New Orleans, Resilience in the Face of Terror: The Show Must Go On
Less than 30 hours after a suspected terrorist driver turned one of the city’s most famous streets into a scene of indiscriminate bloodshed, waitress Ciara Daigrepont was at the counter of an uptown café. "Cortado!" she called out, beneath a menu written in chalk, offering the coffee with milk special of the day on Rue de la Course, just 8 kilometers away from where the massacre occurred.
Daigrepont had been at Harrah’s casino past 3 a.m. the previous Wednesday when the radio of a security guard crackled with static, and he and others rushed towards the doors. Later, he thought they were heading to the French Quarter, where a Texas Army veteran inspired by ISIS had plowed a rented van into a crowd on New Year’s Eve, killing 14 and injuring dozens before dying in a shootout with police.
Back at the cafe, Daigrepont said, "We want our community and our visitors to keep enjoying. There’s so much to enjoy in New Orleans, and we’re going to make sure our routes and the Superdome are safe," said New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, shortly after daybreak hit the crime scene. "We’ve had this tragic event, but we want people to go on with their day."
Yet, moving on after such a monumental tragedy could require a certain level of shock or insensitivity to such attacks worldwide, or a desire to downplay the inevitable questions about security that night in such a key location, or an attempt to prevent an economic implosion in a tourism-dependent market.
It could also be the flexing of a muscle New Orleans has honed over generations, immersed in a "let the good times roll" mantra that belies the countless challenges the 306-year-old sinking city has faced, from Hurricane Katrina to the BP oil spill, the collapse of a huge hotel, and the early onslaught of a pandemic. And many have internalized, perhaps too well, a potent lesson here often celebrated as "resilience," but which distills down to this: how to carry on in the face of the unimaginable.
Michael Hecht, president of Greater New Orleans Inc., an economic development agency, acknowledged the attack as "a strike against the United States, with the humanity and diversity of New Orleans as a targeted symbol." But George Thornton Jr., while filling shelves at the local store Conseco’s Market, disputed any connection to the city.
"It’s an act of isolation," he said. "It’s an act of terrorism. That guy was going to do it, no matter what. It’s not anyone’s fault… It sucks wherever it happened, but it sucks everywhere."
Before the attack, New Orleans was riding high. A Taylor Swift concert in late October had electrified the birthplace of jazz, with a massive friendship bracelet hung in the Caesars Superdome, a symbol of rebirth from the deadly flooding of 2005. The police chief had announced a 35% drop in murders, and the city was looking forward to events from the Sugar Bowl to Mardi Gras, culminating in Super Bowl LIX in early February.
Clearly, however, the hopes of a 20th-anniversary Katrina comeback have taken a hit. The fear that replaced some of that hope was palpable Thursday morning, as ambulances again sped through the French Quarter, past crowds enjoying an Allstate Sugar Bowl preview show. And as Bourbon Street reopened, with its wet pavement and yellow roses against a canal Street wall where the driver first struck, it was clear that New Orleans was grasping for normalcy, yet again.
"But so, it goes. Here we go again," said New Orleans Saints interim head coach, in a sentiment echoed by many in this resilient city. "We’ve had this tragedy… But we want people to go on with their day."
stadt, Uptown
