(they keep trying to pave paradise … promoted at 1:30 PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
This past Mardi Gras season found us with some city mooks that were actually trying to get sponsors to pony-up monies in order to hold the parades of Carnival. Here is my answer to these poops, my diatribe, my damned rant.
Crossposted from GentillyGirl.com
It seems that our “wonderful” invisible Mayor was trying to sell out OUR traditions to the Corporate Pigs.
Mr. Nagin, OUR city’s gov’ment ain’t no freakin’ company: it belongs to the citizens. You are not a fucking CEO, you are OUR servant. Same holds true for anyone who works for OUR city gov’ment. You work for US.
The Social Contract states that we help each other, that we care for each other, and that we arrive at a common scheme of governance. Those who are part of that governance structure obey US. Get that one you jerks?
Not one of you fuckers have the right to sell our culture, our souls, our lives to the highest bidder. We will not allow any company’s “Brand” on us. We are not serfs. And you and those misfits you have placed in City Hall are not overlords. (Remember the term “Civil Servants”?)
There will be no “Muses, sponsored by Monsanto” or “Proteus by Phillips”. Or “Comus provided by Chevrolet”.
We are the people of this city. This is our culture, our way of living… it is our heart. It is alive, just as it’s been for three centuries. This city is ours, you corporate whack-job. We are New Orleans, and without us all that will exist is a freak-show Disney version of the real thing. New Orleans, the city and the soul, belongs to US, not you and your corporate B/S.
In other words you SOB, we ain’t for sale.
My ancestors helped found this city, carving a place to live out of the swamps. Some of my family were “Free People of Color”. A few others were Haitians that drove the French from their island. Some of my forebearers were pirates, others fished the seas. Many are my elders that died fighting for our country and the reason for it’s existence. They lived their lives, just as I do.
“This Land is My Land, this Land is Your Land…”. Get the fucking picture you fucking corporate slaves?
Why don’t you, Mr. Nagin and gang, stop trying to brand and sell us, and instead actually do your damn jobs as OUR servants? Otherwise we will storm the Bastille, and you fucks will be toast. (Remember last year?)
New Orleans is OURS. We ain’t for sale. OUR culture belongs only to US, not your corporate masters. We will not be “Branded”.
Sinn Fein!
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whoo-hoo!
i too am tired of everything being branded, sponsored…
gha! when will the insanity end…
… of the pinheads Ray Nagin and HUD honcho Alphonse Jackson (not even mentioning Don Powell here, though he’s part of it as well) is bad for New Orleans … they do indeed wish to make New Orleans into a Disney World. They want to tear down public housing (while thousands of folks either live in toxic FEMA trailers or under the overpasses in Bushville tent cities) and this unholy combination of federal and local greed is indeed a threat to the culture and integrity of the city.
From the Times-Picayune:
There’s more and it’s all bad.
I’m not surprised by this, no one who has been following what’s going on in NOLA is surprised by this.
From the moment the Federal Flood happened, the Bush misAdministration’s first action was to head for the cash register and line up its friends. Those friends, especially those who headed federal agencies, made federal dollars dependent upon demolition and awarding contracts to corrupt carpetbaggers who wish to profit from the suffering of US citizens.
Bleh.
Thanks, GG … good to know there are folks like you who will call them out on their bullshit.
Say it strong, say it loud. New Orleans belongs to its people. Great rant. Thanks for the info.
stupid to boot. What makes a city like New Orleans rich is it’s culture. Why destroy the assets of soul, place and history. Shock Doctrine personified. To take the gems we still posses culturally and turn them into sterile corporate boring malls is insane, on a financial level let alone the moral civic considerations.
Thing is this pillaging is not paying off. This Visigoth approach to economics is before our eyes crumbling, just as in Iraq they have no other end besides short term profit graft and destruction of the very things that make up the fabric of a people and culture. Who will people this vision less landscape?
While my small hunk of culture/place doesn’t hold a candle to the devastation and aftermath of NO it is occurring here and the backlash is starting. My section of the city of Portland is haven of street life and colorful diversity, non conformist. The tourists, as we call them, come in droves to wander our streets a change from the bland corporate burbs.
This has drawn the eyes and lust of the ‘developers’, Starbuck’s, and they are trying to destroy it with driving out the riff raff and in turn destroying the very reason it draws people. They are vampires in collusion with those who are elected to represent our interests. Community is the only barricade we have. All community is our community from ‘sea to shining sea’ and New Orleans is the front line here. Take it back New Orleans, it cannot be bought and packaged and sold.
loooong before Katrina, and with no ties what-so-ever to NOLA, thought of New Orleans as the Soul of America? I did!
Love the rant, GG and love that you put a stamp on it. (I mean “stamp” in several ways, you know.) 😉
I hope your voice is representative of the majority of New Orleanians — to maintain the heritage, culture and all that was New Orleans. I think, as kj stated, most Americans cannot conceive of a New Orleans except the one that we knew and related to.
Hopefully, with the spirit of those like you, New Orleans will recover with the time and become the New Orleans that it always was — albeit, it’s history grievously marred by an uncaring government.
Keep up the fight!