NO Murder Inc.
The first couple of times I left New Orleans to consider this life in Virginia I saw no real need to change the name of my email from NOLA page because I didn't see that it made much difference what the page was named and I had never cultivated much of an audience beyond a few loyal readers and I couldn't see how the fact that I was writing from a blog named NOLA about rural Virginia experiences would make that much difference to those few readers. But after Katrina, when New Orleans brought so much attention to itself, I shared on my very small scale, some of that attention and drew a handful of new readers who thought of me, I think, as a New Orleans-centric blogger, which is fitting, since I was living and writing from New Orleans after Katrina, from Oct.05 to June 06., camping in my only moderately damaged dwelling on Rocheblave. But after I left I didn't want to piggyback on any of that New Orleans attention, since I am not currently a New Orleanian, so I started this new page and have tried to keep my themes and stories from having anything to do with New Orleans, as there seemed to be no shortage of NO chroniclers.
But the recent murder spike in that city, 12 dead in 7 days, 6 of those in a less than 24 hour period, makes it hard for me to think about anything else and brings to mind what I have said to almost every person I have ever talked to about New Orleans and Katrina, and that is this--the tragedy of New Orleans existed long before Katrina and central to that tragedy is the killing, and how it never stops, or it only stops long enough for people to fool themselves into thinking that everything is ok now, parrr-teee.
As bad as these weekly numbers are, they only represent a recurring spike that has happened with a thankfully not too frequent regularity over the last 30 years. Except all the previous similarly horrific death counts were framed inside the statistic of a population twice as large. So let's say 24 dead in seven days and 12 of those within a 24 hour period. I know this way of looking at it is probably not allowed in statistics, that there are considerations I am leaving out, but think of it anyway.
I will never be able to rule out a return to New Orleans, if only seasonally. The world is large and we should all see as much of it as is practical to our circumstances, but New Orleans is under my skin for better or worse and I won't be able to go on with my whimsical and absurd blathering until I explore my feelings about the fact that murder seems to be the only fully functioning city enterprise at this date, post-Katrina one year and three months.
I know there will be another march on City Hall this week, in response to the twelfth killing, the artist and mother murdered on Rampart St., and her husband, a family doctor, also shot (but surviving) while shielding their two-year-old son. I do not mean to put too fine on point on this last bit, nor do I mean it as aimless criticism of the civic-minded, but I think that these marches most commonly only happen when the death count includes white people who happen to be productive members of the city. And then the citizenry will more or less rest while the death counts continue, month after month and year after year, but only include the lost boys (who only happen to be black) killing each other over turf and other issues we deem not worthy of our serious consideration.
There is so much about this problem that the individual marching citizens have no real control over and real change will only come with the laying of those essential foundation blocks which seem to forever elude the city, including better schools, more police, better leadership (I do not lay sole blame on the mayor, I still like him, yet I would change my vote if I could travel back in time). And it should not be that pigs have to fly before that money which does occasionally come to the aide of New Orleans is spent solely for its intended use instead of being lost forever into the pockets of those professional, political, and administrative criminals that are forever dooming New Orleans to failure. That they will all be murdered some day is unrealistic and should not be hoped for.
It is right to march and shout and demand change. But to me it all seems like part of the New Orleans pattern which has brought about no change. Marches comprised of not exclusively but mostly white people happen when white people get killed and for the most part only the black ministers of New Orleans hold vigils, and fasts, and prayer sessions to bring attention to that majority of the yearly murders--the black teenager killing the black teenager. The challenge of New Orleans is not one that is all about the division of the two predominant races but I think it is always partly about that. What if the white people of New Orleans marched on City Hall every time the weekly murder count got over some number that all agreed was unacceptable, but only included those hateful, threatening, unproductive gangbangers who always seem to be black and whom we just can't seem to get ourselves to care a good goddamn about (unless fear and hatred of can be construed as caring). In many cases you would only have to erase 13 or 14 years to think of these murderous bastards as babies. And babies are good. Babies are not threatening. That's my idea for the day. It would be different, a break in the pattern. I think different would be good.
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