Carondelet Street or bust

Another snapshot, from Billy.....

Please note the footnote at the end. If you can, please donate. I can promise you it is worth it.

Sept. 19, 2005 | NEW ORLEANS --

It was such a fine spring day,
down Louisiana way,
with fragrance divine, oh baby,
and such magnificent regalia,
oh so fine, Azalea.

I've got to go back there
and find that blossom fair,
I always dream of,
'cause with you who can be a failure.
My first love, Azalea.

-- Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, from "Azalea"

A week ago Sunday, I saw the sunrise over the Mississippi River from my roof on Carondelet Street in New Orleans. I was up there with Wallace, a fellow refugee I had met the day before in Oxford, Miss.

I had vaguely recognized Wallace when I saw him in Oxford the previous day, but I couldn't place him. We talked for a minute and he mentioned that he was a teacher and I was able to remember him. He was the hip English teacher at a struggling all-black high school in New Orleans where I had taught street law to "at risk" kids. He had John Coltrane posters on his classroom walls and tried to teach his students radical history. He made an impression on me when I taught his class because his students, who didn't hear much, listened to him. He, in turn, listened to his students, who weren't used to being heard.

Wallace proposed that we attempt to drive the six hours down to New Orleans in his old white Econoline van, in which he used to tour with his band, to assess the damage firsthand, to fix our homes if necessary, and to retrieve precious belongings that we had left behind. We had each just received nearly $700 in Wal-mart credit from the Red Cross, so flush with cash, we stormed the Wal-mart hardware section nervously buying anything that we thought might be useful on our trip, a trip that we had no precedent for and no way to have foreseen.

Wallace bought a set of battery-charged power tools, walkie-talkies for times we anticipated being separate, canned pineapples and water. I bought blue tarps, bungee cords, the biggest Maglite on the market and energy bars, and tried in vain to find rubber boots.

We left Oxford in his van at about 10 p.m., filled with nervous energy and hoping to slide into New Orleans just before dawn, as we had been told by friends that the security checkpoints were not up until sunrise.

There was no traffic at all as we passed through Jackson and approached Hammond, La. We had a steady stream of conversation through the night, talking about our wives, both artists, both far away, progressive politics, and our hopes and concerns for New Orleans. Occasionally one of us would note the possibility that our 12-hour drive to New Orleans and back might be in vain because we could be turned back at the city limits. But we would quickly skip over this point and again rehearse the work-related pretexts we intended to pitch if we were stopped. Maybe 10 times on the drive, one of us said, "That's my story and I'm sticking with it."

We had a quarter tank of gas and two full five-gallon gas cans in the back of the van when we stopped for gas in Hammond, about 60 miles outside the city. We figured it would be our last chance for gas before New Orleans and we were not sure we would make the 120 miles back and forth with the gas we had. It was the only gas station open when we pulled off Interstate 55 at 2 in the morning and it was so jammed full of cars that I assumed it was a gas line full of southern-bound New Orleanians, like ourselves.

However, it turned out that teenagers, mostly black, hung out at the gas station in their cars until late at night, playing loud, bass-heavy music and talking to friends. I figured this out quickly after watching five police cars simultaneously converge on the gas station, lights ablaze, to close down the place and chase off the kids. We pulled into the now-empty gas station after circling the block and letting the dust settle. The pumps had been turned off so I walked up to the little gas station store. The glass door was locked and I stood staring in at the clerks until one came up to the glass and told us that they were closed.

In the weeks since evacuating New Orleans with my wife and two dogs and having no place to live, I have gotten used to asking for favors, begging and saying please and thank you. Through the glass, I told the clerk my "sad story." I told him that I was from New Orleans and trying to get back into town, that I had seen a satellite photo of my roof and that it was damaged and getting worse, and then busted out the wild card that works with most men in most situations. I told him that my wife had her heart set on my getting her wedding rings and the diaries of her sister who passed away and that it would break her heart if I didn't make it home to try to find these things and bring them back. I wasn't lying and he could tell. He asked me if I had cash and when I said yes, told me that he would let me fill up. I thanked him, sincerely, not in the manner that I do in my normal life, when people do little more than is required.

Within minutes of getting back on the Interstate, we saw flares and police cars parked ahead on the highway, blocking the road. Wallace and I checked in on our story once again and slowed to a stop next to a tired-looking, middle-aged white police officer.

"How you doing, officer," Wallace said.

He asked us where we were going and we explained that we were going to New Orleans, that I was a lawyer and that I had legal business related to the storm, a half truth. We showed him our identification. He responded simply, "I'm too tired to care. You can do what you want. He commented that our car smelled of gas and chemicals: "What, you got drugs in there?"

We explained that we had cans of gasoline in the back of the van. He responded kindly, "Gas? You know that's not really safe ... get out of here."

We drove through the checkpoint and up onto the causeway, the elevated highway that runs through the swamps toward New Orleans. Since the balance of the ride back into the city would be on this two-lane road, there would be little opportunity for anyone to send us back now. We were almost home.

On both sides of the causeway, we could see the glow of the massive factories, cities of industry now back in action, spewing flames.

We were quiet for a while, eager to see our homes, our city, and knowing it had changed. We were also exhausted.

We cut around the city to the south and onto Highway 90, the old highway into the city, on the West Bank. The West Bank is part of Jefferson Parish, the white-flight suburb surrounding the city. It is the part of the city that throngs of people tried to flee into, over the bridge from the convention center, only to be turned away by armed sheriffs. Only a few days later, two white men in a van, we were trying to go the opposite direction.

The West Bank was in remarkably good shape. We passed a bingo hall with blinking lights. The Burger King was opening up, getting ready to sell egg sandwiches and Tater Tots. All of this minutes away from New Orleans. It seemed impossible.

As we approached the bridge, we reached another roadblock, manned by the Crescent City Connection Bridge Police. The officer standing guard was bleary-eyed and looked as if he were about to fall over. He hardly listened as we told him why we were traveling into the city. He had no objections. Wallace asked him how he was doing. His pain poured out. He told us that he had lost his house, that the floodwater had risen to the roof, and that it was destroyed. He said that the insurance adjuster said that his policy didn't cover flood. He told us that his wife and kids were in Florida, that he was worried about them and wanted to be with them but only managed to talk to them for a few minutes at a time because he was worried about roaming charges on his phone and because cellphone service was constantly cutting out. He told us about a classic Bronco that he had just finished restoring and about the huge tree that had fallen on it. We asked him when he would be relieved so that he could take care of his home and his family, and he laughed. He explained that there weren't many officers on his detail and that they were all working 18 hours a day, unsure if they were even going to get paid. Wallace asked him whether his union was doing anything to help him. He laughed again, saying, "Union: You're not even allowed to say that word around here."

We thanked him, sincerely, and drove off. As we pulled away, I saw him go back to sit with his fellow officers, none of whom could probably bear hearing each other's sad stories another time. Each, perhaps, waiting to talk to the next couple of guys trying to pass into town who were willing to listen.

The city was dim as we passed over the bridge. We could see a big military ship docked on the side of the river next to the convention center. Within minutes, we reached my house, five blocks from the Superdome. It was still dark.

I inspected the house with my flashlight, and it looked the same as I had left it. I unlocked the door and walked into my high-ceilinged living room, and could smell the aroma of home, slightly stale, a little sour, but distinct. No water had come in; the flood had not reached us. I drank some water from the cooler I had left stocked with four five-gallon jugs, then went upstairs, where I did not know what I would find.

I crept up the stairs, almost blind in the dark with my flashlight off, but knowing the steps, because I was finally home. At the top of the stairs I reflexively switched the light on, to no avail. I flipped on my flashlight and saw that my ceiling had collapsed from above. From the right angle, I could see the night sky through the wound in my roof. There was soggy sheetrock and wet bits of insulation, made of shredded newspaper, everywhere. I wanted to start cleaning up then and there but realized it was absurd, that there was still more to see. I crossed through my wife's studio, unblemished, with her paintings on the walls, and then into our bedroom, where the ceiling had also collapsed onto our new pillow-top mattress, which we had talked about with joy every night since its purchase as we got into bed.

I climbed the narrow ladder up into my attic, walked carefully along the rafters, then climbed through the hole in the roof I had seen from below. I nervously walked up the back face of my double-pitched roof and could see with the flashlight that large portions of the roof were damaged and exposed. Jitters passed through my body. I had been awake for almost 24 hours, I was standing on my roof in the middle of the night in my abandoned city, and I felt nauseated. Even under the best of circumstances, I have no business out on a roof. But anticipating the damage, I had brought up a tarp, some screws, and Wallace's new drill. I tried to secure the tarp over some of the damaged areas, but I began to feel my feet slipping on the remaining roofing tiles beneath my feet.

