So ... I just arrived in Louisiana two hours ago and am writing from Karen Carter's campaign headquarters on Canal Street in New Orleans. This is my second time in the area post-Katrina, and it'll be interesting to see how much has changed since the DNC Spring Meeting took place down the street at the Sheraton.

Stoller set some ambitious goals for the next three weeks, and we'll see what we can't do about meeting those expectations. For starters, I'll be spending a good deal of time covering the Carter campaign ... hopefully giving the readers of MyDD a window into the effort. It's important to note that I will not be coordinating my posts with anyone on the campaign and am basically going to report what I see in text, photos and video. I don't work for Karen Carter, I am working for you.

Karen Carter for Congress
That said, Carter is the endorsed candidate and hopefully we'll be able to raise a bit of money for the campaign, recruit some volunteers and find other ways to help defeat "Dollar" Bill Jefferson. We all recognize it's high time to drain the swamp in D.C., and if the American people are ever going to believe we intend to clean up the House, we have to prove we are willing to clean out our own. It's no secret, the people of this area need a lot of help from strong representation in the Congress. Dollar Bill was stripped of his committee assignments by Democratic leadership in the last congress and there is no reason to believe the new Speaker will be moving to re-instate them anytime soon. As one local put it to me, "He [Jefferson] is like Eleanor Holmes Norton, but with a vote." To the extent that individual congressmen have their own levers of power inside the Capitol to deliver for their constituents, Jefferson is impotent -- and this area simply cannot afford impotence during this time in its history.

Post-Katrina
My second goal is to shed some light on post-Katrina conditions in and around New Orleans specifically. Unfortunately, the last scenes most of us beyond the border recall are of stranded Americans at the Convention Center followed up by platitudes and pledges made by our representatives to "Re-Cover, Re-Build, Re-New Orleans." I'm not native, so I'll be relying on members of the local community, online and offline, to act as guides over the next three and a half weeks. Which leads me to the next aim:

The Local Blogosphere
From what I can tell, there is a pretty tight knit community down here. It's always a bit awkward parachuting into a new state and writing as if I am some sort of authority on the important issues they've been covering for years now. I'm not ... they are, especially with everything they've been through over the past year. Hopefully we can use this platform to introduce you to some of key players locally who have been writing about the above long before my plane landed, and will continue doing so long after I head back up to Connecticut. As soon as I hit submit on this entry, the next order of business is to get in touch with a few of them and hopefully hook up this weekend. You'll find their work linked on the right side of nearly all my posts from Louisiana. Hopefully they are the sites you'll continue to visit when this race is over ... because we all know the rebuilding effort will last long past December 9th.

Stoller hit on race in his introductory post as well. I'm not quite sure what justice I can do the topic during a three and a half week stay, but from the little I've learned about the Carter/Jefferson campaign thus far, there are a number of interesting racial dynamics at play. Additionally, I hope to learn a bit more on the role undocumented workers are playing in the New Orleans re-construction effort.