last year it was peggy wilson, this year it was the communists August 26, 2007
To our amazement and gratification, we managed to pull off Rising Tide 2. It got a little bit bigger and, according to the attendees, better this year, but the conference retained the feeling of a conversation among intelligent friends.
I thought Tim Ruppert’s comprehensive report on the current and projected state of our levees was invaluable. He explained what the Corps of Engineers is doing between now and 2011 in clear terms, with Power Point illustrations, and then answered questions from the audience. Tim was born and raised in New Orleans and he lives in Gentilly. He’s not leaving, and he’s building his new house above the height of the waterline on his ruined previous home. His presentation was videotaped and it will be online somewhere soon. That will be mandatory viewing.
Dave Zirin, author of Welcome to the Terrordome, was my kind of guy. He asks questions about what we used to call sports and the megabazillion-dollar sports entertainment industry that we are confronted with today. I think Zirin might be on the cutting edge of criticism about the business end of sports. I was thinking it would be a good idea to buy several dozen copies of his book and distribute them to the next group of people who will be negotiating with Tom Benson when he again threatens to move the Saints.
I led a discussion on Louisiana politics, and we managed to get in a few good ones, but there was not a lot of disagreement on the panel because we are all pretty unhappy with the choices we have before us in the biggest races. Personally, I think that’s why there is so much voter apathy. It always seems to come down to two candidates who have a strident coterie of loyal supporters, but who are hated by the average person. So, a lot of average people aren’t going to out and voting when they hate all the choices. I think we’d have 90% voter participation in every race if there was a place on the ballot for “None of the Above.” If None of the Above wins, we get a do-over with the top two previous candidates disqualified to run.
Although there were no fireworks during the Politics panel, I did manage to create some controversy later on in the afternoon when I threw Jay Arena out. Arena is a very committed activist for housing and social justice. On Martin Luther King Day, I, Bart Everson, Karen Gadbois, Alan Gutierriez, Brian Denzer and a few other bloggers attended Arena’s demonstration at the St. Bernard Housing Project, entered the complex with the residents to do what I thought was going to involve cleaning their former apartments. I realized once we were in there that the gesture was ineffective and wasn’t going to accomplish anything except tossing more ruined household goods into more sidewalks.
I saw Arena that day for the first time and I was told that he had criticized Bart Everson’s speech at the crime march on January 11 because Bart called for more effort from law enforcement to investigate and prosecute crime.
I hadn’t seen him since then, but he showed up today at the New Orleans Yacht Club for Dave Zirin’s speech. When Dave threw it open for questions, Arena made a statement in which he called New Orleans bloggers “hysterical” for writing about crime and calling for Eddie Jordan’s resignation and accused us of doing it because we want to see more black men to go jail.
That really pissed me off for a number of reasons. For one thing, I know which bloggers he is talking about because they are my friends. I know that their priorities to inform citizens of personal crimes and homicides in their neighborhoods so that they can be vigilant and know what to look for, to plot out where crimes are concentrated as a resource to law enforcement and citizens, and to honor the victims, who just seem to slip away into distant memory as though they never existed. In the future, bloggers would like to get more informed and involved in the justice system, and yes, most of us would like to see violent killers, batterers and rapists put in jail for a long time.
Arena must think he is talking to a bunch of people who are too uninformed to know that the outrageous numbers of young black men in jail are mostly doing statutorily-mandated time for drugs. I don’t know a single blogger who thinks it’s a good idea to use police officer time and jail space on non-violent drug offenders. I’m sure Arena would agree with us that these people need treatment, and a prison term will just give them time to earn a PhD. in drug sales and antisocial behavior.
So, no Jay, the New Orleans bloggers don’t want to see anyone going to jail, much less a young black man, unless they are involved in a violent crime. What we want is to keep our neighborhoods as safe as possible so that we don’t have to live behind bars.
After Zirin finished speaking, I asked Lisa if Arena had paid the $20 registration fee for the conference, as all the other participants had done. “No.”
“Why not?”
“He said he was a friend of Dave Zirin’s.”
I went back inside and Arena was handing out fliers. So I went up to him, introduced myself and told him that I needed to get a $20 registration fee from him.
“Oh. I’m not staying.”
I told him that he was going around giving out his fliers and all the other participants had paid $20.
He said, “well, I don’t have a lot of money.”
“None of the other people in here have a lot of money. They all paid the registration fee, and you don’t get to come in here and insult all of us without paying your fee.”
“Are you throwing me out?”
“I want you to give me $20 or leave.”
So he left. Not too much later, two guys in black shirts arrived and started handing out some kind of newsletter. I didn’t have my glasses on but someone told me it was a Marxist newsletter or something like that. They weren’t trying to go into the conference and they weren’t making any trouble, so I didn’t throw them out.
I think these communists need to realize that they are in the south. Even when a bunch of dirty hippy left wing bloggers have a conference, it’s a southern conference, and it’s best to give a polite call or e-mail and let us know that you are planning to come over and insult us and hand out literature advocating the dictatorship of the proletariat. Your message might have received a polite listen had you not sneaked in tried to put yourself on the agenda without paying the minimal conference fee that was paid by every other person.
Arena has a valid point, one that probably 99% of the NOLA bloggers agree with. We understand his issue better than he thinks, but he doesn’t know that because he obviously doesn’t read the blogs. There is time for us to incorporate someone into next year’s conference who can speak to us about the inequity of the Orleans Parish criminal justice system. We know it’s a major part of the web that tightens around every young black man, and any time one escapes it’s a minor miracle.
UPDATE: Bitch on a Mission - Clay has pictures of me ejecting the communist tight-wad, Jay Arena.
- Posted in : main, new orleans
- Author : dangerblond
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[...] panel presenters and the keynote speaker John Barry were awesome. The only thing missing were the communists. I left with the feeling that the blogger 300 together do and will make a collective difference in [...]