In late 2011, Together Baton Rouge proclaimed its first victory with the reopening of the Blue Grass Bridge in the Glen Oaks area. The bridge had been shut down for 18 months, inconveniencing dozens of residents in the subdivision, and TBR had successfully lobbied city officials to get it repaired and reopened.
As Business Report details in its new cover story, it was a relatively minor neighborhood win for TBR. But it had major significance for the fledgling group, then less than a year old: It showed the effectiveness of community organizing.
A few months later, TBR took on a far bigger and more controversial issue—a dedicated property tax to fund the failing Capital Area Transit System. Though other organizations, including the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, had been working on transit reform for months, TBR’s involvement helped narrowly tip the scales in favor of the tax. The win put the group on the map—and squarely in the cross hairs of those who had opposed the measure.
In the years that would follow, TBR took on a host of other issues to address the problems in Baton Rouge that stem largely from the city’s poverty and socioeconomic disparity—from food deserts, health care access in underserved neighborhoods and payday lending to police reform and opposition to the city of St. George incorporation effort.
As the group racked up victories, due in whole or in part to its efforts, it attracted supporters, genuinely moved by its causes. It also drew critics, who felt TBR’s name and frequent characterization as a faith-based, grass-roots organization was inherently misleading.
Then, in 2016 TBR tackled the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, a lucrative incentive long cherished by manufacturers. Describing the program as corporate welfare, TBR produced a report showing the ITEP had deprived local governments of $13.7 billion from 2006-2016 alone, while failing to create the local jobs it was supposed to generate. Just weeks later, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order scaling back the incentive and overhauling the program.
With the ITEP issue, TBR—and the statewide network it has since helped grow, Together Louisiana—catapulted itself into a whole new realm, where big money, big business and politics converge. Though the group continued to portray itself as a local organization intent on helping the community, it had picked a fight with the most powerful interests in the state. Those who had considered TBR little more than an annoyance suddenly realized it was a force with which to be reckoned. The gloves came off.
In January, businessman and industrial contractor Eddie Rispone started an inclusive sounding group of his own, Baton Rouge Families First, that made going after TBR its first order of business. In a five-minute video circulated on social media, the group questions TBR’s tactics, motives and affiliation with the Industrial Areas Foundation, a Chicago-based network of community organizations that has become a pejorative of the right, not in the least because its founder was the left-leaning activist Saul Alinsky and its best-known prodigy was Barack Obama.
The video presents a clearly biased perspective of TBR that, if not altogether untrue, is unfair. But it is significant because it underscores the very real vitriol a group that is supposed to be about togetherness has engendered from an influential segment of the community.
Read the full cover story, which includes a profile of Together Baton Rouge lead organizer Broderick Bagert and a story on Eddie Rispone and Baton Rouge Families First. Send your comments to editor@businessreport.com.
