SIVACRACY.NET

Black culture giveth, and the Left taketh away.

At 11 AM Thursday morning, various groups began marching behind the Treme Brass Band down Rampart St. to participate in a jazz funeral for democracy. This may sound like a joke but it isn't, despite the media's jocular tone. A jazz funeral is provided only for musicians or for prominent members of the African-American community; it is not something performed for tourists.

The jazz funeral is a burial ritual with a deep metaphysical structure. On the way to the cemetery, the hired brass band plays only dirges and mourners drag their feet. On the return from the cemetery, the bass drummer shifts the band into its upbeat songs (e.g., "When The Saints Go Marching In") and mourners kick up their heels and dance. The march to the cemetery is a eulogy for the body and symbolizes the acceptance of death; the walk back functions both as a celebration of the deceased's life and as a musical blast to carry the deceased's soul to heaven.

Four or five hundred people marched quietly around the perimeter of the French Quarter, as if it was a funeral. When we reached Jackson Square, where several speakers were scheduled, a tophatted man pulled his hay cart in front to give us one last view of democracy in the coffin. There were opening remarks by organizers that spoke directly to the ritual: Democracy under Bush is dead (we heard the dirges). Now we would begin the hard work of taking the country back. (Soon there would be songs of celebration.) Otherwise it was a conventional white left-liberal demonstration, complete with signs, buttons, and earnest shouting.

After a rousing poem by a working-class African-American woman, the first speech was given by a "radio revolutionary" from Tampa Bay, a 40-year-old African-American man, I forget his name. He claimed democracy had been dying for a very long time -- fair enough -- then became specific about his timeline: "From George Washington to George W., America has never really practiced democracy." The crowd quieted. A minute later, as he launched into a familiar litany of racist actions under Reagan, I was already gone (literally); there were no cheers behind me. No one is taking back the country who equates the first and forty-third presidents. Two hours worth of cooperative spirit punctured in two minutes.

If not for the chance to walk alongside the tubas and speak to four of my students, I would have felt the morning a waste of time.