Summertime blues

2nd July 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

With temperatures in New Orleans flirting with 100 degrees daily, there’s no better place to be than in an air-conditioned building like a home, barbershop, beauty shop or community center talking about issues and conditions that are every bit as hot and unbearable as a summer day in the City That Care Forgot. It really doesn’t matter if it’s night or day when you plan a get-together because the heat don’t stop in New Orleans when the lights go down in the city. As one comedian put it during a trip to New Orleans just after the new millennium began, New Orleans is the only city on the planet where both the moon and the sun are hot. After you’ve gotten your fill of “you time” and did all of your mulling and reflecting, pick up a phone and invite a few folks over for an ice-cold slice of melon, smoothie, a hearty plate of seafood pasta or a few cold ones. Share your hurricane survival stories, talk about your pre-Katrina traditions and ones you’ve started since everything changed and talk about some of the many challenges that remain in New Orleans. To keep the conversation flowing, here are a few questions to get you started:

• Who do you trust to find long-term solutions to the scourge of Black-on-Black violence, community-based groups like the Peace Keepers or the unreformed, unrepentant and unapologetic New Orleans Police Department?

• After getting firsthand accounts of the mayor trying to hoodwink groups and individuals that come to town for conferences like the one sponsored last month by the W.K. Kellogg Found­ation and the National Association of Black Journalists into believing everything he says about excessive police force and Black-on-Black violence in New Orleans, isn’t it clear why we need more courageous, uncompromising individuals and a strong and independent Black Press to tell our own story in our own words?

• Is anyone really surprised by last week’s report about there being fewer poor residents in southeast Louisiana than before Hurricane Katrina given the concerted effort by elected officials and the business community to prevent tens of thousands of displaced New Orleans residents from returning home after the devastating 2005 storm?

• Is anyone out there a little confused by the Algiers Charter Schools Association’s recent decision to take administrators at the highest-performing schools and reassign them to posts at the association’s worst-performing schools?

• After nearly two decades of empowerment seminars held during the annual Essence Music Festival, shouldn’t African America be more, well, powerful?

• Isn’t it amazing when you reflect that there are many places in the Lower Ninth Ward and Eastern New Orleans that look exactly the way they did nearly seven years ago after Hurricane Katrina and the Great Flood?

• How did NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas keep a straight face as he told the New Orleans City Council Thursday that he can’t guarantee that the city’s murder rate will drop?

• Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the individual insurance requirement in President Barack Obama’s oft-criticized healthcare reform plan, shouldn’t those at the bottom of the economic totem pole who followed the lead of the rich and powerful in opposing the plan now be grateful that they have a way to see a doctor when the reality of the anti-healthcare reform effort’s failure begins to really set in?

• How many poor, struggling Loui­siana parents who turned down federal assistance with health care to show their support of GOP disdain for President Barack Obama’s oft-criticized plan will continue to refuse to accept medical care now that the United States Supreme Court has upheld its constitutionality?

• What is up with Minnesota Gover­nor Scott Walker who said last week that he won’t implement federal health law even after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling?

• How many people have you helped and/or encouraged to register to vote this summer?

• What would happened if Black folks ever went back to living the words immortalized in the song “Freedom Over Me,” during which Blacks declare “and before I’ll be your slave I’d be buried in my grave”?

This article was originally published in the July 2, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper