By Jeff Thomas
Well it’s that time of year again. How many resolutions have you broken already? Ate better yet? How about that working out thing? Change is hard. The great James Baldwin says, “Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
New Orleans should be the best place to raise a family in the world. Food, fun, culture, uniqueness separates this great place from all others. But we have systemic and intransigent problems that must be faced and then changed. Economic disparities, repressive governance, lack of business opportunities, and racial divisiveness generate crime and poverty and bad schools which create cyclical and generational binds that anchor us to a muck and prevents us from becoming the idyllic wonderland that we seek.
Simple steps can help us help each other and especially ourselves. If each of us does each of these, then NOLA will approach the paradise we pursue.
- Get involved in something outside of family and work
Community groups create safe spaces and produce meaningful improvements across this town. Options abound but include Justice and Beyond, Parks for All, A Community Voice, and many more.
- Vote in every election
Politics affect every part of your daily life. From the taxes you pay on every purchase, to the traffic cameras that snap pics of your license plate, to unanimous juries deciding the fate of people who are accused crimes. Two important millage elections are upcoming in the next couple of months one regarding feeding seniors and the other surrounding parks and greenspace in the city.
- Call your council person or the mayor or state and national representatives and offer them ideas
Our elected officials are trying to do a good job. But if they don’t know what you want then they will do what they think you want them to do. Get engaged. Call them and offer ideas, complaints, solutions and new ways to get things accomplished. Our leaders need and want to hear from you. You may only get to talk to their staffs, but they get the messages.
- Do business regularly with a black owned business(es)
This is the most important thing anybody in NOLA can do! This is more important than voting or getting involved or talking to your spouse daily. Ok that last one might be a stretch, but the point is this is really, really important. The single biggest failure of the city of New Orleans is the sparsity of successful black owned businesses. Successful black owned businesses reduce crime, increase neighborhood stability, generate tax dollars, create more business opportunities, increase police and teacher pay and make the sun rise seem brighter.
- Help a friend or neighbor or family member accomplish a goal.
Your life will be better and the people you help will be better. And they can pay it forward.
The problems in NOLA are long standing and entrenched in our thinking, but….they really have never truly been faced head on. We can change them but only after we face them honestly.
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of Executive Appraisers Louisiana, an MBE-certified real estate appraisal firm, and EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of Executive Appraisers Louisiana, an MBE-certified real estate appraisal firm, and EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
Publish a list of black owned businesses. We all don’t know what’s available in every neighborhood. We can’t go there if we don’t know who, what and where.
I love these Jeff….I would have, however, left in there the one you made light of….and added as an additional point (#6)…ENGAGING WITH SPOUSE DAILY…LOL…not about what’s going on TODAY, but where will WE be tomorrow. This should be the conversation of any partnerships planning to make commitments to one another.