Donald Trump and the Republicans are supporting an incompetent administration

One by one, Republicans lose credibility as they bow to Trump

Echo opinion letter published in New Orleans Times-Picayune (NOLAonline)

Before Donald Trump was running for president, a man asked my opinion of him. I looked to be sure there were no ladies present, and then I told him what I thought of a self-proclaimed billionaire whose employees had to sue him to get their wages.

The man asked if I was a Blue Dog Democrat, and I said I had been called a lot of things in my time. He explained that it was a man who would vote for a Blue Dog before he would vote for a Republican. I replied I probably was one, but I had once known a good Republican who was kin to me.

Thinking of our present elected leader, I can now say without contradiction why I felt that way. That was several years ago, and time has proven me right.

The ones in office now have their main purpose of pleasing Trump and going along. My congressional representative, Julia Letlow, talks about what she has brought to the district. Of course, she voted against all of it. Lying Clay Higgins swore in Congress that he had proof that the January 6the Capitol rioters 🤥were federal agents dressed up as Trump supporters, and he would bring out proof soon, very soon. That was quite a while ago, and Higgins has not come up with any proof.

The only one we had in elected office who could have finished as a statesman was Bill Cassidy. For some reason, he decided it was more important to please Trump than to take care of his constituents, so he gave us a former dopehead and antivaxxer for Health and Human Services secretary and a former drunk to head the military. As for Sen. "Cornpone" John Kennedy, we were lost from the start.

From Carl Crain in Baton Route Louisiana

Pope Leo XIV is American by birth with a genealogy rich in diversity and migration

Is Pope Leo my cousin?

Excellent feature article published in the Boston Globe by Julian Sorapuru: A Globe reporter saw his last name on the gravestone of the new pope’s grandparents.

When reporter Julian Sorapuru saw his last name on the gravestone of Pope Leo XIV’s grandparents, he did some digging.Globe Staff/Jari Honora/Associated Press

Just hours after Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago) made history as the first head of the Catholic Church from the United States, my aunt sent a Facebook post to our family group chat. It claimed the pope — who, at that point, was only known to have European ancestry — had “Creole of color roots from New Orleans on his mother’s side.”

As a Black Creole from a New Orleans Catholic family, I was excited. But as a journalist, I was skeptical. 

In moments of high public interest, misinformation tends to spread. But then my hometown newspaper wrote about it. Next came The New York Times, which ran a photo of the gravestone of Leo‘s maternal grandparents in Illinois.

But they weren’t buried alone. Other members of their extended family were also interred there and memorialized on the gravestone. Any doubt I had about the veracity of the pope‘s Creole heritage evaporated when I read my last name at the bottom of that gravestone.

Growing up with a last name as unique as Sorapuru — or “Soraparu,” as it’s spelled on the gravestone — my family always told me that if someone else shared it, we’re probably related.

So I immediately thought: Is Pope Leo my cousin?

The answer, which I’ll get back to, involves a winding tale mixed up in the muddiness of race. But first, some context.

In modern popular culture, the word “Creole” has become shorthand to signify someone of mixed African and European heritage, usually with ancestral roots in Louisiana. 

But, the term did not originate as a racial designation, said Mary Gehman, an independent historian who has written for more than three decades about free people of color in Southern Louisiana. Instead, she said, “it just meant something that was cultivated and developed in Louisiana, when it was under the French and Spanish,” which could apply to people, animals, and plants alike.

To understand how “Creole” became synonymous with race, we have to examine Louisiana’s pre-American history as a French, and later a Spanish, Catholic colony.

Compared with English American colonies, there was “a toleration and a recognition that there is this mixing that’s happening,” said Kent W. Peacock, a history professor and director of the Creole Heritage Center at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. There wasn’t “a full acceptance” of free mixed race people, he said, but they lived in a “space between the pure whites and enslaved Africans, and enslaved Indigenous folks.”

Many mixed-race people were designated free people of color and were permitted to seek things that were mostly denied to enslaved people like education, paid employment, property ownership — including that of other human beings — and legal protections.

The French and Spanish developed more laissez-faire attitudes toward racial mixing in comparison with the English for two reasons, Peacock said: The colony’s survival depended on it, and Catholic doctrine, which functioned both as religion and law, dictated that all people, regardless of race, had souls.

Although Louisiana functioned as a “tripartite” society, free mixed race people were still “a quandary,” said Wendy Gaudin, a professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, who specializes in Creole history. Despite speaking the same language, practicing similar customs, and often sharing ancestry, white Louisianans made it clear: “They’re not like us.”

After examining dozens of public records, mostly from the 19th century, I‘ve discovered my ancestry is filled with people who lived in this liminal space between fully realized humanity and complete dehumanization. But, that space slowly started to shrink after the Louisiana territory was sold to the United States in 1803. In the ensuing decades, as Americanization set in and the state transformed, so, too, did its racial ideas.

As the country grappled with the fallout of the Civil War, including the emancipation of enslaved people, “white people became very, very stringent about the question of race,” said Katy Morlas Shannon, a historian and author whose research focuses on the lives of enslaved people. 

White Louisianans, many of whom had family members of African descent, stopped describing themselves as Creole, because, they “became nervous that white Americans would think they were people of color,” she said.

Newly empowered to vote, Black people obtained unprecedented political power in Louisiana by way of public office during the 12-year Reconstruction period after the war. 

It was during this era, in 1875, that Joseph Paul Adolphe Sorapuru — my relative who is buried with the pope‘s maternal grandparents — was born in Louisiana.

Joseph, who went by Paul, is my first cousin four times removed. In other words, Paul‘s grandfather, Lorenzo Adolphe Sorapuru Sr., is my great-great-great-great-grandfather.

The earliest record I found of Paul — an 1880 census from St. John the Baptist Parish — marks his race, along with that of his grandfather, parents, and siblings, as “mulatto.” The term, which denotes a person of mixed African and European descent, is considered offensive by many today because “mulatto” derives from the Spanish word used to describe mules.

But, young Paul and his family would not be permitted to identify as such for much longer.

Shortly after Union troops ended their occupation of Louisiana, former Confederates and their children reclaimed political power in the state and “promptly decided that they would institute a binary racial system,” Morlas Shannon said.

So Creoles of color were left with a choice: attempt to disappear into whiteness and the privilege it grants, or fully embrace their Blackness and the marginalization that accompanies it.

Sometime between 1908, and 1917, Paul and Agnes moved north to Illinois. Records seem to suggest Agnes’s parents, Gerard and Ernestine Martinez, and her aunt and uncle, Joseph and Louise Martinez (the pope‘s maternal grandparents), also made the migration around this time. Leo‘s mother, Mildred, was born in Chicago in 1911. Agnes Sorapuru is listed as Mildred’s godmother on the younger cousin’s 1912 baptismal record. Mildred’s middle name was also Agnes.

By 1900, Paul and his family had moved 40 miles downriver to New Orleans’ Seventh Ward, the cradle of the city’s Black Creole population. However, by then, Paul, his mother, and his younger siblings were all listed as “white” on the census.

Eight years later, 32-year-old Paul married 22-year-old Agnes Martinez, also a Creole of color living in the Seventh Ward, in the Catholic church.

According to 1920, census documents, the Sorapuru and Martinez families — all marked as white — lived fairly close to each other in Chicago. It also appears Paul and Agnes lived with her parents, Gerard and Ernestine Martinez, on, of all places, Orleans Street.

Fair-skinned Black people leaving their hometown only to reemerge elsewhere living as a white person is known as passing, or “passé blanc” in Louisiana.

For many, it was an act of economic, social, and personal survival, Gaudin said, not an expression of anti-Blackness. They “made a decision that racism is harmful, it can harm me and it can harm my children,” said Gaudin, who wrote a book about her Creole ancestors’ migration to California. “Moving out of Louisiana gave people the opportunity, if they wanted it, to be more ambiguous, or to be able to slip and slide across racial lines a little easier.”

But that privilege came at a cost. Passing usually meant “breaking the ties of family,” Peacock said, because the discovery of African ancestry “could harm your opportunities.”

By passing, Paul and the Martinezes cemented their collective identity shift from Black Creoles living in Jim Crow New Orleans to a family of white Catholics in cosmopolitan Chicago. The latter narrative is the one Leo and his brothers seemingly grew up on.

John Prevost, the middle brother who is two years older than the pope, recently told the New York Times he and his siblings always identified as white and didn’t discuss their Creole roots.

“It was never an issue,” the Times quoted him saying.

The pope and his siblings never met Paul Sorapuru. He died in 1948, a few years before the oldest Prevost brother, Louis, was born. Agnes outlived her husband by 20 years. The couple, according to surviving records, never had children of their own.

Paul‘s marriage into the Martinez family connected the branches of Leo‘s family tree to my own. But the decision to move to Chicago and pass created a branching moment that separated us from them.

My direct ancestors who stayed in Louisiana were shaped by their Black Creole identity. Growing up, we called our godparents by Louisiana French titles: Parrain and Nana or Nanny, short for Nénènn. My First Communion photos are still on display in my childhood home nearly 20 years later. My paternal grandmother, both parents, and my older sister are all proud graduates of the only historically Black Catholic university in the country, Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans.

Despite their racial change, one thing the pope‘s ancestors retained from New Orleans was their Catholic faith. It was one of the few cultural identity markers from their old lives that was safe for them to hold onto.

Our fascination with Leo‘s Creole heritage shows how important race remains to our perceptions of people in America. 

So far, he has not publicly acknowledged his African ancestry, but if he does, it would be more meaningful than a simple appeasing gesture.

“When people envision American Catholicism, they think of Boston, they think of New York,” said Jari C. Honora, the New Orleans genealogist who first publicly discovered the pope‘s Creole connections. “They don’t think of New Orleans as a very culturally and historically Catholic place, but it is, including the long history of Black Catholicism in the city.”

In Black communities, especially Catholic ones, from Chicago to Haiti many people are already treating the pope as one of our own. 

(Maine Writer note here:  The first settler who is credited with beginning the city of Chicago was a Haitian immigrant*.)

In fact, it is “an act of reclamation that comes from histories of oppression,” Gaudin said. The pope‘s ancestors’ passing was a form of “self-erasure,” she added, “so claiming them as Black is a kind of reversal of that erasure.”

Honora warned that racial identity is difficult to categorize. “People like to quantify race, and that is really impossible to do, even with the popular genetic tests,” he said. “Nobody can say, ‘You’re precisely 22 percent Black or white,’ because these things are social constructs.”

Mark Roudané relates to the pope‘s situation better than most.

In 2006, at 55 years old, Roudané was going through the belongings of his recently deceased father when he came across a binder. Inside were ancestral photos and documents that revealed Roudané, who was raised white, had a long lineage of Afro-Creole ancestry.

“My heritage reappeared from this historical fog,” said Roudané, who currently runs a website dedicated to the legacy of the first Black daily newspaper in the United States, founded by his great-great-grandfather, Louis Charles Roudanez. “There was this whirlwind of emotion that left me with this undefinable realization that I was no longer who I thought I was.”

