Stay Away Essence

For the first time the Essence festival was held outside of New Orleans last week. Houston had the honor of hosting the event this year thanks to the hurricane that starts with a K. From all the reports I heard, the fest just wasn't as good as it usually is. That's probably because New Orleans stays wide open until sunrise so there are hundreds of parties to go along with the concert that last all night. You can literally party until it's time to hit the airport when the festival is here. The locals here believe that this is one of the reasons that they will come back for good once the Superdome is back up and running. Because of what happened and the fact that they don't want to appear to be abandoning the city, I expect them to be back at least for next year. Personally, I hope the Essence Fest never comes back. If the Bayou Classic didn't have two teams from Louisiana, I wish they wouldn't come back either. Maybe they could play in Shreveport. I will be happy to explain why.

Since Hurricane Katrina, no one has really cared about the black community of New Orleans. The state hasn't done anything and neither has the city. If Essence wants to do something for the black citizens of New Orleans it will tell the state that it is not coming back until a detailed rebuilding plan is in place. This is a city that will have an NFL game in September but doesn't plan to open a fully functional public hospital until 2011. Somebody has to show the political and business community that you can't treat us like second-class citizens and then expect us to come and save you financially because we like to party past 2 AM. Susan Taylor needs to call mayor Nagin and tell him they are moving to another city unless someone acknowledges the need for better conditions and does something about it. Losing Essence money won't hurt the black community of New Orleans. We can't get any lower than we are right now. It's not like they were going to devote any of that revenue to rebuilding the city. The majority of that money ends up going to the state anyway. The city makes most of its money on parking tickets and towing brother's cars and that money will be used to cut the grass and prune the flower beds on St. Charles St.. Plus, French Quarter businesses treat us like crap every other day except for Essence Fest and Bayou Classic. Even on those weekends they jack all the prices up.

The funniest thing about the state of Louisiana is that they depend on tourist coming to New Orleans to marvel in all the food, art and music that blacks created yet they don't really care how they are living. Our own people don't need to take part in that.

Stay away Essence and make a statement!