<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/22/calvin-duncan-louisiana-maga-white-supremacy>
"The grand old criminal courthouse in New Orleans, encased by towering
neoclassical columns, is a building that has altered the course of Calvin
Duncan’s life at many junctures. First, in 1985, when he was sentenced to life
without parole for a murder he did not commit. Then, over decades, as he fought
to access his vital case records and was denied by judges the chance to
relitigate his case. Later, in January 2011, he appeared here and accepted a
deal that finally secured his freedom.
And then, in April of this year, on the steps outside, he placed his hand on a
Bible and swore an oath that would elevate him to elected office, having won
the race to become the court’s clerk – its chief administrative officer.
At his inauguration Duncan said he would prevent the numerous injustices he
faced within these walls from ever happening again. He was dressed in a tan
suit and tinted glasses, beaming as a throng of supporters chanted his name. “I
have always considered myself as a protector of the constitution,” he said, his
hands clasped. It was a moment of deep, resonant catharsis.
Duncan, now 64, left school with a ninth-grade education, but taught himself
the law while in prison. He had become one of the country’s most prolific
jailhouse lawyers, helping to secure the release of hundreds of people from
within the system. Freely elected in the state with the highest rate of
incarceration in the US, he had pledged to help reform it.
But this is Louisiana, where a hard-right Republican party, empowered by the
second presidency of Donald Trump, holds significant control amid faltering and
divided political opposition. A few months after Duncan’s victory in November
2025, the state found another way to knock him down. It moved to eliminate his
office entirely, and disenfranchise the thousands of New Orleanians who had
just voted him in.
A largely obscure, down-ballot local election transformed into a metaphor for
this era of competitive authoritarianism, where the desire for power at all
costs seemingly snuffs out even the most exceptional and historic achievements.
Duncan held office for only three hours before a court cleared the way for a
hastily passed law that abolished his position.
“Everything I was believing in had been crushed,” he recalls, as we sit in a
neatly kept living room at his modest home in the city’s seventh ward, a month
after it happened. “I believed in the democratic process. I was out there
saying ‘times have changed,’ but this [running for office] has told me ain’t
nothing changed. It’s still Reconstruction. They will take your seat just like
they did during Reconstruction.”
While his experience resonates with that period in history, when the promise of
change in the aftermath of the civil war was met with legalized white supremacy
in the south, it comes at a pointed moment in the present, as Black political
power in the same region faces a wave of new threats after the supreme court
gutted the
Voting Rights Act earlier in April."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
