Share Our Wealth

(When I run for mayor of NOLA, I want somebody to remember what I'm about to post.)

Huey P. Long supported the presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. However, he was highly critical of some aspects of the New Deal. He disliked the Emergency Banking Act because it did little to help small, local banks. Long bitterly attacked the National Recovery Act for the system of wage and price codes it established. He correctly forecasted that the codes would be written by the leaders of the industries involved and would result in price-fixing. Long told the Senate: "Every fault of socialism is found is this bill, without one of its virtues."

Long claimed that Roosevelt had done little to redistribute wealth. When Roosevelt refused to introduce legislation to place ceilings on personal incomes, private fortunes and inheritances, Long launched his Share Our Wealth Society. In February 1934 Long announced a scheme to rectify the existing maldistribution of wealth in the United States. He told the Senate: "Unless we provide for redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed." He added the nation faced a choice, it could limit large fortunes and provide a decent standard of life for its citizens, or it could wait for the inevitable revolution.

Long quoted research that suggested "2% of the people owned 60% of the wealth". In one radio broadcast he told the listeners: "God called: 'Come to my feast.' But what had happened? Rockefeller, Morgan, and their crowd stepped up and took enough for 120,000,000 people and left only enough for 5,000,000 for all the other 125,000,000 to eat. And so many millions must go hungry."

Long's plan involved taxing all incomes over a million dollars. On the second million the capital levy tax would be one per cent. On the third, two per cent, on the fourth, four per cent; and so on. Once a personal fortune exceeded $8 million, the tax would become 100 per cent. Under his plan, the government would confiscate all inheritances of more than one million dollars.

This large fund would then enable the government to guarantee subsistence for everyone in America. Each family would receive a basic household estate of $5,000. There would also be a minimum annual income of $2,000 per year. Other aspects of his Share Our Wealth Plan involved government support for education, old-age pensions, benefits for war veterans and public-works projects.

Long employed Gerald L. K. Smith, a Louisiana preacher, to travel throughout the South to recruit members for the Share our Wealth Clubs. The campaign was a great success and by 1935 there was 27,000 clubs with a membership of 4,684,000 and a mailing list of over 7,500,000.

Some critics pointed out that all wealth was not in the form of money. Most of America's richest people had their wealth in land, buildings, stocks and bonds. It would be very difficult to evaluate and liquidate this wealth. When this was put to Long he replied: "I am going to have to call in some great minds to help me."

Leaders of the Communist Party and Socialist Party also attacked Long's plan. Alex Bittelman, a communist in New York wrote: "Long says he wants to do away with concentration of wealth without doing away with capitalism. This is humbug. This is fascist demagogy." Norman Thomas claimed that Long's Share Our Wealth scheme was an insufficient and dangerous delusion. He added that it was the "sort of talk that Hitler fed the Germans and in my opinion it is positively dangerous because it fools the people."

Huey P. Long admitted that certain aspects of his scheme was socialistic. He said to a reporter from The Nation: Will you please tell me what sense there is running on a socialist ticket in America today? What's the use of being right only to be defeated? On another occasion he argued: "We haven't a Communist or Socialist in Louisiana. Huey P. Long is the greatest enemy that the Communists and Socialists have to deal with."

Some economists claimed that if the Share Our Wealth plan was implemented it would bring and end to the Great Depression. They pointed out that one of the major causes of the economic downturn was the insufficient distribution of purchasing power among the population. If poor families had their incomes increased they would spend this extra money on goods being produced by American industry and agriculture and would therefore stimulate the economy and create more jobs.

In May 1935 Long began having talks with Charles Coughlin, Francis Townsend, Gerald L. K. Smith, Milo Reno and Floyd B. Olson about a joint campaign to take on President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential elections. Two months later Long announced that his police had discovered a plot to kill him. He now surrounded himself with six armed bodyguards.

