Safety and Politics in New Orleans 9/26/07

I feel safe in New Orleans most of the time. You shouldn't really walk around by yourself at night which kinda stinks, but the bus stops right outside my house, so it's not too much of a problem if I need to get back late. New Orleans is a weird city because there aren't specific neighborhoods where you shouldn't go (well, there are some) but more certain streets you shouldn't walk down. St. Charles, which is a main road, is really safe and so's Jackson (where I live) right off of St. Charles. But 4 blocks away from St. Charles on Jackson is not good. It's sporadic where safe areas and dangerous areas are. The general idea though is not to walk down streets that have "abandoned" houses. As for the news about NOLA, there was a ton of national news about it on the 2 year anniversary of Katrina but it died down really quickly after that. I think many people think the city is progressing too slowly, but forget that the entire infrastructure of the city was destroyed. Mail, garbage, jobs, transportation, everything. The progress that they've made could probably be faster, but it is the South and it's New Orleans... things go slower here anyway. And, yeah, Bush... grrr. He came here around the 2nd anniversary and said how he was going to support the city's rebuilding but he hasn't. GRR! The political news is really interesting... the national elections are still a while away so there's not too much going on there, but Louisiana is having a huge election year coming up. The state is really well known for its corruption (and NOLA for its... interesting mayor) so many of the candidates are talking about beating corruption. It's weird, though, because the state is super conservative so you'd think they'd reject corruption. But no.