Just Cast my Puma Vote!

Those of you that know me, know I live in the ninth ward in New Orleans. I live in the inner city and we have the usual inner city problems including gang violence, a lot of drug-related crimes, and not enough money to rebuild our infrastructure and schools just for regular wear and tear. Let’s not even go  into the Hurricane Katrina wear and tear. My neighborhood is close to the river, so when the city filled up, we stayed high and dry.  However, they still haven’t rebuilt our police station.   We also don’t have banks or grocery stores any more.  That’s the upper ninth.  The lower ninth has less, if that’s possible.

I vote in the local fire house.  It was built in the 1920s and the old stables that used to house the horses that pulled the street car named desire and the fire carriages stand silently next to it.  There are two precincts that vote in this building.  I see the same little southern church ladies each time I vote.  The know me because I vote in every election–even the odd ones with just a charter change or replacement for the latest politician caught up and drug off to jail.  That’s the thing that makes me most sad about where I live at the moment. 

 My state senator just resigned for laundering money.  Two school board members and a popular city councilman at large are sitting in jail for bribery.  The entire country knows about Congressman Dollar Bill Jefferson.  He looks like he’ll be re-elected pretty much along straight racial lines.  Black folk seem to be mighty forgiving down here. It seems they’ll take any black face over a Hispanic, white or other face no matter what the circumstances.  The mistrust of white hegemony makes me feel like the Jim Crow Laws disappeared just yesterday. Black politicians get a wide berth. I’ve learned that lesson over and over down here.  In fact, our Mayor Ray Nagin lives more in Dallas than he does here. He comes in late on Monday and is out of here by Thursday night.  That says something about the living conditions in your city when your own mayor won’t live in it full time.  I have to say that I voted for him the first time, but I didn’t make that mistake again.  We call him Mayor Na-GONE for a very good reason.  I also think that he’ll eventually run for the Jefferson seat once the federal court finally throws the book at Ol’ Dollar bill.  My guess is he’ll be just as worthless of a congressman as he was as a mayor until they wind up having to redraw the state of Louisiana to eliminate one congressional district.  Then it might be another ball game. 

Until then, we’ll suffer because very few of our leaders actually care about the city or the state it is in.  They care about their political career and ability to live large.  We’ll also suffer because a lot of the electorate thinks the only qualification one needs here to be effective is the right demographic.  It has got me questioning the nature of racism these days.  I think it’s all about who is in power and abusing that power for the benefit of ‘your own’.  I now see that folks that once suffered from this can inflict it without much thought.

It makes voting disheartening when you’re actually interested in good government.  I get tired of watching one person after another get hauled off to jail.  I guess ex-Governor Edwards is getting a lot of new company.  There’s plenty of folks from the various Louisiana political machines still running for office as well as sitting in jails right now.  If you’ve never lived in a realm of political machines, there is no way you know what that does to the folks on the outs.  It’s thuggery plain and simple.

Thuggery, abusing racial identities, and machines brings me to the topic of voting in the National Election for obvious reasons. I wore my orange sweater to show my unity with Pumas voting all over our country.  I was really surprised that I didn’t have to wait in line.  There were only two suprises awaiting me.  The first one was this:  after voting election after election, the church ladies had this conversation before I entered the booth.  The one whose job it always is to clear out the previous vote, turned to the others and asked:  “Should I ask her the question?’  Since voting here has become extremely routine, this gave me a bit of a jolt.  The ladies nodded and I was asked “Democrat or Republican”?  Since there are not two seperate ballots for this election, I found this a very odd question but smiled and said “Democrat”.  I secretly smiled and thought, if you’re asking me if i voted Democrat at the top of the ticket, the answer would’ve been no.  I guess folks are still thinking we will vote along party lines.

The next thing that happened when I walked out of the fire station was also unique for me.  I was asked to fill out an exit poll form for the news agencies.  I never vote really early in the morning as a rule but I was trying to avoid lines so I got out the door the minute I’d walked the dog.  It was a simple one sheet form with the logos of nearly all the news affiliates across the top.  I was asked the usual demographic questions, age, sex, religion, income level, party affiliation, and education level.  I was also asked which issues most concerned me ( I said energy policy) and when I made my decision to vote (within the last three days).  I was asked to rank what I thought of the George Bush presidency. (Disaster wasn’t available so I had to settle for saying I was extremely dissatisfied). I said I was very worried about the future of the economy–another situation I had to rank.  There were also the candidate listing of President, Senator, and House Rep. I put McCain, Landrieu, and Moreno.  So when they are slicing and dicing the last minute voters … and they find the democrats for McCain in the exit polls, you will find me in that number.  I hope you find me representin’ in the ninth ward for a lot of you out there.