Reflections on the Protest at Walter L. Cohen High School, By Parnell Herbert

While in Houston TX. to attend a convention on reparations I began receiving phone calls, text and email messages describing a situation back home in New Orleans. It appeared that juniors and seniors at Walter L. Cohen walked out of school on Thursday October 4, 2012. Students say they are “Tired of the lies and misrepresentations” of New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) administrators and Future is Now (FIN), a national charter school organization. The last straw was RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard’s decision to fire Cohen’s principal, his staff and several teachers who students say they had grown to love and look upon as members of their Cohen High School family.

Students say that decision, coupled with Dobard’s unilateral decision to turn over governance of Cohen’s 11th and 12th-grade classes to FIN was the final straw and prompted them to walk out and refuse to return to class until a list of demands were met. Student Demands appear basic and reasonable to some, while unacceptable to others.

As a community organizer I wore my Peace Keepers shirt and spent the entire day with the students, parents, and other organizers. Monday October 8th was probably the coldest day since last winter. At 8:00AM students braved the cold in their school uniforms prepared for class they anxiously gathered around the front door of their school to hear the decision of school administrators.

When administrators offered access to the building but failed to address their demands, students refused to enter. Administrators retreated to the inside of the building and soon returned to offer the protesting students access to the school’s library to escape the cold. Students declined the offer. Some began chanting “NO, NO. WE WON’T GO.” They all laughed at the imitation 60’s chant as I realized they had no idea of how similar they were to the movement of the 60’s.

During the half hour we lingered in front of that door, students selected five facilitators. We decided to shift our headquarters to the corner and warmth of the sun. One of the adults suggested we get chairs from the school for the students to sit. As I walked with him to request the chairs we were met by Dana Peterson, one of Dobard’s assistants. We asked him who we would need to speak with to get the chairs. He said “They will probably say no.” I asked Peterson why they would say no to chairs when they invited the students into the library earlier. He replied “That was to get them into the school. He became irritated as I charged “You mean you were using the warmth of the library to lure the kids into the building?” He appeared irritated at my charge and said “You can phrase it however you want to.” As he turned and started to walk away we noticed students walking out of the school with stacks of chairs to bring to their classmates. He then relented “Obviously you can” as he stormed away.

As the day progressed more parents and organizers began to arrive. Later neighbors, Cohen alumni and other concerned citizens joined us. More puzzle pieces were discussed. Some questioned why would this RSD superintendent sell these Cohen High School juniors and seniors to FIN? Others theorized; FIN has acquired John McDonough High but fell short in their commitment to enroll 300 students as their current enrollment is closer to 100. By acquiring Cohen’s 120 juniors and seniors FIN gets closer to the needed 300 students although the students would remain housed at Cohen they would be added to FIN’s head count which would bring FIN closer to their million dollar payday.    

Several retired teachers arrived to hold class with the students who were eager to resume the process of learning. Around noon the students, who were amazingly well disciplined and controlled, were obviously growing cold, tired, hungry and confused. We all were. But much of the student’s confusion was intensified by administrators planting false seeds into their minds as they attempted to turn the students against their adult supporters.

Chad Brousard introduced himself to organizers as a Breaux Bridge resident who was brought in as principal of John McDonough and later shifted to Cohen. Brousard began with what sounded like a canned speech about students exercising their rights to protest as our ancestors had done…  he said he wanted to speak with the students in small groups. We asked in the spirit of transparency if he would speak with them as one group, they were all assembled just a few yards away in front of our faces. He agreed to do so but turned back as we approached the students. We later found that he had somehow managed to get a few students into the library and had them sitting at a table writing out a list of demands.

We asked administrators if they planned to feed the student’s lunch. They said the students were welcome to eat lunch inside, in the school cafeteria. The large majority of students declined the invitation. Adult supporters hurriedly worked it out and bought food and drink for the children to eat.

A group of seven or eight boys huddled near a car decided to break ranks with their classmates. They walked around the other students and headed to the door. One of the teens tapped Brousard who was standing near the door who immediately followed them inside.

