November 8, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - About 100 protesters marched across a Mississippi River bridge Monday to denounce law enforcement officials who had stopped hundreds of New Orleans residents from fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The demonstrators, including Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney (D-Ga.) and several civil rights activists, said their aim was to ensure that such an injustice would not be ignored. "This is a matter of human rights and civil rights," McKinney said. "We want the people who want a better America to take a stand, and stand with us."
Three days after Katrina battered New Orleans and the city had flooded, officials told residents who had taken refuge at the convention center and other shelters to evacuate across a bridge to the city's West Bank. But after a 2.5-mile walk in sweltering heat, the mostly black evacuees were turned back by armed police from Gretna - a predominately white, blue-collar city in Jefferson Parish. The Mississippi River bridge is a nonpedestrian toll crossing that connects Gretna to New Orleans. "It was racism, and we have to call it that," said Malik Rahim, a West Bank resident who said he witnessed the bridge incident. Activists said the march was the first in a series of civil actions aimed at ensuring the rights and dignity of New Orleans residents, many of whom are homeless and unemployed.
"This is just the first step in a very long journey," said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus, a Washington-based social and political group. "We can change America. We are going to start here."
In an interview, Gretna Mayor Ronnie C. Harris said that the city stood by its decision to block the bridge. "We were concerned about life and property," Harris said. "It was quite evident that a criminal element was contained in a crowd of probably mainly decent people." Gretna Police Chief Arthur S. Lawson Jr. proposed the blockade after someone set the local mall on fire Aug. 31, two days after Katrina struck. "It certainly wasn't a matter of racism. It was a matter of public safety," Lawson told a local radio show Monday.
The New Orleans Police Department initially told the protesters that they could face arrest if they attempted to cross the bridge Monday. "The law is very specific concerning pedestrian traffic on the bridge," New Orleans Police Capt. Harry Mendoza said. But minutes before the start of the march, word came that rally participants would be allowed to cross. Westbound traffic was temporarily stopped, and some motorists heading in the opposite direction honked their horns and gave protesters a thumbs-up. Under police escort, the marchers walked behind a 10-foot-long banner that read: "Hip Hop Taking Back America One Step at a Time." They sang civil rights-era songs such as "We Shall Overcome." Yearwood stopped the procession at the point on the bridge where the evacuees had been turned back.
Last week, McKinney introduced legislation seeking to deny federal assistance to the Gretna Police Department, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Division Police Department - which has jurisdiction over the bridge - "for their maltreatment of individuals seeking aid during the Hurricane Katrina crisis." Harris, Gretna's mayor, said the only injustice committed was by those who failed to get relief supplies to desperate New Orleans residents. He said that Katrina had ravaged his city, leaving many without shelter, food or water. "As far as the people who organized the march, they were under some impression that there was some salvation to be found in Gretna, and there was none," Harris said. timespicayune.com
Marchers protest blockade of evacuees after Katrina Activist:
'The world needs to know what happened' Tuesday, November 08, 2005 By Matthew Brown
New Orleans Times - PicayuneWest Bank bureau
Activists from New Orleans and throughout the country marched across the Crescent City Connection on Monday to protest the blocking of the bridge after Hurricane Katrina. It had been blocked by West Bank law enforcement agencies who viewed fleeing New Orleans residents as potentially dangerous looters. Singing the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome," about 80 activists crossed the bridge to the West Bank under police escort after a rally in front of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where thousands of displaced city residents languished for days after the hurricane with little food or water. "What happened here showed the old way of doing business in the state of Louisiana is alive and well," said protester Malik Rahim of Algiers, 58, a former Black Panther and co-founder of the New Orleans social justice group Common Ground. "The world needs to know what happened."
Several days after the storm, crowds began to cross the Mississippi River bridge after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin promised that buses were waiting on the West Bank. But many people were turned back. Reacting to reports of widespread looting and violence in the city, police from Gretna, the Crescent City Connection and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office blocked the bridge and fired warning shots over the heads of those who resisted. Most of those fleeing were African-American. That roiled political activists who view the violence and despair seen at the Superdome and Convention Center as a consequence of social and racial disparities.
Officials who instigated the blocking of the bridge contend that charges of racism are overblown and off the mark. And in the chaos that pervaded the metropolitan region in those first days after the storm -- a New Orleans police officer had been shot in the head near the West Bank entry to the bridge, and two days later the Oakwood Center mall was set on fire by looters -- they say extreme measures were justified. "I had no food and water for them. We barely had enough food and water ourselves," said Chief Mike Helmstetter of the Crescent City Connection Bridge Police. "Things were getting out of hand. The Oakwood mall was being burned; we were taking shots from the Fischer housing project."
Monday's marchers represented myriad groups, from the Washington-based racial equality organization Hip Hop Caucus to the feminist group National Organization for Women. Also present was U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Atlanta, who equated blocking the Crescent City Connection with violence that swept the South during the civil rights era. "We cannot go back to that America," McKinney said. Police from New Orleans and the Crescent City Connection initially vowed that protesters faced arrest Monday if they stepped onto the bridge. But with about two dozen newspaper, radio and television reporters on hand, authorities soon relented.
Alan Levasseur, executive director of the Crescent City Connection, a division of the state Department of Transportation and Development, said he wanted to avoid a confrontation. "It was in the best interest of the public to allow the march to occur," Levasseur said. Joe Leonard Jr., executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Black Leadership Forum, declared the capitulation by bridge authorities a victory. "It's an acknowledgment of the poor decisions that were made during the catastrophe of Katrina, and, I hope, it's an extension of a hand in peace," Leonard said. . . . . . . .
