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Saturday, April 1, 2006
Some kerosene for the fire
Because we thought your weekend was looking too peaceful
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Following is a quote from Kevin Phillips, author of the original Southern strategy, of what has become of his Nixonian period: “I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860.”
The entire Washington Post piece can be read here.
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A day in the Big Easy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two things that struck us after a day in New Orleans:
—Hurricane or not, broken levees or not, New Orleans remains one of the most publicly political towns in the USA. You see billboards for candidates in neighborhoods that look like they couldn’t support a bumper sticker. And to judge from what we saw at the “Right of Return” rally Saturday, local politics still depends heavily on personal contact.
—Maybe it’s because so many people who had homes are gone now and they stand out in sharper relief. But there seemed to be a striking number of homeless men and women on Canal Street.
It reminded us of a story we heard in Waveland last year about an old woman who pushed a shopping cart around that Mississippi town. Some who knew her thought she would be the storm’s first victim, but the day after the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over Waveland she was said to be out in the road, doing what she had always done. When you ain’t got nothing, as Bob Dylan sang, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Back on the bus
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You may think that after sine die, we’re kicking back. But we never sleep.
No, seriously.
At the moment, we’re on a bus with a group of Rainbow-Push volunteers, riding through the night to New Orleans for the “Right to Return” march to be led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
That’s got us thinking again about that march last weekend which brought a half-million Latinos into the streets of Los Angeles. There are going to be big demonstrations in New Orleans and Atlanta this weekend, but nothing on the scale of the demonstrations waged to protest more restrictive immigration laws. We wonder: are we seeing the dawn of new era in protest politics?
More from the Big Easy when we get there.
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