archive

email from NOLA


View current page
...more recent posts

Bloody April
I say this first part to tack on a little vicarious value to a people who apparently have little value to anyone, including sometimes, themselves.

New Orleans is a small town, and the housing projects--which sprang up in the forties with those good intentions leading to hell--are spaced pretty evenly throughout, and there is no neighborhood here, rich or poor, very far from a project. They are inhabited at this point in time mostly by black people, but that was not always the case. When Marlon Brando as Stanley K in Streetcar Named Desire bellowed with angst for the lost love of STELLAHHH!!!, he was doing so at the Desire projects.

So it is with great sadness that I bring you the news that Marlon Brando was shot dead last night outside his apartment at the Desire. No motives, no suspects.

Also, this in the first weekend of the two weekend event known as JazzFest which is a musical (and food eating) event held at the Fairgrounds race track. Each year it draws approximately a half million predominately white people. This is a number equal to the (predominately black) population of Orleans Parish.

So it is with great sadness that I bring you the news that yesterday 220 white people were gunned down in random acts of violence in and around the Fairgrounds. There is a palpable sadness in the air today and enraged citizens marched on City Hall demanding measures be taken to stop all this killing. JazzFest promoters say the event will go on, remarking that as tragic as this number may be it is still considerably less than have been gunned down in random acts of violence during previous JazzFests, citing the 1994 and 1995 numbers when 420, and 360 white people were killed.

That was the first part. The second part goes like this...

To close out the month of April I have to tell you that yesterday an 11-year-old boy was shot in the stomach near his home and is in critical condition at Charity hospital. Police were in the area to break up an altercation between two groups of youths at the nearby Magnolia project, and think the shooting might be related. The critical boy's name is not being released, because as he lays nearly dead, gut shot, with his internal organs a shredded mess,there remains the possibility that the shooter, or a minion thereof, will come into his hospital room and slit his fucking 11-year-old throat.

I have to start working on the Rocheblave house again, soon. That should shut me up, thank God.
- jimlouis 5-02-2000 7:14 pm [link] [add a comment]