NOLA for Life symposium addresses murder, Black male unemployment

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

Two years after launching an unprecedented murder-reduction strategy for New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu hosted a two-day symposium this month to flesh out the successes of his NOLA for Life initiative. “We can fix this,” Landrieu said, speaking before an audience gathered at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. “We can reverse the tide and build a city in which we can all live together and not be afraid of one another.” The symposium featured several plenary sessions and breakout groups covering a variety of subjects.

Since taking office in 2010, Landrieu has promised to address what is perhaps the city’s most vexing problem: a stubborn murder rate. Food, fun and festivals, for which the city is known, are accompanied by the reality that homicides resulting from firearms is an ever-present danger in New Orleans. Landrieu, during his opening address on December 8, noted that over the past three decades “more New Orleans residents have died from gun deaths than in World War II, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“We spend $70 billion each year on corrections,” Landrieu said, noting national spending statistics. “We spend $13,000 each year per pupil, while spending $30,000 each year per incarcerated person.” Landrieu repeated the often-used phrase of “Black lives matter” during his address and lamented the “evil notion” that deaths in Black neighborhoods are the results of “just thugs killing thugs.” Landrieu said the characterization of the deaths in Black areas of the city are untrue—“that’s a lie.”

Other speakers at the symposium included New Orleans police superintendent, Michael Harrison, who said officers are not only focused on “crime prevention, but, instead, community engagement.” Harrison described efforts to provide officers with another way to interact with city residents. “We are now in a trust-building phase to address past stains between the department and residents.” Harrison said that includes a new charge to officers to serve the city through community service, including “putting on gloves” to aid trash removal and serving at local soup kitchens for the needy. “We are looking for officers who are willing to embrace the idea that policing has changed,” he said.

Sessions during the event included a discussion on approaches to public health; addressing the city’s murder rate; life outcomes for Black men and boys; and a review of job opportunities for young men. Although 43 percent of Black males in New Orleans are formerly incarcerated—amounting to more than 300 men returning to the city each month from prison—nearly 60 percent of area men are without criminal backgrounds, according to the city’s office for reentry services. “Twenty-six percent of local men are looking for professional jobs,” said James Logan, a City Hall reentry services manager. “Another 29 percent are looking for careers in manual jobs.” But despite the search for jobs Black men come up short.

Just 50 percent of Black men who submit job applications receive return phone calls, something Logan said is the result of a natural bias in hiring. “We tend to hire people who look like us,” he said, despite the 73 percent of Black men who possess a high school diploma or college degree. But obstacles outside of race can hinder a job search, including the 52 percent of males who are without personal vehicles.

No easy solutions exist in solving the bias in job hiring, Logan said. Yet better career paths are believed to be an aid in helping to drive down the city’s recalcitrant murder rate, something which one symposium attendee called an opportunity to “hope that we can raise our children without burying them.”

This article originally published in the December 15, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.