by Dr. Kyshun Webster
Cowards Need Not Apply: Will Our Next Mayor Have the Courage to get into Good Trouble and not Surrender to Washington’s War on Dissent?
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has exposed a brutal truth: freedom of speech in America has become a weapon, and in New Orleans, the nonprofits that rebuilt this city after Katrina now find themselves in the crosshairs.
Twenty years after the levees broke, the inequities persist like floodwaters that never receded. Black neighborhoods still lack infrastructure. The Lower Ninth Ward remains a monument to broken promises. Climate planning ignores the most vulnerable. And the nonprofit organizations fighting these battles—advocating for the voiceless—are being systematically targeted by a political ethos that has turned civic engagement into a death sentence.
The Staggering Hypocrisy
Charlie Kirk built an empire on the freedoms he claimed to defend. His Turning Point USA operated as a nonprofit, mobilizing young people and wielding political influence. This was celebrated as patriotic, as exercising First Amendment rights in service of American values.
Yet when progressive nonprofits in New Orleans do precisely the same thing—advocating for climate justice, racial equity, and remedies for Katrina’s lingering devastation—they stand the risk of being branded “leftists,” “communists,” and “domestic terrorists.” What was once celebrated as “good trouble” in the tradition of John Lewis is now being framed as “bad news” when it advances a progressive agenda. Leaders who continue to challenge the systemic failures that keep our poorest communities underwater, easily become the next targets for destruction.
Kirk’s nonprofit work was “freedom.” Ours is sedition. “Good trouble” gets reframed as “bad news” the moment it challenges existing power structures. This false equivalence poisons democracy: advocacy is only legitimate when it reinforces existing power. Challenge that power, and you become the enemy.
Modern McCarthyism Meets Municipal Crisis
We are living through a new McCarthy era, and this time the blacklist comes with bullets. The targeting of nonprofit leaders—particularly leaders of color organizing around equity—mirrors the Red Scare with chilling precision. But the damage could extend far beyond intimidation. Federal and state funding for organizations addressing climate change, equity, and inclusion, and food access have already begun evaporating. Community Development (CDBG) and Community Service (CSBG) block grant resources which sustains critical community work could be systematically eliminated by a national political climate that increasingly views social justice as sedition.
In New Orleans, these organizations serve as our community’s conscience. After Katrina, when federal response demonstrated whose lives mattered and whose didn’t, nonprofits became the megaphones for the abandoned. They filled not just service gaps, but the moral void left by institutional neglect. Now, they face the potential disappearance of their lifelines while our political candidates remain conspicuously silent about how they’ll respond.
The Infrastructure Question No Candidate is Answering
Here’s what every mayoral candidate must address: When federal and state funding dries up—and it will—how will you support the humanitarian infrastructure that serves our most vulnerable communities?
As I have tuned into many of the debates, I was left wondering, “Are these candidates even thinking about alternatives for the inevitable? Have they developed concrete plans to replace the millions in federal dollars that sustained climate resilience work, housing advocacy, and equity initiatives, while already faced with a $100 million dollar deficit? Or are they simply hoping the problem resolves itself while organizations collapse and communities suffer?
The reality is stark: our local politics and resources could be shaped—or strangled—by the national political climate. Washington’s culture war isn’t abstract theory—it’s pervasive; it threatens to become fiscal policy that determines whether New Orleans can address climate vulnerability, housing instability, and racial inequity. When federal grants disappear because an organization dared advocate for environmental justice, what will be the city’s response? When progressive private philanthropy is threatened with RICO charges for continuing investment in DEI, how will this work continue? And when trickle down state funding is weaponized against equity work, where will mayoral candidates stand?
This isn’t merely hypothetical. The warning signs are here. Organizations will face staff cuts. Programs will shut down if Trumps proposed budget ever passes. The infrastructure that rebuilt New Orleans after abandonment risks being dismantled while our would-be mayors discuss everything except how they’ll fill potholes for negate the critical infrastructure our non-profits have provided this community.
The Questions That Demand Answers
Will you create alternative funding mechanisms—through local budgets, public-private partnerships, or municipal bonds—to sustain nonprofits when Washington turns off the tap?
Do you have the courage to redirect city resources toward organizations blacklisted by the national political machine, knowing it will make you a target?
Will you protect leaders of color organizing around Katrina inequities that still poison our communities, or abandon them to modern McCarthyism?
Can you articulate a vision for how New Orleans maintains its nonprofit infrastructure independent of federal and state support, or will you simply watch it collapse?
Will you stand up for our fundamental right to address challenges rooted in systemic racism and federal neglect, or let partisan theater dictate which issues are “acceptable”?
Will you be up for fighting the good fight and getting into “good trouble”—in the tradition of those who came before us—speaking unadulterated truth to power even when Washington frames it as “bad news”?
Or will you be another politician who chose cowardice over conviction, who protected your career while your community drowned—again?
This is a city that survived Katrina through solidarity when government failed us. Our nonprofit leaders are modern-day freedom riders, that are being forced into silence by a toxic political miasma that transformed advocacy into treason. The soul of this city hangs in the balance as we elect new leadership.
We’ve never backed down from a fight worth having. The question is whether our next mayor will fight alongside us—with concrete plans and allocated resources—or cower while New Orleans becomes another casualty in America’s political war against progressivism.
Choose wisely, New Orleans. Everything depends on it.
Kyshun Webster, Sr., Ph.D is a contributing guest columnist, applied social scientist and Soros Open Society Equality Fellow