Posted on 09/06/2005 6:39:16 AM PDT by Frustration
BATON ROUGE, La. – Chillin' on the levee by the Mississippi River on a sunny Monday morning, Nutty and Slim Nine and Doughboy, Jr., admitted that they are already homesick for New Orleans.
"This ain't like the city, where everybody got a nickname that everybody knows you by," said Nutty, 18, whose tattooed nickname was spelled out in two-inch high block letters between his right shoulder and elbow. "I'm trying to get back home — back to the N.O."
"I don't like the curfew here," said Doughboy, Jr., 16. "And I don't like the police. They make grown people stay inside at night."
"We got gangs — 'Catch, Catch, Get A Little Bit', 'Suicide', a bunch of others," said Slim Nine, 20. "And we know the police crew. People here just don't understand us. New Orleans is a fun city." They did not want to give their full names because "people might be after us."
While not typical of the thousands relocated here from New Orleans, they do reflect part of an emerging culture clash in this normally unhurried Southern college town and state capital that in a week has become the largest city in Louisiana with a parish-wide population that may triple to 1 million.
A local news report quoted a Realtor telling of rich refugees from the Big Easy bringing suitcases of cash and buying houses on the spot. There are no rooms to rent anywhere in any price range. Families have taken in kinfolks who have no plans to leave. Suddenly there are traffic jams and lines of cars at gas stations. There's been a run on guns and tear gas by wary residents.
"It's totally related" to the influx of refugees from New Orleans, said Geralynn Prince of Securitas Security Systems, an agency that has many "immediate openings" for security guards.
"We need three or four times as many" as usual, said Prince, whose business supplies armed guards for retail stores and supply warehouses. "We'll take all the qualified people we can hire."
The feared outbreak of crime has not occurred. But unease was dramatically illustrated last Wednesday when a fight broke out at the River Center, the downtown convention center across from the levee. About 5,500 refugees are being housed there, making it the largest shelter in Louisiana.
After the fight, Baton Rouge Mayor-President Melvin L. "Kip" Holden beefed up the police presence and blasted the state for sending "New Orleans thugs" for his city to house.
"We do not want to inherit the looting and all of the other foolishness that went on in New Orleans," Holden told reporters. "We do not want to inherit that breed that seeks to prey on other people."
Located about 80 miles up Interstate-10 from New Orleans, Baton Rouge is dramatically different from New Orleans. The population of New Orleans is about two-thirds African American, compared to about half in Baton Rouge. The median household income in Baton Rouge is $30,308, compared to $27,137 in New Orleans, according to the Census Bureau. One in three people in Baton Rouge graduated from college, compared to one in four in New Orleans.
The differences between the neighboring cities are more dramatic than the statistics show, said James Wilson Jr., assistant director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
While the Big Easy is known for the French Quarter, Mardi Gras, great restaurants and letting the good times roll, the city's populace is actually separated at the extremes. Baton Rouge is largely middle class.
"In New Orleans, especially in the place that's really inundated with floodwater, it's dominated by rich and poor," Wilson told the St. Petersburg Times. "Baton Rouge is pretty much your all-American city, or at least your all-American Southern city,"
The changes are likely to escalate.
"Everyone is settling in here realizing that they're not going anywhere," said Jason Golden, a Red Cross official at the River Center refugee shelter. Already children have registered with education officials and will begin attending Baton Rouge public schools this week, he said.
"Baton Rouge is now the largest city in Louisiana, and it's going to be for quite a while, if not permanently," said Walter Monsour, administrator of the city-parish government, last week. "Is this going to mean a different way of life here? Absolutely."
On the levee, Nutty and Slim Nine and Doughboy, Jr., are hoping he's right.
"I'm not used to this," said Nutty. "In the N.O., something be happening all the time."
I don't mind helping people truely in need, but after we've got them back on their feet, they need to go home!
Republicans will have little trouble taking this state in the next elections, I would predict!
When someone welcomes you into their home, you follow their rules or get out!
LOL, I'm sure I can trust any of this article after that.
My family in Baton Rouge says this is all true. Long lines for food and gas. Constant 'all circuits busy' when they try to call in or out. The population has effectively doubled overnight. Baton Rouge cannot absorb this mess, neither the big cities in Texas. There are about 150 staying in the auditorium in my parent's church and they have no idea for how long. They are using Food Bank resources to feed them.
New Orleans, sounds like a place I'd like to visit. NOT!!!!
We have a spare room, and I thought about letting someone stay there, but I have a teenage daughter and don't know who I would get and also was scared they might never leave.
Someone should tell Nutty to get a job doing clean-up work - manual labor - and start behaving like a normal citizen. Good times may have rolled in Nawlins, but the rest of the world works for a living.
There is no "home" left for many people to go back to. The city that housed 600,000 people will only be suitable for about 100,000 in the next 6 months. Now, there will be some who will live off of others for as long as it takes to move back to New Orleans, but for the vast majority of the remaining 500,000 people it is time to build a new life elsewhere.
In Baton Rouge was unaffected by the Hurricane, why didn't someone, say a State Official, direct aid to the affected areas?
Move them out to the Military bases they are closing down. Lots of them have tons of empty barracks space. OH My bad! It would be beneith their dignity to have to share space while we complete the RESECUE efforts and move on to the RECOVERY
"We got gangs — 'Catch, Catch, Get A Little Bit', 'Suicide', a bunch of others," said Slim Nine, 20. "And we know the police crew....
'Catch me if you can' - coming to your neighborhood soon...
That was exactly my recommendation too. Move these people to closed military bases. We have lots of them with empty barricks and officer housing. Let's not do anything that makes sense shall we.
Be it, really............hmmmm.
Good luck, Baton Rouge. Y'all are going to need it.
Oh, geez. Wait until the 1,000 evacuees in Lubbock, Texas figure out there's only 1 place well outside the city limits on just a single side of town (opposite where they're staying) where packaged beer, wine and liquor can be purchased. Talk about a culture clash.
That is actually happening. Fort McClellen in Anniston AL is being prepped to receive refugees, and I've heard of several others.
they are doing the same in Paris, Texas ... planning to move them into an old base.
"I don't like the curfew here," said Doughboy, Jr., 16. "And I don't like the police. They make grown people stay inside at night."
"We got gangs — 'Catch, Catch, Get A Little Bit', 'Suicide', a bunch of others," said Slim Nine, 20. "And we know the police crew. People here just don't understand us. New Orleans is a fun city." They did not want to give their full names because "people might be after us."
Sooner or later, these fine, upstanding pillars of the community will either end up in prison, or get shot in self defense.
Sad, really ...
That's what I'm afraid of too! A quarter of a million are here in my state and I just hope they miss home enough to go back. God willing N.O will be a healthy productive new city with the help of Americans so that they can go back and take this experience to enhance and improve their lives!
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