Levees Not War

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“Timid supplication for justice will not solve the problem. We have got to confront the power structure massively.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“If all the discriminatory laws in the United States were immediately repealed, race would still remain as one of the most pressing moral and political problems in the nation. . . . There would still be a vast, silent, automatic system directed against men and women of color.” —Michael Harrington, The Other America (1962)

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This Historic March Brought to You by Socialists and Labor Unions

Much praise and honor has been given in recent days, and rightly so, to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s great “I Have a Dream” address at the historic 1963 March on Washington—including a speech yesterday by the president of the United States at the Lincoln Memorial. The nation’s first African American president spoke at the same spot where hundreds of thousands gathered on a hot Wednesday in August 1963 to hear not only the great civil rights leader but also speeches by James Farmer of CORE, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Walter Reuther of the UAW and AFL-CIO, and John Lewis of SNCC, and music by the great Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary. (It was Roy Wilkins’s sad duty to announce that the legendary black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, born in 1868, had died just the previous evening in Ghana.)

On this 50th anniversary of the great march we would like to draw attention to its organizational origins and to its practical aims—namely, jobs and improvement of economic conditions. The following account is indebted to well-researched articles published this week by Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect (“The Socialists Who Made the March on Washington”) and by John Nichols in The Nation (“ ‘Timid Supplication for Justice Will Not Solve the Problem’ ”), among other sources.

The march on Washington had been building for decades. A mobilization of some 100,000 almost took place in 1941, then again in 1948. Each time, the organizer was invited to the White House, where he won concessions from the president and called off the planned march. By 1963, despite John F. Kennedy’s invitation to the White House, there was no way it was not going to happen.

The man who introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to the crowd of some 250,000 gathered before the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, was the formidable organizer A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979, pictured below), the founder and head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and one of the first two black vice presidents of the AFL-CIO. Randolph is rightly regarded as not only the father but also the grandfather of the March on Washington. He was the man with the gravitas. Murray Kempton, who covered the March for The New Republic, wrote that in the civil rights movement, where not all the leaders got along, Randolph embraced everyone. (After a meeting with Malcolm X, Randolph helped the younger man on with his coat and saw him to the door. In Kempton’s account, Malcolm later said that all Negro leaders are confused, but that Randolph is less confused than any of them.)

“The reconstruction program for the Negro must involve the introduction of the new social order—a democratic order in which human rights are recognized above property rights.” —A. Philip Randolph (1919)

Meyerson writes:

As the nation began to gear up for World War II, [Randolph] saw an opportunity to advance the legal and economic status of blacks. By late 1940, the nation’s burgeoning aircraft factories were employing fully 100,000 workers, but only 300 of them were black. President Roosevelt, Randolph realized, could remedy this situation by an executive order, and so, in January of 1941, he conceived the idea of a march on Washington. Fully 100,000 blacks would come to Washington, he said, for a rally at the Lincoln Memorial. They would demand the desegregation of both defense work and the armed forces themselves, and the establishment of a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to enforce the desegregation of the defense industry. “We loyal Negro-American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country,” Randolph proclaimed.

When Franklin Roosevelt tried to charm and persuade Randolph to call off a march on Washington of some 100,000 Negroes planned for the summer of 1941, the labor leader refused to back down. Instead, FDR caved in and signed an executive order desegregating factories working on defense contracts—thus enabling African Americans, too, to share in the work and wages of defense work—and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission to ensure compliance.

Randolph threatened a similar march after World War II to push President Harry Truman to desegregate the military. Truman invited Randolph to the White House to try to talk him out the march idea, but Randolph held firm. Desegregate, or we’re coming to Washington. Truman signed an executive order desegregating the U.S. military in July 1948.

Some fifteen years later, the organizing genius was Bayard Rustin (right), who had passed through the Communist Party in the 1930s before shifting to the Socialist Party. He and fellow socialist James Farmer cofounded the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942, and during World War II he was imprisoned at Leavenworth for protesting the segregation of the U.S. armed forces. He traveled to India to study tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience with followers of Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence movement. In the mid 1950s Rustin worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize a nationwide network of support for the Montgomery bus boycott that began in 1955 following the arrest of Rosa Parks.

