Pouring Drano down the New Orleans brain drain
27th September 2008
You, teacher, struggling for 14 years to reform the education system, and to raise the prospects and opportunities for generations of New Orleans youth — we need your talent and expertise to rebuild New Orleans. Oh, you say you’re 36 years old? Sorry. No thanks. We’re not interested in your ideas or your contribution.
You, social worker, struggling for 15 years in the streets of New Orleans to provide comfort and hope to those who were left behind by the cruel streets of New Orleans — we need your talent and expertise to rebuild New Orleans. Oh, you say you’re 37 years old? Sorry. No thanks. We’re not interested in your ideas or your contribution.
You, business owner, struggling for 16 years to build an idea from scratch, risking your own savings and even your home at times to keep the idea going to provide a product or service which offers jobs to other New Orleanians, and adds to the character of the city — we need your talent and expertise to rebuild New Orleans. Oh, you say you’re 38 years old? Sorry. No thanks. We’re not interested in your ideas or your contribution.
You, community organizer, struggling for 17 years to stop corruption, reform government, fight crime, support education, and beautify your city, weary and needy of a few dollars to keep your organization going — we need your talent and expertise to rebuild New Orleans. Oh, you say you’re 39 years old? Sorry. No thanks. We’re not interested in your ideas or your contribution.
You, graduate of a New Orleans university who made New Orleans your home for the last 18 years, and who lived through the worst of times but came back to continue your struggle to improve the city — we need your talent and expertise to rebuild New Orleans. Oh, you say you’re 40 years old? Sorry. No thanks. We’re not interested in your ideas or your contribution.
You, lifelong resident of New Orleans, fighting to put your home and your neighborhood back in order, still, more than three years after Hurricane Katrina — we need your talent and expertise to rebuild New Orleans. Oh, you say you’re 41 years old? Sorry. No thanks. We’re not interested in your ideas or your contribution.
No, the only good ideas are the ones that come from we 23 – 35 year-old carpetbaggers who didn’t know anything about New Orleans more than a couple of years ago besides Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, and Jazz Fest. We in our insular little group know best what New Orleans needs. Other opportunistic, profiteering carpetbaggers made out so well skimming their share of recovery dollars that we’d like to replicate that pattern. But we don’t have enough people to pat ourselves on the back yet, so we’re announcing a new self-aggrandizing initiative to neglect true New Orleanians by throwing a big party just for us and our hip Google friends, flattering ourselves by saying we did it “in true New Orleans style,” and celebrating our circle jerk by pronouncing ourselves “young movers and shakers who are arriving by the hundreds with dual aspirations of sparking social change and advancing their careers in the inspiring laboratory of post-Katrina New Orleans.”
Oh, what’s that? Someone says it might be a good idea to understand why there’s been such an acute brain drain from New Orleans? Because so many yuppie carpetbaggers are now taking credit for doing what others quietly did for so many years while being neglected?
September 27th, 2008 at 7:12 am
The Katrina model spreads, New Orleans was the canary in the coal mine… http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/umedia/20080926/cp.d8b3c888d65b2bb61b5f902c314f4a8c
September 27th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Dude, I’m 23 and moved here last year. This is my home. I’m not going anywhere else.
We’re not all carpetbaggers.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:08 am
New Orleans isn’t an “inspiring laboratory.” It’s a city.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Alli, as you can tell, I’m quite peeved by funders looking for miracles in darling causes and people rather than looking for grass roots social entrepreneurs who, though they may not be new, young, hip, or trendy, have been pulling up the weeds long before Katrina happened, and who continue the struggle without recognition. My use of the term carpetbagging is a direct reaction to the inference that there aren’t talented people in New Orleans who could be even more successful if they were supported. I, too, was once a carpetbagger before the city made its mark on me, and forced me to stay for reasons having more to do with a calling than personal aggrandizement. It sounds like the patrons of organizations like the 504ward project would have me believe that I made a mistake to sink roots so long ago, and that I would be better appreciated for the work I do if I had left the city and came back after Katrina. If you plan to stay, I honor you and thank you. It isn’t an easy place in which to succeed. It would be nice if the challenges were acknowledged, and if indigenous social entrepreneurs were recognized.
