[Post updated, 9/2/10]

A group of like-minded criminal justice reform advocates is soliciting donations to buy a full-page ad in the Times Picayune next week to protest Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s plan to expand the Orleans Parish jail.

Gusman is proposing a new jail that ultimately will housing about 5,800 people, says the group — up from its existing 3,552 beds. The advocates hope to start a citywide conversation about the proposal by soliciting donations of $22.39 — the daily cost the city pays the sheriff for each inmate. The group also is asking donors to consider what else the city could spend the $22.39 on.

“We’re hearing everything from mental health programs, after school programs, to better street lights and fixing the potholes in the French Quarter,” says Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, which is headquartering the effort. “I think it really highlights the fiscal tradeoff the city is making when [it decides] to focus on expanding the jail instead of other services.”

The ad will cost $12,000 and is expected to run next week, Kaplan says.

“In just a few days we have had about 250 contributions, and we’ve raised over $5,000 in grass-roots donations,” she says. “I think what we’re seeing is definitely a groundswell of support for reform of Orleans Parish Prison. This is just through email solicitation and word of mouth.

“The donations are coming from all kinds of likely and unlikely allies. We’re seeing contributions from former judges, former city council members, local musicians, average citizens.”

Some private donors have agreed to match the funds raised by the effort. You can make a donate online through  Paypal until the end of today. There’s an anonymous donation button, if you don’t want your name to appear in the ad.

“A jail comfortable for our community needs to be no more than 857 beds,” says Norris Henderson, executive director of Voice of The Ex-Offender (VOTE), which supports the effort. “We’ve been locking people up for convenience.”

According to the group: Currently 3,500 inmates are in the Orleans Parish Prison, 2,700 of whom are “city prisoners.” That represents the highest rate of detention of any urban jail in the country and is three times the national average. There have also been a series of documented civil rights issues with conditions at the jail.

If you are interested in more details, Karen Gadbois at The Lens has been chronicling the city’s efforts to convene a private advisory committee around the jail expansion process.

Sheriff Gusman responded with an emailed statement through his public relations firm, the  Ehrhardt Group. He questioned the statistics cited by  the group, saying “all of the projections from the Juvenile Justice Project and percentages relative to our population are wrong.”

The sheriff wants a smaller, more efficient jail complex, he wrote, pointing out that the pre-Katrina jail complex housed over 7,500 inmates. Although 4,200 beds is still more than the current 3,552 beds.

The statement also focused on the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, writing: “This special interest group’s willingness to allow the current inmate housing situation to continue, while pursuing its own agenda, is short-sighted and a threat to public safety.”

“Demanding an artificially small facility just to satisfy a quest for national comparisons, in other words to wish New Orleans to be safer, is unrealistic and it puts the public’s safety at risk,” Gusman continued.

The full text of the planned ad is pasted, after the jump, along with the text of Gusman’s statement.

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Three years ago, filmmaker Spike Lee and CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien gave video cameras to several New Orleans teens to document their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Brandon Franklin, saxophonist for To Be Continued Brass Band, was one of those children. (2:38 mark) He survived the floodwaters and went on to become a young father and a beloved and widely respected musician and teacher. He was gunned down on Mother’s Day this year at the age of 22.

Although TBC has been one of my favorite brass bands for years, I didn’t know Brandon very well and had only hung out with him a few times in the weeks just prior to his death. Yet writing an article about the loss of this young man has been one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever faced, harder in some ways even than reporting from Ground Zero after Hurricane Katrina. Before the levee breaches, folks in New Orleans joked after every storm, somewhat morbidly, about how we dodged a bullet, ‘The Big One’ that would surely one day hit and fill our bowl-shaped city with water. Five years after surviving a near fatal wound we, the ‘resilient’ ones, have finally turned a corner in the recovery of our city. But we’re also still dodging bullets that threaten to take out what we’ve fought so vigilantly these last five years to save - a future for New Orleans. We all must commit ourselves to addressing this threat if we’re truly going to redeem this city. Brandon’s story serves as a testimony to what’s worth saving in New Orleans and a portending of darker days should we fail to heed its warning.

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8:30-11:30am: ‘Bravery, Strength, Resilience’
Memorial Celebration Will begin at The Lower Nine Monument, Tennessee St. at N. Claiborne.  United States Congresswoman Maxine Waters to serve as keynote speaker.