100 Years after the Proclamation, an “Emancipation March for Jobs”

In 1961, as chair of the Negro American Labor Council, Randolph asked Rustin to help formulate a plan to improve the economic conditions of urban black workers. They began developing plans for a national demonstration. Rustin, with Tom Kahn and Norman Hill, wrote a paper calling for an “Emancipation March for Jobs,” envisioning a mobilization of some 100,000 demonstrators converging on Washington. So, the original focus of the 1963 march on Washington was on the economic plight of northern urban black workers (or would-be workers).

The marchers’ demands would focus on legislation banning racial discrimination in employment and the establishment of a Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce it (Roosevelt’s FEPC order had expired at the end of World War II), a doubling of the minimum wage, and a federal commitment to job creation.

Meanwhile, events in the South began to intensify as King and the SCLC pursued a nonviolent but persistent campaign to desegregate public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama. When national television audiences saw the municipal fire hoses and police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor’s German shepherds loosed on peaceful, well-dressed, well-behaved protesters, many of them small children, the public was shocked by the brutality. Meanwhile, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama governor George Wallace was making his infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, wrangling with the U.S. Justice Department, defying Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, obstinately blocking the admission of two qualified black students to the University of Alabama.

On the night of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address to the nation to announce that he was sending a civil rights bill to Congress that focused on public facilities. “I am . . . asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments.” (In a profile of A. Philip Randolph for The New Republic in June 1963, Murray Kempton wrote that the labor leader’s remark to Kennedy after the address “was at once a stately compliment and a measured reminder: ‘It was a magnificent speech, but it was, unfortunately, made rather late.’ ”) That same night, in Jackson, Mississippi, NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was shot dead in his own driveway after returning home from a meeting at a church.

Thus the economic agenda of the march on Washington was joined to the civil rights movement. King saw both as inextricable, indivisible. Meyerson writes, “For Rustin and Randolph, as for King [and others] . . . the challenge confronting African Americans was always two-fold: to tear down the legal edifice of segregation that imperiled and degraded Southern blacks, and to remake the American economy into a more egalitarian social democracy under which—and only under which—black Americans could actually prosper.”

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was an early sponsor of the march, along with the Negro American Labor Council, of which Randolph was chair. The NAACP and the Urban League at first were cool to the idea of a mass mobilization; they thought energies would be better spent lobbying members of Congress to pass Kennedy’s civil rights bill.

Kennedy invited Randolph and other organizers to the White House in an effort to dissuade them from going forward with the march. “Some of these people are looking for an excuse to be against us; and I don’t want to give any of them a chance to say, ‘Yes, I’m for the bill, but I am damned if I will vote for it at the point of a gun.’ ” Murray Kempton wrote, “Philip Randolph answered that he was afraid the choice was no longer whether Negroes came to Washington or not. ‘The choice, Mr. President, is between a controlled and non-violent demonstration and an uncontrolled and violent one.’ ”

The Freedom Budget and the Poor People’s Campaign

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The world well knows what Martin Luther King Jr. said that day, and his great voice still resounds from the Lincoln Memorial, from mountaintop to mountaintop, through the cities and farms and forests and fields, for all those who have ears to hear.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check—a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

What is not so well known is the economic agenda that motivated the organizers and marchers and motivates us still in this land of stark and growing inequalities. John Nichols explains that Randolph, Rustin, and King collaborated to develop a “Freedom Budget” that called for:

1. 1. The abolition of poverty.
2. 2. Guaranteed full employment.
3. 3. Full production and high economic growth.
4. 4. Adequate minimum wages.
5. 5. Farm income parity.
6. 6. Guaranteed incomes for all unable to work.
7. 7. A decent home for every American family.
8. 8. Modern health services for all.
9. 9. Full educational opportunity for all.
10. 10. Updated (and expanded) Social Security and welfare programs.
11. 11. Equitable tax and money policies.