For Leo, Roudané said, there is an opportunity to use his platform as a world leader to make a difference about how we understand racial identity.

“I think the best thing that could happen from all of this new stuff that has come to light with the pope‘s ancestry is that he, and we, begin to really take a much more sophisticated look at what it means to be a human being,” Roudané said, “what it means to be Black, what it means to be white, what it means to be mixed race.”

So is the pope my “cousin”? Technically, no. My family member, Paul, is related to Pope Leo XIV by marriage, not by blood.

But in Black communities across America, family is largely defined by bonds, not by blood alone. The ties between our two families may have been severed a century ago — by migration, by circumstance, by racism — but the revelation of the pope‘s hidden heritage offers us a path toward reconciliation.

Julian E.J. Sorapuru can be reached at julian.sorapuru@globe.com. Follow him on X @JulianSorapuru.

*AI- overview:  The first known Haitian immigrant to settle what would become Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. He is widely recognized as the first permanent non-Native settler and founder of Chicago. du Sable, born around 1750, established a trading post near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s. He was believed to be of Haitian descent, with a French father and an enslaved African mother.

Maine Writer Post Script:  Robert Francis Prevost is a beautiful example of the American melting pot, all in one family genealogy❗

Democrats must protect dedicated hard working federal employees from harm by Evilism-Trumpziism

Echo opinion report calling on support for federal employees from Representative Troy Carter published in the New Orleans Times Picayune NOLA:

Evilism-Trumpziism with his wind up toy monkey "Musk-o-vite" Elon Musk

Louisiana’s federal employees — and millions like them nationwide — are the backbone of our government. They process Social Security benefits, protect our environment, care for our veterans and keep our communities safe. Yet, once again, they face attacks from President Donald Trump, who seeks to dismantle the civil service and replace skilled professionals with political loyalists.

Trumpziism's latest scheme — a so-called “deferred resignation” offer — is a trap.There is no legal basis for it, and those who accept could find themselves unemployed with no recourse. Even more dangerous is Schedule F, a reckless policy designed to strip civil servants of job protections, allowing mass firings based on political loyalty rather than expertise. The goal? To replace competence with compliance.

Union-busting, contract violations and political purges don’t just harm federal workers — they harm every American who depends on government services. Gutting agencies means delayed Social Security payments, fewer resources for veterans and weaker law enforcement.

We cannot allow this blatant power grab to weaken the institutions that serve us all.

U.S. REP. TROY A. CARTER SR. Louisiana’s Second Congressional District

To every federal worker in Louisiana and beyond: You are valued, you are needed and you are not alone. As a proud member of Congress, I will fight to protect your rights, your jobs and the integrity of your service. The government should be staffed by professionals based on merit — not loyalty to any politician.

Americans deserve a government that works for them, not one manipulated for political gain. I urge my colleagues and citizens to stand against these dangerous proposals and defend our civil service.

Vice President Kamala Harris provides stability critical to President Biden's re-election

Echo opinion published in the Washington Post (Democracy dies in darkness) by Karen Tumulty associate editor and columnist:

NEW ORLEANS — The annual Essence Festival of Culture has grown into the country’s largest annual celebration of Black talent and influence. This year, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were there to deliver a message about the fragile moment in which President Biden and the Democratic Party find themselves.

“People are talking about ‘Biden is too old’ — hell, I’m older than Biden,” 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said, bringing a standing ovation. “No matter what anybody says, it ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate. It’s going to be Biden, and you better vote!”

The congresswoman’s bluntness made it all the more noticeable that the next speaker on the program — Vice President Harris — went nowhere near the subject that is preoccupying the political world.

Harris mentioned the president only once, even as she argued for his achievements and the urgency of his reelection against an opponent who intends to “weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, who has talked about being proud of taking from the women of America a most fundamental right to make decisions about your own body.”

Displaying chops developed in her years as a prosecutor, the vice president pressed the case against Donald Trump more powerfully than Biden himself has been able to do lately.

Therein lies the delicacy of her situation. Should Biden step aside, something he has vowed not to do, putting Harris at the top of the ticket presents the quickest and most logical way for Democrats to regroup. Some polling also suggests she might fare slightly better against Trump, which is why his campaign is already organizing a full-scale assault against her.

Biden doomsday scenarios are everywhere, except in the vicinity of Harris. She has been the most loyal — and effective — of Biden’s allies in this fight. In a combative interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper just minutes after the debate, she didn’t cede a millimeter: “I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last 3½ years of performance.”

That line, which Harris delivered extemporaneously, has since become the backbone of the Biden campaign’s talking points.


Through most of the past three-plus years, though, Harris herself was kept backstage. She was handed impossible assignments like tackling the root causes of migration in an administration that showed no interest in doing anything about the border.

Air Force Two touched down in New Orleans on Friday night just moments after the broadcast of Biden’s prime-time interview on ABC. That interview did little to stop the fallout from his disastrous debate performance. As the vice president emerged from the plane, she was caught in a downpour, punctuated by thunder and lightning. I wondered: Was this a random weather event or an omen?

President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris

It was not until the overturn of Roe v. Wade that the White House recognized her value as its messenger on the suddenly salient issue of abortion — a word that Biden still has trouble bringing himself to mention. Harris’s travel schedule accelerated dramatically. This year so far, she has gone on the road more than 60 times by her staff’s count.

When Biden picked Harris as his history-making running mate in 2020, the first Black woman ever to share a major party ticket, the two knew each other primarily as adversaries. The California senator’s own campaign for that year’s Democratic nomination had started with promise but collapsed before the first votes were cast in Iowa. She was overly cautious, too deliberate, brimming with policy proposals that never quite added up to a rationale for her candidacy.

