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Liberal Place: New Orleans, LA
These are comments on New Orleans, submitted by other Turn Left visitors. They do not necessarily represent the opinion of the webmaster. You may add a comment on New Orleans if you want.
New Orleans is a cultural oasis in the desert of southern conservatism, a place where the alienated masses of the neighboring Baptist strongholds can find shelter and perhaps some semblance of individuality. Though the quarter has traditionally been the bastion of liberal thought in the region, some of the surrounding neighborhoods have been gaining ground of late, such as: The Marigny, a lower-rent and less-commercialized alternative to the quarter (which nowadays more resembles some kind of Disneyland for Drunks than it does the place to get an actual taste of the Bohemian life), the Bywater--the next neighborhood down-river from the Marigny, once a crime-ridden wasteland, now an up-and-coming place with a diverse community busily refurbishing the old houses there--the Garden District, whose property values are sure to rise with the recent news that its neighboring housing project is going to be torn down--pockets of Uptown, such as the area around Magazine Street up to Audubon Park--also the neighborhoods around the UNO campus at the lakefront contain a fairly large liberal student population. Coffee houses are becoming an increasingly normal sight; live music and arts festivals abound. The local liberal paper of choice is Gambit magazine; for natural foods, you can try the well-stocked if not always reasonably priced "Whole Foods Market" along stately Esplanade Avenue.

There are certainly minuses to take into consideration when contemplating New Orleans as a place to live. Local government is a bit backward, and the public education system is a disaster; police abuses are a fact of life (though I personally found the ones I encountered there to be much friendlier than their Los Angeles cousins), and gaping disparities in socio-economic class largely defined along racial lines, are no doubt a contribution to the city's well-publicized crime rate (I did, however, manage to live there for several years and was able to avoid being a victim of any violent crime). There also seems to be a disproportionately high amount of cocaine and heroine use lately among the gen-xers which carouse during the night-time hours along Frenchmen and Decatur Streets, and some of the backstreet areas of Uptown. The French Quarter, being a 24 hour place, perhaps invites this problem a bit more than some other areas. The drugs of choice may vary from age to age, but substance abuse and New Orleans have long been bedfellows.

Yet despite these social problems, the city is able to preserve its unique character as a place for square pegs to feel at home, away from the cares of high-stress and high expense living...a place filled with ghosts and decaying elegance that seem enhance the muse of the local writers and artists. The surrounding community of Jefferson Parish, however, is quite another story...it's only positive contribution has been the newly-built Barnes & Noble Bookstore; the rest of the place is filled with David Duke conservatives and working class families living amid used car lots and fast food franchises, and has a sheriff whose idea of law enforcement is hunting nutria rats down for sport along the area's drainage canals late at night.

...and another comment...

New Orleans is a jewel amidst the vast stretches of Redneckland (the Bible Belt, The South, whatever you wish to call it).  The city, sometimes called the "Daughter of Paris", with its Spanish and French heritage has always been a cultural center of the south.  Who would want to live in any of the surrounding cities (Jackson MS, Hattiesburg MS, Meridian MS, Mobile AL, Birmingham AL, Baton Rouge LA)?  When is the last time, for example, the Emerson String Quartet played in Chattanooga?  When is the last time there was a Monet exhibit in Mississippi?

Everywhere one travels outside New Orleans, one encounters backward bigotry, racism, xenofobia, and narrow-minded small-town governments (we have the pleasure of living in one...).  Redneck Bible-belt dusty pickup-truck territory starts just outside New Orleans and stretches in every direction to Colorado, Chicago or Washington D.C. 

...and another comment...

New Orleans is an interesting place, and for progressives looking for tolerance, it is indeed an oasis in Southern close-mindedness (speaking as a person raised in Alabama, and having lived in New Orleans). However, to me being a progressive means to fight for what I believe in, and to above all care; about people, animals, the environment, justice, whatever. If you are looking for an environment that cares, New Orleans is not the place.

The "slogan" for New Orleans is "The city that care forgot", but it is more than a slogan. Living in a city that sits at the downstream side of "cancer alley", with political corruption, police corruption, startling gaps between the rich and poor (slums within 2 blocks of oppulent ante-bellum mansions on private tree-lined streets), horrid crime, and decrepit public schools because those that "have" send their kids to private catholic school thus eroding any real political support for public schools, you would think that New Orleanians would have plenty to care about. But they simply do not care, which is why the problems exsist in the first place.

If you are looking for a place that will not persecute you because of your political beliefs (as much of the rest of the South will do), New Orleans could be the place, but don't confuse it with acceptance, it is just apathy.

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