LOUISIANA ERA MARCHES IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FUNERAL FOR DEMOCRACY
January 20, 2005
Inaugaration Day!
PHOTO BY FELICIA KAHN

Further Info: Jacqui Ceballos: jcvfa@aol.com

In New Orleans you can get your message across in a Mardi Gras parade fashion!.

Announcing that it is reopening the fight for Louisiana to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment , Louisiana ERA members carry their banner in the Jazz Funeral parade in New Orleans on inauguration day, Thursday, January 20th. The jazz funeral was to show opposition to most of President Bush's agenda . Louisiana's ERA committee marched in the parade to raise consciousness about the Equal Rights Amendment., for, though hundreds fought for it in the 1980's, many today have no idea what it is about. In this photo, Sandra Hufstetler, president of the new committee, with Jacqui Ceballos, Donovan Smith and unknown young woman carry the banner.

A second reason for the participation was the fact that, like many democratic laws and customs, the ERA was indeed killed in the state -- but will 'RISE FROM THE DEAD".

The parade began with three jazz bands playing tunes of old church spirituals and rolled through the streets of the French Quarter. The event had the appearance of a lugubrious Mardi Gras ball, a raucous street protest, Halloween freak show and traditional New Orleans jazz funeral rolled into one. A mock coffin containing copies of the Patriot Act and the U.S. Constitution. drawn on a horse pulled wagon hearse followed. Then came a line with dancers and people festooned with capes, masks, signs and anti-war buttons. Women in military uniforms and skeleton masks said they represented America's foreign policy: Death.

And , among all this, the plain ERA banner stood out and got the attention of onlookers and the paraders. In New Orleans you can get your message across in a Mardi Gras parade fashion!.

(pctured in photo: ERA president, Sandra Hufstetler, Jacqui Ceballos, Donavon Smith and an unknown young woman ... Felicia Kahn is taking the photo.. )