Original Sin

Touchdown Jesus (I didn't make that up, that's what we call that statue)

In New Orleans, we’d said this year was cursed. We didn’t know how cursed it could be, while we now watch in horror as we lose our brethren, our community leaders, and our legends to COVID. When someone dies, we usually take to the streets and march and sing and dance in their name; all (rightfully) verboten now.

We said it was cursed. We are a superstitious people.

We started off our year with a couple bodies rotting in a half-collapsed hotel, left over from the October, and the city government recovering from a cyber attack which left operations slowed to a crawl. People have valid and invalid criticisms of the city’s response to these things.

We then went into a Mardi Gras where two people died after being hit by floats – something that hadn’t happened since the ’80s. It’s not that Mardi Gras has never brought drama and tragedy; it’s that the drama and tragedy were not brought upon us by the celebration itself – usually just something peripheral.

For one part of the year, every year, our city shuts down to prioritize joy. It’s hard to explain how meaningful that is – an entire community, allowing and encouraging everyone to do what makes them happy in the moment. It’s Christmas holidays with no obligation, or a giant staycation full of parties and activities that can be fairly inexpensive – where typically, you either get paid holidays or make a shitload of money. People don’t realize this: it’s not all tits and drugs; much of it is family-friendly. Kids who rarely see new toys get a bunch of them during parades. The spirit is generous; strangers give you food and bathroom breaks.

For these weeks of joy and celebration to have been tainted with an invisible virus feels like a violation.

And the media wants to blame Mardi Gras for Louisiana’s – and the nation’s – COVID outbreak. It didn’t help, for sure, but it’s pretty fucking bold to place blame on a city and its leaders, especially when the federal government had yet to take the threat seriously. It doesn’t matter that other cities had events at the same time, that other cities are denser and more international. What mattered is that we are poor, we are full of minorities, and for a moment in time each year, we reject the capitalist mantra that productivity and profit is all that matters.

Blaming Mardi Gras, make no mistake, is a way for people to exceptionalize us so they don’t have to admit vulnerability, or so they can blame their own problems on our “sinfulness” and frankly, our happiness, despite all of our endless problems. There is a reason people love New Orleans even though it’s *technically* a terrible place to live; I can’t help but wonder if people revel in our suffering because they’re jealous.

Katrina survivors are, rightfully, comparing this to when preachers blamed the LGBTQ community for the storm; when they said it was god’s wrath against the city’s sin. We all know that’s bullshit, but it stings.

It’s unempathetic and misguided at best; but it’s racist and classist at its core, with a heaping side of homophobia. Blaming the people of New Orleans for Katrina instead of the federal levee system or the government that failed them is insult on top of injury. It is a way for the powers that be to refuse responsibility for their failues. Blaming the people of Louisiana for succumbing to a disease because they dared pursue joy with the blessings of our federal leadership is insult on top of injury.

Something I’m sure the right wing and the apologist media don’t like to recognize: Republicans celebrate Mardi Gras, too.

And really, we can see right through you, media. What could piss off the rest of America more than a bunch of poor people trying to extract some carefree joy out of life? What could piss of the rest of America more than a culture created by people of color celebrating itself? We’ve been in this position before; we remember how you looked at us in our time of need.

Today, Louisiana – depending on what hour you check the statistics and which parish you’re looking at and who you ask – has the highest or second-highest COVID death rate per capita in the nation (and one parish holds the world record). How can that be any surprise? We are ranked shitty in almost everything – life expectancy, poverty, “co-morbidities” (diabetes, hypertension, etc). Some of that can be blamed on the rich food we eat, the high rates of smoking, and our high level of alcohol consumption. We indulge our vices; we indulge our sins.

That’s on us.

But a lot of this isn’t on us. It’s on a system that has failed us and a population that is used to operating outside the system out of necessity. When the system is needed, it fails.

They blame our sins, but it couldn’t possibly be the shuttering of nearly all of our public hospitals in the past 15 years, could it? Including New Orleans’ iconic and critical Charity Hospital, now well on its way to being condos and retail? It couldn’t be the disastrous conditions our children live through, including the fact that we have essentially no public education left in New Orleans? It couldn’t be the fact between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, there is an area called “Cancer Alley” where its citizens are consistently and routinely poisoned by nearly unregulated industrial waste? I could go on with this list, but you get the point.

The sin lies within the system and it’s outright refusal to prioritize the health and well-being of its people. Until penance is done for that sin, we will burn in hell.

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9 Comments

    • Yeah it’s pretty obvious to me. When the national media started talking about New Orleans, people I know from elsewhere were checking in on me, and they were like “why is it so deadly there?” and I’m like…I mean…tons of us have diabetes and can’t ever go to a doctor. It’s not rocket science.

      But sure, it was Mardi Gras.

  1. This is really well done, great job! I have many relatives in your state & probably need to check up on them. I think your biggest sin is having a blue mayor & governor right now. See below…

    By Thom Hartmann

    Mad king Donald has gone full Joe Stalin in the last week or so. He is helping his friends and punishing his enemies, and using the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans to do it. People are dying and more will die because of it. Red state Oklahoma told Trump they needed 16,000 face shields – an essential medical supply for hospitals – and they got 120,000. As Joan McCarter is reporting over at Daily Kos, Oklahoma also got twice as many N95 masks as they had requested. Red state Florida is getting a third shipment from the feds; they got 100% of what they asked for. Blue state California got 170 broken ventilators and New York is still begging for supplies and equipment, while Red state Kentucky received more than they actually asked for. Blue states Massachusetts and Illinois are getting a fraction of what they need and have asked for. This is criminal, if not legally at least morally. Adam Schiff has called for a 9/11 style commission to investigate Trump’s delayed response to the coronavirus; when they put it together they need to also investigate how he is deciding which states will live and which states will die.

        • The whole state bidding war thing is yet another example of how fucked our entire economic model is. HamNo wrote about it a lot from the standpoint of throwing money at corporations to locate a headquarters or large facility, but when it comes to matters of public health, there is literally zero reason why the Feds can’t simply do the purchasing and distributing–except of course for the fact that the current “leadership” is actively fucking over blue states.

    • Yeah, check up on your family, for sure.

      I am trying to stay calm in this moment, but I think the scandal of Trump picking who lives and who dies is going to be so huge we can’t even conceive of it right now. I just read that he is advising everyone to wear a face mask but he will not – he better fucking catch this shit.

      It seems like it’s not criminal, based on the Twitteringest legal eagles. Reprehensible, though. For once I guess I’m lucky to live in a red state.

      • Man, that’s grisly to hear from the inside. My wife and I were in NO back in October. Her first time ever, my first time since before Katrina. Forgot how much I loved the place. Will be back without fear. Stay strong and stay healthy. This country needs a place like New Orleans. It is one of a few places that’s wonderfully different – Miami, Las Vegas – and should be protected and celebrated.

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