Showdown in Desire portrays the Black Panther Party in New
Orleans in 1970, a year that included a shootout with the police on
Piety Street, the creation of survival programs, and the daylong
standoff between the Panthers and the police in the Desire housing
development. Through interviews with Malik Rahim, the Panther; Robert
H. King, Panther and member of the Angola 3; Larry Preston Williams,
the black policeman; Moon Landrieu, the mayor; Henry Faggen, the
Desire resident; Robert Glass, the white lawyer; Jerome LeDoux, the
black priest; William Barnwell, the white priest; and many others,
Orissa Arend tells a nuanced story that unfolds amid guns, tear gas,
desperate poverty, oppression, and inflammatory rhetoric to capture
the palpable spirit of rebellion, resistance, and revolution of an
incendiary summer in New Orleans.
