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I was just wondering what personal experience all this opinion is coming from. I'm posting from a cafe on the corner of Oak and Carrolton Av. right now. I didn't see any dealers on the way in here, and wasn't afraid for my life. While there are class and race effects in the impact of violence, and certainly a drug connection, it isn't that simple. Most of the violence is NOT random. People go looking for trouble and find it. That's true anywhere, but it is especially true here, with the long term disinvestment in large sections of the city and its population.
It isn't just the drugs, lack of mental health care and the difficulty fo getting ANY health care increase stresses and makes violent outbursts more likely. For instance, an article in today;'s Times Picayune told the story of a baby sitter that dangled her infant charges over an overpass then tried to set their cloths on fire. Shed had been behaving erratically for a number of days, family tried to get her help but couldn't. And Charity Hospital, cleaned out in the weeks after the storm by dedicated staff and national guard, has a 100 bed mental ward sitting vacant, the hospital still closed, because LSU would rather wait to build a new multi-billion dollar research hospital. The issue of violence in New Orleans is indeed much more complicated than just an issue of drugs.
I just wish people would think about the impact of what they say. The portrayal of New Orleans as awash in drugs and violence, not only gives a totally distorted view of what is going on here, it makes the ongoing disaster all the deeper, by scaring people away who might come to visit and help, who might out their vacation dollars into the economy here.
No it's never as simple as the media protrays.....
