentivize and promote one of the most active lawsuit industries in the entire nation – laws that have become strong incentives created by the Louisiana Legislature to create a robust and competitive business environment for trial lawyers.”

LABI will be branding this year’s effort to “reform” civil justice as a pro-consumer idea. They’re already using the high cost of auto insurance in Louisiana as their “focus,” blaming it on the law that says lawsuits in auto accidents (and any other civil issues) must involved claims of $50,000 or more in order to be heard before a jury, instead of just a judge.  This conveniently ignores the 2006 abolition of the Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission, a body that publicly heard and debated insurance rate hike requests. Instead, those rate increases are decided by the Insurance Commissioner alone. The holder of that office throughout the past dozen years  — Jim Donelon — has argued all along that the best way to combat Louisiana’s high insurance rates is to make the state a better place to do business. 

Baton Rouge Business Report executive editor J.R. Ball has indicated he’s throwing in with the “blame the lawyers” scenario. He wrote, on October 10, 2018, “The folks at Truth in Accounting, a state debt transparency organization, say Louisiana’s fiscal afflictions are merely symptoms of an even more sinister underlying problem: too many lawyers.”

What Ball didn’t do – or at least didn’t write about – is look into “Truth In Accounting,” which gave Louisiana a grade of “D.” SourceWatch.org says: “TIA is a right-wing 501(c)3 nonprofit and uses the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC’s) Rich States, Poor States state economic outlook rankings analysis as its database.

ALEC, which claims to be a “membership organization of state legislators,” instead actually receives 98% of its funding from corporations and corporate foundations. ALEC provides state lawmakers with sample legislation, most of which is designed to (according to the Center for Media and Democracy) “undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change; support school privatization; undercut health care reform; defund unions and limit their political influence; restrain legislature’s abilities to raise revenue through taxes; mandate strict election laws that disenfranchise voters, among many other issues.”

LABI was founded in the mid-1970s with one primary goal: to bust the unions through passing the “right-to-work” law. In the intervening years, LABI and its affiliated group members have been consistent advocates before Louisiana legislative committees, in alignment with the ALEC objectives iterated above.

And it’s a segment of LABI’s membership that has been working behind the scenes for more than a decade, preparing to make their big move toward becoming the next answer to the question of “Who Runs Louisiana?”

Let’s call them the “Erector Set.”

In our next several stories we’ll be exploring who, what, and how they’re working to shift the power of state government into their full control.

ITEP Playing Fields Remain Far From Level

By
Sue Lincoln
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Louisiana, we are told, is a “poor” state, ranking at or near the bottom of every “quality of life” measure for her residents: income, education, health outcomes, and so forth. But we are also told how “rich” this state is – ranking among the top ten in both oil reserves and oil and natural gas production, and with cultural offerings that keep us among the top tourism draws in the nation.

Our land is sinking in natural resources and overflowing with those capitalizing greatly from them, while the state consistently ranks second highest in overall poverty of her citizens.

Can Louisianians rectify the lopsided reality which places a significant regressive sales tax burden on individuals, especially those of the lower income group? To answer the question, “Where would Louisiana make-up the difference?”, one might first look at the Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) and its various local iterations around the state.

For several years now, we’ve been hearing how Southwest Louisiana is booming, with the state’s lowest unemployment rates, highest job growth, largest capital investments, biggest-ever economic boom – eclipsing even the World War II-era establishment and growth of the region’s petro-chemical complexes. But at what overall cost?

In Calcasieu — a parish which exempts just under $300 million in property taxes annually, while retaining roughly a relatively meager $210 million each year – the process to obtain the maximum 80% industrial tax exemption is well-greased, since the Calcasieu Parish School Board in October adopted a revision in the rules governing how applicants for exemptions would make their way before the parish school board, sheriff, and police jury.

The group is named the Calcasieu Parish Taxing Authority, and its rules state they “meet to objectively review and make a unified recommendation to the taxing authorities for the Industrial Tax Exemption Program.”

However, the objectivity of this setup may be fairly questioned because these meetings are private and strictly confidential, and the facilitator of the group is the head of the Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance. They have not established – publicly – any formal guidelines for the evaluations.

The legality of this scheme is being questioned, with concerns about it violating Louisiana’s open meetings and public records laws, because the appointees to the Calcasieu Parish Taxing Authority for ITEP are carrying out public functions in a venue closed to the general public.

Indeed, according to the Taxing Authority’s most recently (October 2018) revised rules, even local elected officials are prohibited from attending the meetings, “due to concerns about confidentiality and the competitive nature of industrial projects.” Whatever critical analysis is taking place occurs within the private halls of pro-business Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance—hardly an open or neutral forum. Calcasieu has essentially created a proxy committee that is able to “evaluate” exemption proposals away from the eyes and the scrutiny of concerned citizens in the headquarters of an organization privately-funded by the very companies applying for tax exemptions.

George Swift is president of the SWLA Economic Development Alliance, and the host of these closed-door meetings. A radio broadcaster by trade, the native of Selma, Alabama, moved to Lake Charles in 1987 to manage one of the area’s radio station groups. He also served as president of the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters (LAB), on the board of the National Association of Broadcasters, and as president of the Chennault Airport Authority board. In 2006, he became head of the Chamber Southwest, which expanded its umbrella to become the Alliance.

The organization counts among its board members representatives of Sasol, a petrochemical conglomerate headquartered in South Africa, and  Westlake Group, Citgo, and Phillips 66, massive oil and gas corporations based out of Houston, Texas.

The other members of the Taxing Authority include Wilfred Bourne, the Calcasieu Parish School Board’s chief financial officer; Tammy Bufkin, the Calcasieu Parish Policy Jury director of finance; and Sharon Cutrera, chief financial officer for Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Tony Mancuso. 

None of these members are elected officials, and yet their recommendations are used to steer lucrative tax incentives (public dollars) to private businesses.  

Most recently, Driftwood LNG’s application for a $1.4 billion, five-year exemption from paying property taxes (one of the largest in Louisiana history) for its planned $16 billion liquified natural gas terminal, advanced through this secretive committee and was then hastily approved by the local taxing authorities, followed swiftly by approval from the state Board of Commerce and Industry.

Before Gov. Edwards’ Executive Order 16-73 in June 2016, manufacturers were able to apply for complete exemptions from paying parish ad valorem property taxes via the Louisiana Board of Commerce and Industry. With a staggering 99.95% frequency over a twenty-year period, these exemption applications were approved. Due to public outcry over the frequency with which the state board uncritically “rubber stamped” exemptions that individual parishes would have to honor, Gov. Edwards established that applicants for exemptions would have to demonstrate their value and make their case to the communities potentially affected.

Applicants must now include the numbers of jobs the projects will create and the anticipated return on investment each project will generate for the state and its specific location. Moreover, rather than a complete exemption, applicants can now request up to 80% exemption of their property taxes – unless the application is for a “mega project.” That designation allows up to 93% exemption of taxes.

The reform’s rationale was that ITEP was creating a net loss for the state because – although it was attracting industry – recipients were still provided complete exemptions even if they were not creating jobs.

Together Louisiana discovered over a series of studies that on a per-capita basis, Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program is America’s largest business subsidy program – two times larger than the 2nd-place state’s program, as of 2017.

Gov. Edwards’ executive order also required that local taxing bodies would have to approve the exemptions, before the state Board of Commerce and Industry could do so. That has made local taxing authorities, school boards and parish governments, the new ITEP playing fields, raising loud debates over what processes those locals adopt to ensure a balance between attracting businesses (that are not yet already sufficiently attracted) while expanding the property tax base.

Although Calcasieu ostensibly continues to defer to state Board and LED analysis (since we don’t know for certain what the Taxing Authority is actually evaluating behind those closed doors), East Baton Rouge is a different story.

In November, after a long battle between critics of ITEP and industry advocates (namely the Baton Rouge Area Chamber), the East Baton Rouge Metro Council adopted guidelines that require applicants seeking exemptions to create at least 15 full-time jobs. On December 5th, the EBR School Board voted down guidelines that would have established the pro-business Baton Rouge Area Chamber as one evaluator of the merits of each proposal – largely due to outcry from Together Baton Rouge and teachers who criticized the proposed process as being substantially different from the Metro Council’s. These members of the public spoke out in favor of a neutral party, such as the parish’s finance department, to crunch the numbers for exemption applications.

The issues will face another challenge in the coming weeks, as Exxon looks to move three exemption proposals through EBR taxing authorities. According to Together Baton Rouge, these projects have already been completed and Exxon does not need any more “incentive” to remain in EBR on top of their current exemption from two-thirds of their property taxes.

In New Orleans, progressive reforms to the ITEP approval process have had no problems passing the City Council. On December 20th, without a hitch, the New Orleans City Council voted to require exemptions only be given to companies that pay at least $18 per hour and are locating their projects in economically depressed areas – certainly the most progressive local ITEP guidelines to date.

In April 2018, the Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance proudly declared the area “leads the nation with $108 billion in industrial projects recently completed, underway, or announced.”

Indeed, Southwest Louisiana may be a magnet for industrial development, but its boom is being built not by locals, but by thousands of construction workers temporarily imported from other states and countries.

Analysis of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development data conducted by Together Louisiana shows that Calcasieu Parish, from 1998 through 2017, actually lost 5,497 permanent full-time jobs, all the while forfeiting in excess of $4.4 billion in property taxes to the exemptions. ITEPs are not creating jobs in Calcasieu: incentives totaling $4.4 billion may be incentivizing job losses.

The parish school district ranks 28th of the 69 public school districts in the state, while Calcasieu voters said no to four of five school-related tax measures for schools in November 2017. Without those new tax revenues, the district struggles to do maintenance on existing facilities, and it can’t build new schools to accommodate the hyped population influx associated with construction of the industrial projects.

Calcasieu voters did renew a property tax this fall – one that funds the jail and courthouse. That’s helpful for the sheriff, as the legislature continues to try and reduce the amount of per diem paid to local jails for housing state prisoners. The Police Jury may be struggling to keep up with construction and maintenance of roads and drainage, as developers continue to overbuild overpriced housing for the promised influx of workers, yet it’s a matter of enough time and enough available workers, rather than a money crunch. The Police Jury budget remains flush, primarily thanks to higher sales tax collections.

The full cost of these “incentives” has yet to be totaled, for while the local Economic Development Alliance continues to brag on the industrial boom, more than a few businesses have closed, leaving buildings standing vacant.

Admittedly, some are due to national retail business contractions and mergers – K-Mart, Toys’R’Us, Rite-Aid, for example. Yet those were businesses that employed local residents, as opposed to imported – and temporary – construction workers, and the alliance admitted recently it had not developed any plan for trying to put those facilities back in commerce.

There’s also the uncalculated cost of pollution and environmental degradation perpetrated by the proliferation of these industries.

Chemical contamination of the soils and water bottoms – even down past the 200-foot sands of the Chicot Aquifer – have been documented by both the CDC and the EPA for more than three decades. Plumes of contamination have been migrating ever lower through the aquifer, and have been consistently monitored as a threat to the 700-foot sands –from which the region draws its drinking water – for more than 20 years.

Consider the story of Mossville – named for the WWI-era head of the Lake Charles Chamber of Commerce, C.D. Moss – a community now eradicated due to the accumulated poisons deposited by the chemical industries that surrounded it.

Local taxing bodies are now able to set their own guidelines for evaluating ITEP applications, separate from the guidelines LED and the Board of Commerce and Industry use on the state level. In contrast to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, there exists no visible advocacy group in Southwest Louisiana challenging the Taxing Authority’s potentially illegal blurred lines between the public and private spheres.

Will the residents of Calcasieu Parish continue to submit to LED and local private interest groups’ determination of “return on investment” and continue the hasty “rubber stamps” for exemption applications? Or will the people of Southwest Louisiana – and other communities around the state — utilize their statutorily-guranteed autonomy and meet the rhetoric of industry on these local playing fields?

Clementine’s Hunters: Prologue

By
Bayou Brief
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Prologue by Lamar White, Jr.

Her name was not pronounced the same way as the darling daughter of a miner in one of America’s most well-known western songs, which itself was likely appropriated from a Mexican fable, Romance del Conde Olinos o Niño, and set to the rhythm of an old Spanish ballad. 

She called herself “Clemen-teen,” but, as she told it and as records from both the 1900 and 1910 Census confirm, her birth name was actually Clemence; she was baptized as Clementiam. Regardless of how her name was originally spelled or eventually pronounced, it derives from the same Latin word for “mercy.”

In the law, we use the word clemency, which refers to the power of the government to forgive a person convicted of a crime, usually for humanitarian reasons.     

Her parents almost certainly understood the small but symbolic power of the name they gave their first child, a daughter born in either December of 1886 or January of 1887 at Hidden Hill Plantation in Cloutierville (kloo-chee), Louisiana, a decade after the end of Reconstruction.

Antoinette Adams Reuben and Janvier Reuben, Clementine Hunter’s mother and father. 

It was an era in which white supremacy ascended back into political power and all of the protections that had been gained by newly-emancipated slaves and the generations that followed were eviscerated through violence, acts of terrorism, and institutional barriers, intentionally designed to systemically deprive them of the freedoms once promised by the Union’s victory over the Confederacy.  

In the late 19th century, Hidden Hill Plantation was a notoriously cruel and dehumanizing place for blacks and Creoles like young Clementine. 

*****

Like many of those who contributed to this series, I was born and raised in Central Louisiana, only twenty or thirty minutes down river from where Hunter spent all 101 years of her life.

Her artwork was, at one point, part of the area’s built environment, hanging on the walls of dozens and dozens of middle-class homes throughout town. Those in my grandparent’s generation all seemed to know her personally. Before she became internationally famous, she’d sell her work, often for less than a quarter.

While her paintings were sometimes demeaned as “primitive” in the ugliest sense of the term, the messages they communicated were both powerful and provocative to a community finally coming to terms with the inevitable reality of integration and the march toward civil rights. That is what made her work so valuable and why it continues to resonate: It was ingeniously confrontational.

I do not recall whether my own paternal grandparents ever owned any of Clementine Hunter’s art, but I would be surprised if they hadn’t. My grandmother’s sister, Sue Eakin, was a well-regarded Louisiana historian who spent a great deal of time conducting oral interviews with Hunter, which are now archived at Louisiana State University- Alexandria. And like Hunter, they also grew up on a cotton plantation, though their experiences, as white girls, were starkly different.

Although I was only five and a half years old at the time, I do remember when Clementine Hunter died, exactly 31 years ago, on New Years Day of 1988.            

But while this series may have been sparked by my own fascination with Hunter’s life and legacy, I recognize it is imperative that for her story to be told honestly and vividly, it must shared by those who have dedicated their own professional careers in pursuit of that story. 

Ideally, what we all hope to create is the most robust, comprehensive, well-researched, and authoritative online resource about the life, the art, the rise to fame, the death, and the subsequent criminal exploitation of a woman who witnessed and documented more of the American experience than anyone today could possibly conceive. 

In that respect, this series should be better understood as an ongoing, collaborative project, because in a life than spans more than a century, it would be a mistake to believe a linear biography is the best structure.  

***** 

However, there is one detail-  based partly on folklore and speculation and partly on a patchwork of evidence- about Clementine Hunter’s early life that merits mentioning, at least in passing, in every biography about her: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, may have based the character Simon Legree, the villainous slave master, on Robert McAlpin, the original owner of Hidden Hill Plantation.

Only weeks after Stowe’s death in 1896, in a letter published in The Washington Post, a man named William Hugh Robarts recounted a sensational conversation he had with Stowe twenty years prior in which the writer claimed Legree was modeled after another well-known plantation owner in the area, Meredith Calhoun.

Robarts’s story was quickly rebutted in another letter to The Washington Post by J.E. Dunn, a correspondent for The New Orleans Times-Democrat, who argued persuasively that McAlpin- not Calhoun- was the likeliest culprit.

In truth, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an amalgamation of characters and stories that Stowe had collected from across the American South; however, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that the setting of the book was largely informed by the experiences of the slaves and their masters who lived in and around Central Louisiana.

Despite what locals claimed in the decades following her death, Harriet Beecher Stowe never set foot on Hidden Hill and likely never traveled to Louisiana at all, though it is possible her brother visited the area. It’s indisputable that the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted had been there, and Stowe was familiar with his descriptions of the land and its people. 

A year after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Solomon Northup published his extraordinary memoir Twelve Years a Slave. “It is a singular coincidence that Solomon Northup is carried to a plantation in the Red River country,” Stowe once remarked, “the same region where the scene of Uncle Tom’s captivity was laid.”  

Today, Hidden Hill Plantation is known as Little Eva Plantation, the name of the slave owner’s daughter who befriends Tom. It’s now a massive pecan farm that embraces, even markets, its connection to “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

A reconstruction of Uncle Tom’s cabin at Little Eva Plantation.

There are several reasons Hunter’s work became so well-known and well-regarded, which we will explore in greater detail throughout this series. Her art was infused with coded, subtle messages about race, power, politics, and religion, and perhaps that was a reason it first generated the interest of some of the region’s white middle and upper class collectors. Cammie Henry, the woman for whom she worked as a domestic servant and cook for decades, encouraged her craft and welcomed some of the nation’s leading artists and critics to visit Hunter personally. 

Yet, in the course of conducting our research into this project, it became increasingly obvious that the most significant reason Hunter’s work became globally famous is something that others have been previously reluctant to acknowledge, given the times in which she lived and worked.

Notwithstanding the important support she received from progressively-minded women, Hunter’s rise to prominence was guided, championed, and financially supported by a small number of gay men, almost all of whom were drawn to her from outside of Louisiana.   

*****

There may be a legitimate argument that Hidden Hill should have been renamed in honor of its most accomplished native daughter instead of a fictional character, but when she was still a child, the real-life Clementine and her family moved to new plantation home, fourteen miles up the Cane River, named Melrose.

There grows roses and other posies
Fertilized by Clementine.    



An early Christmas gift: The Saints will be at home through the playoffs

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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Nobody expected the Pittsburgh Steelers to give the Saints an easy win on Sunday, fighting for their playoff lives as they were, and with arguably both the best pair of receivers and the best pass rush in the league, they were in prime position to challenge the Saints.

And they did not, keeping the heat on Drew Brees all day and using Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster to generate consistent offense downfield. The Saints held stronger than most, though, and the combination of another Drew Brees fourth-quarter comeback with a clutch defensive play sealed up a 31-28 win for the Saints, giving them home-field advantage throughout the playoffs and making the week 17 game meaningless for the final regular-season standings.

This late in the week, I don’t want to spend too much time on a straight recap of the game, so I’m going to try to hit some interesting highlights from the game and take a look at what the win implies for week 17.

The pass defense wasn’t as bad as it seemed.

OK, sure. Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster had ridiculous games, combining for 300 receiving yards between the two of them, with Brown accounting for two of the team’s three touchdowns among his 14 receptions and 185 yards. (JJSS scooped up 11 receptions on his way to 115 yards.) Most of that production came in a third-quarter flurry, though, boosted by Brown’s obscene route-running ability and absolutely undeniable hands. This would have been one of the catches of the year, except that Brown barely doesn’t get his second foot inbounds:

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Of course, on the very next play, Brown used a deep release to beat a double team to score. He’s just that good.

All that said: the Saints were surprisingly effective during the opening and closing stretches of the game, considering they were covering arguably the top pair of receivers in the NFL. Brown and JuJu did get theirs, but they didn’t overwhelm the defense all game, and the defense by and large shut down the rest of the Steelers offense, which only had 129 yards of total offense outside of Brown and Smith-Schuster’s receiving.

Terron Armstead and Ted Ginn are vital to this team’s championship hopes.

Armstead finally returned after missing five games with a pectoral injury. The difference was immediate: Armstead has rare athleticism at the left tackle position, and he was vital not only to blocking the Steelers’ athletic pass rush, but also to the running back screen game the Saints are fond of. The offense had struggled in recent weeks, particularly on screens, and Armstead’s absence and what he brings to the line was a major reason why.

Unfortunately, Armstead re-aggravated his pectoral injury and left the game again, causing the offensive line to struggle to protect Brees. They did a fairly admirable job, though, as for the most part Brees didn’t have long in the pocket, but long enough to get the pass off, only getting sacked twice.

Ginn, meanwhile, provided a second reliable option at wide receiver, a crucial factor in moving the ball downfield while the defense focused on Michael Thomas (and a player who could ensure that the defense couldn’t do that to the exclusion of the other targets). Ginn has long been known as a deep threat due to his speed, but in his time with the Saints, he’s also been used on more intermediate routes, with his speed and quickness giving him the ability to get substantial separation. Ginn caught 5 passes for 74 yards, including a huge 25-yard reception on 3rd-and-20 on the game-winning drive. (This came immediately after Keith Kirkwood dropped a wide-open pass on 2nd-and-20 that would have converted the first down.)

Side note: Taysom Hill also underthrew Ginn on a deep ball on the Saints’ opening drive, leading to an interception. Unfortunately, this column is already running long without breaking down the good and bad of the Taysom Hill Package.

Big plays from the defense helped seal the win.

Three major defensive plays helped turn the tide in the Saints’ victory:

-On a third-and-short, the Steelers brought in Stevan Ridley, which was a huge telegraph for what they were going to do. (Ridley had only been used on short-yardage carries to this point.) The Saints stormed the line and not only kept Ridley from getting close to the first-down marker, but also forced a fumble the Saints recovered.

-On 4th-and-5 from their own 42, with 4:11 left in the game and up 28-24, the Steelers dialed up a fake punt. A gutsy call that is by its nature controversial, but I like the decision: The Saints can score from anywhere on the field, and it seemed like a first down would allow the Steelers to run down more clock and put the Saints in a much more difficult position. However, the punt defense team sniffed out the fake and stuffed fullback / up-man Roosevelt Nix a yard short of the line of scrimmage.

-On Pittsburgh’s final desperate comeback drive, JuJu Smith-Schuster took a pass and crossed into the edge of field goal range at the Saints 35… and then had the ball punched out by none other than Sheldon Rankins, who had been dropped back into coverage on a zone blitz. Rankins’ play saved the game for the Saints and allowed them to lock up home field advantage with a week to go.

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MVPs lead fourth quarter comebacks, right?

Drew Brees’ touchdown pass to Michael Thomas with 1:25 left sealed the win, accounting for Brees’ seventh fourth-quarter comeback and sixth game-winning drive on the season. Only Houston’s Deshaun Watson is close to those numbers, with five categories in each.

The MVP race seems to come down to Brees and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes’ case is built around his eye-popping bulk numbers, with 4,800 passing yards and 48 TDs to date. (Brees stands just shy of 4,000 yards and at 32 TDs.) Mahomes will also get a chance to add to those numbers in week 17, whereas Brees likely will not. (More on that in a minute.)

But then… isn’t that latter point part of the case why Brees should be the choice? While Brees was sealing yet another comeback to guarantee home field for the Saints, Mahomes was in the middle of a two-game losing streak and risking the chance of not only blowing home-field advantage for the Chiefs, but the actual division title. (Mahomes only has two fourth-quarter comebacks and two game-winning drives to Brees’ six and seven.) Mahomes is having a big year, but the Chiefs are 3-4 against teams with a winning record this season, losing to the Patriots, Rams, Chargers, and Seahawks (while beating the Steelers, Ravens, and Chargers again). That can’t all be laid at Mahomes’ feet– the defense gave up 43 to New England and 54 to the Rams– but he also had a chance to win several of these games, and he didn’t. Brees, on the other hand, is 5-1 with the only loss coming on the road to a lights-out Cowboys defense while the offense was missing multiple key starters.

And to that point, Mahomes’ surrounding skill talent is better: Thomas is a better receiver than Hill, and Kamara is a better running back than Kareem Hunt– the games he played for Kansas City still count– but the Chiefs also have arguably the league’s best tight end in Travis Kelce, while the Saints have been making do with 38-year-old Ben Watson (who has announced he will retire after the season). The Chiefs’ second receiver is former #4 overall draft pick Sammy Watkins, whom the Chiefs signed to a $16 million-per-year deal in the offseason. The Saints’ second receiver by targets is third-round rookie Tre’Quan Smith.

Mahomes’ and Brees’ efficiency numbers are just about the same, and Brees is going to set the all-time completion record (again). Plus, there’s a sense of history at work here. Mahomes is 23 and will have many, many years ahead of him to break records and MVPs. Brees is 39 years old and nearing the end of the line. He may not have another chance to win the MVP; he was already denied two he deserved, in 2009 and 2011. (In 2009, Brees inexplicably lost to Peyton Manning despite having better efficiency and bulk numbers; in 2011, he lost to Aaron Rodgers, who admittedly had a preposterously efficient season, one of the best of all-time, but that was also the year Brees set the passing yards record for a 13-3 team.) It would be rather silly for the NFL’s all-time leading passer to retire without a single MVP award.

Although I’m sure Brees would take another championship trophy over that one.

What does all this mean for week 17?

Well, the team has been a little coy about who will and won’t be available for week 17, but it seems likely the team will rest its most valuable starters and the players who most need to get healthy. This means guys like Brees, Michael Thomas, Alvin Kamara, Terron Armstead, Cameron Jordan, and Marshon Lattimore might not play at all. Obviously injuries and the way NFL rosters work mean they can only rest so many players, but those are the names I’d expect to be most likely to get the week off. (Armstead is probably the most vital one; they may have brought him back too soon this week, as he left the game after re-aggravating his pectoral injury.)

Indeed, as I was writing this paragraph, the team announced that Armstead, right guard Larry Warford, and backup left tackle Jermon Bushrod would be out for Sunday’s game against the Panthers. The team re-signed tackles Cornelius Lucas and Derek Newton (who had been added to the roster in the last couple of weeks before being released again), so they may get some time in the season finale.

Sean Payton has also announced that Teddy Bridgewater will start the game, giving him some real meaningful action at last. As much as I’m a fan of Bridgewater and would love to see the Saints re-sign him as a successor in waiting to Brees, it seems likely that with the number of teams looking to make a change at the position, Bridgewater might get an offer too lucrative to pass up, especially if he plays well on Sunday. I hope he does; after everything he’s been through to get his career back on track, nothing would delight me more than to see him succeed.

The Saints are still touchdown favorites against Carolina even with the expectation Brees won’t play, as the Panthers are down to their third quarterback, Kyle Allen. It should be a good opportunity to see the young players get some action and determine what we might have for the future there, or who’s ready to step up and be a playoff contributor. You can tune out until the divisional round if you’d like– the Saints of course have the 1 seed and will be hosting playoff games in the Superdome– but I’ll be watching to see who’s ready to take a step forward.

2018 Reflections: Deflections, Elections, and Connections

By
Sue Lincoln
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“The Year in Review” is a news industry standard this time of year. Sure, there’s the tradition of reflection as we “Auld Lang Syne”, but it’s also a handy story to put out when many reporters are taking holiday time off and there’s not much “news” happening anyway.

Not wanting to be considered sub-standard by our readers, here is the Bayou Brief’s twist on our year in review: more than a simple look back on top stories, these are updates on the themes and stories we’ve covered. (And for our donor-subscribers, it’s a preview of some of the type of value-added content you can expect in our newsletters, which start in January!)

The first half of 2018 was dominated by the looming doom of the fiscal cliff, and tales of the Louisiana House leadership’s undisguised intention to send the state in a headlong plunge off of it. We even told you why, on March 1.

State Rep. Barry Ivey (R-Baton Rouge) publicly outed the plot on the House floor, saying, “The Republican leadership told me, ‘We don’t want the Democratic governor re-elected, and we don’t want to give him any kind of win with tax reforms’.”

As the blockading of budget solutions continued through session-after-session-after-session-after session (four in all!), we continued to direct your attention to the ill-disguised machinations of House leadership, and the scarcely-secret purpose behind them.

While the fiscal cliff was ultimately scaled, giving some stability and predictability to state revenue through June 30, 2025, the House Republican leadership’s has now renewed its strategy of budgetary obstructionism and deflection, as we head toward the 2019 statewide elections cycle.

On November 27, the Revenue Estimating Conference met to revise the state’s income forecast for the current fiscal year. House Speaker Taylor Barras had another commitment, so he designated House Appropriations chairman Cameron Henry in his stead. When both the legislative economist and the administrative economist recommended increasing the forecast amount, Henry (R-Metairie) wasn’t having any part of it.

