We watched in horror and fear as Robert Davis, a retired 64-year-old man was beaten by police in the streets of New Orleans. Is this how our senior citizens, our teachers are treated? The retired, 64 year old schoolteacher was beaten to a pulp by police to teach him a lesson. The lesson to learn? For being black and living? And on their BEAT. The police claim he was intoxicated. Mr. Davis claims he was not intoxicated. He was merely buying cigarettes and asking about curfew.
If Mr. Davis was a white, retired, 64 year old citizen/tourist in the French Quarter after dark he would have been patted on the back, given a takee outee Mai Tai in one hand and a double gin Hurricane in a sipee cup in the other, adorned with Mardi Gras love beads, walked to his hotel, tucked in bed with a chocolate mint and a goodnight prayer of “come back and see us some time.”
New Orleans, Bourbon Street has mandated public intoxication as part of the French Quarters economy since Napoleon’s sisters opened the Court of Two Sisters centuries ago.
The violent criminal reaction of the police reminds us of the beating of Rodney King. It reminds us of white power at it’s ugliest in a history of lynching. Where white power interprets black individuals living as a crime of the state as in Emmett Tillett. If the cameras were not there, if the AP photographer did not capture the moment, Mr. Davis could have been killed.
It is heart wrenching to hear Mr. Davis claim he was not drunk. NO ONE deserves to be beaten up for drinking. When first visiting New Orleans after Katrina, President Bush recalled with a sincere, nostalgic glee his Bourbon Street party days to his friend FEMA director friend Brownie. I wonder if President Bush was ever beaten when he was “ in his drinking days” on Bourbon Street. But then he wasn’t a teacher, he wasn’t 64 and he isn’t black. And is the police, and the federal police ever had him against the wall, he was asked as the night stick came down “who’s your daddy?”