On the 8th September, 1935, Carl Weiss, a physician and the son-in-law of Benjamin Pavy, shot Huey P. Long while he was in the state senate. Long's bodyguards immediately killed Weiss. At first it was thought that Long was not seriously wounded and an operation was carried out to repair the wound. However, the surgeons had failed to detect a bullet had hit his kidney. By the time this was discovered Long was to weak to endure another operation. Huey Long died on 10th September, 1935. According to his sister, Lucille Long, his last words were: "Don't let me die, I have got so much to do."

(My note: We have just passed the 70th anniversary of the death of Huey P. Long. Louisiana needs the Kingfish more than ever.)

Hank Stram and Tootie Montana

They died.

Who were they?

Hank Stram coached the New Orleans Saints for two terrible seasons. Sure, they weren't seasons that were any more or less terrible than many of the Saints seasons, but Hank Stram was a championship coach who had great success with the Kansas City Chiefs. Over the course of his two years, the Saints won a total of 7 games and lost 22. He wore a bad hairpiece and clapped a lot. Archie Manning, Tony Galbreath, Chuck Muncie, and Henry Childs all played for Hank.

What in the world would make Hank Stram "beloved" in the minds of Saints fans? I think it's because he loved NOLA and he stayed there. He died in Covington, in St. Tammany Parish Hospital on the 4th of July, the day after I moved to New Orleans. Hank Stram, Super Bowl Winner, was just one of the thousands of folks who came to NOLA and couldn't leave.

Tootie Montana was something else altogether. He died on June 27, defending the Mardi Gras Indians at a City Council meeting.

The Indians are/were an expression of the black community in NOLA, an expression of pride and a celebration of an unbowed spirit. Tootie Montana was the King of the Indians, the "Chief of Chiefs." I don't know much about the Indians, all I know is really what I read after Tootie died and from what I saw in "Make it Funky." And what I know is that Tootie was speaking out against NOPD harassment of the Indians. Why? Who the hell knows. I don't know why the NOPD did 90% of the shit it did in NOLA. I don't know why a cop who was well known as a sensitive poet would refer to kids as "animals." The NOPD is a mystery wrapped up in an enigma.

All I really wanted to do was to mention that this summer, two people who were inexorably tied to the soul of New Orleans passed. And then the storms came, and New Orleans passed, too. Where is the produce man who continued the long tradition of singing about his goods as he drove through the Fairgrounds area? Has he gone the way of the New Orleans Pelicans?

With every passing second that we are kept from our city, more and more of the people who lived in New Orleans because it was old and beat up and full of fucked up drunks and it was slow, they won't be able to afford to return. That will mean the death of the city. We will face a New Orleans where Rue de la Course is replaced by Starbucks. And I for one cannot accept that. We CANNOT allow New Orleans to become Dallas or, God forbid, Atlanta.

That is why I am hereby announcing my candidacy for mayor of the City of New Orleans. My platform will be "Save New Orleans!"

Save New Orleans from the carpetbaggers and the speculators! Save New Orleans from the yuppies and Baptists! I tell you here and now that the first things to go when "the respectable people" move in will be our liberty to do what we want, when we want. These yuppie trash will take away our freedom to drink, our "to go" cups, our Mardi Gras, our gambling; they will say that "decent" people don't need such things. And I say to them: GO BACK TO ATLANTA, YUPPIE BAPTIST TRASH!

Vote for me, and Save New Orleans!

(I am not joking.)

There is a hole in my heart...

and it is shaped like New Orleans.

Before it happened, I mean, before IT happened, I was at Vaughn's on Thursday night standing amazed in the presence of Troy Andrews. They call him Trombone Shorty because he started playing with his brother James at such a young age. He just might have been the youngest second line player ever, I don't know.

And there were so many "New Orleans Moments" that night (and New Orleans moments can be great or they can be terrible, it just depends) that it seems silly to pick out just one as the thing that demonstrates just WHY NOLA is "special."

Let me go back to a week or so before when I went to hear Soul Rebels at Le Bon Temps--you cannot possibly name me another city in America where hip young cool things showed up to dance to a BRASS BAND. You just can't. They were dancing like the kids in Atlanta dance to hip hop, but it was to trombone, trumpet, sousaphone...yeah. I am not making that up. And they got it, too. It wasn't cute, it wasn't trendy, it was NEW ORLEANS, baby, it was COOL. It would be there before the kids were born and it would be there long after they were gone (assuming IT hasn't killed that spirit).