September 27th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Darlin’, how well I understand this post and it’s spirit. I busted my tush from exile in SoCal to get the Gentilly Association put together and locate people and find what their needs were. When I have gone and tried to help these newbies, they stare at me like I’m chopped liver or something. “Who let the old broad in?”
The situation you describe comes from two things- the Folly of Youth (long ago I did the same thing) and the perception of most of the world that we here in New Orleans are drunken fools and morons. The first is natural and the second derives from the lack of experience of our little world here in Debrisville.
I don’t normally suffer fools, but the latitude is there for their attempts to help. Maybe some of them will actually “get it” and join our merry band. The rest can run back to whatever hole they crawled out of.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Your thinking is awfully smug and insular here. I’m 33, NOLA born and raised, and you know what? I’m damn glad these young 23-35 year olds are here, and glad they’ve taken an interest in improving life in my city, glad they’ve gotten beyond bourbon street and mardi gras and are now trying to make a difference. Because too many of my high school friends from Jesuit and Mount Carmel and Dominican and Brother Martin and Newman have left and stayed gone, and built lives elsewhere - and I can’t really blame them, because this city never made much of an economic effort to encourage them to stay, not so much as a contest like the one in question here. (I’m a hold-out, but it’s tough - my friends in other cities still try to get me to leave, and I admit it’s tempting every time.) I am sorry that they’re not here to carry the torch that is helping to bring this city back from the brink - but they’re not. I look around this city and I can’t see how we’re in a position to thumb our noses at help from anyone. A business incentive aimed at retaining some of the brighter, more motivated youthful entrepreneurs that have decided to hang around after coming down to help us rebuild? What in the hell is wrong with that? Nobody’s saying there can’t or shouldn’t be similar programs aimed specifically at the 35+ crowd, at NOLA natives, at blue lesbian unicorns or whatever damn group you please - but there’s certainly nothing wrong with encouraging people to help build this community. I don’t begrudge anyone who makes their home here and wants to help rebuild our city the opportunity to call themselves a real New Orleanian. It’s not an exclusive country club, and if it is, maybe we need to start letting new blood in, because we’re not keeping up real well on our own, y’all.
But apparently you’d rather we NOLA locals just sit here eating our red beans every monday, patting ourselves on the back for being old-school veterans of the crime, poverty, mosquitos and katrina, talking amongst ourselves and whining on our blogs and not doing anything half as constructive as the 504ward people are attempting to do.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
btw, I wanted to add that I actually have really enjoyed you blog and respect the good work you’ve done here and your love for the NOLA - just that on this particular issue, I have to respectfully disagree. sorry that had to be my first comment here. :)
September 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
oops, typo: NOLA, not ‘the NOLA’.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Yes, please let’s alienate the young blood inspired to come in to our city and belittle their enthusiasm and effort. Certainly, many will find that New Orleans doesn’t suit them and move on to other things. Others will become entrenched in our communities and raise the native New Orleanians of future generations. To stereotype them as carpetbaggers is unnecessarily harsh.
When I moved to New Orleans 4-and-a-half years ago, fresh out of college and looking for opportunity everybody outside of this city and even people in the city told me I was crazy. They told me I should go to Houston or anywhere but here if I wanted to make a living. Now a homeowner, landlady to one of your so-called carpetbaggers, and a public school teacher, I think that 504ward’s goal to “retain and engage the 23-35 demographic” is necessary and admirable. I don’t see how it should be construed as an insult to those more experienced. Our goals are the same and we should be united.
September 27th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Em, Schroeder was referring, IMHO, to those who don’t utilize the grassroots organizers who have been here for quite some time. Why try to reinvent the wheel? It’s a waste of time, energy and money.
Many of us locals (and I am a Native who was gone for decades) hit the ground running right after the Federal Flood. Our experience and knowledge base is vast. I guess we just don’t like being made to feel irrelevant. We got the ball rolling in the first place. When I started my Blog post-Flood, People Get Ready was the first place I came to. It helped me make decisions of what I needed to do to help the city… and then we started rebuilding and connecting.
