Just after midnight Saturday, two buses loaded with 80 people pulled out of Atlanta headed to New Orleans for the "Our Right to Return, Vote and Rebuild" march.
Only a few of the passengers were New Orleans natives, but all had the same goal of claiming a right to return and protecting the right to vote for thousands who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Similar busloads traveled from Chicago, Houston and Dallas. Others drove their own vehicles.
“We must do this,” Janice Mathis, Rainbow/PUSH Southern regional director, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “This is America. If we don’t keep these issues before the public and the politicians, nothing will happen. These people must be able to vote, and they must have a right to return to New Orleans."
Civil rights organizations and black politicians want a delay in the planned April 22, and they want the state to make greater attempts to ensure that all displaced New Orleans residents have an opportunity to participate in the election.
But should their efforts be fruitless, everyday people-turned-activists are doing all they can to make evacuated Big Easy residents' voices heard.
Snaking his Mercedes through a cluster of low-income rentals in a corner of Houston densely packed with Hurricane Katrina evacuees, Eusi Phillips stops at each complex and makes two deliveries: a stack of absentee voter forms for the front office, and fliers he tapes above washing machines urging tenants from New Orleans to cast their ballot in the April 22 election back home.
In the laundry rooms, Phillips hopes to find Louisiana's newest power bloc of voters.
"It's a matter of circling the wagons," said Phillips, 27, who has been canvassing Houston apartments each weekend and has built a voter information Web site. "In communities like the Lower Ninth Ward, how are they going to have a say in what happens there if we don't reach these people and get them to vote?"