So move ahead, back to Vaughn's on Thursday night. Vaughn's is (was?) legendary for its Thursday night sessions where, so I'm told, Kermit Ruffins would show up late, play all night, and somebody would bring in barbeque to feed the faithful.


This is Kermit. He is cooler than the top of Mt. Washington.


And Vaughn's itself is tiny. When I first went there on a Sunday afternoon, before I had moved to NOLA, it was at the moment that I was walking into Vaughn's that I knew, "This city will be my home."

Someone was putting out a bunch of junk on the sidewalk outside a home; a sink with a hole in it, a tarnished copper kettle with no lid, a dollhouse that looked like it had (prophetically) been hit by a hurricane, some old quilts...and the woman hung a sign that said, "FREE STUFF."

Free stuff, indeed.

I needed some cash so I went to the corner grocery (and you better know it, if there's one great thing about NOLA it is [was] the corner grocery, because every neighbourhood has them, and a lot of them serve hot food and PoBoys) because they had a sign that said "ATM" outside. I went in and wandered around, but I saw no machine. I asked the man at the register where was the machine and he said, "No machine." I had to do some finagling and then he gave me money from the register. THAT is an ATM in New Orleans.

So now, having turned down free stuff and used the invisible ATM, I walked to the door of Vaughn's and...couldn't get in. I had to be buzzed in. That was a first. You know, I had NEVER been buzzed in to a bar before. Yeah, that was a New Orleans moment.

So Vaughn's on this last Thursday night before IT happened had a good crowd, like Le Bon Temps, young hipsters who were dancing and grooving to Troy's band. I mentioned it before but Troy is a genius. Troy Andrews is Spiderman. Troy is just a brilliant musician who knows everything. The music was the best I've ever heard, energy, art, and technique married together, Troy playing trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, singing, conducting...Troy was Louis Prima, Troy was Satchmo, Troy was every genius wonderkind who ever lived. At this tiny club. On a Thursday. That was a New Orleans moment, people. You can always, always hear the best musicianship on earth for 10 bucks in my city. Or you could, I guess.

I was drinking my blessed Dixie. Whatever anybody says about Dixie, and shit probably most of the criticisms are valid, I would never refuse one. Dixie is New Orleans, the run-down brewery, the lack of care, the uniqueness...

And at some point, between sets, the door to Vaughn's opened and two men walked in carrying giant steel pots, one filled with red beans, one filled with rice. You don't pay for this. They're just feeding you, you know, cause you might be hungry. It wasn't the barbeque I had heard about, but this was better. This was NOLA. I don't need barbeque when I have red beans.

At last my time came to go. I had been in heaven from the moment I walked in and I will cherish the brilliance I was treated to for the rest of my life. James Andrews put in a cameo for good measure, showing his brother that there's more than one horn player in the family--and that too was a New Orleans moment. You simply never know when someone will just appear, his horn under his arm, and start playing. There is no other city like that on earth.

Troy was still playing when I made my way to the door--and for some reason he looked up and saw me. I looked at him and gave him my "prayer hands" in thanks for his brilliance, and he smiled and nodded.

I had two other New Orleans moments that will live with me forever before this. Both were at Donna's on separate Sunday nights. The first was when I ended up talking trumpet with Kermit, as if I had any business doing that, and the second was talking with Shannon Powell when there was almost nobody else in the club, and then when I left he threw his arm around me and thanked me for coming. Shannon Powell--you probably don't know that he was Harry Connick's drummer on some of Connick's biggest selling albums. He is a freaking legend, as gifted a drummer as you will ever hear anywhere, and he was thanking ME. As if.

And as if for any reason Troy Andrews should note me leaving Vaughn's, but he did, and it hit me so hard: My God, I cannot even tell anyone how much I love New Orleans.


Trombone Shorty. Troy. ET. The Brother from Another Planet.

So I had pretty much kept it together

Until now.

