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Reggie Dance
The RDPR Group
rdance@Therdprgroup.com 973-934-0055
The New Orleans Katrina Commemoration Foundation, Hip Hop Caucus and
National Wildlife Federation have teamed up to organize the 5th Annual
New Orleans Katrina Commemoration March on Sunday, August 29, 2010.
3,000 New Orleans residents, local officials and entertainers are
anticipated for the ceremony which will include the reading of names
from those lost during Hurricane Katrina and a 3 mile March to remember
the lives of those lost during the tragic hurricane.
The Hip Hop Caucus, National Wildlife Federation and New Orleans Katrina
Commemoration Foundation organized the March to continue national
awareness to the injustices that took place during the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina which caused additional death and suffering and has
yet to be addressed. The March also calls for a comprehensive recovery
plan of the Gulf Coast which focuses on areas such as housing needs, job
placement, environment restoration and oil spill response amongst other
initiatives necessary to put New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on track
for recovery.
"The 5th Anniversary Katrina Commemoration March and Secondline is an
important ceremony we've built here in New Orleans to show the families
of victims and residents we have not forgotten about their struggle to
resume their lives," said Sess 4-5, Co Founder of the New Orleans
Katrina Commemoration Foundation. "It is vital for the American people
and government officials outside of New Orleans recognize our hardships
continue and we still need their help to get many families back home and
on their feet after this disaster."
"Five years have gone by and New Orleans has still not received the
necessary backing from the United States government to help restore this
city to prominence," stated Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., President of the
Hip Hop Caucus. "It is vital the people of New Orleans and local
officials unite and demonstrate our communities are still in dire need
of assistance as well recognize and create an action plan to restore our
coast and protect New Orleans for future generations."
"The Katrina anniversary and oil spill are both wake up calls that we
need to restore Louisiana's coastal wetlands, which are nature's first
defense against storms, sea level rise and flooding," said National
Wildlife Federation President and CEO Larry Schweiger. "Restoring the
coastal wetlands will not only help protect the communities and
ecosystems in south Louisiana but also help the region recover from the
BP oil spill."
The commemoration events begin at 10:00 a.m. with the reading of the
names of our lost loved ones at the Lower 9th Ward Levee Breach at
Jourdan and North Galvez. Following the Healing Ceremony, at 10:45 a.m.
the March Secondline will begin through the streets of New Orleans and
conclude at 12:45 at Hunter's Field. From 12:45, the Commemoration
Program will begin with community members, local musicians, hip hop
artists, gospel choir and spoken word performances.
For more information on the Commemoration Events, please visit, www.HipHopCaucus.org or www.KatrinaCommemoration.org.
List of Endorsers for 5th Annual Katrina Commemoration and Secondline March
1SKY
2CENT ENTERTAINMENT
350.ORG
ADVOCATES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS
AFL-CIO
AFRICAN AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST ASSOCIATION
AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
ALLIANCE FOR CLIMATE PROTECTION,
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL FUND
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE
AMERICAN RIGHTS AT WORK
ANTI-RACISM WORKING GROUP
APOLLO ALLIANCE
ASANTE FOUNDATION
BENJAMIN FOUNDATION
BLACK LEADERSHIP FORUM
BLACK LOVE MOVEMENT
BLACK MEN UNITED
BLACKS IN GOVERNMENT
BLOWOUT CONSCIOUSNESS
BROTHER UMRANI
CATHOLIC CHARITIES
CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENT COMMERCE AND ENERGY
CHESAPEAKE CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK
CODE PINK
COMMITTEE TO RE-OPEN CHARITY
COMMON GROUND HEALTH CLINIC
COMMUNITY BOOK CENTER
COMMUNITY UNITED FOR CHANGE
CRAIGE CULTURAL CENTER
CRITICAL RESISTANCE
CRESCENT CITY ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS
DC GREENWORKS
DEEP SOUTH CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF MILWAUKEE COUNTY
DIARY FROM THE DOME
DREAMING OUT LOUD, INC.
