Abandoned In New Orleans : NOLA Indymedia

Saturday's Times-Picayune local section featured three stories connected by neglect, abandonment and death. Taken together they highlighted what happens when a society fails to value ALL its citizens and resources.

The section's lead story was "Trio is booked in killing of man found in school." This report told of a murdered man "discovered in an abandoned school in the Lower 9th Ward." His corpse was found "in a second-floor classroom at the abandoned Alfred Lawless High School at 5300 Law Street," the T-P reported. This was the city's first recorded murder of the year.

The newspaper also reported that a coroner's investigator "believes [the deseased] was killed elsewhere within 24 hours of the body's discovery, and taken to the school, which was not boarded up and easily accessible."

The report provided no information about why the school wasn't boarded up, why it is abandoned, why it isn't being used to educate children instead of being a dumping ground for a man who was shot in the head and then burned.

A second report, on page 4 of the section, was "2 homeless people freeze to death." It reported that both deaths took place "during Thursday morning's freeze." One of the dead was found by "An Algiers woman taking a blanket to a woman who had been sleeping on benches along a bicycle path under the Crescent City Connection." The woman found "her lying on a sidewalk," the report stated. It also said the deceased "had been spending nights under the bridge for about two weeks, and that "relatives said they had asked her to stay wth them, but she refused."

The report did not explain why she was sleeping under the bridge, why she did not want to stay with relatives, or why no one brought her a blanket or any other aid before she was found dead.

The same story reported about a man who "was found dead in a parking lot at an abandoned strip mall at 7011 Read Blvd." in New Orleans East. It also reported that the man "had been living behind the mall," and "had been homeless for years." His body, the report stated, was found by "EMS medical technicians responding to a call."

The report shed no light as to why the man was living behind the mall, why the mall was abandoned, why he was homeless for years, or who called EMS and why.

Nor did this report mention the larger problem: New Orleans has no plan to house its 12-16000 homeless people, nor to care for them when they are at the mercy of the elements, which last Thursday proved as merciless as city leaders.

Also on page 4 was another grisly report, "Skeleton found in N.O. housing complex." The report stated "The Orleans Parish coroner's office is seeking the identity of a person whose skeletal remains were found by workers in the unoccupied C.J. Peete public housing complex Friday morning."

"The body, believed to be that of a woman, was found...as workers went through the buidling in preparation for demolition..."

"The body was in an area where people apparently had taken up residence though the complex had been closed since before Katrina and was fenced in. There were blankets, food, a place where fires probably had been made, and an ice chest."

According to the December 16, 2007 Times-Picayne, there were 144 famiies living at Peete before Katrina.

This report did not address why workers were preparing the building for demolition, why the complex is unoccupied, what happened to the legal tenants who had lived there, or why HANO/HUD-who are responsible for maintaining and securing the complex-had no prevous knowledge of the people who "apparently had taken up residence."

In each of these cases it appears that each of these tragedies might have been avoided if buildings were used for their intended purposes, if those responsible for the buildings had done their jobs, if housing the homeless was as much of a priority as promoting football games, and if each of the questions the Times-Picayne failed to deal with had been answered before it was too late.