The lovely people from Cork & Bottle http://www.corknola.com/ posted on their site that WWOZ is webcasting, "WWOZ in Exile."

I'm sorry, when I heard the music of my city, the music that makes me happy when everything else fails, I just cried. I am crying now and I keep saying to myself "Just stop it!" but I can't. I can't.

My father is a Georgia Cracker, a redneck who grew up in Resaca. He never went to college and he never lived more than 20 miles from the place he was born. He grew up in a segregated South where black folk were treated horribly.

Yet my earliest memories include my father bringing a black co-worker and his sons to the First Baptist Church in Dalton in the early 1970s and us sitting on the closest row the to the front of the church as we could, at a time when they would have been as inconspicuous as a fly in a sugar bowl. Sometimes I don't even know how my father became the person he is, he is almost supernatural

Well, anyway, this same father of mine has always loved New Orleans jazz. Among the old vinyl collection were records by Sweet Emma and Kid Thomas. He tells stories of going to Chattanooga to hear them play and he got Kid Thomas and his band's autographs on one of the album jackets. (Side note: This is one of the things I stupidly left behind when I left NOLA.)

I don't know if my father's love of this music infected me or not. I do VIVIDLY remember watching Satchmo on TV as a child and loving the music too.

And of course, as soon as I got to NOLA I discovered the music. I could go on for days about Troy Andrews, Shannon Powell, Kermit Ruffins, Detroit Brooks, Dr. Michael White, Maurice Brown, Nicholas Payton...

I can't tell you how much I miss New Orleans. I can't. My words would fail. If NOLA were a woman, I would marry her and never stray.

Please, everyone, help save my city. Save New Orleans. Nothing else has ever been this important to me.

What's in a name?

The good people of Bangladesh (you may know them from "massive floods every other day") have offered us a million bucks in aid.

How about that?

Some people are taking offense at the term "refugee."

My thoughts: WHAT THE FUCK???

Here's the first definition of refugee from google: "an exile who flees for safety."

HELLO PEOPLE OF EARTH!

I CANNOT GO HOME!

I HAVE FLED FOR MY SAFETY!

DUH!

Got that?

I am PROUD to call myself a refugee. We are refugees, in every sense of the word. Who could be offended by that? We are a people, from a place, and we cannot live in our homes.

I am a refugee, bitches. I cannot be called anything else. I was NOT evacuated. NOBODY knows that I am gone. I left because Mayor Nagin told me to go.

No soldiers showed up at my door telling me that I should leave. Nobody from the government even cares that I am not in NOLA.

No sir. I am a refugee. I have fled. I did so for my safety.

If you call me a refugee, I know that you understand my situation. I did not want to leave. I have no where to go. My greatest desire is to return home.

Sitting in your own crap

Yeah, that' s the title of this entry, because that is what's going on among the poor in NOLA.

Read this and weep:

2 September 2005(AP): The stench from backed-up toilets inside the Superdome is unbearable and people are afraid to go into the unlighted bathrooms.

Sandra Jones says she and her family use a box to relieve themselves instead of using restrooms because "The stink is so bad you can't go in there anyway."

Even though she's hungry, one hurricane refugee in the dome says she's not eating. Michele Boyle says eating would mean she'd have to use the dark, dangerous and filthy restrooms in the dome. So she's going without.

Boyle has been spending some of her time trying to keep a small area of the dome as clean as she can until help arrives. Boyle and other refugees found some brooms and swept up the mess.

She says they're simply "trying not to let it get any worse."

________________________________________________

Welcome to Hell, Day 5.

How in the name of decency can we allow this to go on? Tell me. Tell me that these poor people don't even deserve to take a shit with decency. I am listening to our dear governor tell me that today was a milestone and a turning point, but for the people camped out at the I10 overpass, the convention center, and the Superdome, IT IS NOT!!!!

Not one of these people asked to be in this position. The time for judging them is long, long gone. They need your compassion and love. PLEASE.

The 17th street canal broke Monday night. It is all but repaired. NOW. How long has it been? An eternity? Why was this not a priority?

