Following months of protests against the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, Columbia University’s president has resigned, stating in her resignation letter that “we must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community.” She added that she remains “optimistic that differences can be overcome through the honest exchange of views.” It is an odd thing to talk about “polarization” in terms of students taking a stance against genocide and their university’s aid and ideological cover for it.

A law advertised as “constitutional carry”, backed by Jeff Landry and the Louisiana GOP, came into effect July 1st. This law explicitly legalizes the carrying of a concealed handgun, which had murky legal status before, and drops the age of those who are permitted to carry a concealed handgun from 21 to 18. Advocates have touted the law for its coherence with the second amendment as well as for far more dubious reasons of “public safety”.

The Jolie apartment complex in Shreveport had its power and water shut off on May 31st, before all residents had left. The complex had been plagued by mismanagement and had become a target for political action by the municipal government. Mayor Arceneaux has accused its owner of being a slumlord after the ownership of the complex fled the state and ceased paying water and electricity bills. Besides rent-paying tenants, the complex was also home to a large population of squatters.

Scalawag is approaching its one year anniversary. I originally started this blog because I was affected by the straight-line storm of June 2023, which knocked power out in Shreveport for ten days. The local news had not covered one human aspect of it, which was the impact it had on those who are susceptible to heat-related illness. By making a simple request for public data to LDH, I uncovered that over a hundred people had been hospitalized for hyperthermia in North Louisiana following the storm, a result of the unpreparedness of SWEPCO and the region in general to natural disasters.

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio national guard fired on a crowd of student protesters at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Four students were murdered by the guardsmen and nine more were injured. The protest, directed against the expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia, had begun peacefully, but contradictions between between the students and the relatively conservative townspeople of Kent had been stoked by the local political elites and the home-owning gentry.

“Tough-on-crime” policy has been the guiding light of Louisiana’s criminal justice system for decades, with the result that Louisiana leads not only the country, but the entire world in incarceration rates. Despite locking up more criminals per capita than any other comparable society, we still sport higher crime rates than supposedly “lax-on-crime” systems in other states and other countries, including Norway’s legal system, where there is no death penalty, the maximum sentence is 21 years, and where prisons are relatively easy on inmates.

It was certainly likely that John Nickelson, after being defeated in the Caddo sheriff election against Henry Whitehorn by a single vote, would challenge the results of the election. It’s not necessarily being a sore loser to want a recount after that kind of loss, and Nickelson did get one. A machine recount was performed, leaving the outcome unchanged, down to the vote differential. Team Nickelson, however, has still not accepted the loss, and has made a series of allegations about the machine recount and the validity of certain ballots.

2023 has been a rough year for the Louisiana Democrats. This is the year the Louisiana GOP gained a supermajority in the state legislature, and this is the year gubernatorial power returned to the GOP. October 14th’s election saw the GOP candidate Jeff Landry defeat Democrat Shawn Wilson in the first round primary election with 51% of the vote, just above the simple majority needed to avert a runoff election in November.

The derecho of June 16th, affecting East Texas, Oklahoma, and Northwest Louisiana, knocked power out for over a quarter of a million SWEPCO customers during the longest and hottest days of the year. Heat advisories were issued by the National Weather Service in the aftermath of the storm, with the heat index reaching over 115 degrees Fahrenheit at peak on June 20th. Two heat related deaths were confirmed by local media.