All my friends know that I take reasonable precautions but am not a fearful traveler. Big cities don't scare me. Street people don't scare me. Public transportation doesn't scare me. Crowded markets in developing countries don't scare me. But I wouldn't go to New Orleans these days -- even if I wanted to experience Mardi Gras there, which I don't.
According to a news feature in today's New York Times, the depopulated and beleaguered city tallied 95 murders per 100,000 residents in the second half of 2006 and an appalling eight since the first of the year. That's nearly one a day, which is fine for multi-vitamins but not for homicides. The Times used such phrases as "dysfunctional law enforcement institutions," which could as easily describe Baghdad. I wouldn't want to take a vacation there either!
Petty crimes (pickpocketing, lewd and drunken behavior, soliciting and the like) plagued the picturesque French Quarter long before Hurricane Katrina, and it doesn't appear that the recent epidemic of violence has been directed at tourists. Still, such a high murder rate plus the ineffective law enforcement reported in the Times equals an ucomfortable climate, no matter what kind of a welcome mat the city's tourist industry has laid out.
My heart bleeds for the Crescent City, but when it comes to my own travels, I'll stay away for a while. I don't care that Orbitz, which sells airline tickets and travel packages, has named it one of seven "in" destinations for 2007, or that Travel & Leisure put it on its "go-to" list. The convention and visitors' bureau quoted T&L's January issue as commenting, "Less than 18 months after Hurricane Katrina, much of New Orleans is back and ready for visitors. Revamped favorites and interesting newcomers are contributing to the second act of one of America’s favorite cities," adding that “For travelers who want to play a more direct part in the Crescent City’s renaissance, ‘voluntourism’ opportunities abound.”
Hoping the New Orleans soon gets a grip on itself is probably like hoping that the Shiites and Sunnis will be friends, or the the Palestinians and Israelis will become compatible, or that Yankees and the Red Sox fans will see baseball the same way. I hope I'm wrong.
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So your heart bleeds. Save the sentiment. New Orleans lives and dies by tourism. Those areas of the city are as safe as any big city. I go there every other weekend so I say this with knowledge. Do you enjoy trying to hurt your fellow Americans? I tell you what you need to do. Go to New Orleans and get your butt to the destroyed areas and gut out a house. Feel the determination of the people (your fellow citizens) to heal their home and their culture. Then you will realize how small your world view was before your visit.
ReplyDeletedoctorj2u, you make very good points -- and I applaud you for going there every other weekend. I live too far away to make anything like that feasible, but in the wake of Katrina, we gave what we could. My husband and I contributed twice what we normally do to all of our annual charity giving combined to relief and aid efforts (Salvation Army, Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity in equal measure). A writers' oganization that I belong to collected books to help restock libraries devastated by Katrina -- not just in New Orleans, but in all stricken states. I gave books, and I helped pay for shipping heavy cartons. My husband and I also donated quite generously to another local organization that collected clothing, school supplies and toiletries to people in shelters.
ReplyDeleteWhat you and other volunteers are able to give the city is precious, but people's vacation time is precious to them too. Some people are fulfilled by "voluntourism." Others want to relax and rejuvenate in other, unstressful ways. "Voluntourists" don't need me or you to tell them that such opportunities still exist in New Orleans.
My personal belief is that while some of my fellow Americans are indeed determined to rebuild, others are equally determined to destroy. Humans, I think, are the only animals to foul their own nests -- and there is still a lot of fouling going on, by citizens and law enforcement officials alike. As I posted earlier, this -- to me -- is not a comfortable climate. Infusing tourist money into the French Quarter will not solve the city's wave of violence, especially if the 'kids with guns' cited below start hassling and perhaps attacking well-heeled visitors to areas perceived safe and perhaps patrolled.
I quote from the New York Times report datelined New Orleans. Perhaps you read it -- or perhaps not. The Times reported:
"Frightened citizens now see their city as a stalking ground, roamed with impunity by teenagers with handguns — an image that may not be far off the mark, experts here say.
