Hundreds of New Orleans residents march to City Hall to protest a rising murder rate and what they say is a lack of city and police response.
People have been galvanized by the loss of two prominent, yet disparate, cultural figures in the city.
Helen Hill, 36, an experimental filmmaker, was murdered in her home. Dinerral Shavers, 25, a brass-band musician and high-school band leader, was shot and killed while driving home. Hill was a white woman, a transplant to New Orleans; Shavers was a young, black man and a native of the city.
The march is being seen as a symbol of two distinct communities coming together to oppose Mayor Ray Nagin's assertion that the recent crime wave is mostly "black on black" attacks between drug dealers — and therefore not a direct threat to the city's larger community.
From New Orleans, Eve Troeh reports.
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