EARLINE'S PRALINES
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND CLIMATE CHANGE INITIATIVE
FM 98.5
FEDERALLY EMPLOYED WOMEN
FINDING OUR FOLKS
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
FYRE YOUTH SQUAD
GET FRESH
GLOBAL EXCHANGE
GRASSROOTS AMERICA
GREEN DMV
GRIND FOR THE GREEN
GRINDSTAFF ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES
GRIS GRIS LAB
HEADCOUNT
HIGHLANDER RESEARCH AND EDUCATION CENTER
HIP HOP CAUCUS
HOT 8 BRASS BAND
HOT OFF DA PRESS PROMOTION
INDUSTRY INFLUENCE
IRON RAIL BOOK COLLECTIVE
JUNEBUG
JUVENILE JUSTICE PROJECT OF LOUISIANA
LEVI.ORG
LOUISIANA JUSTICE INSTITUTION
LOYOLA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
MALCOLM X GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT
MENNONITE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--NEW ORLEANS
MIKE B. DA GRINDA
OLD SKOOL 106.7 FM
N'COBRA
NATION OF ISLAM MOSQUE #42
NATIONAL BLACK LAW STUDENTS ASSOCIATION
NATIONAL COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF BLACK MAYORS
NATIONAL CONGRESS OF BLACK WOMEN
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF NEGRO WOMEN
NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN
NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION
NEW ORLEANS WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION
NOLA.TV
NUTHIN' BUT FIRE RECORDS
PEACE KEEPERS
PRAXIS PROJECT KATRINA INFORMATION NETWORK
POWER 102.9 FM
Q93.3 FM
RAINBOW PUSH COALITION
RS SECURITY INC
SESS 4-5
SAFE STREETS
SLAM NEW ORLEANS
SOJOURNER TRUTH COMMUNITY CENTER
SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY AT NEW ORLEANS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
STAND WITH UNITY
STOOGES BRASS BAND
SURVIVORS VILLAGE
TAMBORINE AND FAN
THE FRUIT WIZARD
THE UPTOWN WING SHACK
TRANSAFRICA FORUM
TRUTH UNIVERSAL
TULANE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE COMMUNITY SERVICE PROGRAM
UNITED TEACHERS OF NEW ORLEANS
UPTOWN WING SHACK
VITAMINWATER
WBOK 1230 AM
WILD WAYNE
YOUNG SINO
ZION TRINITY
Police announced a shelter-in-place order for "all areas north of the airport to the Ohio River."
This is a developing story… Please check back for updates…
Aerial footage showed plumes of black smoke and flames around the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky after a UPS plane crashed during its departure on Tuesday evening.
The Federal Aviation Administration said on social media that UPS Flight 2976—a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 bound for Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, Hawaii—crashed around 5:15 pm local time. The agency added that the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with the NTSB providing all updates.
The Louisville Metro Police Department confirmed that the LMPD and multiple other agencies were responding to the scene, where there are "injuries reported."
LMPD initially announced a shelter-in-place order "for all locations within five miles of the airport," which was then expanded to "all areas north of the airport to the Ohio River."
The airport—which confirmed that "the airfield is closed" after the crash—is the UPS global hub. The shipping giant said in a statement that there were three crewmembers onboard and "at this time, we have not confirmed any injuries/casualties."
"UPS will release more facts as they become available, but the National Transportation Safety Board is in charge of the investigation and will be the primary source of information about the official investigation," the company added.
As CNN reported Tuesday:
The McDonnell Douglas MD-11F is a freight transport aircraft manufactured originally by McDonnell Douglas and later by Boeing. The aircraft is primarily flown by FedEx Express, Lufthansa Cargo, and UPS Airlines for cargo.
The plane also served as a popular wide-bodied passenger airplane after it was first flown in 1990. The aircraft involved in Tuesday's crash was built in 1991.
As fuel costs increased for the three engine jets many of them were converted to freighters. The plane can take off weighing in at a maximum 633,000 pounds and carrying more than 38,000 gallons of fuel, according to Boeing, which bought McDonnell Douglass.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said that it "is monitoring this developing tragic event on the ground," and "as this horrific scene is being investigated, prayers on behalf of our entire international union are with those killed, injured, and affected, including their families, co-workers, and loved ones."
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said that he and his wife, Rachel, "are praying for victims of the UPS plane that crashed."
"We have every emergency agency responding to the scene," the Democrat added. "There are multiple injuries and the fire is still burning. There are many road closures in the area—please avoid the scene."
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is headed to Louisville for a briefing with the mayor, said, "Please pray for the pilots, crew, and everyone affected."
Republican President Donald Trump's transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, similarly said, "Please join me in prayer for the Louisville community and flight crew impacted by this horrific crash."
During a press conference earlier on Tuesday, Duffy had warned of "mass chaos" if the ongoing government shutdown continues, saying: "You will see mass flight delays. You'll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don't have the air traffic controllers."
Asked to provide evidence supporting her claim of voting fraud in California, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, "It's just a fact."
President Donald Trump is drafting an executive order aimed at rolling back voting rights, a measure that may include attacks on mailed ballots, a top administration official said Tuesday.
"The White House is working on an executive order to strengthen our elections in this country and to ensure that there cannot be blatant fraud, as we've seen in California with their universal mail-in voting system," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
“Like any executive order, of course, any executive order the president signs is within his full executive authority and within the confines of the law," she added.
Asked by a reporter what is her evidence of electoral fraud in California, Leavitt replied without evidence that "it's just a fact."
LEAVITT: It's absolutely true that there's fraud in California's electionsQ: What's the evidence of that?LEAVITT: It's just a fact
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) November 4, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Leavitt's remarks came hours after Trump baselessly attacked California’s vote-by-mail system in a post on his Truth Social network.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump alleged without evidence. “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”
Trump has previously vowed to ban mail-in ballots, a move legal experts say would be unconstitutional.
The White House's announcement also came as Americans voted in several high-stakes elections, including California's Proposition 50 retaliatory redistricting proposal; the New York City mayoral race between progressive Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa; gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia; and a crowded contest for Minneapolis mayor highlighted by democratic socialist state Sen. Omar Fateh's (D-62) bid to unseat third-term Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey.