“We’re concerned we’re going to spend more money than we need to right now,” Henry said, speaking for the House leadership. “What if the economists are wrong?”

Senate President John Alario (R-Westwego), endeavored to puncture Henry’s “reasonable concern” veneer, declaring, “If the game is just to delay this and not fund the allocations that are there, then just say it!”

Henry, predictably, denied gamesmanship was his motivation, despite the fact that changes to revenue projections require unanimous agreement by the four REC members, and his was the lone “no” vote.

But certain state spending was pre-authorized for the current fiscal year, contingent upon the revenue forecast increasing prior to Dec. 31. Totalling approximately $43-million, the legislatively-approved list includes payraises for corrections officers, and daily per-prisoner payments to sheriffs whose jails house state inmates.

Unwilling to leave those obligations unmet – when both of the state’s economics experts agreed total revenue will be higher than projected six months ago – the Revenue Estimating Conference met again December 10, when Speaker Barras was able to attend.

The result was the same, with Barras rejecting recognition of increased revenue for the current fiscal year and the next.

“Things are better, and you can’t bury your head in the sand and pretend they’re not better!” the exasperated Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne exclaimed. “Things are better!”

The stance taken by first Henry, and then Barras, certainly seems to be a reprise of the tactics they have employed repeatedly over the past three years – serving their party and its ideology, rather than serving the needs of the people of this state. Each of them is, however, term-limited at the end of 2019.

Remember last April, when a cast of cartoonish Republican officials – known for rootin’, tootin, and shootin’ their mouths off – decided to strut their stuff during the Bond Commission meeting? State Treasurer John Schroder, A.G. Jeff Landry, and state Rep. Blake “Top Shot” Miguez were up in arms over two banks’ policies for their own customers who deal in guns. They wanted to ban state dealings with those banks until and unless the policies – put in place in the aftermath of mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland, Florida – were changed.

“This is a very simple question: do we as the state of Louisiana want to do business if these companies are discriminating against our citizens and their Second Amendment rights?” Landry demanded.

They were unable to effect an absolute ban then, but in August, when Bank of America and Citibank bid on running Louisiana’s bond sales for some $600-million of road improvements, the same gang of gun-enthusiasts decided to “stick it to” the nation’s second and third largest banks, and bar them from consideration.

Bond Commission members were advised that excluding B of A and Citibank – which combined underwrite the largest national share of governmental bonds – wouldn’t harm the two banks, but would end up costing Louisiana more in both bond fees and interest rates.

“You can’t put a price tag on the Second Amendment,” Miguez insisted.

This time, the pro-gun group on the Bond Commission was able to marshal enough votes to “punish” the banking giants.

That was the result of one person on the Bond Commission switching his vote between April and August: Kyle Ardoin. In April, he was then-Secretary of State Tom Schedler’s designee and voted against banning the banks, as per the directive of his boss. By August, when he voted for it, Ardoin had ascended to interim Secretary of State, and – despite his insistence to the Legislature that he didn’t intend to run for the post – had entered the race for the fall election.

Now, as we reported just prior to the runoff, Ardoin was not overly selective in his acceptance of campaign donations, taking money from the wife of a voting software company owner. In view of Ardoin’s Bond Commission vote in August, his receipt of $5000 from Jeff Landry’s campaign is…interesting.

Also interesting was an announcement Ardoin made shortly after being elected – that there would be no new voting machines for next year’s statewide elections. He said that was partly because some the Secretary of State’s technology budget was used to pay that office’s share of the settlement in the sexual harassment lawsuit against his predecessor, Tom Schedler. He neglected to “take credit” for having mucked up the bid procedure, and getting barred from any involvement in the voting machine purchase procedures.

Throughout the year, we have reported on controversies surrounding the BayouBridge pipeline: from legislative committee debates over a proposed law to make pipeline protests a felony, to the application of that law on a small tract of land deep in the Atchafalaya Swamp, to the lawsuit filed by the owners of that property, who gave the protesters– but not the pipeline builders – permission to be there.

The landowners’ lawsuit for trespass and damages by Energy Transfer Partners excavating and laying pipe without full permission, versus ETP’s suit asserting eminent domain over the property has now been heard and decided. The judge ruled the pipeline company did trespass, but also awarded the company expropriation of the land, declaring each owner would be paid $150 in exchange. The property owners intend to appeal.

Our reports on the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi went viral, with the stories and videos on Cynthia Hyde-Smith being picked up by national and international media. Despite the coverage, Hyde-Smith won that election.

Yet another story we covered, involving the Plaquemines Parish Council, had an immediate and direct effect on the outcome of a proposal before that body. The council, just prior to the election for new members, was preparing to vote on withdrawing from its coastal lawsuits against the oil and gas industry. As we reported, some council members should have been recusing themselves from these votes all along, due to direct connections to some of the oil and gas companies being sued, and therefore raising questions about conflicts of interest.

When they met and voted on October 11, the cancellation came up one vote short of what was needed to withdraw. As Jason Browne with the Plaquemines Gazette reported, Councilwoman Nicole Williamson stated, “I’m going to be abstaining from this legislation due to recent information published that my employer may have affiliations with two of the defendants named in the suit.”

In subsequent conversation with that reporter, she said, “an Oct. 9 story by reporter Sue Lincoln in the Bayou Brief tipped her off” to the conflict of interest.

And despite the oil and gas industry pouring tens of thousands of dollars into influencing voters and candidates for the parish council elections, the majority of the newly-elected council members support continuing with the coastal lawsuits. The first trials in those lawsuits, which were filed in 2013, are scheduled to start in 2019.

As we look ahead to 2019, you can depend on the Bayou Brief for continued coverage of the unsolved environmental emergency in DeSoto Parish, as well as investigations into many of the other environmental concerns that plague Louisiana. We’ll also be bringing you in-depth coverage of the legislative fiscal session, which begins April 8, as well as insightful articles leading up to and through the statewide elections in the fall.

So here’s wishing you a New Year bright with health, hope, and good reads!

‘City of a Million Dreams’ is a Lucid, Lyrical Masterpiece

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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Award-winning writer Jason Berry’s new book is the definitive history of New Orleans, a 300-year-old city that challenges, defies, yet still exemplifies the American mythos.

For his final article of 2018, publisher Lamar White, Jr. sat down with Berry for a candid conversation about the past, present, and future of New Orleans.

City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 by Jason Berry; $32.67 via Amazon or, instead, for those who live in New Orleans, support your local, independent bookstore and buy it from Octavia Books for $32.00. 

 I. When the Saints Go Marching In

Yesterday, in front of a near-capacity crowd at the Superdome, the New Orleans Saints came from behind to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, securing the top seed in the NFC and home-field advantage during the play-offs. Even the few locals who don’t care for professional football will acknowledge: the Saints, who nearly left the city permanently in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, have become an indispensable pillar of what it means to love New Orleans.

In their first game back in New Orleans after what locals simply refer to as  “the storm,” a Monday night match-up against Atlanta, Saints safety Steve Gleason blocked a punt during the very first drive, resulting in an easy touchdown. Arguably, it was the most important play in the club’s history, because it transcended sports; it was a cathartic moment not only for the team but for an entire region. A few years later, the Saints won the Super Bowl. On Thursday, Gleason, who has lived with ALS for the past seven years, became the first football player in American history to receive the nation’s top civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.  

Louis Armstrong, or Satchmo, recorded his iconic version of a song synonymous with both the city of New Orleans and its beloved team in 1938, nearly three decades before professional football arrived. It is almost impossible to avoid hearing a variation of Armstrong’s rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” if you’re a tourist visiting the French Quarter and completely impossible to avoid hearing it at a Saints game in the Superdome, win or lose.

In Jason Berry’s new book City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300, he unearths the song’s extraordinary historicity, the result of painstaking research, and, in so doing, he forces readers to confront an ironic truth: A song that Satchmo reimagined as a celebratory jazz funeral anthem was originally a slow-tempo dirge of defiance and coded message against the white ruling class and the Lost Cause revisionism that dominated the politics of the Deep South during the years following Reconstruction.

Although its exact provenance still remains unknown, the song dates back to at least the 1890s, and its original version included a series of lyrics that Armstrong decided to leave out of his 1938 recording.

“The bleeding moon, war trumpets, horsemen, and fire echo the Book of Revelation, the New Testament scripture on the Lord’s battle over evil,” Berry explains. “James H. Cone writes that black spirituals had a message: ‘Slavery contradicts God, and God will therefore liberate black people.'”

“Louis Armstrong’s 1938 recording of an up-tempo ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ was quickly adopted by brass bands; few singers tried to emulate the satirical set-piece opening, ‘Reverend Satchmo’ calling out his trombonist like a preacher to the choir,” Berry writes. “The band uncorks a swinging melody, with no hint of apocalypse, only a surge of sweetness and joy.”  

Satchmo’s iconic recording is not the only thing Berry forces readers to reconsider against its historical and cultural context; in many ways, City of a Million Dreams is as much about demystifying the city’s past as it is about reveling in its mystique, its million dreams. 

New Orleans, LA: October 3, 2017 | The entrance of Louis Armstrong Park is lit up at dusk. Editorial credit: James Kirkikis / Shutterstock.com

II. In a city like New Orleans, the past is irrepressibly part of the present.

Ten days ago, Berry invited me to his home in New Orleans, which is only a mile or so away from my home on the edge of Gert Town. I’d told him I intended to write a review of City of a Million Dreams, before the end of the year; ideally, other than an obligatory Year in Review article, I wanted it to be the last thing I published on the Bayou Brief before 2018 came to an end, which seemed appropriate, as it coincided with the end of the tricentennial of New Orleans.  

