A heartbreaking look at New Orleans, from the ground up

     Last week I wrote about a video on the CNN homepage that put a human face to the crisis in Syria.
     This week, I'll recommend to readers an incredibly moving article from CNN that looks at New Orleans through competing lights: popular associations of drunken revelry, color, music, and perpetual festivity juxtaposed with the debilitating intersection of poverty and hopelessness that conspire to make the Big Easy the murder capital of the United States.
      Anyone who has read my manuscript - or spoken with me, for that matter - knows the degree to which New Orleans swept me away. The gas lights, the brightly colored walls and balconies of the French Quarter, the immediate proximity of the Mississippi River, the myriad genres of music that seemed to ooze out of every crevice . . . I can barely dwell on the city without feeling myself on the verge of tears. As such, I come dangerously close to falling into the same starry-eyed trap that grips the article's target audience - one that ignores what could rightly be called a domestic humanitarian emergency.
     It's a lengthy read but one well worth pursuing, providing a heart-breaking chronicling not only of the victims and survivors but also the tireless efforts of those who seek to bring the epidemic to an end. We meet Curissa "Cee Cee" Davis, who at the time of her 18th birthday had lost 20 friends to homicide, including Katie, her best friend since 14, killed by a shotgun blast to the back by an abusive boyfriend.     Later accounts detail an 11 year old killed by a stray bullet in a street-fight and a 2-year old who died when a man sprayed with an assault rifle the courtyard in which she played.
    The article then focuses also on the efforts of Darryl Durham, who heads Arts for Kids, providing youth with a means to express their frustrations constructively, and Father Bill Terry of St. Anna's Episcopal Church, who set up a "murder wall" in 2007, and has since recorded the names of every murder victim as a means of bringing awareness.
     Critically, the article provides insight into the factors that make the violence so pervasive. Chief among them, unsurprisingly, is race. In addition to the usual discrimination in hiring and housing, which demoralizes blacks and places them in situations of economic distress, New Orleans' residents of color are also confronted by what until recently was a wildly racist and corrupt police force, not to mention Katrina herself, which wreaked her greatest damage on traditionally black neighborhoods. Indeed, it was only after Katrina that the city first claimed the infamous murder capital designation.
    Race frames the way the violence is perceived, also. The article details three men who were murdered in the act of protecting others. Two were black, one was white. The media all but canonized the third, and a colossal reward was offered for the arrest of his murderers, while the deaths of the first two men went largely unnoticed.
     I say I was "dangerously close" to falling into the trap of sugar-coating the Crescent City, but I made certain that my second visit to New Orleans included a self-guided tour of neighborhoods like Tremé, that in 2010 still seemed a warzone in the aftermath of the storm. Such ventures only strengthened my love of the city, as its perseverance, its spirit of survival in spite of overwhelming hardship, was as beautiful to me as any of the French Quarter's alluring attractions. In celebrating the individuals who fight to rescue the city from crisis, and the successes they've already brought about, the article pays tribute to this very character.
    A slideshow lends one more dimension to the piece, detailing the residents of the city and the surroundings in which they lead their lives.