New Orleans gears up for Historic Jazz Funeral
(/post de divulgação de evento. O *Biscoito* volta ao português amanhã/)
Fellow New Orleanians:
As John Dos Passos once famously said, we stand defeated in America
[link] .
56 million of us did all we could. We beat them 3 to 1 in our city, but
still it wasn’t enough.
This Thursday we will gather at 10 o’clock for the most important jazz
funeral [link] of our
lives. Dozens of organizations
[link] have joined us.
At Congo Square, in the shade of Louis Armstrong’s
[link] statue, we will mourn the passing
of our democracy. We will mourn for the tens of thousands killed in
Iraq, the hundreds locked up in prisons in Guantánamo and elsewhere, and
the millions deprived of citizenship in our city and all over the nation.
We will march down Rampart Street to Canal. We’ll then proceed toward
the Mississippi River along Canal, then on to North Peters and Jackson
Square, where a rally will be held and a copy of the Patriot Act will be
symbolically destroyed.
There will be live music, street theater, and a host of prominent
speakers. The Tremé Brass Band
[link] will be there and so will
our friends in the Panorama Jazz Band [link] .
Organizers are inviting all who own cameras to bring them along. In
addition to documenting the event, they help protect us from
knuckleheads and provocateurs.
This blog invites all its New Orleanian readers to take part in this
event. If you’re in New Orleans, come meet us at Congo Square, right
there where it all began. If you’re not in New Orleans, please keep us
in your thoughts.
At inauguration time, wherever you are – Brazil, Europe, US – express
your disgust somehow. Let us make this the most embarrassing
inauguration in history.
Pictures of the Jazz Funeral for Democracy
[link] will be posted on this blog
tomorrow.
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