Stuff Black People Don’t Like
April 29, 2016
America’s most unique city has a problem: black violence.
Without this black violence, New Orleans would be the most desirable city to live in/play in/vacation in the nation; with a black population, the city must celebrate another successful year of midnight basketball (11 seasons!), while black violence continues unabated. [‘A bullet hole in the head’: Landrieu delivers passionate speech on gun violence, New Orleans Time-Picayune, April 27, 2016]:
“A bullet hole in the head.” “They blew her guts out.”
As Mayor Mitch Landrieu spoke about violence in New Orleans, it seemed at times as if he was using intentionally graphic language in an attempt to shock the audience gathered Wednesday (April 27) at Tulane University.
The bloodshed has reached such a scale that murder has become routine, Landrieu said. “The violence has become so ingrained, so baked in, it has become part of our culture.”
Since 1994, 4,600 people have been killed in New Orleans, 1,003 of them on his mayoral watch alone, Landrieu said. A photo mosaic of their faces flashed on the screen. A row of binders containing their cases sat on stage.
And those numbers disguise the real truth, which is that some neighborhoods in the city see almost no gun violence, the mayor said. The murders are concentrated in just a few neighborhoods, which have become virtual war zones for their residents.
Landrieu recounted the story of Briana Allen, a five-year-old who was gunned down in a spray of bullets from a Kalashnikov-style rifle as she stood in front of her mother’s home during a 2012 birthday party. Her father, Landrieu said, held her in his arms, “her life bleeding out of her and out of the city of New Orleans.”
Her father was later given a life sentence in prison for drugs.
Her cousin, Ka’Nard Allen, also was shot the night Briana was killed. Then, just a year later, he was shot again during the 2013 Mother’s Day shooting that wounded 19. His father was later stabbed to death.
The slaying of former Saints great Will Smith earlier this month has, for now at least, shaken the city out of its stupor, Landrieu said, but the city should see every death as a tragedy.
“Some people still think that black lives do not matter,” Landrieu said.
“They are wrong, but here is the thing: All black lives matter. Not just celebrities. Not just the ones killed by police. Not just the children.
“All black lives matter, period,” Landrieu said.
The city is, by body count at least, safer now than it has been in decades. The city’s murder rate is half what it was in the mid 1990s.
More needs to be done, though, Landrieu said. The federal government needs to enact sensible gun laws. The state needs to stop cutting funding for prosecutors and parole officers and mental health treatment.
More than anything, though, Landrieu said, the community needs to step up and get involved. “We put a man on the moon for goodness sake. We can certainly figure out how to fix this,” he said. “Our lives and the future of our community depend on it.”
Mayor Landrieu — black people, who are responsibly for all violent crime, homicides, nonfatal shootings (gun crime), and the misery found in New Orleans, had absolutely nothing to do with putting a man on the moon.
Just as white people have absolutely nothing to do with the gun violence you bemoan in New Orleans.
If New Orleans had no blacks, there would be no concentrated gun violence in neighborhoods you call “war zones.”
The 30 initiatives of the NOLA for Life nonprofit wouldn’t be necessary, since the people responsible for all the gun violence in New Orleans wouldn’t be tormented the city anymore with their.. freedom.