The Projects

The Projects have always been a sticking point with law enforcement. Home to the most needy, they are also home to the criminal. While we in law enforcment do not equate poor and criminal, the seeds of perception exists. Not through racism or classism, but because we spend such a percentage of our working time there.

Bobby Jindal is proposing a measure to keep sex offenders, drug dealers and gang members out of the housing projects in New Orleans. He seeks to make it easier for the handicapped, elderly, and working people.

Some, of course, are not pleased with this initiative.

(Stephanie Montague)Enines says a proposal designed to get working people back to New Orleans is broken. The measure, which already passed the U.S. House of Representatives, would make it easier for elderly, handicapped and working people to get public housing in New Orleans. However, it would also prohibit convicted sex offenders, gang members and drug dealers from moving in.

Enines says, "The projects has always been for poor people, you understand, poor people. Now, all of a sudden you want to keep the poor out because they talk about the drug dealers and the drug users. Well, that's poor people. Whatcha gonna do with them now? You want to make the projects for subsidized and for middle class and for rich people, still leaving your black folks out, like, you know, like out here."

I don't know who Enines is, the article identifies her "as she plays dominos, a game she's mastered since she lost her home in New Orleans and moved to Renaissance Village". Oh! She's another one of the victims. All she's done since Katrina is master the game of dominos. Not get a job, not go to school, not try to better her position in life. No, she wants to sit around and gripe about how the government is holding everyone down.

I think that this line from Enines is most telling:

Now, all of a sudden you want to keep the poor out because they talk about the drug dealers and the drug users. Well, that's poor people.

And therein lies the problem. Enines herself equates being poor with being criminal. I don't want to subsidize people like her. Not only is she poor, but she's stupid.

There are a lot of us not born with silver spoons in our mouths. There is a sizeable portion of us who have worked for the things we have. There are a bunch of us who saw that the path to a better life was through education and put ourselves through college.

Enines, on the other hand, has mastered dominos. Not really a marketable skill. No wonder she's poor. Maybe she'd do better if she got off her fat ass and learned to work for a living.