Glenn Ford taught me that every chance for life matters. It was easy to see why: prosecutors told the court Glenn was innocent 30 years after he was wrongly convicted of murder and sent to Death Row. Despite being sentenced to death, Glenn and others on the Row refused to forget their humanity.
Category: Opinion
Posted inOperating Capital - Executions in Louisiana
Operating capital
As Louisiana restarts executions, stories about the state’s death penalty — from condemned men, victims, families, and those who work in the death chamber.
Posted inOpinion
In this ground, our ancestors were buried.
Our heritage is in this land. We can’t let a multinational corporation desecrate it.
Posted inOpinion
The Louisiana legislature’s plans to cage our future: the March 29 ballot amendments
Early voting for this crucial election starts on Saturday. The four constitutional amendments on the March 29 ballot are designed to mislead you as a voter and stand in the way of a safe, more healthy Louisiana.
Posted inOpinion
Redemption and the Ultimate Punishment
“I remember feeling a flush of anger that the State of Louisiana was giving Bordelon what he wanted, relief from his guilt,” writes the author, who visited Angola with a film crew in 2010 as Louisiana was preparing to execute Gerald Bordelon. “My husband had died a few years before that, leaving me a widow and mother to two small children. Death, for me, was not something a governor should casually enter into with a signature — or that Bordelon could chase, to relieve his personal agony.”
Posted inOpinion
Vote to reject the state’s costly push to fill Louisiana jails and prisons
Voters have a chance on March 29 to turn the tide against Gov. Jeff Landry and his legislature’s extensive, expensive plans to expand the criminal-justice system in Louisiana, which already incarcerates more people per capita than any other state
Posted inOpinion
True Terror: New Orleans Likely Not Prepared for Much
“As a researcher who has closely observed, personally experienced local struggles,” says the writer, Bethany Garfield, “it’s with a heavy heart that I say that investigations into the state of our city’s protective plans and systems will likely garner the following conclusion: New Orleans isn’t ready for much of anything..”
Posted inOpinion
Making the grade – or not.
What Louisiana’s school letter grades don’t tell us about school quality. Despite our F grade, the students at Noble Minds are not failing, and we are not failing our students.
Posted inOpinion
Ensuring we all feel safe and are stably employed
“We have much work to do,” Hunter writes, “to ensure that an anti-terrorist component is part of the planning process for every special event that attracts thousands – Mardi Gras, festivals and holiday celebrations, even our Sunday second-line parades.”
Posted inOpinion
‘Servitude’
The author, who is also associate editor for the Angolite magazine, won an honorable mention for this essay in the 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards.