Lock The Bastards Up
City to crackdown on use of trash bins
Residents who fail to use them will face
fines, possible jail time.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
--Bloodshed greeted with outrage, apathy
In a modest Baptist church in eastern New Orleans, friends and family gave a young man in a mocha-colored casket a teary sendoff.
Though Terry Hall, 29, on April 2 became the city's 53rd homicide victim of 2007 -- one of four in a single day, the most in one day this year -- few outside his circle of friends and family marked his death. No one blamed the police or the mayor. No one marched in protest or demanded action.
Unlike some of the victims in a similar string of killings in January -- one that sparked a citywide protest and endless promises of action from police and politicians -- Hall did not go out a martyr, nor did any of the other three people killed that day, nor did the three people killed in the previous three days. (By Brendan McCarthy, NOTP)
Another Email From NOLA
marquin got shot in the hands about 2 weeks ago, got him antibiotics, he didn’t take them, hands got infected. i hauled him back to children’s hospital, and they haven’t let him out yet. shawn (don’t know if you remember him) took 13 bullets on the corner of dorgenois and st. anne last week. he’s on life support. jamal [shot in January] is out and limping around.
The New Page
In 1994 I moved to New Orleans. In 1997 I began writing emails to a few friends around the country about my life as a blue-collar working white boy in a mostly black New Orleans ghetto. The ghetto was represented by the 2600 block of Dumaine.
In 2000 one of the email recipients in New York introduced me to a brilliant webmaster who was hosting his own website and I was invited to begin posting here. The email recipient came up with the name email from NOLA. In that same year I bought a burnt out abandoned crackshack on Rocheblave, six blocks from the Dumaine house, and began a learn as you go renovation.
In 2003 I was offered a soft gig in Virginia caretaking a Shennadoah weekend property for a childhood buddy. The next three winters I found reasons to spend them mostly in New Orleans, last winter, stretching from October to June, so that I could look after my Rocheblave house and do a few necessary post-Katrina repairs.
The Dumaine house is still occupied by a friend who has remained all these years very involved as a freelance mentor and tutor to neighborhood children. She was boat-lifted from the house last September and evacuated to the west coast before returning recently in hope of receiving Road Home grant money to fill the gap left by being screwed by her insurance company.
The Dumaine neighborhood was always a little rougher than average. An average that to many of you would itself seem unacceptable. And while murderers did live and recreate on the block, the block itself was more or less murder-free for the last 13 years. So it is unusual but unfortunately true to say that in the last two months two young men have died by gunshot in the street in front of the house. And one other near the Dorgenois corner.
It is this type of drama that made up parts of the original emails from NOLA (of which only a few samples are posted here) but I don't myself have exposure to such drama now, nor do I live in New Orleans. So I've been working on a new page with a different name which you can access at--
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/mtpleasant/
Or perhaps I could offer you an actual link to get there.
RIP Eric
M, not that this would be all that unusual but I haven't heard from you since you moved back to the block, I guess you got rid of the Oregon cell phone. Hope you are all right. Sorry the craziness is starting again. It was really quiet for awhile after the flood. Drop me a line sometime if you get the chance.
Better Late Than Never
Elloie suspended by La. high court