10:00am-6:00pm: 5th Annual Katrina Commemoration March
Healing Ceremony located at Jourdan Road and North Galvez at the levee breach in the Lower 9th Ward. March starts immediately after reading of names, going down Claiborne Ave ending at Hunter’s Field (St. Bernard Ave. at Claiborne Ave).

* video courtesy of Lisa Palumbo

The hottest race for Congress this primary season turned out to be the Republican primary in the 3rd Congressional District, which stretches across Louisiana’s oil-soaked coastline from St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes on its eastern edge to St. Martin and Iberia parishes on its western side. The district also includes the coastal areas of Jefferson Parish. The main controversy involved the military records of the two front-runners, former House Speaker Hunt Downer of Houma, and Jeff Landry, an upstart (and well financed) challenger from New Iberia.

In the GOP primary, Landry called Downer, a retired major general in the Louisiana National Guard, “a disgrace to the uniform.” Downer responded that Landry has identified himself as “a veteran of Desert Storm” — even though he never set foot in Kuwait or Iraq during that war. Landry, who has support from elements of the Tea Party branch of the GOP, also blasted Downer, a former Democrat, for voting for taxes during his tenure in the state House.

The basis of Landry’s attack on Downer’s military record was Downer’s acceptance of the Kuwait Liberation Medal for his service during the first Gulf War in 1992. Downer spent 17 days in Kuwait during the conflict; Landry was stationed in the U.S. during that same period and left the service with the rank of sergeant.

“I have never claimed to have served in Iraq,” Landry explained to a reporter when questioned about his claim to be a Desert Storm veteran. “The only reason I didn’t go is because the war ended so quickly. I certainly never tried not to go.”

That’s still not quite the same as actually being there, even if it was only for 17 days. Landry further accused Downer of “using political connections and rank to get promotions while the rest of us sweated it out in Fort Hood.”

Sweating it out at Fort Hood? Gee, that must have been awful … while so many others had it so easy in Kuwait and Iraq.

Sen. Mary Landrieu joined U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon and other Gulf Coast leaders at the downtown Marriott hotel this afternoon to launch the “Ready 4 Takeoff Coalition,” a broad-based lobbying and public relations effort to attract federal compensation and defense spending to the region in the wake of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’ve been hit and hit and hit and hit again,” Landrieu said. “By storm after storm, flood after flood, and now the BP oil spill, and also the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling, which may cost us more jobs than the oil spill itself.”

The senator was ushered off to her next appointment without taking questions. The press kit for the event was short on details but said the coalition was “committed to building a better tomorrow for the innumerable families, workers, suppliers, manufacturers, and small and large businesses within the region.”

Its economic development initiatives include securing a $40 billion federal government contract for EADS North America to build a KC-45 Real Tanker (pictured) in Mobile, Ala.

Ready 4 Takeoff — get it?

“There’s going to be a significant amount of money paid to the federal government in the aftermath of the spill,” Landrieu said in prepared remarks. “And our congressional group is claiming that 80 percent of that money be spent in the Gulf of Mexico region. Whether it’s $5 billion or $20 billion, depending on if the courts find BP simply or grossly negligent, we’re going to spend that money from Florida to Texas.

“BP is going to replace every blade of grass, every fish destroyed, every pelican oiled, and we are going to hold BP accountable.”

The other politicians and commerce leaders from Mississippi, Florida and Alabama talked in similarly broad terms about BP being made to pay, but were also short on specifics when it came to defense spending, even though the coalition’s members include Airbus Americas, which is owned by EADS North America and stands to benefit directly from the tanker contract.

In addition to the refueling jet, the initiative seeks to push the federal government to purchase more Gulf Coast seafood for military and school contracts, accelerate revenue sharing from offshore oil and gas development, and acquire federal money for projects like the U.S. High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program in Alabama and Mississippi.

The roundabout nature of the rhetoric stood in contrast to the specific request for a $40 billion defense contract.

“We’re talking to each other, building relationships and coalitions,” Mobile Mayor Sam Jackson said after Landrieu had left the building.

“People are scared of what they can’t see, and what they don’t know,”  Melancon said. “It’s important the message gets out to people that the beaches are open and the seafood is safe to eat.”

Again, no mention of the military jets being safe to refuel. But you can sign the petition online, if you’re interested.