Carpetbaggers is probably an unfortunate term. Personally I reserve it for contractors, but it does have some relevance when seen as a description of those who show up and decide that we locals don’t know jack. I have fought many campaigns over the last 35 years. I know jack, and his grannies, uncles and aunts. The only idiots here are to be found in City Hall.
I welcome the new blood coming into New Orleans. I cheer them for taking a stand for something, but I do not like being marginalized. It sux.
September 27th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“I’m damn glad these young 23-35 year olds are here.”
Absolutely. I agree. We need more people in this demographic. But we also need more people in the 36-50 demographic, and in the 51-65 demographic. And we need back the middle class professionals who gave up on federal, state, and local government crap after Katrina.
In my mind, this ageist discrimination created by people who hadn’t lived in New Orleans before Katrina is ostentatiously self-aggrandizing.
My criticism isn’t directed at everyone, but it certainly applies to some who have completely missed what’s already happening.
Most importantly, it’s not a criticism of people who move to New Orleans, as much as it is a criticism pointed directly at the way funding organizations have favored some people and their ideas over others, and the discriminatory way in which those darling entities pull resources away from less-favored recovery ideas and efforts, equally vital, but lacking the resources required to build their capacity to achieve their potential. I would bet money that some of the best ideas are not found among new arrivals, but in the people who have the experience of having lived in the city for a more considerable amount of time.
What’s “smug” and “insular” is the way in which outside organizations which have the potential to do good completely skip over the indigenous interests and efforts which had been underway long before Katrina.
Far better it would be for funding entities to look at what the city needs to achieve the goal of a more prosperous city, and support efforts which answer those needs.
“this city never made much of an economic effort to encourage them to stay.”
Yeah, I agree. How about outside funders look at *that* problem, instead of favoring *exclusively* recent arrivals.
“But apparently you’d rather we NOLA locals just sit here eating our red beans every monday, patting ourselves on the back for being old-school veterans of the crime, poverty, mosquitos and katrina, talking amongst ourselves and whining on our blogs and not doing anything half as constructive as the 504ward people are attempting to do.”
That’s a broad brush, don’t you think? We aren’t doing anything? Wow. A number of bloggers number among the most innovative and tenacious volunteers and reformers in the city. So much so, in fact, that I’d say they ought to number among the first people to be consulted when funders are looking for new ideas to support.
“Our goals are the same and we should be united.”
Yes. So why is it that 504ward doesn’t see it that way?
September 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
This is good. There needs to be a debate of this issue.
Ever since Katrina, there’s been this sexy story sold in the press that anything newcomers bring to the city is golden, with a particular neglect of indigenous efforts.
Let’s put it on the table. Let the funders defend their actions.
September 27th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
GG, I’m honored you found something worthwhile here. You have certainly found your own voice and have made a valued contribution to the city.
September 27th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
2 and half years of working night and day..just got my funding cut. I am over 40..
September 27th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
BTW, I don’t eat red beans and rice on Mondays. An old tradition, sure, but one I abandoned long ago, and again, a tired stereotype of New Orleanians.
September 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I’ve done a little digging and I think we could all do a little more homework on this subject.
I suggest you take a look at the rules & regulations and the overview of 504ward’s competition. From a brief read-through myself, it looks like a great opportunity for an entrepreneur in New Orleans (or elsewhere) with a great business idea to make it happen. The ages of the applicants or the people they employ is not necessarily at issue - it’s that they demonstrate their product or service can retain the young crowd in New Orleans.
Then perhaps we might submit to the Idea Village that their next competition be aimed at bolstering other New Orleanian talent and demographics.
September 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
“That’s a broad brush, don’t you think?”
It is, perhaps. I know the good that the local blog community has done since the storm, in volunteerism and citizen journalism and in largely shaping the grassroots discourse surrounding this recovery - and it was not my intention to malign local bloggers or the important role they’ve played. (lord knows I have no room to cast aspersions, not even having blogged much myself since pre-katrina. i’m just being a bit of a gadfly here.) Unfortunately, though, the blog-culture is by its nature discourse-based - it’s one of discussion more than action. I was at Rising Tide 3 this year, too, and there were a lot of great thoughts tossed around, but what they all came down to was that Action Needs To Be Taken. Local public schoool parents need to Take Action to improve/safeguard their children’s educations. Citizens need to Take Action against a corrupt government. But the ability of the blog community to Take Action or even instigate such action is constrained by our (limited and largely homogenous) readership and/or our ability to get mainstream media champions for our causes (a la Zurik and DuBos.) In light of that, I do think there’s more to admire than to disparage in an organization that has the resources to literally put its money where its mouth is and actually takes action to effect change - any change - with the betterment of this city’s future in mind.
September 27th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
“discussion more than action”?
Or action reinforced by discussion?
“I suggest you take a look at the rules & regulations and the overview of 504ward’s competition.”
I did. There’s an undercurrent to the message, that the saviors of the city are people who are recent arrivals — and one which a perhaps poorly-written article reinforces:
“504ward … is designed to retain the influx of young movers and shakers who are arriving in New Orleans with dual aspirations of sparking social change and advancing their careers. … Post-Katrina, New Orleans has enjoyed an influx of young talent — individuals bold enough to take a chance and smart enough to see a unique opportunity in reinventing a great American city. 504ward seeks to retain this group by addressing the issues pertinent to the 23-35 year-old dynamic: career prospects, social engagement, and opportunity for community impact.”
I’d like to think I’m wrong. Congratulations to the Idea Village for putting some money up. It’s great that they’re willing to do it. In some respects, I’d rather they distribute it around to some neighborhood organizations that could really use it as seed money to acquire more funds. Or how about they retain someone to write grants to keep their initiative going, and to identify resources for neighborhood organizations.
To me, this is just more of the same. Maybe I’ve unfairly maligned the organization. I’ll do more research and come back with a response another time. Promise.
September 27th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
The 18-35 bit is rather silly. Thirty-five is an arbitrary cutoff point. You turn 36 and your suddenly squaresville? You’re washed up? I don’t think it’s so much discrimination in favor of carpetbagging, but age discrimination? Affirmative action is often called discriminatory. But isn’t just handing favors out to a group. It’s keeping historically less favored groups in mind. People hate young people in American culture? Hardly. If you have a good entrepreneurial idea and you’re one day older than 35, it shouldn’t matter.
September 28th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Is this a metaphor for the presedential election?
September 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
18-34 is a well-researched marketing demographic (the three major groups are 18-34, 35 to 54 and 55 to dead). New Orleans has a history of not being able to successfully employ and retain people in this youngest demographic. I didn’t know anything about this venture until I read it here, but I’d venture a guess that this is a way to keep young people by funding them for business ideas they come up with and implement. Sure, there is overlap and good ideas come from people older than 35, but I guess the point is to attack the problem of keeping this group in New Orleans.
October 1st, 2008 at 8:12 am
[…] Pouring Drano down the New Orleans brain drain […]
October 1st, 2008 at 11:43 am
The 18-34 demographic is arbitrary, no matter how often used by advertising people. What are the similarities between people 18 and 34? Some research already shows that the supposed generational gap in the use of technology is a myth, but … aren’t the 18 year olds more likely to use blogs and twitter and such? Or don’t they? The demographic is built more on the assumption that major life changes are more likely to occur in this age group, particularly as regards marriage and family. Women have been traditionally less likely to have children after 35, etc.
Clearly, however, there have been changes here in past decades–people getting married later, economic changes that have made younger people less likely to own homes, etc.
And are there differences in other areas among this demographic? In gender, ethnicity, etc.? Who does this $100,000 more likely to go to? I’m guessing people from schools of the MIT variety, one, and white males secondly. Is this representative of the demographic? Does it help New Orleans to be giving out thousands of dollars to young white males with graduate degrees from MIT, or entice more younger people to come here? Maybe so, but you haven’t convinced me that this award is built on anything resembling sound research.