The Media Silence about LA Dodging Anti-Immigrant Laws & The Cone at Shadowbox

Amigos and virtual community:

Today, July 29, 2011, marks the first year anniversary of Arizona's infamous SB 1070 officially becoming a law, and since, it has spawned other states to follow. The new confederacy of Southern states signing harsh anti-immigrant laws has grown considerably this summer, and Tennessee is expected to join South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia with similar Arizona copy-cat laws that demonize Latino immigrants. In Louisiana, the great news is that two such laws, not one but two, were actually voluntarily withdrawn by their respective legislators. A highly effective grass roots campaign and coalition to oppose the passing of these bills was formed by local organizations such as the Congress of Day Laborers, PUENTES New Orleans, Catholic Charities, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute of Loyola University.

Representative Ernest Wooton, an Independent from the Belle Chase area, was forced to voluntarily withdraw his bill called The Louisiana Citizen’s Protection Act or H.B. 411 in a legislative session on June 6 in Baton Rouge. Wooton made a show of continuously identifying "illegal aliens" with exaggerated emphasis on the word "illegal". Had it passed, his bill empowered local and state police to detain anyone they suspected of being undocumented. The $11 million fiscal expense to implement his bill was not received favorably by Louisiana legislators already grappling with a $1.6 billion budget deficit. However, even the state's conservative lawmakers did not exhibit a bloodlust to criminalize Latino immigrants who have been vital to the recovery of this Gulf State post-Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and post-BP oil spill. I filmed three legislatives sessions in Baton Rouge, and while I am no fan of this state's red conservative tendencies, I have to confess that Wooton's colleagues did not exhibit his outrageous passion in trying to pass his odious bill.

In May, Representative Joe Harrison, a Republican from Houma, was forced to table his bill H.B. 59, and in the Judiciary committee I filmed, he encountered strong opposition to his anti-immigrant law by Representative Joey Bishop, Democrat from New Orleans, and Representative Walker Hines, a New Orleans Republican who in late 2010 switched ranks from his previous Democratic affiliations. Both were critical and unsupportive of a bill that criminalized Latino immigrants who had helped to reconstruct the devastated city after the flood. It was grand political theater indeed, as befitting the inherent drama of Louisiana politics, but the biggest headline that this Gulf State has resisted drafting a despicable anti-immigrant law is nowhere to be found in local, statewide, or national media news. This great good news story has been flying below the media radar, and outside of a short Associated Press article that followed the initial deferment of HB 411 in mid June, there has been nothing. Simplemente nada!

The New Orleans Times-Picayune daily hardly mentioned it and public radio stations have been silent as well. One would think that this would be great news to profile for the local and statewide Latino community and for the national community in general. Unlike its neighboring states of Alabama and Georgia, Louisiana has not joined in passing another Juan Crow law.

For those of you who may not know, the 2011 summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders, a heroic coalition of racially integrated black and white students who risked their lives riding on Greyhound and Trailways buses into the segregated Deep South. In Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, they encountered terrorist-like attacks by Ku Klux Klan members, local and state police, and white residents opposed to their commitment to desegregate public facilities, restaurants, and buses. The Freedom Riders challenged the racist Jim Crow laws that kept the South in an officially condoned state of apartheid. Fifty years later, this hatred has been reborn in Juan Crow laws that openly demonize a new race of color. Fear in the Deep South is rearing its ugly face again. We must not relent in defeating this new cancer! Adelante MI Gente!

WHEN AN IMMIGRANT DIES IN NEW ORLEANS…
Also, on July 29, 2010, the Congress of Day Laborers held a vigil and protest that took place in New Orleans. Latino immigrant activists and their allies took to the streets to protest the mysterious death of José Nelson Reyes-Zelaya, a twenty-eight year old El Salvadorean immigrant. He died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after 24 hours of being in their detention facility. Members of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice filed a Freedom of Information Act petition that was handed to ICE agents in front of their offices on Poydras Street (across from City Hall). To this day, the NOWCRJ and the Congress of Day Laborers have not received any further information. Shortly after his death on July 17, 2010, ICE authorities released a statement that the death of Mr. Reyes-Zelaya was a result of "apparent asphyxiation" from suicide. He was the eighth immigrant to die in ICE custody by July 2010, and customarily, ICE classifies these deaths as "suicides".