After a half hour another organizer and I went into the school library where we found some of the boys seated while eating doughnuts. A group of FIN teachers were lounging on the other side of the room. The students told us they had gone inside the school because they were concerned and wanted to study for the test they would soon have to take in order to graduate. My colleague then demanded the teachers to relinquish their seats and to begin the process of educating the students. They hurriedly complied.  

As the cameras assembled for the scheduled 3:00PM press conference a woman (some say she was an obvious provocateur) was sent to disrupt by accusing an organizer of betraying the students by working for the RSD. Again the awesome students held their composure and proceeded with their press conference as scheduled.

Many of the students remained seated and composed after the press conference because they intended to remain for the RSD scheduled meeting with parents and students.

An obviously nervous Superintendent Dobard convened the meeting by telling the students “We as adults like to keep doing things as before…” as to imply they were being manipulated by their adult supporters. He informed us all that “A contract has already been signed.” He promised the students that “All seniors and juniors will graduate from Cohen High School from this building.”

He said “I made a decision because I could not standby to watch students not being educated,” He threatened that “Staff will be available to work on transfers tomorrow for students who want to transfer elsewhere.” He responded to shouts from students regarding books “We will address books.” When students complained about ceiling tiles on one side of the cafeteria designated for New Orleans College Prep (a charter school that shares the building with Cohen) and missing tiles on the Cohen student’s side of that same space he said “We will evaluate the ceiling tiles.”

Adults in the audience became disruptive and started yelling complaints to him. I could not hear the questions but I did hear his responses which were “I will work on that and I will address that.”

As I spoke to students to ask for clarity on some of their complaints I learned that they do not have individual books and must share books in the classrooms. When they need to go to the restroom they must go to the office to request toilet paper. I began to reflect on my days in the Orleans Parish school system during the Jim Crow era. We did have toilet paper in the restrooms and every student had a full set of books although most of them were handed down out dated books from white schools when they became tattered, worn and too old for white students. I began to wonder if we were better off during Jim Crow days. Now that African Americans hold executive positions in our education system are we now in “Tom Crow Days?”

One former teacher (Black male) said he holds a master’s degree and was fired by State Superintendent John White who has a bachelor’s degree. He further stated that proven certified teachers are being replaced with uncertified/under qualified teachers. Upset adults went off again when Dobard responded with “Everything is not about qualifications.”

A newly fired Cohen teacher became emotional when he spoke. He said “I was hired on Friday, my first day was Monday, I was evaluated on Tuesday and fired on Wednesday. Students later rushed over to embrace their teacher and assure him that everything will be alright.

An adult supporter who spoke directly to Dobard spoke of a West bank girl who lives six blocks from Landry High School but has to awaken at 5:30AM to be bussed to a school in New Orleans East. He told Dobard “You are guilty of Black on Black Crime.”

The meeting ended abruptly when many of the frustrated students stood up and angrily walked out. I found it ironic that in today’s world with all of the anti-bullying campaigns that a school system would so BRUTALLY BULLY children placed under there care.    

Parnell Herbert is a recently returned New Orleanian who was previously displaced to Houston by Hurricane Katrina. He is active on many social justice causes, including the right of return for New Orleanians, and freedom for the Angola Three. His new play, Angola Three, has been performed in New Orleans and other cities.

Seven Years After Katrina, A Divided City, By Jordan Flaherty

A version of this article originally appeared on TruthOut.org.
 

Seven years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has become a national laboratory for government reforms. But the process through which those experiments have been carried out rarely has been transparent or democratic. The results have been divisive, pitting new residents against those who grew up here, rich against poor, and white against Black.

Education, housing, criminal justice, health care, urban planning, even our media; systemic changes have touched every aspect life in New Orleans, often creating a template used in other cities. A few examples:

- In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, more than 7,500 employees in city’s public school system were fired, despite the protection of union membership and a contract. Thousands of young teachers, many affiliated with programs like Teach For America, filled the empty slots. As charters took over from traditional public schools, the city became what then-superintendent Paul Vallas called the first 100% free market public school system in the US. A judge recently found that the mass firings were illegal, but any resolution will likely be tied up in appeals for years.

