Deamonte Love of New Orleans

This story
made me feel temporarily better. The kids in the article are in my hometown of San Antonio, now, too, which gives me a small-comfort warm feeling. San Antonio and New Orleans have some similarities I've been ruminating on this past week. Both are old cities, pre-American Revolution, pre-United States, having been French and Spanish and Mexican colonial-power outposts, both cities historically Catholic, both historically bilingual. San Antonio and New Orleans are also cities of poor people of color whose underpaid labor has made white people wealthier and who've benefitted very little from social programs, but whose music and food and art make their cities world-famous tourist attractions. Both are party cities, restaurant cities, bar cities, convention cities. Both are charming, lovely, friendly, violent, and poor. San Antonio, thank God, is not levee-dependent, but a large majority of its population would be similarly fucked if a natural disaster struck.

I pray that there comes out of the NOLA tragedy a new national focus on America's poor; my hometown needs it, and so does yours.