a paragon of contradiction


New Orleans: A Paragon of Contradiction

 Like Washington, DC, New Orleans is a paragon of contradiction.  It has a longer history than our nation's capital in the practice of Catholic and catholic corruption, and that fact has made it one of the most magnetic urban centers in the United States of America. It is a haven for excess and a breeding ground for "isms" -----sexism, racism, classism, elitism, and so forth.  Any well-designed study of American cities which came near to "objectivity" in its use of qualitative and quantitative factors would arrive at a tentative conclusion: the Crescent City does have a unique "history" (all cities have unique histories), but the problems it deals with daily and the choices of its elected official in addressing those problems  are not unique.  The conclusions of an honest and holistic study , of course, would provoke howls of protest from many  native-born residents and  from  opportunists who profit from the city's cultures and economic vulnerability.    



On Wednesday, June 26, 2019, the City sponsored a justice system community roundtable at the Pythian,  a building constructed " by the Colored Knights of Pythias under the leadership of Smith W. Green in 1909," a building that "has been integral to civil and human rights" for a century.  The agenda included a presentation on the purpose and work of the Criminal Justice Council -----access

https://council.nola.gov/committees/criminal-justice-committee-----, approximately 17 tables at which participants  discussed the state of criminal justice in New Orleans, and table reports on three urgent issues the Council should address.



My table identified three key issues: early intervention to prevent juvenile criminalization, employment, and viable alternatives in the administration of justice, a most elusive abstraction.  What we could not include in our group report was what we said about trauma and mental health, bail, the lack of vocational skills among the incarcerated at Orleans Justice Center who await trial, the dark motives of the New Orleans District Attorney, widespread distrust of the police,  and the systemic inequities innate in criminal justice.  What we could not include was the consensus at my table that the Criminal Justice Council ought to a year-long conversation with the entire population of New Orleans about  the deep roots  of criminality and mass incarceration.  So radical an undertaking would be much more valuable for a future in New Orleans than any number of middle-class roundtables for predictable audiences of social activists.  The undertaking would force Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other city officials to transform a trickle  of rhetoric into a flood of meaningful actions.  All citizens might profit from  robust  exposure of why a paragon of contradiction ought not endlessly  nourish greed, corruption, the manufacturing of public trauma,  and criminal injustice in New Orleans.



All people who live in New Orleans  need to know that  "justice" is a mousetrap.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            June 28, 2019

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CLA paper

CLA,   April 6, 2018 Jerry W. Ward, Jr. PHBW:   Negotiating the Ideas of Seven Writers [1]                 Founded in 1983 by Dr. Maryemma Graham, "The Afro-American Novel Project" (AANP) had the initial goal of identifying all published novels written by African Americans from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.   AANP became The Project on the History of Black Writing (PHBW) in 1990 to reflect an enlarged vision and a more ambitious aim.   PHBW want to make a substantial contribution to what we then spoke of as our "Profession" by organizing bibliographic information and databases, sponsoring institutes and seminars, and by encouraging our colleagues to have rigorous engagements with all genres of black (African American) "writing" within   frames   of historical inquiry.                              The Project's   working frame was an   adaptation of the paradigm of unity in African American Studies , f
Read more

reading notes for September 23, 2019

Reading Notes for September 23, 2019 Eighteen years after the tragedy of 9/11 as I re-read Amiri Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America" (2001), two meanderings occur: 1) a chance temptation to ask what the term "pro-Semitic" can mean in the contexts of (a) Israeli and world politics and (b) to what extent the amount of foreign aid the USA donates to Israel truly matters, and 2) a more focused temptation to ask if Morrison's Playing in the Dark sheds light on the motives that govern projects devoted to discussions of slavery beginning with 1619. I suspect those projects are at once very literary and very political. Such speculations arose during a September 12 conversation with one of my former UNCF/Mellon mentees whose research on redemption now teaches me, the former mentor, a few things about the urgency of scholarship in the twenty-first century.   The journey forth happens in the cognitive territory of "universal enslavement,"
Read more

Musings, February 8-9, 2021

    MUSINGS OF THE DAY   The mother- and father-ships of sanity have landed   Let our enemies of whatever color they be know this as we eradicate them with the tools of insanity.   Mr. Ramcat informed me this morning that I need to tie up loose ends and thank all the people who have made my life a rich and satisfying experience of 77+ years.   If you deserve my gratitude, you know who you are.   Four quotations to brighten the day------   "I don't regret my years as a prosecutor assigned to juvenile court.   In some ways, I think it is why I was put on this earth." ---Daphne R. Robinson   "While there are books and articles concentrating on young black men in the social sciences and education, thee has been comparatively little input from scholars in the arts and humanities/" Howard Rambsy II   "The hashtag 'black lives matter,' which now rings prophetically through various quarters of the United States of America and int
Read more