Given Biden’s age, Harris was always going to be an issue in this campaign. During the Republican primary, it was a rare appearance at which Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, would not declare: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris.”

Conservative commentators mock her laugh. Trump mispronounces her first name. And in a recently surfaced video, he called her “pathetic” and “so f---ing bad.” (Maine Writer - WOW❗😮 the Biden campaign should latch on to that evil venom and turn it around....IOW "Trump is so f----ing bad❗)

But watching her over the weekend, I saw an assurance that was absent when Harris was running in her own right four years ago. Were she to do it again, now or in 2028, I’d bet she would be harder to caricature, less easy to demonize than Republicans believe.

Harris concluded her appearance here with a message to the younger women in the audience.

“You are on many occasions in your life going to be in a room [where] you will be the only one that looks like you or has had your life experience,” Harris said. “And what I demand of you is that you always walk into those rooms with your chin up and your shoulders back.”

“I will beseech you: Don’t you ever hear something can’t be done. People in your life will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before,’” she added. “Don’t you ever listen to that. I like to say, ‘I eat “no” for breakfast. I don’t hear “no.” ’ ”

This may or may not be Kamala Harris’s own time. But if the call comes, we know what her answer will be.

Nikki Haley certainly needs American History lessons about racism, slavery and civil rights

Echo opinion published in NOLA.com in Lousiana:

Not long after sundown on the day the United States of America honored the life of one of its greatest civil rights leaders ever, Martin Luther King Jr., an animated politician blurted out one of the most ridiculous claims in the history of this great country.

Ed Pratt: Never a racist country? Surely Nikki Haley knows better than that❗

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley proclaimed, “We’ve (the USA) never been a racist country.”

Wait❗ Isn’t battling racism and seeking rights for Americans the reason why King is annually saluted? 

So, I guess Haley, and those like her, never got the memo. 

Or, maybe she is joining the group working hard to whitewash our country’s history.

I’ve written before about my U.S. Army veteran dad and me being confronted by a White teenager who refused to sell him two sno-balls, and she made it clear why when she said, “We don’t serve Negros.”

My brokenhearted dad was convinced that he was a victim of racism. Silly, right?

In my early days as a reporter on the old evening newspaper State-Times in Baton Rouge, a White reporter held up a magazine for me to see the headline about a popular television miniseries: “Roots best watched from end to beginning.”

Let’s be clear, most folks in this country are working hard to treat people as people and that has led to improvements in employment, education, housing and other areas. But, my goodness, Nikki, there is a contingent who are unabashed racists and another group who don’t believe they are racist.

I’ve written before about my U.S. Army veteran dad and me being confronted by a White teenager who refused to sell him two sno-balls, and she made it clear why when she said, “We don’t serve Negros.”

My brokenhearted dad was convinced that he was a victim of racism. Silly, right?

In my early days as a reporter on the old evening newspaper State-Times in Baton Rouge, a White reporter held up a magazine for me to see the headline about a popular television miniseries: “Roots best watched from end to beginning.”

Get it, Nikki? Funny, huh? But not racist, right?

Let’s talk about the biggie — slavery. I guess holding human beings just a step above captive animals was just a thing or a phase, huh, Nikki? Nikki, have you seen what the belly of the slave ships were like?

Nikki, I know you read stories about places where people who look Black like me could not sit at the front of a city bus. 

I’m thinking that if you and your family were around at that time, some folks may have said something about you sitting in those front seats, too. But asking you to move to the back would not have been racist, though, right?

Nikki, Nikki, Nikki. Did you hear about the White people in Tulsa, Oklahoma who went into a prosperous Black section of town and burned it down? After finishing the dastardly deed, no harm nor foul to the perpetrators. Your thoughts?

Now, that I’m thinking about it, I recall you saying a couple of weeks ago that slavery was not at the heart of the Civil War. 😒😟😳❓ 

Indeed, even many racists agree that keeping slaves on those cotton farms was the foundation for the Civil War.

Hey Nikki, you know several GOP-controlled legislatures around the nation are trying to make it more difficult for Black and poor people to vote. Shouldn’t voting be as accessible as possible?

You know, Nikki, I’m anxiously waiting for your comments leading up to February. You do know what that is, don’t you? 

You know, February is Black History Month. Pay attention 😅, Nikki, you may learn something about what a race of people has faced since 1619, and what they have been doing about it.

Or, given your recent outlandish comments, you may say something else to cause jaws to drop and for you to appear, well, you know.

Email Edward Pratt, a former newspaperman, at epratt1972@yahoo.com.

Speaker Mike Johnson is really #GymJimJordan - Rep. Jordan "with a jacket"

Take a good look at the radio show host right wing pundit!

Echo opinion letter published in the Louisiana newspaper "The Advocate".  

I am very perplexed about how anyone thinks that U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson can bring any credit to Louisiana. (Maine Writer, IMO, Mike Johnson is a religious fanatic!)

Speaker Mike Johnson needs a name tag.  Who is he?

Johnson has not sponsored any meaningful legislation while in Congress. He voted against women and the LGBTQ+ community. He voted against President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill.

But, like the other Republicans in this state, he took credit for the money that his constituents received from that same bill.

He is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. He was a key figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020, election. He is, to this day, an election denier.

Johnson was part of a group that voted to object to electoral votes on Jan. 6; he sent a personal email to every representative politicizing signatures to invalidate electoral college votes. Finally, Johnson called Trump telling him to, "Stay strong and keep fighting" long after the courts found no evidence of election fraud.

So, please explain what kind of credit this man will bring to Louisiana. 

From Kim Minor,  New Orleans

Mayor Mitch Landrieu transcript ~ Remove Confederate Statues

This is the full text of the remarks delivered by the Mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, upon his removal of the last of the city’s several Confederate monuments.

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way — for both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans — the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando De Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Colorix, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.

You see — New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling caldron of many cultures. There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum — out of many we are one. But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were bought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture. America was the place where nearly 4000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp. So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.

And it immediately begs the questions, why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame... all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans. So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth. As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.” So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other. So, let’s start with the facts.

The historic record is clear, the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.

After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city. Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy. He said in his now famous ‘cornerstone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears... I want to try to gently peel from your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us. And make straight a wrong turn we made many years ago — we can more closely connect with integrity to the founding principles of our nation and forge a clearer and straighter path toward a better city and a more perfect union.

Last year, President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments about the need to contextualize and remember all our history. He recalled a piece of stone, a slave auction block engraved with a marker commemorating a single moment in 1830 when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood and spoke from it. President Obama said, “Consider what this artifact tells us about history... on a stone where day after day for years, men and women... bound and bought and sold and bid like cattle on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. For a long time the only thing we considered important, the singular thing we once chose to commemorate as history with a plaque were the unmemorable speeches of two powerful men.”

A piece of stone — one stone. Both stories were history. One story told. One story forgotten or maybe even purposefully ignored. As clear as it is for me today... for a long time, even though I grew up in one of New Orleans’ most diverse neighborhoods, even with my family’s long proud history of fighting for civil rights... I must have passed by those monuments a million times without giving them a second thought. So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race.

I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes. Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it? Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too? We all know the answer to these very simple questions. When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can’t walk away from this truth.

And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.

This is however about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong. Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division and yes with violence.

To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past. It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.

And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African Americans — or anyone else — to drive by property that they own; occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd. Centuries old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place. Here is the essential truth. We are better together than we are apart.

Indivisibility is our essence. Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world? We radiate beauty and grace in our food, in our music, in our architecture, in our joy of life, in our celebration of death; in everything that we do. We gave the world this funky thing called jazz, the most uniquely American art form that is developed across the ages from different cultures. Think about second lines, think about Mardi Gras, think about muffaletta, think about the Saints, gumbo, red beans and rice. By God, just think.

All we hold dear is created by throwing everything in the pot; creating, producing something better; everything a product of our historic diversity. We are proof that out of many we are one — and better for it! Out of many we are one — and we really do love it! And yet, we still seem to find so many excuses for not doing the right thing. Again, remember President Bush’s words, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”

We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other. We justify our silence and inaction by manufacturing noble causes that marinate in historical denial. We still find a way to say ‘wait’/not so fast, but like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “wait has almost always meant never.” We can’t wait any longer. We need to change. And we need to change now.

No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well. If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain. While some have driven by these monuments every day and either revered their beauty or failed to see them at all, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans see them very clearly. Many are painfully aware of the long shadows their presence casts; not only literally but figuratively. And they clearly receive the message that the Confederacy and the cult of the lost cause intended to deliver.

Earlier this week, as the cult of the lost cause statue of P.G.T Beauregard came down, world renowned musician Terence Blanchard stood watch, his wife Robin and their two beautiful daughters at their side. Terence went to a high school on the edge of City Park named after one of America’s greatest heroes and patriots, John F. Kennedy. But to get there he had to pass by this monument to a man who fought to deny him his humanity.

He said, “I’ve never looked at them as a source of pride... it’s always made me feel as if they were put there by people who don’t respect us. This is something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It’s a sign that the world is changing.” Yes, Terence, it is and it is long overdue. Now is the time to send a new message to the next generation of New Orleanians who can follow in Terence and Robin’s remarkable footsteps.

A message about the future, about the next 300 years and beyond; let us not miss this opportunity New Orleans and let us help the rest of the country do the same. Because now is the time for choosing. Now is the time to actually make this the City we always should have been, had we gotten it right in the first place.

We should stop for a moment and ask ourselves — at this point in our history — after Katrina, after Rita, after Ike, after Gustav, after the national recession, after the BP oil catastrophe and after the tornado — if presented with the opportunity to build monuments that told our story or to curate these particular spaces... would these monuments be what we want the world to see? Is this really our story?

We have not erased history; we are becoming part of the city’s history by righting the wrong image these monuments represent and crafting a better, more complete future for all our children and for future generations. And unlike when these Confederate monuments were first erected as symbols of white supremacy, we now have a chance to create not only new symbols, but to do it together, as one people. In our blessed land we all come to the table of democracy as equals. We have to reaffirm our commitment to a future where each citizen is guaranteed the uniquely American gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That is what really makes America great and today it is more important than ever to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one. That is why today we reclaim these spaces for the United States of America. Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all... not some. We all are part of one nation, all pledging allegiance to one flag, the flag of the United States of America. And New Orleanians are in... all of the way. It is in this union and in this truth that real patriotism is rooted and flourishes. Instead of revering a 4-year brief historical aberration that was called the Confederacy we can celebrate all 300 years of our rich, diverse history as a place named New Orleans and set the tone for the next 300 years.

After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration. After public hearings and approvals from three separate community led commissions. After two robust public hearings and a 6-1 vote by the duly elected New Orleans City Council. After review by 13 different federal and state judges. The full weight of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government has been brought to bear and the monuments in accordance with the law have been removed. So now is the time to come together and heal and focus on our larger task. Not only building new symbols, but making this city a beautiful manifestation of what is possible and what we as a people can become.

