Ray in New Orleans

I'm dug in deep. Taking the new job was another piling sunk in the ground. I picked up the funk like everyone else, but it was not just in the blogosphere, but in other friends of mine.

I think the march was one of those signature events that will hopefully overcome the funk about UNOP, LRA, crime, the who ugly package.

And yes, god helps us if someone gets shot at a parade. The NOPD needs to let us worry about staying out from under the floats and patrol the back of the crowd as aggresively as the front.

Bullshit. You were not AWOL, you were on sick leave. Now you're better. Now you're rockin' again.

And yes, I looked at real estate in Chicago. Tell me that ain't depressing.

Flash flooding in Austin this am, water coming into my kitchen from under the wall...ai yi yi... damn slab construction! My peeps in New Orleans laugh and tell me that at least it doesn't flood like that very often at home and that I might as well get my ass back there...

Good post, Ray. I think we are all going through this right now. Part of the reason I haven't been posting lately is bc I am going through the funk as well and I don't want to put my thoughts out there as I don't like the thoughts I am thinking . . .

As always, your honesty is wonderful and appreciated. Glad you're feeling better!

Ray, you just said out loud, what everybody does. It's a stupid little game we all play with ourselves to maintain the illusion of safety. It's the same in the U.S., in Atlanta, in New Orleans, the distance of the stretch just changes with the locales, but we all try to devise a reason why *that* (whatever *that* might be at any given moment) won't happen to us or ours. I applaud your saying it out loud.

What happened in New Orleans this week was remarkable. The citizens took charge of the dialogue. It was a thing of beauty and of hope, not just for you guys toiling away down there doing the heavy lifting but for an entire nation in need of change.

Peace, darlin'.

The Girls of Squandered Heritage miss you.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Fine post, Ray. Glad the funk is starting to lift. You were feeling very shaky in every way the last time I saw you. I was too. I feel a bit better myself.

Fine post, Ray. Glad the funk is starting to lift. You were feeling very shaky in every way the last time I saw you. I was too. I feel a bit better myself.

Hey Ray... I am in my funk, as well. You picked up your whole family and moved them home (our home, that is). You have kids. If after a year, you see a bad effect on your kids, them move back to Austin. Seriously.

It's one thing if you or I move home, but a whole other deal to ask your beloved ones to go through it with you. My first impulse was to move home. Raysa's health would be at serious risk if we did that. So I am not gutting the shotgun double I've always wanted, and I am not running poetry workshops in the schools, and I am not doing a Ph.D. at Tulane.

Instead, we are doing battle with our own mold-contaminated house (though not nearly on the scale of anyone's in N.O.), redoing the basement apartment in hopes of letting more air and light into this cave (can you say "floor scraper?" I knew you could...), and doing what we need to do to survive in a place that is not New Orleans. Yet our county is full of New Orleanians--about 100K, to be precise, and most from the Seventh and Ninth Wards and N.O. East. There are plenty of Louisiana license plates south of the airport, as it's the only place left in Atlanta with semi-affordable housing for working folks. It's also full of automatic weapons that predate Katrina. We heard plenty on all sides on New Year's Eve--always do-- but everyone blows out their clips by around 12:20am. I hate it.

Some people in New Orleans have been willing to put up with the *idea* of violent crime, thinking of it as the price of all the other good stuff. I view the recent claims to stand up against violence with quite a lot of skepticism.

Everyone can march behind a banner, make demands of Mayor Ray, and feel a little better for a while. The real problems that breed violent crime run much deeper, as we all know, and they can't be swept away by executive order or by a few earnest community workers.

However, it is a way to mobilize people to create political pressure from the ground up (witness levees.org), which it what it's going to take to get *real* jobs and not Trump and Martha Stewart and KB Homes into the city. Until people in the city can depend on a steady, non-HRT gig to pay the bills, nothing will change for the better. We need K&B drugstores, not KB Homes. My short list:

--customer support centers (small stretch from HRT service jobs)
--distribution centers (think amazon.com warehouse)
--manufacturing (something that will be there long-term, not close up in five years)
--software and publishing companies (it's time to get some of that out of New York and the Research Triangle)

Without a wider economic base than petrochemicals and tourism, and without a serious federal response, we cannot possibly rebuild New Orleans. This is very hard for me to say, and I know it will not be well-received. However, until someone besides people like you and me decide to give a damn, really addressing the fundamental sickness that causes a city to destroy its own artists is not going to happen.

