The tourism industry vultures appeared before the New Orleans city council last week with a grandoise Power Point Bourbon Street song and dance about the economic impact of their industry. Their talentless little magic show didn't fool many of us, and hopefully not the city council....it basically came off as typical corporate cook-the-books bullshit- their usual effort to get money from this cash-strapped city and state and to tap into whatever Federal disaster money may make its way here in the next few months, as if rebuilding the tourism industry should be a priority.
Screw that, the tourism industry has ample private capital to tap into.......public monies should go to the public....and the tourism industry has done nothing for New Orleans past, present, or will in the future, except to keep wages low and the general populace in poverty. Let's not reward them for this.......instead let's put our faith and money where it belongs - into the creative activities of the people, the residents of the city - the musicians, artists, dancers, the social aid & pleasure clubs, the Mardi Gras Indians - without whom there never would have been a tourism industry here to begin with.......It’s time to put the horse before the cart for a change......
Meanhwile **** The Louisiana Recovery Authority has $28 million to market the state to tourists! ****
What can we expect to see from this money? Probably more lame TV and newspaper ads that fail to depict the creative artistic and cultural vitality of the city. This money will likely be dispersed to entities beholden to the Hilton's and Marriott's, such as the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., the Convention and Visitor's Bureau, the HO’tel-Motel Association, etc.all the while workforce development and job training programs for the vast underemployed, i.e. underpaid, masses continue to offer nothing more than career development in making beds and cleaning rooms, as if that is all anyone in New Orleans is capable of producing. For years the state has sold itself as a great palce for big business to locate because of its huge low wage workforce....... there are obvious reasons why New Orleans looked like a third world country on CNN a year ago, cuz its policy makers are thrid rate despots......
What should happen with this LRA marketing money if the state is truly committed to building its 'cultural economy' ????????
How about dedicating $5 million of the marketing $moola$ to a program that will provide tour support to the many touring musicians, that have always been Louisiana's most effective cultural ambassadors. Those musicians that have been touring for years and years, cats like Mem Shannon, The Wild Magnolias, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and the Roadmasters, Jon Cleary, the Dirty Dozen........
Meanwhile we also need workforce development programs that foster the city’s improvisational impulse - the creative entrepreneurial spirit that resides within the soul of the city’s populace...and maybe of the tourism induistry had any balls they would pony up to provide seed money for small businesses.......yeah, dream on girl!
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