Vauhini Vara writes in a blog piece for The New Yorker titled “Race and Poverty, Fifty Years after the March”:

Back in 1963, the Washington marchers made these four economic demands: a higher federal minimum wage, a law barring discrimination by employers, a massive job-training program, and an increase in the areas of employment covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—the law that established standards such as overtime pay. The policy changes brought about by the protesters’ demands, and the civil-rights movement at large, were significant, if not as numerous as King and his allies sought. In January of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the policies that became known as the War on Poverty; that July, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Through the sixties and into the seventies, the government started job-training programs and deliberately hired more black people into government jobs, among other measures.

Where Do We Go from Here?

To the very end, Martin Luther King Jr. held fast to his commitment to social justice combined with economic opportunity: he was working on the Poor People’s Campaign and had come to Memphis to show support for the sanitation workers’ strike when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The following remarks are excerpts from the speech “Where Do We Go from Here?”, King’s last address as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to its members, in Atlanta, on August 16, 1967. (See also King’s book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?)

We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. . . . Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. . . . 

. . . our emphasis must be twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. 

. . . John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth. . . .

. . . as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” . . . the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. . . . We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. . . . 

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrow. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

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For more about how socialists and labor unions organized the March on Washington, we recommend the fine, long piece that Harold Meyerson wrote for The American Prospect, along with John Nichols’s account in The Nation. For even more detail, see John Nichols’s The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition . . . Socialism, particularly the chapter “For Jobs and Freedom: The ‘Militant Radical’ Who Dared to Dream of a March on Washington.”

Read “Dr. Martin Luther King’s Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom” by Mark Engler in The Nation

Murray Kempton’s account of the March on Washington for The New Republic, August 1963

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Another Sweltering Summer of Legitimate Discontent

In this disheartening summer that has seen the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—because, the chief justice tells us, its protections are no longer needed—amid vigorous rollbacks of voting rights and access in states with Republican-controlled legislatures; and that has seen a shockingly unjust verdict in the Trayvon Martin case, the moderate-to-liberal American majority that believes in “liberty and social justice for all” sorely needs uplifting, inspiring. These dispiriting events, along with the 50th anniversary in June of the assassination of Medgar Evers, call to mind King’s reference to “this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent.”

So it is no wonder that many of us look with a kind of hungry, yearning nostalgia to the idealism and promise signified by the great 1963 March on Washington that took place 50 years ago today. That march, with its hundreds of thousands of peaceful marchers of all colors—the largest demonstration Washington had ever seen—would have been an historic event anyway, but it was lifted to majestic heights that will be looked to for decades, centuries to come by the exalting oratory of Martin Luther King Jr., in a speech whose original script did not include the words “I Have a Dream.”

Why We Still Need the March on Washington

The general American public—those who are not right-wing reactionaries putting party before nation and ideology above party—has elected an African American president by strong majorities in two straight elections. We can all take pride in this fact. In five of the last six presidential elections (counting 2000) the popular vote has gone to the Democratic candidate. And yet it seems that the election of our first president of color has also pushed a certain kind of button, activating some rather scary retro-reactionary machinery that would drag the nation backward, ever backward into a darker and less civil and humane society. Since late 2008—when, you might recall, the entire economy was in free fall—the forces of extreme, radically conservative reaction (with help from one very influential cable news network) have shifted into overdrive to resist and revoke rights and protections hard-won by minorities over the past decades—indeed, they seem to be trying to roll back the entire twentieth century.

Although this chief executive has endeavored to be a president of all Americans, of whatever complexion or political orientation, and though he has tried time and again to accommodate the opposition’s concerns, the Grand Old Party’s “massive resistance” to even the simplest and most routine bills and nominations, and even to legislation originally proposed by Republicans, has strangled and poisoned the body politic to the point of paralysis. Every initiative proposed by this president and his party is stonewalled, achieved only through protracted struggle and deal-making, and then, even after passage, is vilified daily, as though expanding access to health care or investing in the repair of roads and bridges is a betrayal of the public trust.

Energetically and as secretively as possible, a well-organized and richly funded minority is busy revoking or strangling minorities’ and women’s rights while the rest of the population—those paying attention, anyway—watches in horror and disgust. Some protest, while most of the public is simply trying to survive or hold on to the job (if any), or is so exhausted or beaten down by hard luck and grim times that they can’t stand up to fight.