Last week, I read about the Shavers shooting and the kids' drums arriving. Then, as I was driving to work on the same godforsaken Atlanta backstreet where Ray Nagin had a re-election billboard (I kid you not), and as I drove past the abandoned trailer spraypainted "The World/New Orleans Can't Wait/Drive out the Bush Regime!", I heard the NPR commentary about Helen Hill. And I bawled for all that we have lost--all the people, and all the vibrancy, and the love of life that is New Orleans' best side. And I wrote a poem because I could do nothing else. New Orleans seems, from this vantage point, to be cannibalizing itself from within. And I guarantee that that is exactly what the big-money developers on the outside want us--want you--to do. The powers that be WANT to let things get so shitty that people will be begging for wealthy out-of-state transplants to live in multimillion-dollar condos in faux French Quarter style built on top of the late project on top of the late Storyville on top of Congo Square.

And then folks like Mayor Ray and the king of Comus will take their big fat wallets and move someplace "safer," like Palm Beach.

Anyway, you can tell I'm still deeply conflicted about *not* being there. If it were just me, I'd be there, and probably in way over my head.

On this Martin Luther King Day, I hope y'all have no gunfire, no violence, no more heartache.

Love,
Robin

Keep on keepin' on Ray. Your post was from the heart and soul.

You're just the kind of stupid yuppie we need!;)

Being a parent certainly amplifies the second guessing...every decision you make affects not only you, but three other people. I feel it even more being the only breadwinner at the moment.

I know I've paid extra attention to the news out of NOLA since you've moved back. Does Louisiana have a concealed handgun law? Might not be a bad idea. Your kids might be old enough that it's not as much of a concern to have a gun in the house. Something to think about anyway...until the city and the NOPD gets back on their feet a bit more.

Be safe.

Ray, you have dne a wonderful job of externalizing the thought process that we all have been through (whether you admit it or not all of you have). It truly shakes me up to see my name come up here and in other places in this context. While I am not saying "Stay, no matter what," I do beg you to remember that I have also have to deal with multiple family deaths over the past few months which hsa clored my own views quite a bit. Be objective and make the best decision you can. The funk is like a sine wave, it ges up and down cyclically along wth the optimism. D not let either emotion assume sole dictatorship over your actions. You have a family.

I am always here if you need face to face socialization, its only four blocks.

And I'm four blocks and four steps away. C'mon over anytime.

*huge hugs*

I'm happy that you're back and that your mood is on the upswing, hon. I wish I had sage words to write regarding the epidemic. I'd read about it, of course, but I'd hoped that, perhaps, it was the MSM blowing things out of proportion. I am so sorry to hear that they hadn't.

Do what you need to do, Ray sweetie, for you and your family. No one who knows you will fault you for it.

*huge hugs*

Ray, I think I met you at the Rising Tide Conference, though we didn't get to talk for a very long time. I have been trying and trying to get my wife to move to New Orleans. Then Dick Shavers gets shot. I told myself in my white uptown way that surely that was more black on black crime. No way that affected the areas of town where my wife and I would be living. Then Helen Hill gets shot. Now I feel like I am asking her to move into a war zone because *I* want to move home. I have a good job. I like where I work. I enjoy my neighbors company. But there's something missing here. Some kind of community commitment, neighborliness, common experience that doesn't fit me the right way - like the wrong size coat. It might look ok on the outside, but you keep trying to make it feel right on the inside. Then "the march" happened. I wish I could have gone to it. It would have done me good.
Then I go back to the reason I want to move back. I want to be part of the solution, the rebuilding, the renaissance. I may not be the most well-spoken or well-behaved person I know. But I know that I can make a difference.
I am glad that you have moved back. It was the right thing. I have to struggle with my own battles and demons (and my wife, too) before I can commit to doing the same. I think about what you guys are doing and how you are making a difference and keeping people informed. Your opinions and views are valuable to me and, I am sure, many others.
If you leave, they (the criminals - political and otherwise) will have won. Don't let them. It's our city, not theirs.
This hit home for me. Thanks for sharing.

That was really powerful, Ray. Thanks for walking through it on the page.