"A Sense of Place"

Fascinating article in Gambit about the Neighborhood Story Project. Excerpts, with emphases mine:

The fate of the poor obscures a deeper issue. With most of the projects now empty, crime is surging.[...]NOPD is deteriorating, while the drug culture, permeated with guns, is on a roll. [...]Annie Pearl Nelson, a 40-year resident of the (now empty) Lafitte housing project, has this to say in a book called The Combination:

"When I first moved into Lafitte, this was the best housing development there was. The kids could come outside and they could play. You could leave all the doors and windows open. We didn't have to worry about breakin in, robberies, or anything like this. ... But now you could see [drug] transactions goin on anywhere you might be passin. ... I've had someone run in my door twice and the police were there, and they ran in my house twice."

Okay. The "welfare culture" has yet to return to New Orleans. The National Guard's still there, so there are a lot of good guys with guns on the street.

Yet it sounds like the Wild West down there.

Is this some mass post-Katrina psychosis goin' on? Or is it possible that those at fault for the crime were not the so-called entitlement class?

Once upon a time, we lived in a violent, poor, inner-city neighborhood. Ashley Nelson puts it so well:

Ashley Nelson's grief over her parents' drug use leads to an unblinking look at reality: "People I know who sell [drugs] say, 'They just making a living cuz it's hard." But it's more than that, too. Once I asked my uncle, 'Why do people deal drugs?' He told me, 'Respect and power. ... Once you get it, you feel like a leader.'

My experience is, this stuff about respect gets all mixed up in inner-city kids' minds. Yeah, in some ways the ghetto respects a drug dealer. He's got money. People fear him. Junkies worship him. He's got the juice and he gets what he wants.

In areas where many people struggle day-to-day, and there are no better examples around - because even the moderately successful leave - the drug dealer is king. He's the role model that too many children wish to emulate.

So I applaud HUD's efforts to close down those big projects permanently and go to smaller, scattered sites and vouchers. Children need to learn that the wider world views those "street heroes" with utter contempt, as the scum they are. They should live in a more varied environment and have exposure to working- and middle-class mores.

Then we'll make a dent in this problem.

Do go to Gambit and read it all.