New Orleans, May 11 – Today, after work, I headed straight to the Gwangi and Hollywood Community Center in Algiers, a working-class, majority-Black neighborhood on the west bank of the Mississippi River. At 5:30 p.m., people were in a line wrapping around the block, there for the same reason as me: to sign the statewide petition to recall Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry, an oil-and-gas investment millionaire known for his total subservience to Donald Trump.
The recall campaign was launched by Baton Rouge residents Marian Gbaiwon and Katilyn Stepter just after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act with its Louisiana v. Callais ruling. Violating norms, the Court sent its ruling down immediately, bypassing the usual 32-day waiting period. Landry’s government also moved immediately, pausing a U.S. House primary election that had already started and redrawing the state’s voting map before the November midterms. These moves are an attempt to suppress Louisiana’s Black voters.
Landry is also trying to throw out the New Orleans Criminal Clerk of Court election that already happened last November. He did this by supporting a state bill to merge the New Orleans criminal and civil Clerk of Court offices into one. The bill passed, and it eliminates the office won by Calvin Duncan, a Black, formerly incarcerated man who was exonerated in 2021 after spending 28 years in prison. He ran on a platform of reforming how court records are stored and accessed so people can actually obtain the documents they need. The people made their choice, with 68.2% voting for Duncan. Landry doesn’t care.
What really impressed me about the petition site today wasn’t that a lot of people showed up: it was that the operation was so well-organized. The campaign only started a week ago, but the organizers in Algiers had figured out how to handle high volumes. It was a lot like a voting site. They had set up separate sign-in tables under tents for residents of different parishes (counties). Volunteers directed people to where they needed to be and checked IDs.
They were also serving food inside the community center. The whole atmosphere was friendly and upbeat.
An older woman who was next to me in line told me, “Landry doesn’t care about Louisiana. The only person he’s loyal to is his Daddy Dearest – that’s what I call Donald Trump.”
This recall effort is required to get signatures from 20% of registered voters, or about 600,000 signatures, in 180 days from the time of filing. Then it would go to a vote. This may be a tall order, but the organizers have already done a great deal in one week. The campaign has announced petition drives in at least six towns through the remainder of the week, with a bigger push planned for the weekend.
As Malik Rahim with the community center in Algiers told WDSU, “They thought we were powerless. This is showing we have the power. It has been white, Black, all people have been coming here.”
Gregory E. Williams is a public health worker from South Louisiana.
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