re: Nola writer asks why people are leaving Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge could have all the "culture" in the world. It could have 20 Mardi Gras Parades. 10 different live music venues downtown that let everyone in for free every night. It could have a world class zoo and aquarium. It could have niche movie houses that serve limited release beer brewed only in rustic barns by actual people with mustaches. It could have poets reciting shite you would actually want to hear in coffee houses that serve drinks that taste like a kiss from Dany Targaryen. It could put an art gallery and a museum on every other street corner and fill it to the brim with paintings by Dutch masters and shite on loan from the Smithsonian, and let people in for free. And you could have free public transportation out the arse.

Baton Rouge could be vomiting and drowning in "culture" and people still would leave if 1) They don't feel safe going to the gas station after the sun goes down and 2) They don't have good schools to send their kids to, where they won't get stabbed.

It is that. fricking. Simple.

Even if Baton Rouge provided all those things (and it doesn't), it would still lose people because this town does not provide a basic feeling of security for it people or even the slightest bit of confidence that it knows what it's doing with its schools.