But times have been hard before, and these storms, too, the republic shall survive, if enough of us work together. And for an example of how we can work together for a better society and economy, and get results, we look to the words and actions of those who brought us the 1963 March on Washington.

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Tomorrow we’ll look at some of the similarities between 1963 and 2013, and at the socialist and labor union origins of the great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963.

Recommended Reading about a Movement Still Moving

While we’re working on a longer piece about the great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963, we’d like to point you to some writings about the event that we think are worth spending some time with.

•  Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect writes a good long piece about how socialists and labor union organized the event, “The Socialists Who Made the March on Washington.”

•  Speaking of socialists, John Nichols at The Nation writes a strong piece making many of the same points and also focusing on labor leader A. Philip Randolph and the great organizer Bayard Rustin, “ ‘Timid Supplication for Justice Will Not Solve the Problem’.”

•  The Atlantic shows some fine photographs from August 1963 in “An Intimate Look at the March on Washington.”

•  Tomorrow (8/28) the Film Forum in New York City will show the 1970 documentary, “King: A Filmed Record . . . Montgomery to Memphis.” We’ve bought our tickets. Described by the Film Forum as “an epic record of the greatest American social movement of the 20th century, focusing on its greatest leader, all taken from news footage of the time. . . . Originally shown just once—across the country in hundreds of theaters in a single day—this unique record has been restored by the Library of Congress. Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary.”

And Also Recommended . . .

See our piece on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers, “In Honor of Medgar Evers and Res Publica” (6/12/13), which was only 2 1/2 months before the March on Washington.

Supreme Conservatives Drag U.S. Ceaselessly into the (Jim Crow) Past

The (GOP-Driven) Decline of Black Power in the South

How the World Has—and Has Not—Changed in 50 Years: Portraits of Courage, Struggle, and Defiance

“There Is a Creative Force in This Universe”: The Poor People’s Campaign, 40 Years before Occupy Wall Street

RFK, MLK: “This mindless menace of violence in America”

4/4, 44 Years Ago . . . 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: January 15, 1929–April 4, 1968

“Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam”

Rev. King and Gun Violence: “Study War No More”

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Keynote Speaker is Gambit’s Deborah Cotton

Deborah Cotton, a Gambit reporter and activist who was injured in the notorious Mother’s Day shooting on May 12, will be the keynote speaker for the 8th annual Rising Tide conference on Saturday, Sept. 14, at Xavier University in New Orleans. Ms. Cotton was one of 19 people injured by three shooters during a second-line parade in the Seventh Ward to honor Mother’s Day. (See our account of the shooting here.)

A Los Angeles native who moved to New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina (2005), Cotton writes about and videotapes second line culture, Mardi Gras Indians, brass bands, and social aid and pleasure clubs for Gambit under the pen name “Big Red” Cotton. She has written Notes on New Orleans for NOLA.com, Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans, and her own web site New Orleans Good Good. Ms. Cotton appeared on Brass Bands panel at Rising Tide 6, where she spoke about the New Orleans noise ordinance. (Click here for a fine tribute by her Gambit colleague Kevin Allman.)

Also featured at Rising Tide 8

Creating Community for Writers of Color: MelaNated Writers Collective will discuss why New Orleans is a city ripe for literary rebirth. Moderated by Jarvis DeBerry of the Times-Picayune and NOLA.com, panelists include authors jewel bush, columnist for Uptown Messenger; David Thaddeus Baker, web editor for The Louisiana Weekly; Kelly Harris, founder of Poems & Pink Ribbons; and Gian Smith, spoken word poet and author of “O Beautiful Storm.”

Tech School is back! Katy Monnot of Bird on the Street hosts a day of presentations on better use of social media for individuals and businesses. On the Working with Bloggers panel, Bridgette Duplantis, Maria Sinclair, Shercole King and Victoria Adams discuss how small business can leverage the power of blogs to help with promotions. Megan B. Capone, Celeste “Metry Chick” Haar, and Marielle “NOLA Chick” Songy will talk about about Personal Branding: When You are What You’re Selling. Addie King, Jess Leigh, and Cara Jougelard will present Using Visual Tools in Online Promotion, and Steve Maloney will present a primer on Content Marketing.

