II. A First Draft

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE FUGEES OF NOLA

When in the Course of events, human and otherwise, it becomes necessary for one people to break the political chains which have bound them to another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal place to which the Laws of Nature entitle them, a half-hearted respect to the opinions of the rest of the world requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be as self-evident as the sun on Ash Wednesday morning, that New Orleans was not created equal, that it is endowed by Nature with certain obvious cultural advantages, that among these are a Laissez-Faire disposition, an Innate Ability to create universally unrivaled Music and Cuisine, and the Resilience of cockroaches. —That to secure these advantages, Governments are instituted among Men, Women, In-Betweens, Crossovers, and the Gender Agnostic, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. —That whenever any Form of Government pimps to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to secure their Natural advantages. A Laissez-Faire disposition, indeed, will ensure that Governments long established will not be changed because it is too strenuous, too time-consuming, and for the most part, unimportant; and accordingly, all experience has shown, that people, especially New Orleanians, are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the conventions to which they are accustomed. But when a long, Mega-Krewe parade of abuses and encroachments, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Cultural Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to cast off such Government like a cheap whore or parasitic boyfriend, and to provide new Guards for themselves. —Such has been the patient suffering of New Orleans; and such is now the necessity which constrains it to change its former System of Government. The history of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct Object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over this city. To prove this, let a few Facts be submitted to a can’t-care-less world.


She has plundered our natural resources and ravaged our coasts and wetlands.

She has cut off our trade with many of our natural allies, such as Cuba and Venezuela, because they refuse to kowtow to Her every geo-political whim.

She has forced our state legislature into changing the legal age for purchasing and consuming alcohol from 18 to 21 by means of extortion, threatening to withhold millions in funds for infrastructure improvements and maintenance if Her demands were not met, thereby denying those old enough to fight in Her wars the liberty to buy and drink a beer.

She has promoted the development of some artificial up-start, desert town in Nevada as Her place of whoring, gambling, and general debauchery when we already had plenty of brothels, gambling houses, and opportunities for debauchery here, authentically.

She has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, Her merciless and savage commercial chain and franchise establishments, which are characterized by their cheap products, long checkout lines, and poor customer service, and whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all mom-and-pop entities.

She has allowed Her National Football League to hold its Superbowl in our backyard for the single purpose of flaunting in our faces the fact that our team has not played, and will probably never play, in such a game, engendering in us the sort of hopeless angst from which an adolescent male suffers when not allowed to mingle with, or even go anywhere near, his older sister’s hot slumber party friends who lounge around in skivvies one room away.

She has tried with all Her power and in all of Her Puritanical Self-Righteousness to convince us that an exposed female breast is somehow bad or dirty.

She has for years dumped her trash, sewerage, toxic waste, and various other refuses into the Mississippi River with the full knowledge that it all would eventually pass through our city and, in many cases, enter our water supply.

She has invaded us as part of a “civil” war with which we wanted to have nothing to do and, after we let Her “win,” put us under the charge of that silverware-stealing asshole from New Hampshire, Benjamin “Spoons” Butler.

She has continuously sent us Her Carpetbaggers and rarely accepted ours.

She has irrevocably fucked up the Claiborne Avenue neutral ground, our historic promenade, parade grounds, meeting place, and locus of culture, by placing Her silly little Eisenhower Interstate System above it.

She has won a World War largely with boats made in New Orleans and only given us in return a big propaganda vehicle, the National D-Day Museum, devoted mainly to revising Her early- and mid-20th century history and assisting present-day Americans in getting themselves off to fantasies of how great their empire is.

She has covered up the vast, nefarious conspiracy of Her agencies, officials, and operatives who saw to the elimination Her 35th president and pinned it all instead on an easily-duped New Orleanian, who’d failed at nearly everything else he did in life.

She has stolen Jazz from us and designated it as Her sole indigenous art form.

She has mandated the rendering of Her national anthem in our territory though it has little if any Soul and no Bounce whatsoever.

She has offered on the menus of Her restaurants ill-prepared, bland dishes and, after crowning such dishes with a half-inch of black pepper, called them “New Orleans Style.”

She has continuously misrepresented our dialect in films and made-for-TV movies, portraying our speech to sound like that of either twangy Texans or run-of-the-mill, Bible-Belt crackers.

She has continuously misused our words “Cajun” and “Creole,” mistaking them as interchangeable.

She has continuously misused our word “lagniappe” and consistently mispronounced it “lag-nap,” as if it were the sleep one needs after flying on a jet across numerous time zones.

She has come to our city and worn Mardi Gras beads when it was not Carnival season and believed that wearing such beads gave Her complete license to act like a barbaric imbecile.

She has visited our taverns and saloons and thought it okay to impatiently elbow Her way to the bar without ever, seriously or not, requesting pardon.

She has bought our booze and thought it okay to continuously remark how inexpensive it is and yet not leave tips.

She has danced with our brothers and sisters, groped them, and thought it okay to say that She was “going to the restroom” before leaving the establishment to find other brothers and sisters of ours to molest and desert.

She has hurled on our floors and pissed on our streets and thought it okay to leave and return to whichever pristine place from which She came without ever cleaning up a god-damned thing.


In almost every stage of these Oppressions, Transgressions, Impositions, and Nuisances We have Petitioned for Redress in the humblest terms of which we are capable: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Pimp is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our American brethren. We have warned them of attempts by their Puritanical Representatives to extend Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our settlement and of our way of life here. We have appealed to their instinctual leanings toward liberty, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these Oppressions, Transgressions, Impositions and Nuisances, which would inevitably fuck up our connections and correspondence. Those bastards have ignored us too. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of the fools on this planet, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the relatively good People of New Orleans, as solemnly as we can, publish and declare, That New Orleans is, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent; that it is Absolved from all Allegiance to America, and that all political connection between it and that Bitch, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a Free and Independent Nation, it has full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, determine its own Holidays, identify its own Heroes, and to do all other Acts and Things which it Damn Well Pleases. And for the support of this Declaration, with a quasi-firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, whatever that is, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and lack thereof, and our somewhat-less-than-sacred Honor.



[Note to fellow Fugees and all others who wish to support, or become a part of, our new nation: Your responses to this draft, including (but not limited to) any additional complaints, are welcomed; submit them to the Drafting Committee here.]

Storyville, where the Americas came to whore.

BENJAMIN "SPOONS" BUTLER.

Yeah, this guy acted alone.

Dennis Quaid, chere.