"There are a variety of reasons for the descent toward chaos. An automobile-bound police department is reluctant to walk the streets and interact with the city’s residents. It is at war with the district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting seven officers for a deadly shooting soon after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Judges in the city’s courts regularly rule in favor of criminals.
"Completing the grim picture is an already fragile social structure in the city’s poorest wards that has been all but destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Moving back to town, in many cases, are 'kids with guns, and without parents,' said Mr. Scharf, who predicted a year ago that the city was in for a tidal wave of violence." [Note that the Mr. Scharf quoted is Peter Scharf, a University of New Orleans criminologist.]
"The police, feared and hated by the city’s poor, get no cooperation from them in solving crimes. 'Stop that snitchin!' is the inscription on the T-shirt of a man waiting for a bus on Canal Street. In killing after killing, police officials have begged for witnesses to step up, to no avail.
"The result is an unwitting carrying out of the classic Maoist strategy of guerilla insurgency: criminals swim like fish in the surrounding sea, protected by a population that finds no reason to give them up, and is often afraid to.
"Frustrated, police officers have been known to lash out at residents. Disturbing police brutality cases — officers beating up, or even shooting, random African-American men — are now competing for headlines with the latest killings.
"Infuriating the police agency he must work with, Eddie Jordan, the district attorney, referred to the police as 'rabid dogs' after he indicted seven of them last month in the shooting death of two men after Hurricane Katrina."
My sisters church went down to build a house last year and they didn't have a good experience. I don't want to get in to it, but believe me, it was bad.
ReplyDeleteThis post will be included in today's edition of the "Carnival of Hurricane Relief." See:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cehwiedel.com/cohr/
Claire,
ReplyDeleteI know the problems very well. I am a native New Orleanian that now lives on the northshore of Lake Ponchatrain. I marched today in a demonstration against the crime. The violence is in the neighborhoods of Nola, not the Quarter. It is where the people live, not where tourists play. Now if Fred from Kansas, wants to score some crack, he will be in danger. If Susie wanders into the wrong area, she is in trouble. The tourist areas are safe as any big city. I am furious at this country. They whine that people need to help themselves, but don't do the one thing that allows people to help themselves-the right to work. Zagat's has it right. He is a New Yorker and understands. Going to New Orleans to visit is the best thing you can do to help an American city and its citizens. And I promise, you will have a wonderful time.
If you marched in the 'Enough is Enough' demonstration today, know that it was broadcast on ABC network news this evening. So was Mayor Ray Nagin's tough talk, telling killers that they were no longer welcome in the city. But as one resident said on camera, "I don't think they [the killers] are watching the 11 o'clock news."
ReplyDeleteAlso on the newscast was the shooting of Helen Hill, a film-maker living with her husband and two-year-old in a middle-class neighborhood. Their house was broken into, she was killed, her husband is still hospitalized and their child is being cared for my family members. The incident wasn't in the French Quarter, but it wasn't in an impoverished neighborhood either. The couple was not out looking for drugs, nor did they wander anywhere they shouldn't have been. Trouble -- bad trouble -- found them in their own home.
I lived in New York during what I still call "the dark years" -- the years when subways were considered unsafe (until the city Transit Authority started putting uniformed officers in every station and on every train), when street muggings were rampant in many formerly safe neighborhoods, when an epidemic of arson fires were set (read "Report from Engine Company 82" for a graphic description) and when the original Jack Lemmon-Sandy Dennis version of "The Out-of-Towners" was a hit movie. In headlines, on television and on screen, New York was depicted as an unsafe cesspool.
As a resident with a bit of street smarts and a lot of luck, I never had a bad incident. Even then, however, I did not try to persuade visitors to put themselves in my city and far out of their comfort zone. There were other places to visit and vacation until New York got its act together. I talked about this at great length with an English friend who felt the same way when the IRA was bombing London. She told me that actually dissuaded foreigners from visiting in those violent times. Would anyone have suggested Belfast as a tourist destination in those years of "the troubles"? I think not.
