How Local Businesses can make New Orleans Great in 2021
By Jeff Thomas
For the last few years, I have written about how to make our city great in each upcoming year. Those articles primarily focused on government policies. Fortunately, the New Orleans City Council implemented progressive laws in accordance. Some of the policies set forth are not jailing people for marijuana and creating more contracting opportunities. Despite these steps, the snags of crime still occurred.
Progressive laws are like fishing but for quality-of-life advancements. If you’ve never fished then you don’t know the frustration of your line being snagged by an underwater impediment. First you think you have a bite. Then you realize not only no fish, but you may have lost your gear and bait.
Unseen forces can ruin your cast. Progressive legislation’s goal is to improve our economy. More economic opportunities reduce poverty. Poverty is the source of most crime. Chronic poverty leads to carjackings, window smashing, home burglaries and even drug murders. Poverty starts in unemployment and poor education. Like casting a hook with a live shrimp, positive government policies hope for a good catch.
Creating more opportunities is the proper role of local governments. Typically people with jobs who own homes do not commit violent crime. Children who live in the homes of parents that own their homes normally do not commit violent crimes. A growing economy creates more jobs. Jobs should eliminate poverty.
That every politician’s website has a multipronged job creation platform is now trite. Yet the necessity of a successful jobs program is paramount to eliminating the poverty which creates the crime that plagues us.
The Unseen Impediment – Local Business Must Step Up
But just like the fisherman who drops his line only to catch a snag, even the best jobs program can be derailed. If local businesses do not hire or do business with locals, then even the best jobs program is unsuccessful. Local businesses must participate. Livable wages, job opportunities, local hiring, and solid benefits are required. Also, contracting and vendor creation are equally necessary.
Instead of being unseen barriers to economic growth, big local businesses must be advocates for local people and their small businesses. They must overcome stale and untrue narratives. Local people are qualified and able. Our local people can do great work. Local people deserve jobs and contracts.
Lets help each other pull up fish and not cost each other economic opportunities and growth. Local businesses must step up.
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 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 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