Saturday’s election for District 93 Representative is for “THE Civil Rights Seat.”

The House district once held by the Rev. Avery Alexander has changed its borders, dimensions, and demographics considerably from when the great civil rights leader first brought African Americans to Baton Rouge. It encompasses less of Central City and more of the Lower Garden District than when Alexander represented it. The Warehouse District has turned into a bastion of young professionals, and the CBD’s towers now hold apartments as often as offices. The French Quarter may be less of a neighborhood than it once was, but the Treme has reached national status as a destination for living. Homes that could not have sold for $100,000 a decade ago now sell for almost a million.  

District 93 is the heart of New Orleans, from the Port Terminals to Armstrong Park, and whomever represents it is the face of our city’s personal and corporate identity. The occupant must be someone extraordinary in his or her talents.

James Perry’s work as director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center puts him as one of the single individuals most responsible for helping Orleanians return to their city after the storm. His David versus Goliath fight against the machinations of the State’s Road Home Program — nearly on his own forcing that absurd bureaucracy to accept common sense procedures and appeals — made it possible for literally thousands of people to have a chance to repair their houses well enough to reoccupy them.

Fighting for the restoration of affordable housing, Perry has stood firm against encroaching racial discrimination in surrounding parishes.   And, unlike some of his opponents during the mayor’s race, Perry refused to tarnish his glowing civil rights record by devolving his campaign into cheap tactics of racial fear that do nothing but divide our city.

Perry, then and now, took the high road, never forgetting that race is a conversation we must continue to have in New Orleans, but recognizing that the mayor must represent all people — regardless of color, creed, or accident of birth.  And, upon Mitch Landrieu’s election, took that attitude into building the transition team’s plan for housing and the fight against blight.

It was from the foundations of his work that two local state legislators have been able to argue that the city needs the power to use eminent domain to force dead-beat property owners to repair their property. Perry’s focus on neighborhoods has no equal.  

From a practical standpoint, no candidate knows more about the “on the ground” practices and policies of local government than Perry. It was not an accident that he knew that the Youth Study Center was a jail, unlike his mayoral opponents. Perry has had firsthand knowledge of its faults and dangers from his non-profit work. It is an “in the trenches” type of recent experience of which few other candidates can boast.  He is ready to get to work from day One.  

Perry is the civil rights leader for the crises of today.  

Jefferson Parish

24th Judicial District Court: Deborah Villio

When last she ran for judge, The Louisiana Weekly endorsed Debbie Villio happily and were saddened by her narrow 51 percent–49 percent loss. Our editors have no hesitation in recommending her election this Saturday.

The veteran prosecutor has used the intervening two years well. As head of Jefferson Parish Code Enforcement, her work to clean up Jefferson Highway led to closure of a doggy hotel noted from driving crime into the surrounding, pre-dominantly African-American Shrewsbury neighborhood, and has kept numerous would-be slum lords from letting their properties fall into dilapidation, something for which countless renters have thanked Ms. Villio.

She has been equally praised by the residents of a Causeway neighborhood for stopping the construction of an industrial-style warehouse on a piece group zoned residential and in the middle of a neighborhood. Villio choose homeowners over rapacious developers with no care for the environment around them — or the existing law.

Her previous work with juvenile offenders helped hundreds opt for their cases to be reviewed by the Drug Court, allowing them to take drug treatment rather than jail time and giving those young people — who might have otherwise morphed into hardened criminals — a real second chance at life.

Few people have the criminal and civil breathe of experience for the bench as Deborah Villio, and for the residents of Metairie and much of East Bank Jefferson, please remember to vote for her this Saturday.

This article was originally published in the April 26, 2010 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper