Below is an article detailing Monday’s march across the Gretna Bridge in New Orleans. The audio is Cousin Jeff from BET Television as he and many others are walking across the bridge. Earlier that morning we spoke with Jeff and he explained that there was the threats of arrests. The marchers had already been kicked off the grounds of the New Orleans Convention Center where they had agreed to gather prior to marching. Jeff explained that non of the local cities or parrishes had any juridiction to the bridge even during the Hurricane. It is controlled by the state. However, Gretna’s police chief makes no apologies for his actions. Jeff decribed his attitude of one where he would likely tell the marchers to go to hell… Marchers protest blockade of evacuees after Katrina Activist: ‘The world needs to know what happened’ Tuesday, November 08, 2005 By Matthew Brown West Bank bureau www.nola.com/news/t-p/met…215490.xml Activists from New Orleans and throughout the country marched across the Crescent City Connection on Monday to protest the blocking of the bridge after Hurricane Katrina. It had been blocked by West Bank law enforcement agencies who viewed fleeing New Orleans residents as potentially dangerous looters. Singing the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” about 80 activists crossed the bridge to the West Bank under police escort after a rally in front of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where thousands of displaced city residents languished for days after the hurricane with little food or water. “What happened here showed the old way of doing business in the state of Louisiana is alive and well,” said protester Malik Rahim of Algiers, 58, a former Black Panther and co-founder of the New Orleans social justice group Common Ground. “The world needs to know what happened.” Several days after the storm, crowds began to cross the Mississippi River bridge after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin promised that buses were waiting on the West Bank. But many people were turned back. Reacting to reports of widespread looting and violence in the city, police from Gretna, the Crescent City Connection and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office blocked the bridge and fired warning shots over the heads of those who resisted. Most of those fleeing were African-American. That roiled political activists who view the violence and despair seen at the Superdome and Convention Center as a consequence of social and racial disparities. Officials who instigated the blocking of the bridge contend that charges of racism are overblown and off the mark. And in the chaos that pervaded the metropolitan region in those first days after the storm - a New Orleans police officer had been shot in the head near the West Bank entry to the bridge, and two days later the Oakwood Center mall was set on fire by looters - they say extreme measures were justified. “I had no food and water for them. We barely had enough food and water ourselves,” said Chief Mike Helmstetter of the Crescent City Connection Bridge Police. “Things were getting out of hand. The Oakwood mall was being burned; we were taking shots from the Fischer housing project.” Monday’s marchers represented myriad groups, from the Washington-based racial equality organization Hip Hop Caucus to the feminist group National Organization for Women. Also present was U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Atlanta, who equated blocking the Crescent City Connection with violence that swept the South during the civil rights era. “We cannot go back to that America,” McKinney said. Police from New Orleans and the Crescent City Connection initially vowed that protesters faced arrest Monday if they stepped onto the bridge. But with about two dozen newspaper, radio and television reporters on hand, authorities soon relented. Alan Levasseur, executive director of the Crescent City Connection, a division of the state Department of Transportation and Development, said he wanted to avoid a confrontation. “It was in the best interest of the public to allow the march to occur,” Levasseur said. Joe Leonard Jr., executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Black Leadership Forum, declared the capitulation by bridge authorities a victory. “It’s an acknowledgment of the poor decisions that were made during the catastrophe of Katrina, and, I hope, it’s an extension of a hand in peace,” Leonard said. . . . . . . . Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3784 Less