Knowing that I was a danger to myself, I slid back down the hole and made my way downstairs and told Wallace what I had seen and what I tried to do. He told me that he was good on roofs -- he would come up with me. We made our way back up. He did most of the work. He explained that we weren't really accomplishing anything but that it was good to try, that I could tell my wife that I had tried to repair the roof in the middle of the night, and I would be a hero. I felt pathetic and scared but comforted.

Before making our way back downstairs, we watched the city come awake. New Orleans never had the early-morning hustle and bustle of other American cities but, instead, a few people heading to work, a few stragglers still trying to find their way home. In New Orleans, sunrise meant "go to sleep" about as much as it meant "wake up," even among many of us who lived there. Now, however, with the city empty of its citizens, sunrise signified only wakeup time to the soldiers who, that morning, occupied the high-rise apartment building on St. Charles Avenue, the great Mardi Gras parade route, a block behind my house. They wandered out the building, absent-mindedly gazed up at us on the roof, and got down to the business of brushing their teeth and shaving with little cups of water in their hands.

Back downstairs, I cleaned up what I could and packed some things and brought them down to the van. I found the rings and the journals but had lost the list my wife had given me. I panicked, knowing that I was in no state to make decisions. Everything seemed pointless by this time. Miraculously, I got through to my wife on my cellphone.

"Nikki, I can't find the list. I've lost it. All I can remember are the rings and the journals," I told her.

She could hear in my voice that I was not well, that I hadn't eaten, and that I was exhausted. She said, "Billy, you got everything that matters. Go downstairs, eat some beans from a can, and sit down for a minute. Promise."

She has said these kinds of things so many times in this house as we restored it from a shell, as I worked myself into the ground with my job, and her words put me back together, a little bit anyway. We got off the phone and I grabbed as much as I could remember, neglecting her advice for the time being.

Before we left, Wallace handed me two garbage bags and told me that I should clean out my fridge. It hadn't occurred to me. I opened the door and began to retch at the smell. I tried to wrap a cloth around my face, but it kept dropping down. The worst were the chicken cutlets in the freezer that turned to mush when I grabbed them and then leaked through the cellophane wrap, all over my hands. I dragged the garbage bag through my house to the curb. Immediately flies swarmed to it. Wallace sprayed bleach on the floor in my living room and cleaned up where the bag had leaked. I will love him forever.

When I got my bearings, Wallace introduced me to two dogs that had come up to him while I was upstairs. They were already peacefully resting in the kennels he had brought with him in case we ran into strays. They knew that they had hit the jackpot and weren't going to do anything to mess it up. He had already named one of them. The black Lab puppy was Sancho Panza, after Don Quixote's sidekick. He asked what the names of the cross-streets were on my block, as Carondelet, the name of the street, didn't seem like an appropriate dog name. I told him that they were the names of muses, Clio and Erato. He named the baby pitbull Clio, the muse of history.

We got into the car and drove to his house. On the way, we looked for my Jeep, which I had parked in a garage to protect from flooding, but it was gone. It had been liberated. I hoped that whoever took it made it out of town with their family. Maybe they will drop me a postcard from El Paso, or where ever they are, when they are done using it. No hard feelings.

Wallace's house was in much better shape than mine, and he made quick work of packing, cleaning out his fridge, and getting us back on the road. I could tell that he felt kind of bad that his house wasn't damaged like mine. I was just glad that I didn't have to go up on another roof.

As I waited for Wallace, I met two young guys from the Oregon National Guard who had come up to the house, thinking that we were holdouts and intending to encourage us to leave. They were very sweet and I offered them cigars, a recently acquired vice, which they initially declined. They had both signed up for the National Guard before Sept. 11 to help pay for college. While I could tell that they both had their hesitations about the "war on terror" and their pending deployment to Afghanistan, they were patriots, in the best sense. One of them, a lieutenant, told me about their temporary barracks in an old neighborhood high school. He told me that he was disgusted that kids ever went to school there and that in Oregon the place would have been bulldozed and rebuilt so that kids could have a proper place to learn. He seemed troubled that all of this was happening in America. He realized that many of the problems that he was seeing in New Orleans existed before the storm and wanted to know why people had put up with it and why they hadn't voted the people out of office who let this happen. I told him I didn't know but that maybe we could change things in New Orleans in the future. He seemed hopeful. I felt less certain.

I introduced them to our new dogs, who were happy to have a little attention. One of the guardsmen told me that there were dying dogs everywhere, and it made him incredibly sad. He said, blankly, "These starving dogs are the saddest thing ... after the dead bodies." They quickly changed the subject.

After being yelled at by holdouts, the police and their commanders, they had made their first friend in New Orleans. I told him how to pronounce the street names properly and what each neighborhood was called and what they were like. I stressed that Esplanade Avenue is pronounced like "lemonade" and that they should correct any of their superiors who say it otherwise. They both laughed. I offered the cigars again and they accepted. As they were walking away, one of them accidentally bumped my leg with the barrel of his M-16. He was embarrassed, as though I might not have noticed the massive guns that both of them were carrying. To ease the tension, I said to them, "You're the only two 22-year-old men to ever come to New Orleans and not get drunk or laid." They laughed hard and started walking away again.

"What we wouldn't give," they said.

I told them to come back and visit when it was a city again and that they would surely have a better time.

Wallace and I got back in the van and started to head out of town. Before we left his neighborhood, Bywater, we came across some scrappy-looking guys and we pulled over to see if they wanted any of the water or food that we had left in the van. They introduced themselves, saying, "They call us holdouts." They turned down the water and food, saying they had plenty of canned food and that they had gallons of water in their hot-water heaters. They explained that they had been bathing in the Mississippi but that "it was beginning to get nasty." They wanted bleach to keep things sanitary, but we didn't have any. They settled for some Orange Clean, cat food that we had brought for strays, and a five-gallon can of gas for their generator. They told us to tell others to come home: "Bring people back. Tell them that it is OK. That you can make it here."

We drove off and left our occupied city. I slept most of the drive back as Wallace, still solid, drove. I woke up as we were approaching Oxford and told Wallace to pull into a convenience store so that I could get some beer. It was around 8 at night and we had been on the road for a full day. I brought a six-pack of Budweiser to the register, and the cashier told me that they couldn't sell beer on Sundays anywhere in Lafayette County. Broken-hearted and shocked, I told her my sad story, but she was inflexible. I thanked her and left, with new resolve to return home to New Orleans as soon as possible.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Billy Sothern is a New Orleans writer and attorney living in Oxford, Miss., until he can return home. His nonprofit, Reprieve, accepts donations to support the organization's many indigent clients who are now homeless and without money or credit.

The Need for a Progressive Vision in the Face of Horror

For those who remember the New orleans blog, this article is by one of the guys I worked with. The full article can also be found here.

September 13, 2005
The Need for a Progressive Vision in the Face of Horror
How the Other Half Lived

By BILLY SOTHERN

In 1911, the Triangle Shirt Factory in New York City, where I grew up, exploded in flames trapping scores of young, immigrant, women workers inside. As the fire burned, many women jumped to their deaths, unable to bear the slow death of heat and smoke. Newspaper reporters wrote about the sound they made as they fell, with their dresses billowing, before hitting the ground. In all, 146 women died.

The nation and the world were horrified at the barbarism of industry and began to focus on the rights of workers. For a moment, the world was able to see beyond the fact that the victims were female immigrants, and acknowledged the need for basic human standards for workers. This was a moment in history where, horrified by the excesses of the unrestrained capitalism and the disregard for the basic humanity of our citizens, this country was forced to change and adopt standards that progressives had vainly pressed for years. I imagine that then, as now, conservatives countered with market-based solutions and crude cost-benefit economic analyses but the tide had turned and people knew better, knew that these were paper tigers erected to obscure the reality that this suffering was real and avoidable. The tragedy at the factory has come to be understood as the beginning of the New Deal, the program that fundamentally change the relationship between government and its citizens in this country. (http://newdeal.feri.org/library/d_4m.htm)

Today, it appears that as many as 10,000 citizens of my adoptive hometown of New Orleans may be dead from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina was an enormous and dangerous storm but this is not why people died. Those who stayed in New Orleans were, for the most part, the poor; people who could not escape, people whose lives were constant struggle before anyone in New York had even heard of the New Orleans levee system or the Seventeenth Street Canal. While the rest of the country might have been ignorant of these Americans before the storm, they were there, they were poor, and they were desperate. The storm did not turn New Orleans into a third world city; it revealed it as one.

Poverty is a fact of life in New Orleans in a way that I never witnessed in New York or other cities outside the Deep South. The first time I drove past the projects in New Orleans, with their boarded up windows and knocked in doors, I assumed that they were abandoned, that people couldn't possibly live there. Then I saw a mailman making deliveries through the overgrown alleys between the old, brick buildings.

