Word: mardy
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...With Mardi Gras season under way, New Orleans was caught up last week in its traditional flurry of preparations for the 10-day pre-Lenten revelry. But much of the euphoria that usually surrounds the celebration has been replaced this year by anger and anxiety. Reason: an ordinance passed by a unanimous vote of the seven-member city council last December that requires the racially and sexually homogeneous private organizations that stage the carnival to stop discriminating or lose their right to parade...
...Momus -- both all white, all male -- have announced that they will not parade, citing government intrusion. Other krewes have threatened to cancel their parades or relocate them in future years unless the ordinance is radically altered. Such an exodus would be devastating for New Orleans, which depends on Mardi Gras to pack its hotels with thousands of wild-spending tourists who help give the local economy an annual half-billion-dollar boost...
...Because Mardi Gras is so indelibly a part of New Orleans, the debate is threatening the city's social and cultural fabric. New Orleans now has a 62% black majority, largely because of white flight. A Times-Picayune poll last week showed that 66% of voters, including most blacks, want the ordinance repealed. The law's chief sponsor, councilwoman Dorothy Mae Taylor, was reviled on posters and T shirts as THE GRINCH THAT STOLE MARDI GRAS. Said carnival spokesman Beau Bassich: "The law wasn't needed. It tampers with a very special tradition that makes New Orleans' appeal so unique...
Barely a month after blacks and whites in New Orleans banded together to defeat former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in the Louisiana Governor's race, the city's newfound unity has been shattered by a controversial antidiscrimination law. For more than a century, many of the elite Mardi Gras krewes, which organize colorful carnival balls and parades, have been white, all-male organizations. But in a unanimous decision last week, the city council ruled that any krewe that bars blacks, Jews or women could not only lose its parade permit but also face criminal penalties...
...proposed by city councilor Dorothy Mae Taylor, who is black, will not affect Mardi Gras until 1993, leaving the council committees time to review, and possibly revise, the penalties. The legislation "could kill Mardi Gras," warns Beau Bassich, a member of the Mardi Gras Coordinating Committee. Says Loyola professor Edward Renwick: "To bring up such a divisive issue so shortly after this election seems to blow the coalition asunder. We're right back to where we started. Taylor is the Grinch who stole Mardi Gras...