Let us remember what the once exiled, imprisoned and now universally loved Nelson Mandela and what he said after the fall of apartheid. “If the pain has often been unbearable and the revelations shocking to all of us, it is because they indeed bring us the beginnings of a common understanding of what happened and a steady restoration of the nation’s humanity.” So before we part let us again state the truth clearly.

The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered. As a community, we must recognize the significance of removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments. It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history.

Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul-searching a truly lost cause. Anything less would fall short of the immortal words of our greatest President Abraham Lincoln, who with an open heart and clarity of purpose calls on us today to unite as one people when he said: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds...to do all which may achieve and cherish — a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Thank you.

In the Shadow of Statues ~ Mayor Mitch Landrieu discussion

New Orleans LA ~ Interview published in The Conversation~ Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s last day in office conversation with Chris Riback. 

An excerpt from Landrieu's book, In the Shadow of Statues:

Mayor Mitch Landrieu

Landrieu writes, "I was thirteen when the woman yelled those words at me, a newly minted eighth grader at Jesuit High School, where my father had been a star athlete a quarter century before. Earlier that day, Father Harry Tompson, the principal, a jovial man but quite the disciplinarian, summoned me to his office. "There has been a threat made against your life," he said gravely. Someone had called the switchboard with an alarming message. With a wary eye, Father Tompson escorted me across Banks Street to the gym, letting me go in for basketball practice.."

New Orleans ~ He was still packing up his office when we talked about why he removed statues from his city that honored the Confederacy, his new book — In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History — and of course the question many have for him: Are you running for president?
Transcript

Usually we drop these conversations on Friday mornings – you know, something to look forward to since the workweek excitement is about to end.

But we’re posting this on Monday, May 7 because of my guest: It’s his last day as Mayor of New Orleans.

Did you see the speech? (You can watch it above.) It was about a year ago and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stood up and explained to his city and the nation, really, why he removed four statues that honored the Confederacy: Robert E. Lee; Jefferson Davis; P.G.T. Beauregard; and the Crescent City White League.

In that speech, Landrieu took on race and inequality and history. He asked: “Why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame… all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans. So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.”

It was a powerful 20 minutes, and if you haven’t watched it, you should.

For a mayor who had so much else to be proud of – his city: New Orleans has rebuilt itself incredibly since Katrina; and his family: his father Moon Landrieu was New Orleans mayor and HUD Secretary under Jimmy Carter; his sister was a U.S. Senator – the speech brought Landrieu into the national conversation at a time when there was a lot of yelling and not much talking.

Landrieu has written a book about the statues and race in America – it’s called “In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History,” and it’s excellent.

I spoke with Mayor Landrieu four days, before term limits meant he would give way to a new mayor. He was gracious with his time – and funny and thoughtful with his words.

I asked him about the speech, the book, New Orleans, and of course the question everyone has about him: 

"What about that running for President thing?"

Chris Riback: Mayor Landrieu, thanks so much for joining me, I appreciate your time.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: It’s great to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Chris Riback: You won your first term in 2010 mayor, with 66% of the vote. You took 365 of the city’s 366 precincts. You won your second term with nearly 64%, and by all accounts you still seem to be extremely popular. Are you sure you believe in term limits?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: [laughing] Well, you know, I see it, I served for eight years as the mayor of a major American city, you come to realize that term limits are really good. It has been a great blessing to be the mayor but the responsibility is huge, but it’s time to turn the reins over to the next generation of leaders.

Chris Riback: Terrific. Let’s get right into it. Let’s talk about your book and your speech, the speech that captured so many of us when you made it, I guess about a year ago. You took on, perhaps, the single most divisive issue in our country, race, and you did it around the path that has become almost the physical representation of our divide: statues. Why’d you do it?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Well, you know, as I wrote in the book, which was not just about the statues, but about race in America, and how I came to live through it, I have come to the conclusion that we’re not doing well speaking about this issue towards each other and it’s holding us back. That we really have never dealt with it appropriately and, at least in New Orleans and in the Deep South, we confront this. It’s certainly not just an issue in the South, but all over the country.

As we rebuilt the city of New Orleans after it was totally devastated from Katrina, we were really forced to think about how we were going to build the city back. Not just the way it was, because Katrina and Rita didn’t cause all of our problems, but the way it should have been, if we would have gotten it right the first time. And when you asked the question that way, it forces you to go back and rethink decisions that had been made in the past that were helpful and those that were hurtful.

Of course, those statues in New Orleans, which is one of the great multicultural cities that values its diversity and has become, if not the soul of the country, very close to it, those statues stuck out like sore thumbs because they were not only symbols of hatred, but they were put up purposefully to send a message. There was really no way for the city of New Orleans to prepare itself for the next 300 years without dealing with that issue.

Of course, those statues are just pieces of stone, but what they actually represent, and so the speech was an effort to invite the people in New Orleans into a conversation about how we move past where we’ve been to where we all think we need to go.

Chris Riback: Would that opportunity have existed, in your mind, without Katrina?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: The opportunity’s with us every day, it’s just a question of whether or not we decide to do it, and unfortunately the United States of America really hasn’t. We don’t really talk to each other about race, we talk past each other. What I’ve learned is you can’t go around this, you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it. You really have to go through it, and in New Orleans we actually started that.

In 2014, we began an effort called The Welcome Table to bring different people of races, creeds, and colors into very small settings where they could get to know each other, to foster a better understanding. And it was out of that effort that about 600 people participated in, that we began to think about bigger things, like the monuments themselves.

Chris Riback: As you said, the book is not about the statues, per se, and it is also about race, but it’s also about your own personal journey, how you grew up, the friends you had, the things you saw or were done or said to you, like the threats against your life at age 13, visiting Auschwitz in 1979 I think it was, why was telling your personal-

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Yes, that’s correct.

