James Perry 2010 - Mayor for a City that Works

NEW ORLEANS – In the first major gaffe in the New Orleans Mayor’s race, each of the four status quo candidates, one by one, swung and missed in response to an important direct question on the Youth Study Center.

Gina Warner, CEO of the Afterschool Partnership, asked:

“What is your position on the Youth Studies Center?”

It became apparent from the answers by Troy Henry, John Georges, Leslie Jacobs and then Ed Murray that they had absolutely no idea what the center was, what its mission is, nor the controversy surrounding its rebuilding.

“Are you kidding me?  The rebuilding of the Youth Studies Center is one of the most important opportunities to change the failed dynamic that has a stranglehold on our criminal justice system,” said James Perry who has made solving the City’s public safety crisis the focus of his campaign. “The answer is not to build bigger jails, use bigger guns and simply arrest more – that’s why we are in the mess we are today.  The answer is also not to elect empty suits with deep pockets who don’t have even the most fundamental understanding of what the problems are and what the next Mayor must do to make our city safer.”

The candidates’ answers:

Troy Henry: I am in favor of the Youth Studies Center. I am in favor of using the youth studies center in collaboration with all the revised library systems that are also being built. So we want to be smart and prudent about how we use our current resources today so where it makes sense to consolidate let’s do that but where it makes sense to keep them separate and individual, let’s do that. But we need to make sure we have the Youth Studies Center.

(Nervous laughter)

John Georges: I’m for them as well. We have to be about our facilities. Libraries are certainly one group. It’s all about budgeting and available dollars and the idea is to do like the board of regents … it’s also a budgetary issue.

(Nervous laughter)

Leslie Jacobs: I think it’s critically important for kids, our students to have a place to go outside of school. Schools have a $1.6 billion rebuilding plan, we need to look how to locate each of these youth studies centers inside our of our school buildings. I think they are important but given the budgetary crisis the more we can co locate with a library, school and other civic centers the easier it will be to staff them and the easier it will be to maintain them.”

(Nervous laughter)

Edwin Murray: I, too, am in support of youth study centers. I think it would be great if we could somehow figure out a way to put them in schools and figure out how to just keep the schools open a little longer and also use library systems across the city.  It’s important also to try to work in in recreational activities some kind of way to make sure that after school Youth Study Centers to be involved as well to encourage kids in extracurricular activities

(Nervous laughter)

James Perry: I want to be clear because I think some folks misunderstood this issue. The Youth Studies Center is a jail. It is a prison. The subject of some very difficult litigation. Children have been imprisoned for long periods of time with no access to quality education at all.  We need children to have access to education despite incarceration. If you are locked up for 23 hours of a 24 hour day there is no chance we can decrease the recidivism rate. It’s about how we define success. When it comes to juveniles in this system, making sure they have a real educational opportunity so that the prison they are in does not define the outcomes of the rest of their lives.

(Raucous Applause)

James Perry has the executive experience as a non-profit CEO to navigate City Hall and the courage to fix what needs to be fixed. He has a record of building coalitions, building organizations, and making a real difference in people’s lives, whether it’s helping homeowners, fighting discrimination or standing up to politicians and exposing corruption.