Like Rising Tide on Facebook (don’t forget to share!), follow Rising Tide on Twitter (don’t forget to retweet!), and check for programming updates on the Rising Tide Conference Blog or Rising Tide website. Registration for Rising Tide 8 is open now!

What Is Rising Tide?

The Rising Tide conferences, held  since 2006 on or near the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, bring together bloggers, activists, techies and other geeks, teachers, writers, artists, and experts in education, public safety, infrastructure, Louisiana politics, the environment, Internet technology, sports, parenting in New Orleans, and many other topics pertaining to the area’s ongoing recovery from hurricanes, “federal floods,” oil spills, and other challenges.

Past featured speakers have included David Simon (co-creator of HBO’s Treme and The Wire); the actor and activist Harry Shearer; N.O. geographer and historian Rich Campanella; Treme-born writer Lolis Eric Elie, director of the documentary Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans; former Tulane professor of history Lawrence N. Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans; Mother Jones human rights and environmental reporter (Ms.) Mac McClelland; and authors John Barry, Dave Zirin, and Chris Cooper and Bobby Block.

Click here for a listing of previous Rising Tide programs, with links to videos and more.

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc., is a nonprofit organization formed by New Orleans bloggers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federally built levees. After the disaster, the Internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, and friends of the city and the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs were created, and combined with those that were already online, an online community with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, to mark the anniversary of the flood, the bloggers of New Orleans organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the arts, the internet and social media and turning advocacy in the city into action.

All are welcome. Advance registration for students is $18, and for the general public, $20. The ticket includes breakfast and lunch (provided by Laurel Street Bakery and Juan’s Flying Burrito, respectively).

The food is great, and the discussions are even more nourishing. We’ve been to four Rising Tides, and we’ll be there again this year. Sign up now!

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Click below to read about previous Rising Tides (most recent first): 

Rising Tide 7 Is Sat. Sept. 22 at Xavier (2012)

Dedra Johnson of ‘The G Bitch Spot’ Wins Rising Tide’s Ashley Award (2011)

Live-Blogging from Rising Tide 6 (2011)

Rising Tide 6 Is August 27, So Register Today (2010)

Live-Blogging from Rising Tide 5 in New Orleans (2010)

Come Surf the Rising Tide : Aug. 28 in New Orleans (2008)

Rising Tide 5 Is Aug. 28 in New Orleans: Register Today (2010)

RT4: Sinking to New Heights (2009)

Rising Tide III in New Orleans Aug. 22–24 (2008)

Viva New Orleans—for Art’s Sake! (2007)

Making Blogging Sexy: Rising Tide 2 (2007)

Ultraconservative Unified Field Theory Revealed

“Socialism requires that government becomes your god. That’s why they have to destroy the concept of God. They have to destroy all loyalties except loyalty to government. That’s what’s behind homosexual marriage.”

—Pastor Rafael Cruz, father of senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), addressing Family Leadership Summit, Ames, Iowa, Aug. 10

And that’s all you need to know.

H/T to The American Prospect

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September 24, 1962–August 2, 2013

“My message is kind of an emperor’s new clothes thing: I’m making fun of them, but I’m also trying to remind people that you have a choice. And if you don’t get involved in it, then it’s going to continue, and they’ll continue to put on the circus show for you, amusing you by proposing laws about pants that show ass crack, or Darwin being racist, at the same time that they’re screwing over your future.” —Greg Peters

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[ Update 8/10/13 : Be sure to read Mark Moseley’s thoughtful tribute to his friend and ours at The Lens, “Remembering the unforgettable: a salute to the late, very great Greg Peters.” Highly recommended. ]

It is with sadness that we note the death yesterday of our friend Greg Peters, an award-winning cartoonist, artist, and writer, following heart surgery at Oschner Medical Center in New Orleans. A native of Marquette, Michigan, who was an all-but-dissertation-Ph.D. in English and creative writing at the University of Louisiana (Lafayette), Greg Peters was 50.