I have worked in these projects, visiting the families of my clients, seeing their lives, and realizing that I was the first positive contact they had with a government-funded entity, the public defense non-profit for which I worked. I was representing their son on death row or facing the death penalty. Having disregarded the needs of these families for generations, the government finally sent someone out to them once it had resolved to kill their son. Too bad that there are no constitutional rights to education, housing, or medical care. Maybe someone would have shown up before the worst had happened.

Unmistakably, the poor citizens of New Orleans must feel similarly in the glare of all of this attention from the rest of the country. After everyone has been pulled from the water, dead or alive, the city will ask in unison, "Where the hell were you before I was drowning?"
Progressives must answer this question for a country that, though reluctant, is probably more able to accept reality today than ever. We must say that America didn't answer because it didn't care. Both political parties, one who had abandoned the south and the other which took it for granted, didn't care about you until you were dying in a pool of raw sewage.

And this is a confession. A confession of guilt.

This is the confession that Jacob Riis was able to compel when he exposed the reality of the lives of immigrants in New York's slums. This is the confession that Walker Evans, James Agee, Dorothea Lange, and other Great Depression artists were able to exact.

This is the confession that progressives must force if we are ever to be taken seriously in this country. We must remind the country that its discussion of poverty has focused on the mythic "welfare queen," "personal responsibility," and "faith-based" solutions. It must have been that welfare queen who couldn't afford the gas to get out of town, who couldn't take personal responsibility for her own food, water, and personal safety when she was being sexually assaulted in a Superdome bathroom, whose real problem is a moral crisis that would have been resolved if she prayed a little bit harder to the right God?

The citizens of this country never intended to vote into office people who would have allowed such barbarism to happen and, ultimately, they will hold both parties accountable if officeholders are not permitted to shirk responsibility through claims that this was an unforeseeable act of nature. First, The act of nature wasn't unforeseeable to the New York Times or the Times Picayune who have been writing about the likely effect of such a storm for years. (Nothing's Easy for New Orleans Flood Control, Jon Nordheimer, The New York Times, April 30, 2002, Section F, Science Desk, Pg. 1.; The Big One; a Major Hurricane Could Decimate the Region, but Flooding from Even a Moderate Storm Could Kill Thousands. It's Just a Matter of Time, John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), June 24, 2002, Pg. A1.) The loss of life wasn't unavoidable but was instead the result of a political ideology that holds that the government that governs least, governs best, and that citizens should be left to deal with their own affairs from housing to education, health care to evacuation.

Progressives have long had a different view of the role that government should play in people's lives giving people the tools to meaningfully participate in democracy and pursue a better life for themselves and their families.

As his final word in How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis quoted scripture: "Think ye that building shall endure which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?" Throughout our history, we have seen these buildings but, in this moment, progressives must lead, in our noble tradition, and rebuild New Orleans, and the rest of this country where people struggle invisibly, on a bold and visionary model. This is the best that anyone can ever hope from tragedy. If we do not act, we never will, and the worst will have happened, that all these people will have died in vain, and will again.

Billy Sothern is an anti-death penalty lawyer and writer from New Orleans. He can be reached at: billys@thejusticecenter.org

Letter to Bush...

Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

Good things...

For those of you who came with me to New Orleans, I don't think I need to repeat how much I loved my experience there. I just found the article below, written to convince others to pack their bags for a few months and make it down to the Crescent City.

So.....just incase you were not with me from January 2005, and to give you a glimspe of why these people and my work had such a massive impact on me...here it is...

New Orleans. The most I knew of this city before I volunteered there for what seems like the whole of my life was:

• I had been waiting to do this for over 7 years;
• Clive Stafford Smith upset quite a number of judges there;
• Great music and even better – fantastic cuisine;
• Tropical temperatures, which meant no fur coat was necessary; and,
• It housed the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Centre (as it was known at the time!)

After completing my pupillage and squatting for a period, I took the giant (petrifying) leap of temporarily packing in my brief career as a criminal defence barrister in the Big Smoke and armed with 4 guides to New Orleans, took that flight to the Deep South. I was terrified! In the words of Ms Cox, it was like embarking on a career as a Morris Dancer. I sensed that once this journey began, there would be no turning back. I would be changed forever. Primarily because of what I was leaving behind and secondly, not really knowing what to expect or how I would fare. That uncertainty was unnerving. Dealing with U.S. Immigration as I changed planes at Charlotte, having had no nicotine for over 12 hours, dispensed that feeling in a flash. I realised how lucky I was that my parents chose not to name me “Aisha Mohammed!” Wambui Mwangi was enough to give them reason to doubt that an African woman would travel all the way to America to work for those sentenced to death. For free! Obviously a front for terrorist activity.