I had never met Jason in person, but we have been exchanging emails for a few years. I’d told him that I was a fan of his work, particularly the essays and articles he wrote for national publications about New Orleans history and the debate over the confederate monuments. So, he had graciously sent me an advanced copy of his new book months before it was released. 

Shortly after I arrived at his home, a relatively nondescript place on the outside that is furnished similarly to my house- except with taller mountain ranges of books, a more eclectic art collection that testifies to a life well-traveled and a respect for the genius of folk art, and a room designed around conversation instead of a television set, I sheepishly admitted that I’d given the advanced copy before I could finish it to a close friend who was enthralled by the city’s history and who I felt was more deserving than I was of the limited edition “advanced” version.

Now, instead, I had the hardcover that was published last month, but there was no way I would allow myself to finish 2018 without finishing a book that had entranced me so thoroughly that it had nearly taken me hostage.

Thankfully, I made good on my resolution, because Jason Berry’s City of a Million Dreams isn’t only my favorite book of the year; it is a bonafide, lyrical masterpiece.

****

Berry is not primarily known for his scholarship on Louisiana history or his hometown of New Orleans. He is known, however, for breaking one of the biggest and most consequential scandals in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church.

In 1986, he won a Catholic Press Association Award for his reporting on Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, a priest in Lafayette, Louisiana (and subsequently assigned to churches in Henry and Erath) who had been tried and convicted of molesting a young boy. Berry, then a freelance journalist, dug into the history of Rev. Gauthe and uncovered evidence that the priest had been molesting young boys for decades; later, Gauthe admitted to abusing at least 300 children. “It all began in Lafayette” is the title of the first of a four-part series published in 2004 by Minnesota Public Radio about the worldwide scandal.  

In 1992, Berry published Lead Us Not Into Temptation, the first-ever comprehensive book about widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. His book and his name are both mentioned in the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight,” which focuses specifically on the work of a team of intrepid journalists at the Boston Globe on their series of groundbreaking reports about decades of allegations and subsequent coverups of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. 

Berry spent much of his career investigating and writing about what eventually became revealed to be a global scandal, and without question, his reporting saved lives and helped victims secure the justice they had been denied for decades. 

However, although he is understandably well-known and well-regarded for his work on and investigation into the Catholic Church child sexual abuse scandal, Jason Berry’s second book, published the same year he broke the story about Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, had nothing to do with the Vatican. 

The book is titled Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music Since World War II, and when you consider that, then it should come as no surprise that his latest book is the one he has wanted to write for more than thirty years.   

“I’m a jazz historian,” he tells me. And though he does not say it aloud, I know what he means, and I know it is true: If you want to understand the history of New Orleans, you first need to know about jazz. Ideally, you need to be an expert in the subject. 

In 1973, when he was only 24 years old, Berry wrote his first book, Amazing Grace with Charles Evers in Mississippi, detailing his experience as a press aide to the gubernatorial candidate and the ways in which racism poisons the politics of the Deep South. If you want to understand the history fo New Orleans, you also need to know about the politics of racial identity. 

City of a Million Dreams presents itself as a history book, but that is not quite accurate. It definitely is a history book, but like its subject matter, it defies conventional categorization. Berry unfolds the story of New Orleans through telling the stories of the people who shaped the place as we know it today, many of whom may be familiar but most of whom have been largely relegated to the footnotes. 

I anticipated our conversation would last for about an hour. Instead, we talked for four hours.  

****

The book may be organized in chapters that seem linear, but there’s a reason Berry opens with an excerpt from the book of poetry “Gulf Music” by Robert Pinsky, with a reference to Faulkner’s famous line. 

Pinsky, the former poet laureate, is also performance artist, as anyone who has ever heard him read will attest. (As a college student, I attended a few of Pinsky’s readings and was always struck by the deliberativeness of his cadence).

Forgive the slight digression, but this is video of him explaining what “Gulf Music” is about and reading from the final poem from the book, which, to me, perfectly reveals exactly why Berry chose to begin City of a Million Dreams the way he did.  

Time is not linear, and a book of history cannot be honest or accurate without recognizing this paradox. Lives intersect and overlap with one another. There are parts of our past that were once powerful, then forgotten, and then rediscovered again by those who either imbue them with meaning they require or exploit them to justify cruelty and marginalization.

In a city like New Orleans, the past is irrepressibly part of the present, and the musical hum of the city, which the late Allen Touissant told Berry was in the note of B-flat, has lingered in the background for generations. As much as things change, they still remain the same. 

Berry understood, intuitively, that to tell the city’s history, his narrative must zig and zag, but most importantly, it must be unapologetically, exhaustively, and fearlessly truthful. 

“This may seem like an unfair question, but out of all of the characters you researched, who were your favorites?” I asked Berry.

He didn’t hesitate. “It’s not unfair at all. My favorites were Bienville, Latrobe, Mother Catherine, and Gertrude Morgan.” 

Jason Berry, the author of City of a Million Dreams.

III. Mystics and the Lucid Dream of New Orleans  

Appropriately, the first chapter of Berry’s book is about Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the French-Canadian colonist and explorer who is known as the “Founder of New Orleans.” The Bienville that emerges from Berry’s book is not the one conventionally taught in middle school Louisiana history classes. (With all due respect to my late, great aunts Sue Eakin and Manie Culbertson, who co-wrote the textbook Louisiana: The Land and Its People, which had been a part of the state’s curricula for nearly three decades). 

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville

He is also not the regal man depicted in portraits of him. We learn from Berry, right away, that Bienville looked menacing, deliberately covering his entire body with the same type of tattoos worn by the leaders of area Native American tribes. “Mr. de Bienville who is the general of the country has all of his body covered in this way and when he is obliged to march to  war with them he makes himself nude like them,” a French general wrote in 1720, in a diary Berry uncovered during his research. “They like him very much but they also fear him.”  

Bienville covered his body with a series of serpentine tattoos.

Today, we would describe Bienville’s strategy as a type of psychological warfare. He emulated Native Americans in appearance; he learned their languages; he slept with Native American women. And he employed some of the same techniques in battle: Eye for an eye “justice,” massacres, beheadings.

Bienville does not come across as a sympathetic figure, but he was most certainly a sophisticated and shrewd if not unscrupulous tactician. He commanded respect, at least for a time, not merely because of his social status, but also because he played the role of a kind of visionary mystic. Ultimately, Bienville was ordered back to France, where he spent his remaining years nearly destitute and completely powerless. To some, his ignoble ending may seem unfortunate, but considering the brutalities he committed without any consequence for most of his life, his demise into obscurity is better understood as a kind of cosmic justice.  

Indeed, although Berry did not expressly make the connection to me when he named his four favorite characters (and the word “favorite” should not be understood as “most admired”), all of them, in their own unique ways, share a variation of the same characteristics: They were each visionaries and, to some of their contemporaries, that imbued them with a type of mystical quality.

Two of them, Mother Catherine and Gertrude Morgan, were self-proclaimed mystics.

Mother Catherine

Benjamin Latrobe may have been less preoccupied with the supernatural, but he is widely known as the “Father of American architecture,” a title that carries with it the implication of secular sainthood.    

“Market Folks, New Orleans 1819” by Benjamin Latrobe

I found all of Berry’s characters fascinating, but I imagine these four people- two white men and two African-American women- were most notable to him because like the city itself, they each represented a tension between the sacred and the profane.   

IV. A City of Youth



In a century from today, as New Orleans celebrates its 400th anniversary, it is possible that historians will regard the past forty years as the most significant period of time since Reconstruction. In 1978, New Orleans elected its first African American mayor, Dutch Morial, a milestone that cannot be diminished or overlooked. 

The World’s Fair of 1984 was a pivotal moment. To its boosters, it led to the revitalization of a huge swath of the Warehouse District; to its detractors, it was an expensive boondoggle that made a handful of wealthy people even wealthier, while taxpayers footed the bill. But it may have also proven something else about the city and its identity: New Orleans should not aspire to be FutureLand.

If Robert Moses had his way, there would not be a riverwalk along the levee in front of the French Quarter; there would, instead, have been a raised highway floating alongside the banks of the Mississippi River. 

This defining view, for example, would have been destroyed. 



But obviously, the most pivotal moment in the city’s modern history was the Federal Flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and more than thirteen years later, the city continues to grapple with the tensions between revitalization, rebuilding, and displacement, which was exacerbated by the failures of corrupt leadership. History will not be kind to former Mayor Ray Nagin, who is currently sitting in a federal penitentiary in Texarkana. It may also ultimately be unforgiving to the scores of self-proclaimed urban planners who swept in like vultures.

Even those who remember vividly their experience of the trauma of the flooding and its horrific aftermath will find Berry’s closing chapters essential, if not overwhelming. Because the sheer scale of the ineptitude, the abuses, the corruption, and the negligence is made even more stark when the story is told as a chapter of the city’s history and not as a series of reports that trickle out over the course of several years. 

Still, Jason Berry is more hopeful about the future of New Orleans than cynical. He considers the removal of confederate monuments to be a significant turning point in healing the divisions that have plagued the city for most of its 300 years, an act of exceptional political courage by former Mayor Mitch Landrieu. 

“New Orleans is the American city with the deepest African identity,” Berry tells me. “The dynamism of African culture is our future.” 

The culture and rhythm of jazz, Berry says, did not entirely originate in New Orleans; it can be traced back to Africa.

Although he did not say it, I would add that the cuisines for which Louisiana are most well-known, Cajun and Creole, also trace back to the experiences of forced migration. 