In his own words (from his profile at Lafayette Creative [‘artsy, without the fartsy’]):

Greg Peters is a cartoonist, writer and graphic designer living in Louisiana. He is available for freelance work, as well as speaking engagements, personal appearances at bachelorette parties, raucous press club luncheons, and swanky, black-tie bourgeois pig feeds, where his unassailable personal magnetism and colorful vocabulary make him a sure object of intense, whispered conversation.

Although we did not know Greg as well as we would like to have known him—living in separate cities, and meeting only at the Rising Tide conferences whose posters he designed year after year—we always admired his intelligence, artistic talent, his satirical wit and no-bullshit honesty, and his very wide and loyal network of friends, in New Orleans and beyond, who will be mourning his passing. We will miss Greg in much the same way as Ashley Morris is missed: talented life-forces who passed too early, too young, from this physical realm, but whose spirits live on among us and continue to inspire our best, most honest work and our best living, as if life itself, and how you live it, matters. We are not OK, because they are gone. But we’ll be OK, because they’re still with us on the inside.

Putting Art to Work Against Official Incompetence and Mendacity

Peters’s award-winning “Suspect Device” editorial cartoon series (named after the song by Stiff Little Fingers) was published in the Times of Acadiana and Gambit, and other graphic work was featured in the book Attitude 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists (2004). He designed posters for the Port of New Orleans, among other clients, and, from 2007 on, he designed posters for all but one of the Rising Tide conferences on the future of New Orleans. (A sampling of his work appears below.) He also created the cover for A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writing from Postdiluvian New Orleans (2010), which includes two of his blog posts from Suspect Device.

Kevin Allman has posted a fine tribute at Gambit, noting that Peters was “funny—and always furious and rude, juxtaposed with sophisticated writing. In a 2004 profile of Peters and his work, former Gambit music editor Scott Jordan noted, ‘Peters’ craft is fueled by his punk rock-influenced DIY personality and educational background in literary criticism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and Buddhism—all meeting the surreal arena of Louisiana politics.’ ”

Other tributes can be found at NOLA.com, Toulouse Street, Library Chronicles, Liprap’s Lament, Pog mo Thoin (an especially eloquent and touching personal recollection from a friend who is not of the New Orleans blogosphere), and on Facebook, where Greg’s companion, Gambit contributor Eileen Loh (shown with Greg in top photo), posted the following:

I’m gutted to have to tell so many of Greg Peters’ friends that the world has lost a brilliant mind, a gifted artist, a scathing wit, a maestro of sarcasm, an ardent defender of the disenfranchised and the discriminated and the broken, and one of the gentlest, kindest, funniest and most fearless people I’ve ever met. He never got to live one day of his life without the congenital heart condition that got him in the end, and in my almost bottomless sadness, I am happy he’s finally free. Please keep his boys in your thoughts; they are inconsolable.

Greg Peters is survived by his two sons, Magnus and Wilder, shown embracing with him above; his companion, Eileen Loh, and his former wife, Saundra Scarce of Lafayette.

Memorial Services Announced

Eileen Loh announces on Facebook:

There will be two memorial services for Greg Peters: one in Lafayette and one in New Orleans. The former is set for next Saturday, Aug. 10, at Martin & Castille Funeral Home, 600 East Farrel Road, Lafayette (337-234-2311). Visitation starts at 1:00, and the service is from 2:00 to 4:00. • The family is hoping that some of the guests might choose to prepare a 4- or 5-minute eulogy or remembrance to read at the service, largely so that Magnus and Wilder can hear many facets of their dad’s truly one-of-a-kind personality.

The New Orleans memorial service is TBA and will be a far less classy affair, a punk Irish wake in a New Orleans dive bar, as the gods intended . . . probably toward the end of August, 23/24, so that as many of his kick-ass friends from all corners can come. I will keep you posted. 

For further details, stay tuned to Greg Peters or Eileen Loh’s Facebook pages.

Greg Peters, center, on a panel at the first Rising Tide conference, August 2006. From left to right: Dedra Johnson, Josh Britton, Greg Peters, Lois Dunn (Scout Prime of First Draft), and the late Ashley Morris. Photo by Maitri.

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Let the last words, for now, be those of Charles Bukowski, as quoted in a signature in an e-mail from Greg in 2009:

“We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

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