Via NOLA.com:

Actor and activist Danny Glover is perplexed by New Orleans and its entrenched poverty and inequality.

“New Orleans is the most unique city in the country,” he told an audience Monday (Jan. 18) at Southern University, where he was the keynote speaker at the #BlackWorkersMatter summit, a Martin Luther King Day event focused on improving the job climate for minorities. He listed off the attractions that make tourists flock: Mardi Gras, Super Bowls, college sports championships. […]

His left-wing politics cropped up at regular intervals in his discourse, quoting Karl Marx and touting the “Bolivarian Revolution” of the late former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

Poverty in Venezuela indeed receded under Chavez, but mainline economists say his policies, exacerbated by the oil bust, left the country teetering on the brink of collapse.

Glover lamented that some of the leftist fervor of New Orleans’ past — the historic United Teachers of New Orleans union, for example — had been snuffed out. In the case of the hospitality industry, he said, unions have never built much of a presence, which Glover said has contributed to the city’s inequality.

In order for all this to change, he said, New Orleanians have to band together and exert pressure on the political powers that be. “We have to organize,” Glover said. “This is not about standing up here and making one speech, one day. This is 24/7, if we want to transform.”