Chris Riback: …And I’d love you to talk about that as well. Why was telling your personal journey integral to writing this book?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Well, because some people thought that I got to be mayor and I thought, “Oh gee, let’s take these statues down. That would be an interesting issue to talk about as it relates to race.” And what I was trying to point out to them was that there’s not a second in my life, from the moment of conception through today where, at some point, I personal have not had to deal with the issue, and of course that meant everybody else had to deal with it as well.

That’s why the book was really about race in America and how we deal with it, or how we don’t deal with it. How we remember our history, how we exclude other parts of our history. How we revere certain parts of it and completely forget about the rest. In other words, I was condemned pretty roundly by some people that purported to be members of “historical societies” that said I was taking away history.

And I reminded them that the city of New Orleans is actually 300 years old, the Civil War was only 4 years, and these monuments took up all of our time and all of our space, and that they were guilty of historical malfeasance by not remembering the other 296 years and all of the creativity that has gone on and diversity that’s gone on since then. And I pointed out, I think forcefully and correctly, that until recently there really were no monuments or any remembrances of some of the carnages of slavery.

Just the other day, Bryan Stevenson and his team opened up a compelling new monument in Birmingham that commemorates the lynchings, but we’ve never really remembered that appropriately either. So if we’re going to talk about it in a historical way, we have to talk about all of our history and not just some of it, and certainly not a false version of it. (See MaineWriter blog here)

Chris Riback: You know, I was surprised and taken by … You wrote that you had to relearn history yourself, and I imagine, on some level that journey must have surprised you. Your family is part of New Orleans and Louisiana history. You’ve spent most of your life there. I think you would have even, possibly viewed yourself at the least, as an amateur New Orleans historian. How’d you realize you needed to relearn history and what did that do to your sense of self?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: That’s a very good question because all of this requires intense self-reflection and discernment. One of the things I say is that I walked by those monuments every day and never thought that much about them until my friend Wynton Marsalis, who people in the world will know is the great jazz trumpet player, but he happens just to be a boyhood friend who was helping me curate the (New Orleans) 300th anniversary, said to me, “Have you ever thought about those monuments? Do you know why they’re there? Do you know who put them up? Have you ever thought about them from our perspective?” As a friend would challenge another friend.

And when he started asking me those questions, I have to admit I never really thought about them from that perspective, and when I did, and started doing extensive research, what I found was that those things weren’t put up by accident, they were put up well after the Civil War ended by people with a specific intent, to send a message to African Americans that even though the Confederacy lost the war, that the people who were supporting the Confederacy were still in charge.

I just thought it was really important to start talking about simply what actually occurred because it seems to me that people have a difficult time saying the very simplest things that are clearly true, which is this: the Confederacy fought to destroy the United States of America, not to unite it. They fought the war in an effort to preserve slavery, and that is not right, and it was on the wrong side of history.

Those statues were put up to revere the people who actually fought that war to destroy the country. I just thought that it was important to set out the distinction between remembering what people have done throughout our history and then revering them. They’re two very different things and they occupy different places and they should be remembered in different places as well.

Chris Riback: Yeah, you make that really clear through the book and through the speech. You mentioned your friend Wynton Marsalis, and you mentioned him in the speech as well. I watched that speech again, to prepare for this conversation, and there are so many powerful parts to it. One is where you said,

Mayor Mitch Landrieu Speech Audio: “Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father, trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter, why Robert E. Lee sat atop of our city. Can you do it? Can you do it? Can you look into the eyes of this young girl and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her?”

Landrieu speech excerpt: "We have to reaffirm our commitment to a future where each citizen is guaranteed the uniquely American gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is what really makes America great and today it is more important than ever..."

Chris Riback: And when you asked, “Can you do it?” You pointed to the audience. Who were you pointing to?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: I was pointing at everybody. You know, when you put … Here’s the thing, when you walk in another person’s shoes, you begin to see things more clearly. We can have all these theoretical arguments about who put them up, when they were put up, what they were put there for, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, when all the theory goes away, if my job as the mayor was to prepare the city for its next 300 years, who was I preparing it for? I was preparing it for the people who live here, particularly the children.

And I’m, every day, talking about creating a better future for them by encouraging them to go to school, go to college, help participate in building the new rocket to Mars that we’re building in New Orleans, encouraging these kids to go to college. But if you take that child and she’s walking past that monument, she says, “Why is that person up there still, if his whole life was designed to either keep me in chains or to send a message to me that I’m ‘less than’, how then are we living with integrity and repairing it?”

I wanted to personify this. I wanted everybody to put themselves in the shoes of a parent, explaining to the child why it was okay for that guy to be there. I think that that just put people back on their heels and said well, good. When you say it from that perspective, it gets pretty simple about what we ought to do. It clears away all the cobwebs and it gives us a pretty clear direction of which way we should go.

Chris Riback: Were you nervous to give the speech at all? Was it different? It must have been different then. You must give dozens of speeches every day, at least a couple every day, and that had to be different. Were you anxious at all?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: I wasn’t, actually. I had spent a lot of time thinking about it. Remember, I started working on this three and a half years before we took the monuments down, and of course a lot of these issues were things that had been part of my life. What I was, was certain that I wanted to give the speech. I gave it for a specific purpose which was to lay down a historical record that could be laid right next to a speech that a fellow named Charles Fenner gave in 1890, so that when people saw the historical record, I clearly explained why I did what I did and why it was necessary.

