Sunday night Jones Walker, New Orleans\' largest law firm, hosted a gracious reception for the 23 lawschools participating in the Student Huriicane Network\'s relief efforts in New Orleans.\r\n\r\nThe event featured several speakers including local lawyers and a panel of students from Tulane Law School. The Tulane students gave a vivid account of their experiences directly before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Their subjective experiences reflected the fear, confusion, and denial lost in the buzz of political rhetoric and media coverage of Katrina, and they really brought home the fact that until now, my own knowledge of this tragedy and personal delegation of moral responsibility for its consequences have been based solely on coverage furnished by these political mechanisms. These many voices speaking of their own pain and adversity created a narrative deep and complex enough to countervail the monolithic drone of a numbing mainstream media coverage, where individuality has been lost in the plight of a vast yet failed exodus from the tragedy and tribulation caused by natural disaster and governmental indifference to human life.\r\n\r\nTracie Washington, a local civil rights attorney concerned with due process issues, spoke of the importance of the individual voice and the future of the State of Louisiana. She spoke of two important initiatives that are now largely in the hands of pro bono attorneys and students volunteering their efforts to service these causes: the voter\'s rights initiative and the prisoners\' right to counsel program.\r\n\r\nThe voter\'s rights initiative is an effort to maintain the right to vote of those Lousiana residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. As Ms. Washington pointed out, this cause is critical to the future of the state of Lousiana, as these displaced citizens would lose their right to vote in the state if they had to relocate because their homes were destroyed in the storm. Allowing these people to lose their political voice could further tilt the balance of power in a state already troubled by gross social, political, and economic inequities.\r\n\r\nThe prisoners\' right to counsel project is an effort to provide legal counsel to people who have been detained in custody since the hurricane 6 months ago without the opportunity to seek legal counsel and in many, many cases, have not even been charged with a formal indictment. The gross disregard for the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens should have the people of this country on alert of the decline of civil rights not only in the state of Louisiana, but in the nation at large, which until now, has been the standard bearer of democracy as a system of individual freedoms.\r\n\r\nBy participating in the right to counsel project over the past 2 days, my eyes have already been opened to the truly egregious dimensions of our government\'s failures (on both the local and federal levels) to observe the procedures of the legal process under the ideals enunciated in the US Constitution. As US citizens, we have the right to due process, counsel, and a speedy trial, not to mention equality under the law. The thousands of prisoners currently sitting in jail with no access to an attorney or even a proper legal charge are not being afforded these fundamental freedoms.\r\n\r\nMs. Washington spoke of Katrina as an indicator of the next wave of the civil rights movement. Though much is lost forever in destruction, the dimensions of this tragedy can, at best, illuminate the now undeniable truth that there is still much to be done to ensure the recognition and deliverance of equality in our social and political systems.\r\n\r\nOriginally posted: http://bls-shn.blogspot.com/2006/03/voices-in-drone.html