Sadly but not surprising, there was hardly any news coverage in the local media or public radio station about this tragedy, and it exemplifies how little immigrant lives matter in New Orleans, a city that has been rebuilt by thousands of Latino immigrants after the storm. Currently, Latino immigrants are fighting for the right to remain in a city that they have reconstructed, but they live in a parallel universe where their suffering goes unnoticed.

THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY: New Orleans after Katrina
We rarely hear enough about the Latino connection to New Orleans, and in the many post-Katrina narratives, our stories of trauma and displacement were practically non-existent in the mainstream media. Even in the more thorough National Public Radio coverage, Latinos and the large Vietnamese community were missing in action. Fortunately, NPR's Latino USA did cover our stories, and I did an interview with them days after I escaped the flooded city on a stolen school bus, which was rescuing African American families. I was on the same bus that the iconic composer and musician Allen Toussaint was riding out of the social storm, and I intuited that if Mr. Toussaint was getting on that bus I needed to hop on as well.

Also, the rebuilding of the city owes much to the Latino immigrant work force that was brought in by the thousands, and they cleaned out the Superdome and the Convention Center, salvaged the city's many hotels to reignited the tourism engines, and repaired churches, hospitals, schools, and many homes. As an immigrant myself, it is my rightful duty to tell this untold story of the Katrina experience.

The Cone of Uncertainty is my multimedia show that chronicles my escape, and it's informed by the dramatic film footage captured by Afro Cuban filmmaker Williams Sabourin O'Reilly, who began filming at five in the morning on Monday morning as the storm was still passing through. For the 6th Anniversary, The Cone will be remounted in full for the first time since it was shown in New Orleans in March 2006 for three shows only at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, as a work-in-progress when the city was still fragile. The Cone will be presented at the latest alternative theater venue in the Big Easy called the Shadowbox Theatre, which is located on Saint Claude Avenue. It runs Thursdays through Sundays from August 25 - September 11. The exact dates and more details are below.

Make art that matters!

José Torres-Tama
ArteFuturo Productions
2426 Saint Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70117
www.torrestama.com
504.232.2968

http://elbigeasyamigoblogger.blogspot.com

NEW ORLEANS FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR
OGDEN MUSEUM ART BOOK available at
http://www.torrestama.com/ogdenbook/index.html

ArteFuturo Productions Presents
The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina
José Torres-Tama’s Critically Acclaimed Post-storm Multimedia Solo

WHERE: Shadowbox Theatre @ 2400 Saint Claude Ave. (in the Marigny)
For tickets call 504-298-8676 or go to www.theshadowboxtheatre.com.

WHEN: Thursdays - Sundays, August 25-28, Sept. 1-4 & Sept. 8-11, 2011
All shows @ 8PM - $10 at the door & 2 for $16 (All Students $8)

"Cone pulls no punches in describing ‘the apocalyptic abandonment’ of New Orleans’ people." ---American Theatre

"But like the best performance artists, Torres-Tama seduces his audience through humor and the ability to play disparate characters." ---Theater Journal

ABOUT THE CONE: José Torres-Tama was a firsthand witness to the apocalyptic abandonment of a city whose people were made to beg for water and buses before television cameras. He offers a politically provocative and moving work that sheds light on the Latino immigrant experience of post-Katrina narratives, where Latinos were rendered invisible in all the mainstream media coverage. Performed with a magical realist Latino voodoo aesthetic, The Cone is an inventive fusion of personal stories, exaggerated characters, and dramatic film footage of the storm. Torres-Tama plays five distinct characters and invokes the spirit of a nearly three hundred year-old city that has engaged in an arduous reconstruction process.

SHOW’S HISTORY: The Cone of Uncertainty debuted at Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles in November 2005 with support funds from the National Performance Network www.npnwqeb.org. The Cone script was further developed through a ‘05/’06 Fellowship award from National Association of Arts and Culture www.nalac.org, as part of a Ford Foundation initiative to support Latino artists. The Cone has toured extensively across the country with performances at LSU, Ohio State University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Maryland, and numerous art centers. In January 2011, it was staged at the prestigious National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

In May 2009, The Cone made its European debut in the United Kingdom with performances at Roehampton University in London, the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool, and the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, Wales, as part of an international tour that was profiled in American Theatre magazine’s March 2009 issue.
http://www.torrestama.com/cone/index.html