Saving Our Future: New Orleans Needs to Make the Bruce Willis Demand

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Saving Our Future: New Orleans Needs to Make the Bruce Willis Demand

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Report from New Orleans, Louisiana - USA

     The local papers do not seem to be running letters to the editor or stories of people leaving with their recitation of reasons why they are doing so anymore. My guess is that it is not because the letters aren't being written, but that it is an editorial decision not to publish this. Whatever the case may be and as cathartic as it must be when leaving town to pen this type of letter, none of us who stay want to hear it.

However I was excited to see Dr. Larry Montelibano writing in the July 17, 2007 edition of The Times-Picayune to request a reason to stay from our politicians. That is exactly what we need and more. We need to collectively demand that which is needed to stay. Both as businesses and as individuals we need to bond together to make our demand. We do not need businesses like Tidewater and our doctors, nurses, plumbers, electricians and all the rest leaving and then telling us why. We need to know what is required for us, all of us, to stay (and return in too many cases!). The letter by the good doctor and the talk of leaving by Tidewater recently are the canaries in the coal mine. We miss these signs at our peril.

Oddly we are both hostages and hostage takers in New Orleans. We are hostage to this city that we love. But we also have the power to make the demand. Think of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon (ok - maybe that's a bad example - didn't end too well.) Here's another way to think of it. Think of the following bad movie rather than a fine film. In the movie  Armageddon when Bruce Willis and his men are called to serve, Willis' men ask for all sort's of wants. Bruce Willis asks only for that which he needed from the feds (yes indeed; from the federal government - sound familiar?) and he got it! I am saying that we need to make the Willis Demand - that which we need.

Obviously we are all working to solve a hundred pressing issues on thousands of fronts. But we need collective action to stop the bleeding on issues of crime, insurance, health care, utilities, cost of living, education, jobs and the rest. There must be some few things that we can all agree and demand. Do these become a Bill of Rights for New Orleanians or Louisianians? Mayor Nagin recently stated that we would need to take to the streets to get that which we need. Before this, do we need to agree on a Bill of Rights granted not by God or by the government, but granted to each other?

For example, is there a Right to Return that should be granted to everyone? Is this a right to return to the exact piece of land or home? Maybe not - maybe so, but there must be some common ground where we can work for each other's return. Can we agree that there must be some end to the current madness with crime, insurance and utility prices and that we owe each other the possibility of a civil and affordable place to call home? Addressing these issues and thereby creating a right to return by agreement on a minimum standard that is then enacted come hell or high water might be the first step of the Right to Return; the Right to Remain for all of us. Please make no mistake as I am not advocating for a hand out or even a hand up; I am only suggesting that we demand the bare necessities to allow for 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'.

Citizens need to take to the streets as one. Now, this year by the 29th of August we do it by getting together to deliberate and craft our demand letter. We will not all get what we want, but if we do not get what we need it will be a long slow decline with many unpublished letters to the editor stacking up on his desk.

On any given issue, idea or right that we need in this city under siege there is a place where the buck stops. Until we demand that the buck stops, no mayor, governor or president will stop it. 

Thank you,

Your Ignoble Working Boy