Years ago, tourists came to New Orleans mainly to drink and party. “Today, people are coming to experience our culture, our arts, our restaurants, and our music,” he said. That is a cause for hope. 

Before I leave, I ask him two more questions. Should people be concerned about the influx of new residents and the possibility that they could erode that culture? 

Of course we should be mindful of that, he explains, but we should also acknowledge the fact that most people are not moving to New Orleans because they’re being lured in by a high-paying job; they’re moving to New Orleans because they want to participate in the unique culture that no other place in America can offer. The culture is itself a life force. 

Then I ask, “If the past 300 years of New Orleans can be characterized as a city of a million dreams, what are we today?”

“A city of youth,”  he says. 

The Saints’ Pro Bowl Selections and Snubs

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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Five Saints made the Pro Bowl, all of them deserving.  Let’s take a look:

Drew Brees was the easy choice to start at QB in the NFC. He’s having far and away the best season at the position in the conference, even after the recent three-game slump. He and Patrick Mahomes (and maybe Philip Rivers) are in the conversation for the MVP award, but Brees is the only one of them playing in the NFC.

Michael Thomas was another no-brainer, as not only one of the NFL’s leading receivers but as someone on track to smash the ceiling for catch rate among wide receivers. The NFL has only tracked the statistic since 1992, but the highest rate I can find in that time among anyone at wide receiver (minimum 80 targets, or 5 a game) is Wes Welker in that 2007 all-time great Patriots offense, at 77.2%. And Welker was running lots of short, high-percentage routes, with the threat of Randy Moss over the top to help make life easier. Thomas has no help; he is the help. And his catch rate this year is at 85.8%; that’s sixth among all players since 1992, Welker’s season, by comparison, is 53rd.

Terron Armstead has long had the talent and skill to deserve a Pro Bowl bid, but injuries kept him off the field too much to get the votes until this year. And that trend hasn’t changed: Armstead has missed the last five games with a shoulder injury, though he’s off the injury report and set to return against Pittsburgh. Fortunately for Armstead, he had gained enough votes before that injury to get selected anyway.

Max Unger has been a rock of the offensive line during his time in New Orleans. He had played every snap of the season until leaving the Panthers game early with a concussion. He received an All-Pro bid in his time with the Seahawks, but has been long overlooked for such accolades since joining the Saints. He at last gets his due as one of the anchors of one of the best lines in the NFL.

Cameron Jordan is once again one of the NFL’s best pass rushers and sack leaders; his 12 sacks put him second in the NFC among defensive ends, making him an easy choice for one of the three defensive end spots.

Eight other Saints were, I thought, deserving of or at least in contention for a Pro Bowl nod, but didn’t get one:

Alvin Kamara hasn’t been quite as efficient as he was last year, but he’s having another tremendous season, with nearly 1,500 yards from scrimmage and 16 TDs. The three NFC running back selections– Ezekiel Elliott, Todd Gurley, and Saquon Barkley– have all cracked 1,800 yards from scrimmage on the season. It’s as tough to say Kamara isn’t having a Pro Bowl season, but it’s also tough to say he should clearly get in over any of those three.

Ryan Ramczyk stepped in as a rookie and played both tackle positions at a high level last year. This year, he’s having another great season (he was a selection for Pro Football Focus’ Pro Bowl team), and he’s the only Saints offensive lineman (and offensive player, actually) who has played every single snap this season. Dallas’ Tyron Smith is having a down year and got his selection largely on reputation; Ramczyk or Green Bay’s David Bakhtiari would’ve been a better choice. (PFF seems to prefer Bakhtiari to Williams, specifically.) 

The entire Saints’ offensive line is of Pro Bowl caliber, honestly. Larry Warford was a replacement selection last year, and he or Andrus Peat would have been a worthy selection. That said, the three choices for the NFC team– Zack Martin, Brandon Brooks, and Trai Turner– are all worthy, with the first two in particular having the best seasons at the position by consensus.

Flipping over to the defensive side of the ball, Sheldon Rankins‘ eight sacks make him a strong pick for an interior lineman, but he lost his spot to two guys having strong seasons with more buzz around them, Philadelphia’s Fletcher Cox and Chicago’s Akiem Hicks. (Aaron Donald, leading the league in sacks and the leading candidate for Defensive Player of the Year, isn’t competing for a spot with anybody.) Rankins has more sacks than both, but Cox’s reputation and big contract help him here, as Hicks is helped by the story of Chicago’s dominant defense (though the former Saint has been playing very strongly). Hopefully soon Rankins’ fearsome pass rush and high draft position will build his reputation enough to begin earning the selections he deserves, though Donald, Cox, and Hicks were in their own rights all worthy.

Demario Davis getting the off-ball outside linebacker spot over Anthony Barr should be no question; Barr’s selection was made largely on reputation, as he’s missed time and hasn’t been at his best when he was on the field. Davis, on the other hand, is the major reason New Orleans’ run defense has improved so much, as he has uncanny instincts in diagnosing run plays, closes well, and makes sure tackles. He’s also an effective blitzer, with four sacks on the year. A comparison of their counting stats makes the case clear (Davis also has four passes defensed to Barr’s two):

Marshon Lattimore started off shakier than his rookie campaign, but, like the rest of the Saints defense, he’s shaken off those September struggles to return to his old form. People haven’t adjusted their perceptions yet to the improved performance of the Saints defense (as we discussed last week), and, unlike last year when he missed three games, Lattimore has been healthy, only second to Marcus Williams in snaps played for the defense. That said, it’s hard to say Lattimore was snubbed when considering the four people who were selected– Kyle Fuller, Patrick Peterson, Darius Slay, and Byron Jones have all had outstanding seasons.

And on special teams: I think Wil Lutz should have made it over Aldrick Rosas. Both have only missed one field goal this year, and Rosas’ 28/29 advantage over Lutz’s 27/28 is negated by Lutz making 21 more extra points (46/47 to 25/26). Lutz is third in the league in scoring, first among NFC kickers, and was leading the fan voting at the position, so it’s hard to figure how he missed out.

All of these players deserved to go; Ramczyk, Davis, and Lutz were the only ones where I felt someone who was having a clearly worse year was selected, though. And there were a few guys I thought were having good seasons who might have merited a selection but weren’t likely to have a realistic chance– players like Marcus Williams, Thomas Morstead, and Justin Hardee. I’d like to have seen more Saints selected, in recognition of the seasons the players (and the team as a whole) have had, but ideally, the team will be in a position where none of its selections get to play in the game anyway. 

The Saints Conclude Their Road Trip With Yet Another Unusual Performance

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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Football Outsiders’ weekly DVOA article came out Tuesday, and it helped as a guidepost to one of the biggest questions of the last few weeks: What’s up with the Saints?

They still won two out of three– and really, were right in it with Dallas– but the offense has sputtered in this stretch, only really looking right during the second half of the Tampa Bay game. In the other ten quarters, the team scored a total of 25 points: four field goals, two touchdowns, and one extra point. (What happened on the other one is something we’ll get to in a moment.)

The offense is struggling, and the DVOA article clarified just how much: New Orleans went from fourth in the league from weeks 1-12 to 28th over weeks 13-15. There’s no one factor completely responsible; each part of the offense has had its own struggles. That said, Drew Brees is probably taking more blame than his share: He’s missed some throws, to be sure, and his interception total is up, but the decline in his numbers is the more a reflection of the decline of the offense than of his own part in it.

The offensive line’s struggles are somewhat unavoidable; they’re caused more by injury than anything else, and really, the unit still hasn’t been that bad. Even when both Bushrod and Unger went down on Monday night, and the left side of the line was Andrus Peat – Will Clapp – Cameron Tom– two backups and a starter playing out of position– they performed reasonably well enough.

Alvin Kamara didn’t quite look his usual self for long stretches against Carolina, though he bounced back with some nice plays in the second half (including the game’s only touchdown). He didn’t display his usual burst or ability to break contact for stretches, though, and it’s fair to worry that he might be starting to wear down after his heavy usage earlier in the season. The Saints are almost certainly headed for a first-round bye; that extra rest seems strongly likely to benefit Kamara. (And if they beat the Steelers on Sunday, they clinch home-field advantage; that would provide two weeks of rest for Kamara.) 

The biggest issue right now is the performance of the receiving corps outside of Michael Thomas. Thomas is as great a player as ever, but opposing teams are increasingly focused on him in coverage, and no one else on the Saints’ roster seems to be able to win matchups consistently or make catches reliably. The Athletic’s Deuce Windham had a great breakdown of how the Saints’ young receivers aren’t quite up to speed on the finer points of route-running and adjusting their routes to coordinate with Brees’ thinking. That may well, and hopefully will, come in time. In the meantime, though, lacking some of those nuances and subtleties has made it more difficult to get open.

And while Brees’ numbers have taken a dip lately, it’s hard to blame him for the number of balls that are simply dropped. Can you blame him for this throw to Ben Watson?

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Or this one to Dan Arnold?

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(Granted, Brees put the throw slightly behind Arnold there, but Arnold still gets both hands on the ball.)

And he definitely isn’t responsible for Tommylee Lewis’ decision to dive for the pylon, and the subsequent fumble that gave the Panthers a touchback and a last chance to at least tie the game.

Brees is, however, responsible for the horrendous decision on the two-point conversion, a rollout pass where Thomas and Ingram were the only realistic options. Both were covered, and Brees forced a bad pass into heavy coverage, which Donte Jackson intercepted and returned for two points. That turned the Saints’ chance to go up 14-7 into a 12-9 lead.

