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The New York Times reports on the march:
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11 - Thousands of residents here, mostly whites, marched through downtown on Thursday in a show of anger over recent killings and local officials’ ineffective response.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin, in a moment of silence at the rally. His administration has come under attack after 13 killings in two weeks.
Converging on City Hall, the crowd packed the plaza fronting the building, with many marchers holding signs that denounced Mayor C. Ray Nagin, his police chief and the local district attorney as “incompetent,” “failures” or worse, and demanding their resignations.
The police estimated the crowd at 5,000, a big turnout in a city where such large-scale mobilization is unusual.
It was a striking demonstration of the frustration coursing through New Orleans as residents endure one more challenge - at least 13 killings in two weeks, including those of a popular musician and a well-known filmmaker - after all the misery inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Yet it also showed the community’s deep division. Nearly all the demonstrators were white, even though New Orleans is mostly black, the victims of the violence have mostly been black, and perpetrators are believed to have been black, too.
The demonstrators were homemakers from the Uptown neighborhood, bohemians from the Faubourg Marigny section, small-business owners from the French Quarter, and executives and lawyers from the Central Business District.
The monochrome crowd was a surprise to many, and an unpromising augury for any possible resolution of the city’s crime crisis. Law enforcement officials have for years spoken of mute circles of witnesses around crime scenes in largely African-American neighborhoods here.
Marching up Poydras Street to City Hall, one of Thursday’s few black demonstrators, Isadell Icastle, said: “I was totally shocked when I came here, that they didn’t have more black people out here.”
The Rev. John Raphael, a local black pastor who fired up the crowd during the rally, said afterward: “There is a lot of hopelessness on the street, in the black community. People are living in fear.”
“To step out,” Mr. Raphael added, “people just feel they would make themselves vulnerable.”
Some whites suggested that many blacks holding low-paying jobs would not have been permitted to leave work to attend the demonstration.
Earlier, Mr. Nagin had stood by silently as Mr. Raphael, of New Hope Baptist Church, gave emotional voice to the crowd’s discontent.
“We have trod through streets soaked with the blood of our neighbors and siblings, to declare our dissatisfaction,” the pastor called out to the crowd. “We have come to lodge our complaint.”
Pursued by catcalls, Mr. Nagin ducked into City Hall with his entourage when the rally ended.
But he later seemed at pains to make clear, at a news conference, that the demonstration had affected him, calling it “something very moving for me personally,” and saying it had been “an incredibly powerful day.”
Many in the crowd appeared to think so as well, though most had no more specific goals than the expression of weariness and rage.
“Do we just keep passing restaurants where we say, ‘I know people who were murdered there?’ No more,” said Karin Rittvo, who held aloft a sign that read “6 Family, Friends murdered since July. No Arrests. It’s Personal Now.”
Other demonstrators spoke of their shock at some of the latest killings, like that of the filmmaker Helen Hill, which - unusually - did not involve shootouts between drug dealers.
“It’s bad enough when criminals are killing criminals,” Clyde Patton, a real estate developer, said. “But when criminals are killing the innocent, that hurts us all.”
One woman spoke of a sense of shame at the killing wave. “We all let the violence in our city get out of hand,” the woman, Janet Barnwell, said. “We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11 - Thousands of residents here, mostly whites, marched through downtown on Thursday in a show of anger over recent killings and local officials’ ineffective response.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin, in a moment of silence at the rally. His administration has come under attack after 13 killings in two weeks.
Converging on City Hall, the crowd packed the plaza fronting the building, with many marchers holding signs that denounced Mayor C. Ray Nagin, his police chief and the local district attorney as “incompetent,” “failures” or worse, and demanding their resignations.
The police estimated the crowd at 5,000, a big turnout in a city where such large-scale mobilization is unusual.
It was a striking demonstration of the frustration coursing through New Orleans as residents endure one more challenge - at least 13 killings in two weeks, including those of a popular musician and a well-known filmmaker - after all the misery inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Yet it also showed the community’s deep division. Nearly all the demonstrators were white, even though New Orleans is mostly black, the victims of the violence have mostly been black, and perpetrators are believed to have been black, too.
The demonstrators were homemakers from the Uptown neighborhood, bohemians from the Faubourg Marigny section, small-business owners from the French Quarter, and executives and lawyers from the Central Business District.
The monochrome crowd was a surprise to many, and an unpromising augury for any possible resolution of the city’s crime crisis. Law enforcement officials have for years spoken of mute circles of witnesses around crime scenes in largely African-American neighborhoods here.
Marching up Poydras Street to City Hall, one of Thursday’s few black demonstrators, Isadell Icastle, said: “I was totally shocked when I came here, that they didn’t have more black people out here.”
The Rev. John Raphael, a local black pastor who fired up the crowd during the rally, said afterward: “There is a lot of hopelessness on the street, in the black community. People are living in fear.”
“To step out,” Mr. Raphael added, “people just feel they would make themselves vulnerable.”
Some whites suggested that many blacks holding low-paying jobs would not have been permitted to leave work to attend the demonstration.
Earlier, Mr. Nagin had stood by silently as Mr. Raphael, of New Hope Baptist Church, gave emotional voice to the crowd’s discontent.
“We have trod through streets soaked with the blood of our neighbors and siblings, to declare our dissatisfaction,” the pastor called out to the crowd. “We have come to lodge our complaint.”
Pursued by catcalls, Mr. Nagin ducked into City Hall with his entourage when the rally ended.
But he later seemed at pains to make clear, at a news conference, that the demonstration had affected him, calling it “something very moving for me personally,” and saying it had been “an incredibly powerful day.”
Many in the crowd appeared to think so as well, though most had no more specific goals than the expression of weariness and rage.
“Do we just keep passing restaurants where we say, ‘I know people who were murdered there?’ No more,” said Karin Rittvo, who held aloft a sign that read “6 Family, Friends murdered since July. No Arrests. It’s Personal Now.”
Other demonstrators spoke of their shock at some of the latest killings, like that of the filmmaker Helen Hill, which - unusually - did not involve shootouts between drug dealers.
“It’s bad enough when criminals are killing criminals,” Clyde Patton, a real estate developer, said. “But when criminals are killing the innocent, that hurts us all.”
One woman spoke of a sense of shame at the killing wave. “We all let the violence in our city get out of hand,” the woman, Janet Barnwell, said. “We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”