'It's really a slap in justice's face': Black leaders speak on Caddo Sheriff election

On Dec. 12, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling in the Caddo Parish Sheriff's race made by retired Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bleich on Dec. 5.

The ruling said the runoff election proved to have at least 11 illegal votes cast and counted.

John Nickelson contested Henry Whitehorn's win in the runoff election by a one-vote margin, alleging a number of voter irregularities in a lawsuit. Whitehorn receive 21,621 votes while Nickelson received 21,620.

To some Black community leaders, these are just concerted efforts to suppress the Black vote.

Omari Ho-Sang, founder and organizing director of ASAP Shreveport and Louisiana coordinator for Black Voters Matter, said the the court rulings should serve as a call to non-voters in the Black community.

"Hopefully this is a wake-up call to our nonvoters, our jaded voters," Ho-Sang said. "The folks who believe that their vote doesn't matter or does not count. I hope that this signals to them that there are institutions, like the courts, that are being used at this point to essentially disenfranchise the vote. Disenfranchise voters and they would not be doing it if our vote did not matter − they're doing it directly because it does matter."

Ho-Sang said she understands how some voters can feel as if their vote does not count especially in this instance.

"If people were to look at this inversely − 'See we got out and voted and won by one vote and it still didn't work'," she said. "That's when we have to say, How do you work? How do we think? How do we work? How do we strategize to be able to push back against this very clear challenge to building our voting power. What do we need to do? Our community, especially when it comes to voting, our response to the lack of attention paid to our communities, the lack of attention addressing our issues, our response has been a freeze response.

"But we have to stop freezing, like we're freezing our vote. We're not voting. We're not getting out. We're not apprizing ourselves of what's going on. So it's like a freezing response but instead of having a freeze response, we need to have a very strategic response to what's happening."

Breka Peoples, head of the People's Promise, said she has seen firsthand how the powers that be utilize their power to discourage Black and brown people from voting since 2020.

"We as Black people should not experience voter suppression − this isn't 1965," Peoples said. "Our people are now realizing that in order for us to have any type of liberation, we must utilize our power and that power is at the voting polls. The people know that healthcare, housing, education and public safety will be on these upcoming ballots."

Elections are important and vital to our democracy, and all it takes is one vote to determine the outcome of an election, NAACP Louisiana President Mike McClanahan said.

"There's nothing that says that you've got to win, especially in elections, that you've got to win by five, 10, 20, 30, 100 votes − just one," McClanahan said. "I've seen persons get elected with one vote. I've seen issues decided by one vote and we have to hold that true to start another election. It's really a slap on justice's face."

McClanahan said the new runoff election will give an opportunity for the candidates to get voters engaged.

"Obviously, we need to get more people out to vote and I'm all for the process but I'm also for people participating in the process," he said. "When they participate in the process and it's done fairly, I think the fairness of the election should prevail. I can't speak for the judge. Hopefully the judge has the law on its side and doing what thus says the law. If not, then there's a remedy in that also − the appeal process and that's time consuming, costly. In the end, we are more than confident that justice will prevail."

'I think we have to do more than show up to vote.'

Voters should expect more of election challenging and become better informed, Ho-Sang said, and learn who their elected officials are.

"... we're going to have to have that level of knowledge of what's going on around us," she said. "We can't just live half-haphazardly anymore because we have targets on our backs and don't even know that, and I think also we have to do more than show up to vote. This moment calls for us to do more than that. We're going to have to start recruiting. We're going to have to start registering our neighbors, our friends, our children, our nieces and nephews. We're going to have to start taking them to vote. Put in the calendar."

Ho-Sang said her organizations Black Voters Matter and ASAP are continuing to organize voters within the community and not just ahead of the March 2024 elections.

"We're talking about the issues that are impacted by the Sheriff's Office," Ho-Sang said. It's bigger than the Caddo Parish sheriff's race but it's every office from the mayor to city council to the attorney general to the tax assessor to the CAO. All of that is so important and all of that connects directly with a day-to-day issue that we're dealing with. Whether it's the prices at the grocery store. Whether it's the quality of the meat, the fruit and the vegetables. Whether it's the quality of the education that our children are receiving or those bumps in the road. Whether it's those gunshots that you're hearing. All of that is connected with who we're electing so if we're just letting people go up in there, that means that we're not caring out the outcomes in our communities."

Black and brown people need to send a clear message that they know their power and will demonstrate it on March 23, 2024, Peoples said.

"The Honorable John Lewis warned us about the social revolution by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation," Peoples said. "So now it's time to prepare the people for that revolution."

If those who failed to vote in the Nov. 18 runoff had participated in the process, there would not have been a runoff or election challenging, McClanahan said.

"People sit at home and complain, complain, complain," McClanahan. "They watch the news, they complain. They ride down the street, they complain but the way to stop from complaining is to get involved. Go to the polls and vote. Go to the school board and talk. Go to the council members and voice your opinion. We have to get involve and stop complaining. We have to stop sitting at home and saying it ain't gone change because it will change if we all take an active part."

Follow Ian Robinson on Twitter @_irobinson and on Facebook at https://bit.ly/3vln0w1.

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This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Black community leaders share thoughts on Caddo Sheriff election