- Every public housing development has either been partially or entirely torn down. The housing authority now administers more than 17,000 vouchers – nearly double the pre-Katrina amount –a massive privatization of a formerly public system. During this period, rents have risen dramatically across the city.

- The US Department of Justice has spent three years in negotiations with city government over reform of the police department. The historic consent decree that came out of these negotiations mandates vast changes in nearly every aspect of the NOPD and some aspects could serve as a model for departments across the US. But organizations that deal with police violence, as well as the city’s independent police monitor, have filed legal challenges to the agreement, stating that they were left out of the negotiations and that as a result, the final document lacks community oversight.

- As the city loses its daily paper, an influx of funding has arrived to support various online media projects – including $880,000 from George Soros to one website. In a city that is still majority African-American, the staff of these new media ventures is almost entirely white, and often politically conservative. These funders – many of whom consider themselves progressive - have mostly ignored the city’s Black media, which have a proud history of centuries of local resistance to the dominant narrative. Publications like Louisiana Weekly covered police violence and institutional racism when the daily paper was not interested. Wealthy liberals are apparently still not interested.

There is wide agreement that most of our government services have long deep, systemic problems. But in rebuilding New Orleans, the key question is not only how much change is needed, but more crucially, who should dictate that change.

New Orleans has become a destination for a new class of residents drawn by the allure of being able to conduct these experiments. For a while, they self-identified as YURPs (Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals).  Now they are frequently known as “social entrepreneurs,” and they have wealthy and powerful allies. Warren Buffet has invested in the redevelopment of public housing. Oprah Winfrey and the Walton family have donated to the charter schools. Attorney General Holder came to town to announce police department reforms. President Obama has visited several times, despite the fact that this state is not remotely in play for Democrats.

Many residents – especially in the Black community – have felt disenfranchised in the new New Orleans. They see the influx of college graduates who have come to start nonprofits and run our schools and redesign our neighborhoods as disaster profiteers, not saviors. You can hear it every day on WBOK, the city’s only Black-owned talk radio station, and read about it in the Louisiana Weekly, Data News, and New Orleans Tribune, the city’s Black newspapers. This new rebuilding class is seen as working in alliance with white elites to disenfranchise a shrinking Black majority. Callers and guests on WBOK point to the rapid change in political representation: Among the political offices that have shifted to white after a generation in Black hands are the mayor, police chief, district attorney, and majorities on the school board and city council.

In a recent cover story in the Tribune, journalist Lovell Beaulieu compares the new rebuilding class to the genocide of Native Americans. “520 years after the Indians discovered Columbus, a similar story is unfolding,” writes Beaulieu. “New arrivals from around the United States and the world are landing here to get a piece of the action that is lucrative post-Katrina New Orleans…Black people are merely pawns in a game with little clout and few voices. Their primary role is to be the ones who get pushed out, disregarded and forgotten.”

People hear the term “blank slate,” a term often used to describe post-Katrina New Orleans – as a way of erasing the city’s long history of Black-led resistance to white supremacy. As New Orleans poet and educator Kalamu Ya Salaam has said, “it wasn’t a blank slate, it was a cemetery.” Where some new arrivals see opportunity, many residents see grave robbers.  In response, those who find anything to praise in the old ways are often accused of being stuck in the past or embracing corruption.

Hurricane Isaac has demonstrated that New Orleans is still at risk from storms – although the flood protection system around the city seems to be more reliable than it was before the levees failed and eighty percent of New Orleans was underwater. But have the systemic problems that were displayed to the world seven years ago been fixed by the radical changes the city has seen? Is reform possible without the consent of those most affected by those changes? These are polarizing questions in the new New Orleans.

Home Grown Ugly

Dr. Angela Barthe died yesterday morning of complications due to breast cancer, a disease that plagues far too many women in our community. I didn’t have the opportunity to know Dr. Barthe well. We had met on several occasions. She had an incredibly warm personality. Just as important, Dr. Barthe had an excellent reputation as a caring physician, and delighted in her profession as pediatrician because of her love for children.

Dr. Angela Barthe was home grown beauty.

Dr. Barthe was the wife of City Council member Jon Johnson. As we can all understand, Jon is grieving terribly the loss of his wife while simultaneously making arrangements for her funeral and comforting their young daughter. Mayor Landrieu sent a press release expressing his condolences, as did most council members.

Most. Not all. Despite the admonitions by her fellow council members, Stacy Head has decided to convene an Emergency Council Meeting tomorrow at 2:00 p.m., to discuss tardy sewerage and water board fees. No doubt, tardy sewerage and water board charges are a financial burden to this community. But Ms. Head is not convening the meeting tomorrow because this 2:00p is urgent – the $91 million city budget deficit will not close at 2:30p because of Stacy’s meeting. No, Stacy is convening this 2:00p meeting because she knows Council member Johnson will not be able to attend and, therefore, she believes it the perfect opportunity to embarrass and chastise further Council member Cynthia Hedge Morrell who, by-the-by, is Stacy’s declared opponent for the Council-at-Large seat being vacated by Arnie Fielkow. Despicable, nasty politics.

Hearing these latest Head tomfoolery, I am reminded that it was only last year when Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was targeted and gunned by the dark forces of intolerance and hatred that is the heinous underbelly of politics in this country. It was President Barack Obama who urged us to move forward in unity and civility, believing "we can be better." Mrs. Head didn’t hear that message, and continues to place politics above humanity.

Council member Stacy Head is home grown ugly.

Why Can't the Loyola University Institute of Politics Find Any Black Voices They Believe Are Qualified To Speak On Black Politics?

Tonight, the Loyola University Institute of Politics (IOP) will be hosting a closed session on the subject "Black Politics in New Orleans." The guest speaker is Moon Landrieu, the last white mayor of New Orleans. Landrieu's term in office ended in 1978.

Not only is the timing of this selection of a speaker curious, it suggests that former Mayor Landrieu is the best expert to lecture graduate students on the subject of Black politics in New Orleans. While former Mayor Landrieu is certainly is a wise political sage and earned a reputation for racial fairness in his day, he is clearly not best qualified to lead a discussion of contemporary issues related to African Americans and politics in New Orleans and Louisiana. We find it curious that the IOP did not select one of dozens of recognized scholars and African American political professionals who have worked in this field for decades.

The entire community and particularly African Americans should be outraged. For far too long, we've allowed others to define our history, distort our struggles and attempt to determine our destiny. Enough is enough.

As center of higher learning, the Loyola Institute of Politics should be held to a higher standard of honest intellectual inquiry. Further, as a Jesuit-affiliated institution of higher education and a member of the academy, the IOP should not be allowed to miseducate our state's future political leadership by failing the standards of academic objectivity and scholarship, demeaning the integrity of the political struggles of African Americans in New Orleans.

Among the countless speakers who the IOP could have been considered are: Don Hubbard, Jerome Smith, Andy Washington, Dr. Rudy Lombard, Dr. Raphael Casimere, Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika, Lolis Edward Elie, King Wells, Bob Tucker, Ron Nabonne, James Gray, II, Dale Atkins, Dr. Gary Clark, Dr. Silas Lee, Sheriff Paul Valteau, Dr. Ron Gardner, Louis Charbonnett, III, Sherman Copelin, Vincent Sylvain, Doug Evans, Jay Banks, Jerome Bondi, Paul Beaulieu, Beverly McKenna, Renee' Lapeyrolerie, Judith Dangerfield, Sundiata Haley and Lolis Eric Elie.

In addition, we find it interesting that they scheduled this session for tonight in particular. We suggest that IOP members interested in the topic might find tonight's mayoral forum more enlightening:

Tonight at 6:00pm, Dillard University's Deep South Center for Environmental Justice will host a mayoral forum at the Cook Center. Dr. Beverly Wright, President of the African American Women of Purpose and Power (AAWPP) and Nolin Rollins, President and CEO of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans are the primary hosts of this mayoral forum, titled "A Collaborative for the Future; Where Purpose Meets Power." The debate will examine issues that are of interest to the African-American community.