On behalf of my city

**The following letter is not something I can claim as my own words - it was written by my uncle, a native of New Orleans. May you all be as moved as I was and am. ***

Dear Mr. Shafer,

This is in response to the following article:


I am a native of New Orleans, born, raised, and educated all the way through law school. Most of my family is from there or from the surrounding parishes. We've been there since the 1760s. My wife's family is from there. Three of my children were born there.

I know the city, in all its glory and splendor, and all of its apathy and squalor. I attended numerous public schools there, from the very best (Franklin and McMain) to some of the worst (Gregory Jr. High, Kennedy High). I love that place like no other, yet hate the way it has so often been neglected and mistreated by its own residents. Like many young professionals, I left New Orleans to find better pay, better schools, better housing, lower crime. I left the city to its problems.

I say all of this in preface, so that you will know that I have some basis for my opinion regarding your article. I don't condemn you for writing it. Unlike many of my NOLA brethren, I recognize the hard facts of the place, and do not blame others for pointing them out. You have every right to say these things about my city, my homeland.

But I ask you to consider this: why is it that a city that is so beloved by the World, for our culture, our food, our music, our joie de vivre, is so easy to abandon once you've had to look at how things really are? Surely you've visited before. Enjoyed a fine meal at Commander's Palace or Antoine's, perhaps. Maybe gone to Jazz Fest or Mardi Gras. Marveled at how a single place can at the same time be so European, so Caribbean, and so American. You've taken the good, skimmed the cream. Benefited from our largesse of spirit in inviting you there time and again. But I'm willing to bet you never had to look beyond the surface details that we emphasize for you outsiders. Never wondered why the hotels and restaurants can be so cheap compared to other tourist destinations (hint: because nobody doing the grunt work in NOLA's hospitality business makes any money at it). Never thought about why so many people are willing to shuffle for your amusement, doing little dances, playing instruments in the street.

We are your Jamaica, your Cozumel, your Bermuda, right here in America. We are every tourist's playground, where you go to forget your cares. We are where you go when you need things to be easy for a while. We feed you, amuse you, love you, give you the comfort of a warm bed at night and strong coffee in the morning.

Well, now things aren't easy. Things aren't pleasant. There's no shucking and jiving now, because the shuckers and jivers are dead or dying, or displaced. We can't give you the illusion and the pretty show you want now. All we can show you is our need, our desperation. We have been laid waste, torn asunder. And what is your response to this? Evacuate the residents, sure. Give them some water and an MRE. Let them have food stamps.

But abandon their homes. Let the city lie fallow. Turn the shotgun shacks into nothing more than another series of raised crypts. Don't waste the time, the money, or the effort in reclaiming what was theirs. They shouldn't have been there in the first place. No sane person would have built a city there. They're corrupt. The schools are disastrous. Crime is high. WHO NEEDS THEM ANYWAY?

You do.

You always have.

You've needed us when escape from your mundane world was the only thing that would keep you sane and healthy. When you needed to be transported to some otherworldly place where time is slow, meals are savored, music is breath, is life. We have been your spiritual succor for so long, longer than most of the country has existed. Without us, there is no America. The Mississippi river made this country great. We are the Mississippi. Our music, jazz and blues, is the very cornerstone of all that is original in American music. Our cuisine has fed your presidents, your senators, your captains of industry. We are the salt that has given this country flavor. We are the mistress that America cannot admit out loud that it loves.

You need us. To be America, the real America, you need us. To have the culture that you have, we have to have been there from the start.

But now, now that things are hard, you tell yourself it wasn't worth it. It was a fool's venture. A crazed dream in the middle of a godforsaken swamp. You want to return to your gray flannel life, your insurance tables, your accountant's rationality. You want to be calm, and measured, and dispassionate. Naturally, in doing so, you want to leave our city to rot. We are not of your world, do not share your way of doing things.

The very thing you have always loved, our separateness, is now the thing which leads you to cast us aside.

You have every right to feel as you do, to say what you have said. But we are listening. We who carry the legacy of our dead and dying city are watching. We will remember, not just our homeland and the people and places we have lost, but your words, and your deeds.

Did San Francisco deserve to be rebuilt after the Great Earthquake of 1908? Did Chicago deserve rebuilding after the Great Chicago Fire? Did Iowa deserve assistance after the 1993 floods, even though they always knew they were on a 500 year flood plain? Was Atlanta worth saving after Sherman's march? None of these places has given you what we have given you. None of them were forsaken in their hour of need.

We have loved you from the start. And now you leave us to die in a flood that you swear was our own fault. This is the hour of our despair. But it is also the hour of your shame. May it follow you to the end of your days.

-(name withheld)