Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

The military patrols in front of my house after Hurricane Katrina: Hummers, guns, and soldiers

I moved to New Orleans sight unseen about 14 years ago.  It’s a city with much charm and beauty, tons of eccentricities and eccentrics, and it’s own brand of food, architecture and music that make you feel like you’re not quite in the US.   For as much culture shock as I experienced when I first moved down here from cold, efficient, clean, crime free,  marvelously developed and governed Minneapolis, I’ve learned to love my quirky home.  I really don’t feel right when I go other places these days.  It always feels like something is missing.   I come back again to New Orleans own brand of wonderful food which rivals its music and architecture for my love and adoration.  All of them are cheap, readily available, and wonderful.  For those of us that live here, those cultural things completely outweigh the lack of amenities and civilities found around the rest of the country.

Hurricane Katrina changed some things.  I was hoping that the aftermath would bring the best parts of this city to light so that we would be appreciated as the National Treasure that is New Orleans.  It seems folks were fascinated with us for awhile, but there’s always a new thing to distract our fickle media and citizenry.  For every celebrity and charity that is still hanging in here with our painfully slow recovery, there is now the old refrain that there is something ‘not quite right’ with us.

The first thing I would like to do is to ask Time Magazine if this headline is really necessary?  Is Baghdad Now Safer Than New Orleans? The article uses murder statistics around the world to compare to the level of violence experienced in Baghdad.  Even this quote shows the reach to meet the comparison.  It further dismisses the roots of our problems which are related to our huge problems with black-on-black crime associated with drug use, poor education systems, and basic lack of opportunity for inner city teenagers.  How do the problems of a largely ignored, poorly run and funded US city compare on any level with a city in a developing nation that we invaded only to unleash a set of bloody tribal wars?

Let’s go to the numbers: Caracas, with about 3.2 million people, is in a bloody league of its own, with an estimated murder rate of 130 per 100,000 residents according to government figures. Cape Town is about the same size as Caracas but nearer to Baghdad’s murder rate with 62 violent deaths per 100,000 people. New Orleans, with an estimated post-Katrina population of just over 300,000, is tiny in size compared to its rivals. But the number of murders is huge; figures vary, but even the low estimate puts the city on a par with Cape Town. By way of comparison, Moscow, one of the most violent cities in Europe, has an estimated murder rate of just 9.6 per 100,000 residents. New York City’s murder rate is 6.2, Washington D.C.’s about 32.

Today, the NY Times had a feature article on our goofball mayor, Ray Nagin who may have just achieved the lowest approval rating of all times, any where. Here’s the article: Term Limits Say New Orleans Mayor Can’t Return; Residents Say They Don’t Mind.

In a recent poll by the University of New Orleans, Mr. Nagin was cited as one of the “biggest problems” for the city, coming in third after crime and education. Just 24 percent of residents over all said they approved of the mayor, a drop from 31 percent the year before.

“It’s the worst approval rating we’ve reported since 1986,” when the poll was first conducted, said Robert T. Sims, the director of the university’s survey research center.

Among African-Americans, support dropped to 36 percent from about half of those polled last year. Among whites, who constituted much of Mr. Nagin’s voting base in his first election, the approval rating was 5 percent. (The survey’s margin of sampling error for whites was plus or minus five percentage points.)

Edward F. Renwick, a retired professor of political science at Loyola University and a pollster himself, said he found that figure surprising. “I have hardly ever seen 5 percent,” Dr. Renwick said. On the other hand, he added, “I have never met a white person who doesn’t hate him.”

That sentiment can be seen in a $2 bumper sticker that has become popular in the city’s souvenir shops. In vivid Mardi Gras colors, it says: “May 31, 2010: Nagin’s Last Day. Proud to See Him Gone.”

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