Today an email came from a local businessman in my neighborhood about a recent murder – a couple was shot in their Marigny home – she is dead, he is seriously injured, and the newborn baby is fine. Robert – owner of Fairgrinds – is outraged. I forwarded his email to the Joe Donley, the editor for the Times Picayune. They are collecting letters from outraged citizens – those who are sick of the crime, the murders, the ridiculous whatever it is that threatens to ruin our beloved city.
The other day I was amused to read how the owner of La Finca fought back against a would-be robbery by shooting the perp – as the robber fell over behind the bar, patrons stood up on barstools and pelted him with beer bottles and even a random stool – go get him, I thought – and the robber died on the scene.
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Argentina, a tsunami occurs in Sri Lanka. We know how we are connected, we know why we are connected, but we fall down in the face of figuring out what to do about it. The sum total of it is too overwhelming to an overwhelmed crowd.
We need to break it down in chunks. What was the best thing that happened from Katrina – the death of the New Orleans Public School System. The Road Home is not economics – it’s taking small but necessary steps to undermine a system of poverty and ignorance that pervades every corner of this landscape.