Billy Sothern

Billy Sothern, a New Orleans anti-death penalty lawyer and a Soros Justice Media Fellow, is a frequent contributor to The Nation and the author of Down in New Orleans: Reflections From a Drowned City (California).

Currently

  • Cruel and Unusual Punishment

    May 5, 2008

    As executions resume in the wake of a Supreme Court decision, we are reminded that a life cannot be willfully ended without violence.

2007

  • Waiting for Godot in a Wasteland

    December 13, 2007 Subscribe

    The most devastated neighborhood in America makes an ideal backdrop for a morally ambiguous play about abandonment.

  • Bobby Jindal: Not Much to Celebrate

    October 29, 2007

    Some herald the election of an Indian-American Republican governor as a milestone, but the poor and black citizens of Louisiana aren't among them.

  • New Orleans Is Us

    August 29, 2007

    If the American people continue to avert their eyes from the slow death of an abandoned city, their communities may soon be next to fail.

  • Goodbye, St. Thomas

    August 10, 2007

    In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans's ruling class is demolishing public housing to make way for private businesses and expensive condos.

  • Jefferson Should Go

    June 6, 2007

    The people of New Orleans suffered another blow with the indictment of Representative William Jefferson. They deserve better.

  • On the Porch in the Seventh Ward

    May 22, 2007

    As the New Orleans Jazz Fest unfolded, a down-home celebration, bright with beads, sequins and feathers, took place in the city's poorest neighborhoods.

  • A Cruel and Unusual Punishment

    April 24, 2007

    Billy Sothern, member of the legal team that represented Patrick Kennedy, convicted of child rape, in a landmark Supreme Court death penalty decision this week, explained the issues at stake in this 2007 essay.

  • A Question of Blood

    March 27, 2007

    History repeats itself for the white residents of St. Bernard Parish, who tried and failed to restrict rentals in their devastated streets to blood relatives, barring blacks and Hispanics.

  • In Lieu of Flowers

    March 13, 2007

    Mourning a slain young mother in New Orleans, the only way to dignify her death is to try to create real justice here.

2006

  • A Second-Line Revival

    January 25, 2006

    Storm-whipped New Orleanians returned to the city to join a joyful second-line parade, a revival of music that made real the triumph of the city's spirit.

2005

  • Left to Die

    December 14, 2005

    If a society is measured by the treatment of its prisoners, we are in deeper trouble in New Orleans than we realize. The biggest prison crisis since Attica is now unfolding in the devastated city, with inmates jammed into inadequate facilities, often abused and unrepresented by attorneys or advocates.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Podcast

RadioNation with Laura Flanders, 12/1/08
This week: Imagining a new new deal, with Howard Zinn, Frances Moore Lappe, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Eric Schlosser and...FDR himself. Plus: Ennis Carter and Stephen Duncombe on the political propaganda legacy of the WPA. (13mb mp3)

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