Or better yet, when the budget for raising the levees was rejected for 3 consecutive years (presumably because tax cuts and wars against phantom stockpiles of WMDs had to be conducted), why did decent people not stand up and say "If we're gonna superheat the Gulf waters, can we at least pour some motherfucking dirt down here?"

Whatever you think about this, just understand one thing: IT WAS ALL PREVENTABLE.

From the failure to restore the levees and wetlands, to the failure to have a plan in place to evacuate the poor, to the failure to have a plan in place to plug breeched canals, to the failure to have adequate security for our neighbourhoods, to the failure to have adequate food, water, and shelter after the fact, IT WAS ALL PREVENTABLE.

It will cost 500 million dollars just to rebuild the HOUSING in the lower 9th ward. Just the housing. Not including the infrastructure. These people need your love and compassion.

My sweet Colleen tells me that she has to move back to Chicago, that there is nothing left for her in NOLA. The great Acadian Diaspora has begun.

My city is on life support, people. The city that gave America its one true art form, the city that spawned a cuisine treasured around the world, the city that gave you Lee Harvey Oswald (okay, bad example) IS DYING. Please, help SAVE NEW ORLEANS.

New Orleans: Year Zero

I cannot tell you how I feel.

Beyond losing everything I own, losing a rare picture of a grandfather who died before I was born, losing all my clothes, is the loss of a way of life in a city that was one of the best on earth.

New Orleans was so very far from being "perfect," but its informality and ease brought with it the troubles that one had to endure in order to discover its gifts. And its gifts were infinite:

The taste of a hot cup of Community Coffee's New Orleans Blend, flavoured with chickory--I could cross the street from my apartment in the morning and start my day with that. And a very pretty, smiling girl named Ty would hand it to me and that would set the tone for the rest of my day.

Donna's Lounge on a Sunday Night--Shannon Powell would play the drums and sing, musicians from around the city (and sometimes the world) would drop in. It was informal, communal, full of joy.

Anything from Liuzza's by the Track--The gumbo, the Garlic Oyster PoBoys and the incomparable BBQ Shrimp PoBoy just begin to tell the story. The cast of characters (a woman in a purple mumu wearing a mask and on top of her head a crown made of pot leaves would often drop by; S. Gary Wainwright, Attorney at Law would regale you with the story of how he ran for District Attorney on the platform of decriminalising drug posession; the leader of the Storyville Stompers brass band was there; Bird the one-man taxi company worked there; Roadrunner, the chef/carpenter worked there...) made every Saturday morning hangover session more bearable.

Jhelisa at Hookah Cafe--her voice is indescribable.

Cheap food from Country Flame when you're high--It was really the bucket of Coronitas we loved, but cramming a plate of nachos down your cramhole and watching Mexican novelas was the perfect complement.

Alligator sausage at Cooter Brown's--wash it down with some 11% Abita Andy Gator beer. Repeat as needed.

13 Monaghan--The proper launching pad for a night of debauchery. Start off with a frozen irish coffee, eat the good food, drink a few beers, then hike over to the Quarter where pretty blondes named Lindsay with an "A" will kiss you.

The "Barmuda Triangle" on Magazine at Sophie Wright--Half Moon, Moonlight, and Sharon's bar all within 200 feet of each other, each forming a point on a triangle. This is supplemented by $1 cans of PBR at Juan's Flying Burrito. Sharon's was like "Trees Lounge" + "Barfly" but maybe not as uplifting.

Sitting on the steps of the levee by the Mississippi, sipping a cold beverage, watching massive ships moving up and down the river--the first time this happened, I was in awe of the scale of what I was seeing.

Pizza at Sugar Park Tavern--the best mf'in pie on earth.

Watching Troy Andrews play every instrument in his band--Vaughn's on a Thursday night. Troy, the genius wonderchild that only NOLA could produce, I would just stand amazed as he conducted the band and communicated telepathically with his sax player.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Two nights ago, as a refugee in a small sports bar in Tunica, MS, I sat down at the bar and thought, "There's nothing in here I'd want more than a Dixie Beer." A Dixie. Something small, something simple from my city. I miss my city. I love my city.