When violence and crime are random, the atmosphere for visitors is disquieting at best. I agree with you 1,000% that governments at all levels let New Orleans and its people down during and after Katrina and have continued to do so. But I personally don't think that tourists should be expected to make up for those terrible betrayals -- unless they are "voluntourists" who do so with their eyes wide open because they want to help, as you do. Hopefully, the "enough is enough" message will also get through to public officials, law enforcement officers and the public to get the city on track again, for the citizens as well as for visitors.
This thread is drifting from "travel," but it's far more important than the narrow world of travel and vacations. New Orleans was not only in the NYTimes report that launched this thread, but yesterday's demonstration in New Orleans was on TV screens across the land too.
ReplyDeleteCNN's Anderson Cooper broadcast "360" from New Orleans last night. I tuned in half-way through, when Cooper was interviewing an octogenarian who was rebuilding his own house (which he had built in the first place more than half-a-century ago). He is the only resident around, sleeping on a cot in his work-in-progress. He still needs kitchen cabinets, a sink and an electric heater, because there is no gas yet. He also told Cooper that he has been paying insurance premiums since 1952 and only was paid a portion of his claim. He is just the kind of person for whom doctorj2u was advocating.
According to reports on the program, the federal government has allocated $10 billion for reconstruction, foreign aid amounts to $1 billion and American charities raised $2.5 billion. Most of it reportedly is tied up in red tape. The feds, the state and city point fingers at each other, while money is locked up. Mayor Nagin claims that the only federal money the city has seen is $350 million in LOANS, not grants. Governor Blanco says that of the 100,000 people expecting some kind of financial aid to help rebuild, only 100 have gotten any money.
New Orleans' and other Gulf Coast residents' quarrel should be with every level of inept and unresponsive government at all levels, and with insurance conmpanies who are better at collecting premiums than paying on claims. In good times, the city indeed lives and dies by tourism, but IMHO, no amount of tourism will compensate for the ineptitude and venality of government agencies, cowardly law enforcement officials, out-of-control elements of the population and the insurance industry.
Thank you Claire for waking up to the nightmare my city in enduring in a world that is more interested in Britany Spears disco circuit than an American region suffering. I am glad you watched Anderson Cooper's show last night. He and Brian Williams are the only news people in this country that seem to care. The really sad thing is that foreign news services are doing a far better job of reporting the tragedy occurring in the Gulf South than our our media. This just adds to the hate of our country in the world.
ReplyDeleteI was in Austria not during, but immediately after Katrina, when people were still in the Superdome and the waters were still high. I watched reports on CNN-International, BBC and ORF -- and so did everyone else. Austrians couldn't believe that the "powerful leader," the United States, showed such incompetence, lack of caring and, yes, racism. I had no answers -- and I still don't. Austrians couldn't understand why news crews could get into the flooded city but not government rescue workers, except for the Coast Guard resuce swimmers who seemed to regard it as a training exercise. they couldn't understand why we always send aid when calamities hit overseas but couldn't do so in this very country. They couldn't believe that, once the storm subsided, helicopters did not drop food the the refugees around the Dome. The could not believe that medical personnel who broke into drug stores to get supplies for hospitals were viewed as heroes, while black citizens who broke into convenience stores and supermarkets for food were depicted as looters. They could not believe that bodies were left on the streets for days. And you know what: neither could I.
ReplyDeleteI've been wishing that this issue -- of help needed maintaining order on the Gulf Coast -- would come up in the current debate on the "surge" of troops for Iraq. It seems so obvious that we could have National Guard troops helping maintain order in New Orleans while the justice system gets itself together after a major tragedy, if those troops weren't dying and getting wounded and traumatized in Iraq. I have to say I really don't understand why it's not a bigger issue in the media.
ReplyDeleteI live in Detroit MI where we have a lot of crime. I would never think of driving through the city at anytime by myself and I've lived there all my life. However, last month I spent 5 days in New Orleans and drove around everywhere and I wasn't the least bit afraid.
ReplyDeleteThe major problem with people not wanting to go to New Orleans is that they are basing their feelings on all the bad press the city gets from the media. If people would take the time to check around and see that the city is not dead and that there is good going on down there. You say you contributed money fine that's a start. But why not visit the city and see what is going on.
