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1 .A weekly or bi-weekly newspaper affiliated with the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN).
If your community has an AAN-affiliated paper, then this is concrete, up-front proof that your progressive community sufficiently large enough to be able to support such a paper. This is important to people considering Shreveport as a place to live or to attend school. After all, who want's to be stuck in a place where people like them are stuck in the closet and have to "suffer in silence"? If your city has no such paper, then it only reenforces Shreveport's reputation for being a "redneck" city that lacks any significant progressivism. This is bad enough for any random American city, but since Shreveport is also a SOUTHERN city (recall all the baggage that goes along with that distinction), having no AAN-affiliated alternative newspaper gives the impression that Ark-La-Tex liberals had better keep their mouth shut or else!". If can get one, then I know Shreveport can -- if they put their minds to it.
For this reason, I could not live in a city that does not have an AAN alternative newsweekly.
2. A large number of people with unconventional dress and unorthodox, non-traditional opinions (i.e. "weirdos", "bohemians", "nerds", people who dress the stereotype of drum circle members, off-beat people of other stripes).
3. A large open and active gay community
4. A large number of cars with bumper stickers advocating liberal positions and other controversially non-traditional viewpoints.
All three of these go together to a great extent. To make a long story short, a city with a section of town where these types are prominent, if not dominant, is a sign of a city that provides a place where one can be who they are "warts and all" without having others get finger-pointy toward you. Such communities also tend to be immune to the worst aspects of the archetypical urban and suburban middle class (consumerism, "keeping up with the Jones'", fashion taste snobbery, general image snobbery, lack of individualism, etc)- thereby giving our youths at least some place of refuge where they can grow and develop as people.
A city in which you can walk around all day and never see anyone wearing dreadlocks, spiked multi-colored hair, or goths, pagans, etc. also gives the impression that the city tends to be conformist, uptight, has a narrow definition of normal/acceptable person, and generally intolerant of difference. This not only stifles people's ability to think for themselves, it can also hinder economic growth in the long run (Google "Richard Florida" "Creative Class" to see what I mean).
When I went to Louisiana Tech in Ruston (about 70 miles east of S'port), it seemed all but a tiny few of the students walked, talked, dressed, and thought alike. In such a place, I never felt I had the freedom of wide open thought. By contrast, when I got to the University of Memphis, I quickly found out that "conventionally conservative-looking" people are in the minority. In fact, that school had more "artsy dressing" types than "boy or girl next door" types. Althogh I'm not bohemian, the presence of a lot of bohemians (about 1/3 of the U of M student body in this case), gives the impression that at this university anybody can be accepted for who they are. North Louisiana schools in general have a lot of work to do in this regard (I don't know about Centenary though, so I exclude that college from that comment).
How should Shreveport transform itself into a city like this? What do you think?
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