Two Funerals in the Crescent City

[iverglas]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6817192

All Things Considered, January 11, 2007
Commentator Jason Berry attended two funerals in the past week and describes them and the mood in New Orleans.

- link to listen to report

A Murder Shakes Confidence in New Orleans

Filmmaker Helen Hill was murdered in New Orleans last week. Her death has undermined hope for the city's future. David Koen, a writer, attorney and her friend, attended her funeral Wednesday.

... Last week, Helen was shot and killed by an intruder. Her husband Paul huddled over their young son, saving his life, while the gunman fired bullet after bullet into him.

... She was an award-winning filmmaker. Paul joked that he was probably the only doctor ever supported by an artist spouse. Before Katrina, he ran the Little Doctor's Neighborhood Clinic in Treme, an old Creole neighborhood. He served anyone who walked in the door.

... Their house took on four feet of water in Katrina. They spent a year in exile in South Carolina. Paul had had it with New Orleans, with the violence and the terrible neglect that drowned the city. But Helen needed New Orleans, and New Orleans needed her.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/01/10/filmmaker-funeral.html

Silent march to honour Canadian filmmaker shot in New Orleans
Violence is on the rise in New Orleans - 9 people killed in 10 days

Mourners will march silently through the streets of New Orleans Thursday to honour a Canadian filmmaker who was gunned down in her home in the increasingly violent city.

Helen Hill, 36, was killed last week by an intruder who broke into her small white house and opened fire on her and her family.

... Hill is one of a growing number of victims in New Orleans, where the murder rate is on the rise.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/551491.html

Woman slain in New Orleans was active in Halifax peace group

Groups of young and old sat around chatting in the January sun in front of the Halifax North Public Library on Sunday as the collective Food Not Bombs dished up a steaming hot vegan curry.

It was just the kind of scene that would have been appreciated by humanitarians Helen Hill and Paul Gailiunas, who were instrumental in starting Food Not Bombs in Halifax, says Caleb Latreille, one of the roughly 30 volunteer members of the group in Halifax.

... Prior to the birth of Food Not Bombs in Halifax, the couple co-ordinated another group in the city that provided food to the homeless, according to Mr. Latreille.

After the couple left Halifax in 2000, Mr. Latreille visited them in New Orleans in 2003 where they were also running Food Not Bombs.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2cec1dfc-d9ba-4d94-99e0-5ea0840274b8&k=1713

Shooting of activist couple breaking point for New Orleans

EDMONTON -- Murder is an unfortunate part of life in New Orleans, but the shooting of a much-loved Canadian doctor, Paul Gailiunas, and the murder of his filmmaker wife, Helen Hill, has electrified and horrified the city, pushing many residents to think about giving up there.

... Citizens groups plan to march on New Orleans city hall on Thursday to demand change. "If I don't see some kind of improvement this year, then we'll think about leaving seriously," Everson says.

... In the past week, more Americans have died in New Orleans than in Iraq, MSNBC.com reports. Since Dec. 29, there have been eight military deaths. In the Big Easy, there have been 14 murders.

... Hill and Gailiunas had settled in New Orleans permanently in 2001, Hill working as an experimental filmmaker and Gailiunas as a physician at a clinic that helped out the city's poor, many of whom lack any kind of medical insurance.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070108.wxorleanscrime08/BNStory/International/home

Surging crime turns the Big Easy into Big Sleazy

NEW ORLEANS — There's a frightening new crime wave flooding through this city with the ferocity of hurricane Katrina, and Dave Rebeck got caught up in it New Year's Eve.

It was just after 6 in the evening and the 37-year-old musician was about to get into his car near the French Quarter when he heard a high-pitched voice ordering him to hand over "everything you got."

"I turned around to see two young boys crouched down pointing firearms at me," Mr. Rebeck said yesterday. "One had a SWAT-style pump-action sawed-off shotgun."

When he got a better look at the muggers, he realized he had mistaken his assailants for girls because the younger boy's voice hadn't changed yet. He thinks he was 11 or 12. The older one was no more than 14.

... The incident took place just blocks from where former Halifax filmmaker Helen Hill was shot to death in her doorway early Thursday.

The authorities were blocked from collecting firearms in individuals' possession in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, following the resistance fomented by the NRA. And sales of firearms in the region rose.

So gosh, one has to wonder how it is that all these people are dying in firearms homicides. Surely the bad guys know it's likely that their intended victims have firepower, and are thus deterred from their misdeeds. Or, have those intended victims no sense? If they had any sense, surely they'd be packing heat, and thus immune to firearms victimization. Or some damned thing.

The tragedies in New Orleans continue. The difference is that this kind of tragedy is, if not completely preventable, amenable to reduction. The plain fact is that although places like London and Toronto and Paris and Sydney have poverty and crime and alienated youth and thriving drug trades, even if not in the proportions that New Orleans had before Katrina, they are not awash in firearms; and in the wake of a natural disaster, they would not be losing their populations to firearms homicides at the rate of one a day.