I felt very good about it. It was just a very direct talk to folks about the truth as I saw it. As a matter of fact, the name of the speech is “Truth” and in this day and age, talking and speaking the truth and relying on real facts and real history I thought was needed in order for the history books to record the actions of a mayor that is part of what I would I consider to be a continuous government that’s 300 years old, so that the records will reflect why we did what we did.

Chris Riback: I know that your concern, your focus is not just on racism and issues in New Orleans. Obviously, that’s the central while you’re the mayor of New Orleans but you’ve thought about, and you write about race in America, broadly, and you’ve been quite public, and you write about President Trump in your book. You associate I believe, you correct me if I have it wrong, a rise in white supremacy in this country with President Trump. Why do you say that, and what would you say to him? I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to talk with him. Have you ever spoken with him?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Yes, I have. Not in long conversations but I wouldn’t couch it that way, and I don’t mean to correct you, but I want to put this in perfect context.

Chris Riback: Thank you.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: I rarely mention President Trump in the book. I do a couple of times, not as the cause of any of this, but a participant in what I consider to be a very dangerous thing that’s going on, that he is either unwittingly participated in, encouraged or has refused to disavow, although recently he has done that. And that is the cause of white supremacy. There’s no question that all across the world, that this notion that whites are superior intellectually and genetically to other people, has led us into very dangerous territory, or that any group of people are superior to others.

We’ve had apartheid in South Africa, we had the tremendous atrocities in Germany. In the United States of America we have had slavery. All of those things are borne out of a sense of racial hatred or superiority that people have of others, and there has been a rise recently, across the world, which has also manifested itself in the United States.

When that happens, which is why I tell the story of Auschwitz, there’s only one thing that people can do, is stand up and say, “Look. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. It doesn’t matter you’re conservative or a moderate or a liberal. There’s a lot of room for us to disagree on a lot of things, but not on the cause of whether one group of human beings is superior to another, and that we have a right to oppress them.”

Slavery was an awful thing for this country, we’re still paying dividends for it. When that raises its head in the face of, or the mouth of David Duke or anybody else, that could potentially result in the kind of things that happened in Charlottesville, everybody’s got to stand up and say that’s out of bounds.

I called the President to task briefly in the book for false equivocation between protesters or acting like he didn’t know who David Duke was, and not just specifically saying, “Do not vote for me if you believe what white supremacists believe.”

Chris Riback: I wanted to ask you about religion as well. You went to Jesuit high school, Catholic university. You got your JD from Loyola University Law School, in New Orleans. How has religion … I’m assuming, based on that, you please again, please correct me if I have it wrong, that religion surely plays an influential part of your life is my belief from your background.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Well, you correctly point out that I was raised in the Catholic faith and I am a Catholic by choice as well. I went to Jesuit high school and Catholic university, Loyola Law School. I readily admit that I’m not very good at it, and that I make a lot of mistakes in my life so I’m not trying to preach to anybody about anything. But when you are raised that way, you have a pretty good reservoir of direction that you try to take in your life, and you try to rely on your faith to help keep you steady in good times and in bad.

Chris Riback: Understood. Let any of us, how we’re living our own lives, be the first to cast any stones, that’s for sure. Most us, just trying to do the best we can. To close out, and you understand, I just want to be helpful here. You may not have noticed mayor, and I have no other motivations. The last few Democratic Presidents, Clinton, Carter, LBJ, not Obama of course, came from the South. I, personally find that very interesting, and given that I’m talking with you today, I’m not asking you anything about yourself, you know that, I’m just wondering if you find that interesting also?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: [laughing] Well, of course it is, and it’s a noticeable thing. I think all of those guys did a great job.

Chris Riback: That’s the shortest answer I’ve ever heard you give. How do you feel about people asking you about that, about whether you may run. And I know … it’s meant in a positive way.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Yes, it’s very flattering, there’s no question about it. It would be disingenuous and a lie to say it’s not. I’ve been serving in office now for 30 years. I’ve served as a legislator for 16, lieutenant governor after 6, and the mayor after 8, and so you want to finish with people thinking well about the work that you did and the sacrifice that you made. And so, of course it makes you feel good.

Secondly, it makes me really proud because when people say that, they’re not just saying a good thing about me, they’re saying a good thing about the people of the city of New Orleans, who I think did miraculous work after Katrina, to stand our city back up. But it gets to be a horse race and people surmise about what other people are going to do. That’s always a very interesting conversation, but I have really been focused on getting the city through the eight years of recovery and rebuilding, and then finally just celebrating our 300th anniversary.

What the future holds, who knows. I think that’s unlikely. It’s not impossible, but what the heck, I don’t know what the future holds for me, but my sense is that it’s unlikely that that’s going to happen.

Chris Riback: Well there’s one day in the near future that you do know about, and to close out, I may publish this conversation on May 7th. What will that day be like for you?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: You know, it’s interesting because as we tape this, we’re a couple days away from it, and I’m cleaning out my office as we speak and I’m also working full time so I don’t really have a lot of time to focus. But my guess is that at 12:00 on the 7th, it’s going to be very bittersweet. There’ll be a huge sense of relief that the responsibility that’s so heavy, that you have to bear by yourself sometimes, has been lifted from your shoulders, but there’ll also be some sadness that you’re not at the helm anymore or in a position of, as a mayor of pretty extreme power to pull people together and to lift other people’s lives up and so I don’t know what I’m going to do in my future, but it’ll do something, hopefully, God willing, that helps other people, whether it’s in my private life or in a public life. That’s been the most gratifying part of serving the public for 30 years.

Chris Riback: Mayor, thank you. Thank you for your time and obviously, thank you for your service as well.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Well, great. Thank you so much for your interview. I enjoyed it.