The announcement also followed a federal judge's permanent blocking of part of Trump’s executive order requiring proof of US citizenship on federal voter registration forms.
Democracy defenders have repudiated Trump's attacks on mailed ballots and claims of voter fraud—a longtime right-wing bugaboo unsupported by facts on the ground.
"Voting by mail as permitted by the laws of your state is legal," ACLU Voting Rights Project director Sophia Lin Lakin says in a statement on the group's website about Trump's order from March.
"In his sweeping executive order, Trump tried to bully states into not counting ballots properly received after Election Day under state law by threatening to withhold federal funding," she continues. "A federal court has temporarily blocked this part of the executive order."
"Trump’s effort to target mail-in voting is a blatant overreach, intruding on states’ constitutional authority to set the rules for elections," Lin Lakin adds. "It threatens to disenfranchise tens of millions of eligible voters and would no doubt disproportionately impact historically excluded communities, including voters of color, naturalized citizens, people with disabilities, and the elderly, by pushing unnecessary barriers to the fundamental right to vote."
"Trump and his allies claim to defend Jews, yet ignore antisemitism in their own ranks," Jamie Beran of Bend the Arc told Common Dreams.
President Donald Trump used one of his final messages before New York's mayoral election on Tuesday to insult the many Jewish supporters expected to turn out in favor of the Democratic nominee, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self-professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social just hours after polls opened.
It was one final attempt to smear the assemblyman, who pre-election polls showed leading comfortably, as antisemitic over his criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights, which has revealed stark divisions in opinion among American Jews, with New York being no exception.
Courting Trump's support—which he earned Monday along with that of Elon Musk and senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller—former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has leaned into the most vulgar of Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani over the home stretch of the campaign, referring to him as a "terrorist sympathizer" and suggesting he'd support a second 9/11.
But in the face of these attacks, Mamdani's support among Jewish voters has remained strong. In July, with the field still fractured, he outright led among Jewish voters. And though Cuomo has bolstered his Jewish support since the dropout of incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, polls have varied widely, with some showing Mamdani and Cuomo virtually tied among Jewish voters and others showing Cuomo with a commanding lead.
Mamdani has nevertheless managed to make tremendous inroads with Jewish leaders, most recently the influential Orthodox rabbi, Moshe Indig, who endorsed Mamdani at a meeting in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday.
He had previously earned the support of the Brooklyn native Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and local leaders, including a former mayoral contender for this cycle, Comptroller Brad Lander, and Ruth Messinger, a former Manhattan borough president and Democratic nominee for mayor in 1997.
He has also received the endorsement of several Jewish organizations, including the pro-Palestinian Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, the New York-based Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), and Bend the Arc, a progressive Jewish organization that deals primarily with domestic matters.
Following his latest insult to Mamdani, Jamie Beran, the CEO of Bend the Arc, said that “Trump is showing once again that he doesn’t care about Jewish people. He only uses us when it’s convenient for him, with no regard to the damage he does to the Jewish community or the danger he puts us in. Both Trump and disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo use smokescreen antisemitism to manipulate Jewish fears for their personal gain."
Trump's attack on Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, is hardly his first. In recent days, the president has slurred the assemblyman as a "communist lunatic" and indicated he'd cut off federal funding from New York if he wins the election. With support from Republican members of Congress, he's also threatened to strip Mamdani's US citizenship and have him deported from the country if he attempts to interfere with deployments of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to carry out mass deportations.
But although Trump has often invoked "antisemitism" to justify his efforts to punish pro-Palestine speech, he's long degraded Jewish people who vote in ways he disagrees with. During the 2024 election, he ranted that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion"—an insult to the 79% of Jewish voters who voted for his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. Before that, he'd repeatedly referred to Jewish Americans who do not vote for him as "disloyal" to Israel, a country in which they do not live.
In recent weeks, the Republican Party has been dogged by several scandals related to antisemitism. Last month, a leaked group chat of Young Republican operatives—including several who worked for the New York GOP—was revealed by Politico to be full of praise for Adolf Hitler and jokes about gas chambers. Shortly after, Trump's pick for the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, had his nomination tanked after it was revealed that he'd described himself as having a "Nazi streak."
And over the past week, the Heritage Foundation—the influential right-wing think tank behind Trump's Project 2025 agenda—has dealt with discord in its own ranks after its leader, Kevin Roberts, stridently defended right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson's friendly interview with self-described fascist and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
"The antisemitism smears against Zohran Mamdani increasingly fall flat because people are learning to see through smokescreen antisemitism," Beran told Common Dreams. "That is, how bad actors who have never joined our work, or any work, to actually end antisemitism, instead only use antisemitism to promote themselves and their agendas—which harm Jews, our loved ones, and our neighbors. Trump and his allies claim to defend Jews, yet ignore antisemitism in their own ranks."
"Jewish leaders who actually want to end antisemitism know that leaders like Zohran understand that a strong democracy keeps Jews—and all of us—safest," she continued. "Jews exist across many identities, from immigrants, to trans people, from Black and brown people, to those with disabilities who are struggling to afford life in the city. And actually trying to end antisemitism and all bigotry requires all of us.”