Fortunately, that lead held. The good news is that the Saints defense has been on an absolute tear of late, which has done a lot to mitigate the offense’s struggles. The same DVOA report tells us that over the last six weeks, the Saints have ranked second in the league by that measure on the defensive side of the ball. They haven’t given up more than 17 points in that time, and on Monday night, they looked downright dominant in stifling the Carolina Panthers at nearly every turn.

Carolina scored nine points on the night, two of those on the aforementioned “pick-two” and the other seven on a-4th and-2 trick play wherein Cam Newton handed the ball to Christian McCaffrey on what appeared to be a sweep, only for McCaffrey to throw a pass to backup tight end Chris Manhertz. The Panthers’ standard offense was largely ineffective, moving the ball in short stages but eventually getting stifled by the pass rush (four more sacks on Monday) or the coverage. The best example of the latter is Eli Apple’s play at the end of the first half; his coverage on Devin Funchess is textbook, and leaves him in perfect position to make the interception, even though Funchess has four inches on Apple.

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Apple hasn’t had a great season, but he’s been an upgrade over Ken Crawley and has been improving every week with the Saints. These last two weeks in particular he’s been simply outstanding. If he can keep up that level of play, the Saints’ chances for a Super Bowl victory are that much stronger.

He might need to keep up that level of play, because the Saints’ next matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers involves one of the best pair of wide receivers in the NFL. Antonio Brown is still widely regarded as the league’s best receiver, and second-year player JuJu Smith-Schuster is sixth in the league with 1,274 yards (seven more than Thomas, at present). Apple is going to have to cover one of them. Don’t be surprised if you see Apple on Brown as par of a double team (most likely with Marcus Williams), with Marshon Latimore on Smith-Schuster. (Fun fact, Williams and Smith-Schuster are the two youngest players from the 2017 draft.) Smith-Schuster popped up on the injury report Thursday, which would be a major boon for the Saints if he’s limited or can’t go.

The Saints still have their own questions about health; Jermon Bushrod hasn’t been practicing this week, although Terron Armstead has been limited and may make his return. (Max Unger has also been reported as a limited participant in practice; I imagine he’ll play if he passes concussion protocol.) But the Saints’ prayers at wide receiver might finally be answered: Ted Ginn was designated to return from IR this week and returned to practice. A capable second wide receiver would do wonders for this offense. (Really, the Saints only needed one of Ginn, Cameron Meredith, or Dez Bryant up and running and healthy. Having to rely on so many undrafted players and rookies isn’t really management’s fault, when so many of the talented veteran options succumb to injury.)

The Saints need the win Sunday, but they’re also finally returning home, with a good chance not to leave the Superdome before the Super Bowl. Between the home-field advantage and a relatively favorable matchup considering the quality of the opponent, the Saints could lock away a bye and two playoff games at home if they step up to their best level. 

Bonus content coming: Pro Bowl selections were announced; we’ll cover the five well-deserving Saints who were selected along with the well-deserving Saints who weren’t.

Spreading The Vote By Meeting People Where They Are

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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“We have to do things differently,” Candice Battiste tells me. We were discussing the ways in which voting rights advocates in Louisiana and across the nation typically program voter registration drives.

If you’ve ever been to a public event during campaign season, you’ve probably encountered someone seated behind a fold-out table decorated with a neatly arranged display of clipboards and brochures; usually, the organization’s name is draped on a banner hanging from the center of the table or advertised on the t-shirts worn by volunteers.

Every now and then, particularly during campaign season in Louisiana, you may drive by a cheap tent set up in the neutral ground near a major intersection. The tents are sometimes staffed by volunteers but usually campaign workers, paid $50 to $100 a day to sit in the elements- rain or shine, sweltering or freezing- to distribute push cards promoting their candidate and to ensure those who are not yet registered to vote fill out a simple form that guarantees they will be by Election Day.

Candice Battiste has a new plan to increase voter registration in Louisiana. It’s not only her new plan; it’s her new job.

Currently, the system isn’t working the way it is supposed to work; today, voter registration is primarily the responsibility of campaigns and their supporters. In some states, it’s illegal for people working for a particular campaign to engage in voter registration activities.  Ideally, for example, that’s a task assigned to every employee who ever encounters you whenever you show up to renew your license or change your address at your local Department of Motor Vehicles.  Ideally, in a state like Louisiana where ID is required to vote, it should be easy, convenient, and free of charge for any eligible voter to obtain that ID. 

Seven years ago, during the Jindal administration, former Sec. of State Tom Schedler, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, and the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services were sued by a coalition led by New Orleans attorney Ronald Wilson, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the organization Project Vote for violating Section 7 of the National Voting  Rights Act.  The case was pretty straightforward. Louisiana agencies had failed to do one of its easiest tasks imaginable: Affirmatively provide people voter registration information.

For whatever reason, Sec. Schedler, who recently resigned in disgrace, decided the case was worth spending a small fortune to fight. He was knocked out at every level. Ultimately, in 2013, a federal judge issued a damning ruling against Schedler and his department, which is now led by his then-First Assistant Kyle Ardoin. Quoting from Project Vote (emphasis added):

The court ruled that the Secretary of State, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Department of Health and Hospitals had been systematically violating the NVRA (National Voting Rights Act).

Among other things, the court found that the public agencies were violating the NVRA by using application forms that did not offer voter registration or did not contain the language required by the NVRA; requiring clients to affirmatively request voter registration (opt-in) before distributing registration applications; failing to check voter registration applications and failing follow-up with clients if applications were incomplete; and permitting employees to tell clients that they could register to vote through the Secretary of State’s website, rather than actually distributing voter registration applications.

With regard to the Secretary of State, the Court ruled that the Secretary provided inconsistent and inaccurate trainings and failed to ensure that public assistance offices were complying with their responsibilities under the NVRA. The court also reaffirmed the plaintiffs’ standing, and entered a permanent injunction requiring the defendants to comply with the NVRA.

Although she may claim Shreveport, Candice Battiste, 33, is originally from Haughton, Louisiana in Bossier Parish, a booming exurb about twenty minutes east and a place that is now perhaps most well-known for being the hometown of Dak Prescott, the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. She earned her undergraduate degree from LSU and then decided to pursue a legal career. After wrapping up law school at Southern, Candice, unlike most of her peers, returned home and began working as a staff attorney at Legal Services of North Louisiana, a nonprofit legal aid organization that provides services for low-income and elderly residents who live within its 26-parish service area. Her experience and her education motivated her to become more involved in public policy and advocacy.

Candice Battiste (Source: Spread the Vote)

I first met Candice a few months ago during a discussion I led in New Orleans for the state’s chapter of the New Leaders Council. She was one of only a handful of applicants selected as a fellow for its institute, a series of intensive training sessions for young, motivated, and highly-qualified Louisianians interested in becoming a leader in public service or in a nonprofit organization.

Later this year, she served, briefly, as a volunteer for Adrian Perkins’s campaign for Shreveport mayor, which she credits as her very first experience in politics. Perkins, who is only one month older than Battiste, recently won in a runoff election against incumbent Mayor Ollie Tyler. He is set to take office on December 29th, but by the time the campaign season rolled into full gear, Candice had already moved on to a new and arguably much more consequential job; she was hired as a regional field director for the statewide campaign known as “Yes on Two,” the proposed state constitutional amendment to end the practice of non-unanimous jury convictions.

The amendment passed in a landslide, and Candice quickly found her next job. She was recently hired as the state director for Spread the Vote, a national nonprofit organization that helps people who cannot afford to get an ID to pay for that ID.

Spread the Vote is a 501(c)(3) that was launched in 2016 but kicked into high gear during this year’s midterms. Currently, the organization, which is the brainchild of Kat Calvin, has only five state chapters; Louisiana will be its sixth, and West Virginia will be its seventh.

“We don’t need to be in every single state,” Calvin explains to me. “We need to be in the 22 states that have restrictions (like Louisiana’s).”

Spread the Vote does not rely on a penny from the government; it’s entirely funded through grants and donations. In Louisiana next year, Battiste will oversee a budget of approximately $150,000 and plans on having satellite locations in the state’s five major regions, largely relying on a network of state advisory board members to ensure they can maximize their resources.

The organization is, by its very nature, completely non-partisan. “This is not about compulsory voting. We’re not telling people who to vote for,” Calvin says. “We’re not requiring they even vote at all.”

What they are doing, instead, is simply helping people with the financial assistance they need to purchase an ID. Calvin says the costs are typically between $50 to $80, though they are often higher for the homeless, “easily over $100,” and those who rely on shelters as a result of civil fines imposed for vagrancy and loitering. Spread the Vote helps cover those costs as well.

Although the organization is focused primarily on voter registration, Calvin understands that for those who lack an ID, voting isn’t their top concern. “People aren’t interested in voting if their basic needs aren’t taken care of,” she says, noting that a lack of ID prevents people from gaining employment or housing or even getting a meal to eat at a shelter.

Kat Calvin (Source: Twitter)

Calvin, 35, currently lives in Los Angeles, but because her father was in the Army, she grew up all over the country, spending several years in Arizona and in Washington State, where she graduated high school.

After earning  Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, where she majored in theater with a minor in religious studies, Calvin ultimately decided to pursue a law degree from the University of Michigan, one of the nation’s top five law schools. 

But in the two years between college and law school, Calvin moved to a place she had never been before: Opelousas, Louisiana. She taught first graders at Crestwell Elementary School, arriving in Louisiana in the immediate aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. 

Calvin’s decision to expand Spread the Vote to Louisiana is practical; she recognizes the importance of the 2019 elections. But she also still feels “a personal connection” with the people of Louisiana. “I really admire the community activism that occurs in Louisiana,” Calvin tells me.  

Both Calvin and Battiste understand the work cut out for them. More than 20% of eligible African American men are not registered to vote in Louisiana, which is why Battiste believes in doing things differently.

“We have to meet people where they are,” Battiste says. To that end, in addition to traveling across the state and cultivating a network of volunteers, Battiste intends on spending a lot of time in barbershops, instead of underneath a tent near major intersections or behind a fold-out table at conferences.

Spread the Vote isn’t going to wait until campaign season to kick things off in Louisiana. “Our motto is 365 + 1,” Calvin says. “We want to help get people IDs every day of the year.”

The math doesn’t add up for a reason; by working year-round, they hope to provide people a day they never had before: Election Day. 

 

The Landry Coalition: Why Jeff Landry Is Now The Most Vulnerable Incumbent in Louisiana

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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Late Friday in Ft. Worth, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, an appointee of President George W. Bush, struck down the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the ACA or Obamacare. In a 55-page opinion, O’Connor ruled that the law can no longer stand because the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The law remains in effect, however, and is likely headed immediately to the courthouse on 600 Camp Street in New Orleans, home of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Regardless of whether the majority conservative Fifth Circuit affirms O’Connor’s decision, which is not necessarily a fait accompli, the case is likely destined for the United States Supreme Court, which has already affirmed the ACA’s constitutionality in two separate challenges.

If Judge O’Connor’s decision is ultimately upheld, at least 17 million Americans would immediately lose their health insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “52 million adults from 18 to 64, or 27 percent of that population, would be rejected for coverage under the practices that were in effect in most states before the Affordable Care Act,” the New York Times reported.

In Louisiana, potentially more than a million people would lose their health insurance. In a statement released late Friday night, Gov. John Bel Edwards lambasted the decision and state Attorney General Jeff Landry. 

“Nearly 850,000 Louisianans with a pre-existing health condition face uncertainty and could lose their health insurance as a result of a lawsuit that Attorney General Jeff Landry supported. Even more troubling is that 480,000 working Louisianans on Medicaid expansion could lose their health insurance over this decision,” Gov. Edwards stated. “Being diagnosed with breast cancer or diabetes should not automatically mean that you are denied coverage to protect an insurance company’s profits, and if you put in a full day’s work, you should not be priced out of coverage.” 

Edwards vowed to “vigorously pursue legislation” that would protect those could lose their insurance if the decision is upheld. 

Notably, although the case decided yesterday was technically initiated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and styled as Texas v. United States of America, the challenge wasn’t merely supported by Jeff Landry; it was really led by him.

In a press release from February announcing the legal challenge, his office boasts the case was the result of the “Landry coalition,” a group of seventeen other Republican attorneys general and two Republican governors. 

Recent news reports about Friday’s ruling have credited Paxton of Texas and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel with spearheading the effort, though this is largely a consequence of a decision by members of the “Landry coalition” to help the two most embattled attorneys general in the country solidify their base in their campaigns for reelection.

Landry was elected President of the National Association of Attorneys General on June 21st, despite being in his first-term in office. He had previously served a single-term in Congress; after his district was consolidated with the now-defunct seventh district, he lost his bid for a second term against long-time incumbent Charles Boustany in 2012.   

In November, Ken Paxton, who has been indicted with two first-degree felonies for fraud and one third-degree felony for violating state securities law, won his election; the case against him has been ensnared by delays for three years, and it still remains unclear when exactly the trial will actually occur. Schimel, who earned a reputation as “the worst attorney general in Wisconsin history,” lost his bid for a second term to Democrat Josh Kaul; as a consolation, outgoing Gov. Scott Walker (who was also defeated) appointed Schimel as a circuit judge in Waukesha County.

The decision to file in Texas and not Louisiana or Wisconsin was a strategic one, a practice commonly referred to as forum shopping. In August, I wrote about another challenge against the ACA that Landry had championed, in which he argued that an obscure and completely harmless accounting maneuver, the HIPF, was tantamount to a “deep state” conspiracy. That case was also filed in Texas and was also heard by the same exact judge as the case decided yesterday, Reed O’Connor. In that case, Judge O’Connor also agreed with Landry’s argument, though his opinion did not include any mention of the “deep state.” 

Landry has acted as a spokesperson for the lawsuit decided yesterday in numerous media appearances, including a contentious exchange on CNN in late September in which he was forced to acknowledge that he had pursued the case without first working with legislators on a plan to protect those who would lose insurance if he prevailed.

Landry struggles to explain how his case would affect those who would lose their health care coverage in Louisiana.

Shortly after the decision was announced Friday night, Landry responded in five-part statement via Twitter: 

The only factually correct statement of Landry’s five-part tweet-storm (which was improperly formatted) is the very first sentence.

There is no evidence whatsoever that he has worked with a single member of the state legislature on any proposed legislation, and his decision to pursue this legal challenge was unilaterally made by him, without any consultation at all with state leaders, including Gov. John Bel Edwards, Sec. Rebekah Gee of the Louisiana Department of Health, or any other member of the administration. 

Although the Landry Coalition filed suit in February, while state legislators were meeting in the first of what would become three special sessions, of the more than 1,400 bills ultimately filed during the regular session or the hundreds of others filed during the three special sessions, not a single bill contemplated “state-based solutions” for the 480,000 people who rely on Medicaid expansion or guaranteeing coverage for the 850,000 Louisianians with pre-existing conditions who now have insurance.

Legislators were focused on drafting a balanced budget that would reduce the tax burden on citizens by, among other things, maximizing the opportunities available for federal funding. Importantly, because of the ways in which Medicaid expansion funding under the ACA is structured, Louisiana actually saves money; the state’s match, which is currently less than 5%, is paid through provider fees.  

Landry went rogue.

If the decision on Friday stands, he can claim credit for ending health insurance for 480,000 Louisianians covered because of Medicaid expansion and 850,000 Louisianians with pre-existing conditions who are now covered, immediately saddling the state with untold billions of dollars in debt, and leading the coalition that, according to the President of the Federation of American Hospitals, would result in “a devastating impact on the patients we serve and the nation’s health-care system as a whole.”  

While it may have been politically convenient in Louisiana to disparage anything and everything undertaken by the Obama administration when Landry was elected three years ago, Medicaid expansion, which has been subsequently implemented under Gov. Edwards, and protections for people with preexisting conditions are both resoundingly popular policies in Louisiana.

When Landry faces reelection next year, he will confront an electorate that includes over a million Louisianians who either lost their insurance or could have lost their insurance as a consequence of his actions as their state attorney general. There are approximately 230,000 more people with preexisting conditions who gained access to insurance coverage in Louisiana because of the ACA than the total number of votes Jeff Landry received when he won in 2015.

Because of that- and even regardless of the ultimate ruling, Landry, who decided to forgo challenging Gov. Edwards and run for reelection instead, should now be considered the most vulnerable incumbent on the ballot in 2019. He has not only ensured that more than a million citizens now have a personal reason to vote against him; he has all but guaranteed that his reelection campaign will attract national attention and opposition. And if his appearance on CNN is indicative of anything, it’s that the General isn’t skilled in battle. 

There is one more aspect to this that deserves emphasis and attention.

While Landry shoulders the bulk of the blame for involving Louisiana in this litigation, he is not the only elected official in the state who should be required to answer for it. The only reason he even had an opportunity to form the Landry Coalition and pursue a lawsuit that would be heard in Judge Reed O’Connor’s courtroom is because, in 2017, congressional Republicans, in both the House and the Senate, struck out the fee associated with the individual mandate when they passed a massive tax cut that almost exclusively applied to the wealthy and for large corporations. The bill, which President Trump enthusiastically signed into law, is also expected to increase the national debt by at least $1.8 trillion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

By eliminating that fee, Republicans were deliberately, albeit quietly, attempting to invalidate the justification employed by Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion first upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act: That it was a proper exercise of congressional authority under the Taxing and Spending Clause. (The easiest route would have been through the Commerce Clause, which would have put an end to the tortured argument that health insurance is somehow not subject to interstate commercial activity. Notably, though, in Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion, he decided the Commerce Clause did not apply because, at the time Congress passed the ACA, the “national marketplace” didn’t exist. Nine years after the bill’s passage and seven years after Roberts’s opinion, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make the same argument about the existence of the “national marketplace”).       

Regardless, when Jeff Landry states, “Since day one, this case has always been about the Constitution and federal overreach,” he is being disingenuous, because, even if one agrees with Judge O’Connor’s decision, the only reason he struck down the ACA is because Republicans snuck in a provision to zero out a fee as a way of unraveling the entire law.

This, of course, begs the question: If more than a million Louisianians lose their health insurance as a result of Congress zeroing out a fee that Chief Justice Roberts used to justify the constitutionality of the bill, which members of Congress from Louisiana voted to support that effort?

The answer is: All but one of them, Cedric Richmond, the delegation’s lone Democrat.

Sen. John Neely Kennedy voted for the provision, as did Sen. Bill Cassidy. Rep. Garret Graves, Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. Mike Johnson, and Rep. Clay Higgins voted for it too.

And so did Rep. Ralph Abraham, who now wants to become the state’s next governor. There’s a good chance that, when all of the numbers are crunched, he will discover that he supported an effort that could eliminate health insurance for more people in Louisiana than the entire number of people who voted in Louisiana in 2015. 

Welcome to the Landry Coalition, Congressman Abraham.

What’s the expression? Oh yeah, break a leg! (Don’t worry: I’m just being facetious. You wouldn’t have to worry if you did, though. You have great health insurance).  

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