New Orleans is a contradiction in terms. My relationship with the city, locals, legal institutions, prison systems, and the local wildlife[1] that inhabit your living quarters, oscillated between love and hate on a daily basis! However, from the moment I set foot at the Louis Armstrong Airport, I was made to feel totally welcome. I opted to work for a sister organisation of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, the Capital Appeals Project, which deals predominately with direct appeals. Simply, this is a strange U.S. appellate procedure between conviction and confirmation of the death sentence. This was most probably the best decision I have ever made in my life. The work was not only challenging, interesting and work I can continue to contribute to from almost anywhere, but the team with which I worked was small, cohesive, accessible, welcoming and great fun! The big chief called me “Miss Wambui” in a Louisiana drawl from day one and (I totally attribute blame to my XX chromosomes) I swore complete loyalty from that moment on! I was not disappointed. Jelpi Picou was the best boss anyone could ever ask for – I was a part of an amazing team minutes after I had been assigned a desk, computer and shown the stationary cupboard, to the moment I boarded the flight out, several months later.

Clive Stafford Smith once said “It's a sick world out there …” After a few seconds of reading decisions subject to appeal and the records from the trial, you realise why and the phrase “Surely, you cannot do that?” became a permanent fixture in my daily vocabulary. Whilst Louisiana criminal law, in particular in it’s relation to capital trials, may seem to make some sort of sense on paper, its application can be incomprehensible. And even more confusing, especially the more I read, was how the legislators/judiciary actually think that the law can inject an element of rationality into this system and in essence to a wholly irrational form of punishment. A true test of my faith and legal ethics was to begin, particularly after my first visit to Angola, the State penitentiary – for a visual, think “Dead Man Walking.”

New Orleans gave me the opportunity to work on some incredible and yet terrifying appeals. I don’t think I have ever learnt so much, worked so hard or had so much fun (ironic isn't it?) in such a short space of time. The reasons why this system is so prejudicial to indigent defendants and the errors permitted that seem so obviously wrong and basic, are sometimes almost too simple to put in a GCSE level law exam and yet too many to go into in this brief article. It makes any abuse of process arguments I made in London – which I was initally so proud of - pale into oblivion. Based on my experience, if I could have sent a letter to several particular DA’s/judges in Louisiana, it may have comprised of some of the points below:

1. dodgy (actually dodgy is such a tame word to describe the nature of confessions individuals are convicted on but it will do for now) confessions should be inadmissible;
2. Miranda rights are constitutional rights;
3. a defendant is entitled to a first appearance;
4. the right to counsel is normal and protected by the constitution;
5. ineffective assistance of defence counsel does include one who sleeps during a trial or walks out during cross examination of his witness to put change in the parking meter;
6. it is not nice and definitely an error to eliminate black jurors because of their race;
7. a prosecutor having his tenants on the jury could be percieved as going against the premise of an impartial jury;
8. inadmissible evidence is exactly that, regardless of how well you know the judge;
9. the State is supposed to disclose exculpatory material, including forensics that exculpate my client;
10. Prosecutors really should not blatantly lie to the State Supreme Court;
11. you do need evidence to convict a person for murder;
12. a schizophrenic, lying witness who has made several deals with the prosecution may not be a competent witness;
13. intense publicity for several months in the area the trial will be held is a good reason to consider changing the trial venue;
14. international law does apply regardless of what they think in Ohio;
15. only this once, George W. Bush may just know what he is talking about when he determines that national courts must abide by a decision of the International Court of Justice with respect to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

In short, and here comes the plug, I highly recommend this experience to anyone even remotely thinking about it. New Orleans is a fantastic city. The Capital Appeals Project is a truly worthy establishment to spend any number of months doing voluntary work. If you are looking for a life altering experience, mixed with a highly toxic and addictive cocktail of daily challenges, hard work, good food, wonderful music, great company and constant parades that encourage grown men to cover themselves in gaudy multi-coloured beads, you will not be disappointed. And if you are lucky, as I was, someone might just pay for you to go and do it!

[1] Translate that into the biggest cockroaches you have ever seen.