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By
Allen Johnson Jr and
Lili LeGardeur
Flames Over Armstrong
What's black and white and read all over City
Hall? Not the emails of Friends of Armstrong Park, a citizens group opposed
to WWOZ radio station's efforts to build an expanded studio and office inside
the city-owned park. While city officials met twice with WWOZ representatives
to discuss the park in December, Chief Administrative Officer Charles Rice flashed
Friends Of Armstrong Park leader Leo Watermeier early this month asking to be
removed from the group's contact list for daily email updates.
Watermeier refused, sending back, "Even your
request to be removed from our e-mail list reveals how little you must value
our input. That is a disappointment, but not really a surprise."
Watermeier then wrote to Nagin communications
director Patrick Evans, calling Rice's request "a dereliction of his duties."
Evans wrote back to say he believed Rice's request was within legal limits,
which Watermeier took as a legal threat. "I take full personal responsibility
for keeping (Rice) on the e-mail list, and if you, he, or Mayor Nagin thinks
that is breaking any law, I invite you to bring charges against me," Watermeier
shot back.
The suggestion that city officials have been
unresponsive on this issue frustrates Evans, who says he remembers responding
to at least one Friends email late one evening while he was coaching his son's
basketball practice.
As for any fuss over meetings between WWOZ
and city officials, Evans suggests that's a non-issue. "We don't even have a
developed plan from 'OZ," says Evans. "If there's ever a plan presented to us
-- before we approve anything, before we finalize anything, there will be public
input."
The emails that Rice no longer wants to see
have ranged far and wide. Some set out suspicions that Rice and deputy CAO Cynthia
Sylvain-Lear were keeping the group's letters and messages away from Nagin.
In two blow-by-blow accounts, Watermeier described laying in wait for the mayor
outside of scheduled events, confronting him, handing him written messages directly
and attempting to engage him in discussion on Armstrong Park. Other messages
call for Sylvain-Lear to be removed from the discussion.
"I'm a little bit like a Jehovah's Witness
on this subject," admits Watermeier.
On Jan. 7, deputy CAO Cynthia Sylvain-Lear,
who was point person for the park under the Morial administration and continues
in the capacity under Nagin, had her own meeting with Watermeier and fellow
Friends member Randall Mitchell. Also present were director of property management
Ronald M. Ruiz and Elaine White, executive assistant to councilwoman Jackie
Clarkson. No one from WWOZ was there. Sylvain-Lear also met with Mitchell in
mid-December.
According to Watermeier, city officials have
yet to answer Friends of Armstrong Park's questions about a number of issues,
including the legality of the 89-year lease for space that WWOZ signed with
the city in 2002. Dave Herrera, acting superintendent of the New Orleans Jazz
National Historical Park, says the National Park Service holds firm to its commitment
to restore four buildings inside the park starting this summer. And WWOZ general
manager David Freedman stresses that his organization is following proper channels,
but has lost more than $100,000 in pledges toward its capital campaign because
of delays in the project.
And the emails? It's new territory, but Joe
Cook, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana,
thinks it might fall under the heading of viewpoint or content discrimination.
"If he (Rice) is receiving other peoples' points of view by email, he's got
to receive everybody's," says Cook. "If it's harassment, that's something different."
-- LeGardeur
Ekings Back on the Air
Robyn Ekings, who as a reporter for WVUE-TV
exposed David Duke's map for a racially divided America during his 1988 campaign
for the state legislature, has returned to television journalism after more
than a decade in public relations. The Louisiana Public Broadcasting network
in Baton Rouge hired Ekings, a New Orleans resident, last month as a full-time
correspondent for Louisiana: The State We're In, an Emmy-award winning TV news
magazine now in its 27th season. Her reporting will be showcased statewide with
LPB's live coverage of the inauguration of Kathleen Blanco beginning at 11 a.m.
Monday, Jan. 12, which airs locally on WLAE-TV (Cox Cable Channel 14).
"We had two dozen applicants for the position,
from as far away as Alaska, and Robyn emerged as the strongest candidate based
on her experience," says Jeff Duhe, managing editor of The State We're In.
In 1988, Ekings confronted Duke on-air with
a map of a racial utopia that the white supremacist had published in a newsletter
for the National Association for the Advancement of White People, an organization
Duke founded in the early '80s after leaving the Ku Klux Klan. Duke, who is
now serving time in federal prison for fraud, then argued that he merely re-printed
the map, which showed Jews being relocated to New York City and African Americans
resettled in Mississippi. However, the map was consistent with NAAWP editorials
advocating segregation of the races, recalls Tulane University history professor
Lance Hill.
"[Ekings] was one of the few television reporters
that did anything perceptive on Duke -- and she was the only television reporter
in New Orleans who did anything on the map," Hill says.
Since leaving WVUE in 1992, Ekings work has
included a stint as public relations director of the Tulane Medical Center.
This week, Ekings will profile new Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. for LPB's
inauguration special. Future Ekings reports include a profile of Lt. Gov.-elect
Mitch Landrieu on Jan. 23, a look at Blanco's options for the troubled state
health care system on Jan. 30, and a Feb. 6 New Orleans-based investigation
of how police can skew crime statistics to improve their own image. The regular
half-hour programs air locally at 8 p.m. each Friday. -- Johnson
Other Stories This Week in News & Views:
Commentary
A Mixed Legacy
News Feature
No Sweet Deal
Bouquets & Brickbats
The Best and the Worst of the Week
Politics
Jefferson's New Faces
Penny Post
The Disappearance of Beggars
Other Stories by Allen Johnson Jr and Lili LeGardeur:
News Feature 12 23 03
Cover Story 12 09 03
Cover Story 12 09 03
Allen Johnson Jr and Lili LeGardeur Archives
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