Privatizing New Orleans, by Jordan Flaherty

“I can’t stand it anymore, being lifted up and then smacked down again, just when we were all trying so hard to experience hope,” a friend tells me.

She was one of several people I know who were bystanders to Saturday’s shootings in New Orleans.

Last weekend, revelers filled the streets for one of our city’s most vital cultural traditions, the second-line -- a roving street celebration put on by New Orleans community institutions known as Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. This second-line was the biggest anyone I spoke to had seen, put on by 30 different Clubs. Many people came from out of town just for the day, and during the parade thousands were chanting, “we’re back, we’re back!”

The day of hope and celebration was shattered when, towards the end of the route, three people were shot in three separate incidents on Orleans Avenue between Claiborne and Broad, in the Treme, a Black neighborhood with a long history and culture of resistance.

Michelle Longino, one of the event's organizers, was quoted in the Times-Picayune as saying, “It just breaks my heart that some people on the outskirts could do such a horrible thing and have it be associated with the beautiful, glorious, peaceful thing we were putting together,” adding that the event was organized to “testify to the importance of the social clubs and the importance of providing affordable housing and decent schools so people can return.”

The violent end to a hopeful day was devastating. It was horrifying to see a broad community effort shattered and to see a return of the violence that has marred our city.

On top of our personal sorrow, there is also a pressure all of us here in New Orleans feel, this awareness that we are being judged by the media and by politicians in Baton Rouge and Washington. The question constantly comes up, are we deserving of rebuilding? I feel certain no other US city would be facing this questioning, but we have to constantly prove ourselves as being “worthy”.

All of us were immediately aware that those who do not want the city rebuilt would use this incident as evidence against us, just as recent news reports have gloated over the “lack of crime” that has been brought by the mass displacement of our city’s population.

Last week, the mayor’s Bring Back New Orleans commission released its recommendations on rebuilding, which are filled with the expected double talk and half promises regarding what neighborhoods can be rebuilt, pegged to vague tests and benchmarks.

But most infuriating, featured in all the coverage of the report, is the estimate given by the commission, politicians, developers, and media that only half of the city’s population is expected to come back to New Orleans in the next several years. The so-called experts advise us to be “realistic”, and accept that the city has to have a “smaller footprint” because so many people will not be returning.

Where do the reduced population statistics come from? The truth is that the “experts” are manipulating the truth for their own ends. They are creating a situation where half the city is kept from returning; then saying that we need to reduce our expectations to this reality they have created.
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