Boycott continues in New Orleans City Council
Times-Picayune (excerpt)

One of the stranger aspects of the boycott of New Orleans City Council meetings this month by Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and Jon Johnson is the fact they have never explained their reasons. In fact, they have never even admitted they are deliberately skipping the sessions. Given an opportunity to explain themselves Sunday morning in a friendly setting, a half-hour interview on WYLD-FM's "Sunday Journal, " the two council members shed little new light on their motives. Did they walk out of the May 3 meeting because they were upset they had just lost a vote on a proposed City Charter amendment they had expected would pass? Or was it to prevent action on the next item on the agenda, ratifying the interim appointment of Errol George to the District B seat Stacy Head had left the day before? Or did Hedge-Morrell and Johnson, who are both African-American, just want to express personal or political animosity toward Head, the white candidate who defeated black rival Cynthia Willard-Lewis last month for an at-large seat that many black leaders feel should be held by a black official?