A friend of mine put it this way as with any city there are places you don't go. I wish everyone would stop being afraid of what they don't know. As I said before I blame the media and all those reporters who promised they would never forget New Orleans and are now gone or only report the bad things.
Grace - I'm glad you had a good visit to New Orleans, and in theory, I agree with everything you say, and also with what doctorj2u said in his comment more than three months ago. Still, I find the news out of the Crescent City disquieting.
ReplyDeleteThe Associated Press reported last week, "People across New Orleans are arming themselves...Violence has engulfed the metropolitan area in the 10 months since Katrina, making New Orleans the nation's murder capital. The number of permits issued to carry concealed weapons is twice as high as it was before Katrina -- this in a city with only about half its pre-storm population of about 450,000. Attendance at firearms classes and hours logged at shooting ranges also are up, according to the firearms industry. Gun dealers who saw sales shoot up during the chaotic few months after Katrina say that sales are still brisk and that the customers are doctors, lawyers, bankers, artists, laborers and stay-at-home moms."
The story didn't even deal with illegal firearms sales or people who pack heat without a permit. The more guns, the greater the chance of crossing the path of some trigger-happy gun-owner.
We will be coming to NO to board a cruise ship. I understand that the port area with hotels is a nice, safer place. We were thinking perhaps the Hilton. Any comments from locals or people who have visited NO? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI have not been to New Orleans recently, and my originally cautionary post was made 4 1/2 months ago. You probably have been keep closer tabs on conditions there than I have. Most of the violence has been directed drug-related. There were pre-Mardi Gras concerns that it would spill over to impact tourists and tourist areas. that did not appear to have happened.
ReplyDeleteNew Orleans isn't out of the proverbial woods yet, but as far as I know, the tourist areas are as safe as in any troubled city. There are also encouraging signs. For instance, I did post some news about new and reopened restaurants on another blog at http://culinary-colorado.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-in-new-orleans.html.
An Associated Press report just a couple of days that began: "Tucked inside a $14.4 billion blueprint for the rebuilding of New Orleans is a proposal for a Hurricane Katrina monument on a grand, 'Homeric' scale, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
"The idea is to honor Katrina's victims and the spirit of New Orleans, and create a tourist attraction.
"But with many sections of the city still in shambles and only about half the population back 21 months after the hurricane, some question the need for a $3.5 million memorial, even if it is paid for mostly with private money, as proposed.
"'What will it memorialize? How many people came back?, said Angele Givens, president of the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association.
"The rebuilding plan is making its way through city approval processes. While the memorial is a far lower priority than upgrading drainage and reconstructing neighborhoods during the next decade, it is still listed among the top projects."
IMHO, it is quite encouraging that this report focused on civic wrangling than on ongoing violence.
We go to NOLA at least 6 times a year. Our daughter & many close friends live there.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't go off the beaten track late at night & don't do drug deals in bad neighborhoods you are as safe or safer than any place in the US (including our neighborhood in Baltimore near the Inner Harbor).
Look at the neighborhood maps where the murders etc. are---it is v clear.
We go to NOLA at least 6 times a year. Our daughter & many close friends live there.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't go off the beaten track late at night & don't do drug deals in bad neighborhoods you are as safe or safer than any place in the US (including our neighborhood in Baltimore near the Inner Harbor).
Look at the neighborhood maps where the murders etc. are---it is v clear.
Kodjo - You are not the first person to take exception to my post about safety in New Orleans. Please remember that I wrote my original post more than 10 1/2 molnths ago when headline-making eight killings in ten days had the city on edge, especially since it was banking on a safe Mardi Gras to boost the post-Katrina economy. I am happy whenever I hear visitors' reports of safety and joy in the Big Easy. May the recovery continue.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I just read on the Intelligent Travel blog that the St. Charles streetcar is finally back in service. Another sign of recover -- some two years and three months after Katrina. Here's the post: http://intelligenttravel.typepad.com/it/2007/11/a-streetcar-nam.html#more
ReplyDelete