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.

“An illuminating look at the Black Panther Party’s history in New Orleans, the turbulent racial climate of New Orleans in the 1960s, and the founding of the local party, which was committed to challenging discriminatory white political-power structures.” —Times-Picayune

Orissa Arend is a mediator, freelance journalist, and psychotherapist in private practice in New Orleans. She has written for the Louisiana Weekly, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Times-Picayune.