Commentary
COVID-19 hits Black America hard, but HBCU chiefs find vaccine trial is hard to sell
COVID-19 is known to have infected one of every 36 Black New Orleanians during the pandemic. There’s no way of knowing how many New Orleanians of any race have been infected, but those 6,601 confirmed cases that have been counted among Black people are 2.5 times more than the 2,594 cases that have been counted […]
A burning chemical plant may be just the tip of Hurricane Laura’s damage in this area of oil fields and industry
By John Pardue, Louisiana State University Hurricane Laura plowed through the heart of Louisiana’s oil and chemical industries as a powerful Category 4 storm, leaving a chlorine plant on fire and the potential for more hazardous damage in its wake. The burning BioLab facility sent dark smoke and chlorine gas into the air over the […]
DEBERRY: America promised to learn lessons from Hurricane Katrina, but the events of 2020 say it didn’t
Not long after four bouncers from Razoo Bar & Grill pinned 26-year-old Levon Jones to the ground until he was dead, trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe told an MLK Day crowd at St. Louis Cathedral that because he breathes into a horn for a living, he couldn’t imagine a more horrible death than the Black college student […]
COMMENTARY: Virus toll ranks high in SEC country, but teams won’t break the huddle
As you probably expected, the Southeastern Conference dominates the preseason national rankings. As of Tuesday, Florida could claim the title of No. 1 in the country, reporting the highest weekly per-capita death rate from coronavirus nationwide. Go Gators! Texas, home of the Texas A&M Aggies, had the second-highest per capita death rate, followed by Mississippi […]
DEBERRY: Did the ‘hardworking Louisianians’ that politicians praise up and decide to become less so?
You’d be hard pressed to find a politician who hasn’t described the people he or she represents as hardworking. That modifier is such a part of the political lexicon that it’s rarely noticed. It’s similar in that regard to the way that every governor claims to lead “the great state of…whatever.” In political speech, everybody […]
How long will it take America to move from ‘Pandemic to Prosperity?’
It wasn’t long after Hurricane Katrina and the flood that followed that the New Orleans Index became an invaluable resource to people with an interest in the city and its slow — often painstaking — progress toward recovery. Neither the hurricane or the water it pushed into the city could have discriminated against anybody, but […]
Without the $600 added to unemployment checks, I don’t know how my family will survive
By Travis Smith Congress will soon be debating legislation that will determine if families like mine will be able to stay above water. My wife and I are both unemployed and blessed to have been receiving the Pandemic Unemployed Compensation from the CARES Act introduced in March. It has been a tremendous help while we […]
An unemployment fiscal cliff lies ahead; will Congress continue $600 federal aid?
It was surprising Thursday evening to hear an aide for U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins express such concern and support for Louisianians who say they’ve been making do with the unemployment benefits they’ve been getting but fear they’ll be put outdoors if the larger, federal share of those checks is cut. Louisiana Republicans haven’t exactly oozed […]
Pollution left us in St. James Parish vulnerable to COVID-19; now industry wants to build bigger
By Stephanie Cooper I grew up in St. James Parish, on a country road off Highway 18 on the west bank of the Mississippi River, before a dozen polluting petrochemical plants were built here, before my community became known as Cancer Alley and before our long exposure to industrial air pollution helped lead to some […]
COVID-19 was never a Black people disease; it was just killing mostly Black people
“Maybe next time you see Black people in trouble you’ll help. Maybe.” — Richard Pryor, in a 1983 routine recorded at New Orleans’ Saenger Theatre. David Jackson, a 45-year-old Black man who lives in New Orleans, is the Facebook friend who had the most shocking response to a pair of questions I recently posted: How […]
COVID-19 infections in the prison system concern us all
By Andrea Armstrong At a July 8 press conference, Dr. Alex Billioux, assistant secretary of health for the Office of Public Health, attempted to explain why the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) does not provide independent data on COVID-19 in Louisiana prisons and jails. First, Billioux said prisons and jails are not public health risks […]
Don’t blame police protests for spiking COVID-19 cases
People in Minneapolis erupted in anger at the video of Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, as they should have, but the large public demonstrations of anger seemed certain to make worse the apocalyptic moment we had already entered. When the anger out of Minneapolis spread across the country, […]