No, that's not the Brian Lairn Show theme. That's the TBC brass band playing a kind of

New Orleans-type version of the Whitney Houston song,

I want to dance with somebody. Recognize it. Why are we playing that? Our guest now, Mark

Hertzgard, sent us a link to that clip because it was the song that was playing at a parade

in New Orleans on Mother's Day 11 years ago, just before Mark and a group of other people were

hit by gunfire in a mass shooting, a Mother's Day mass shooting during a parade in New Orleans.

Mark went back to March in that same parade yesterday for this year as Mother's Day.

Some of you know the name Mark Hertz Guard.

He's usually on with us as environment correspondent for the Nation magazine,

and he's founder of the Covering Climate Now Media Consortium that inspired our climate

story of the week series on this show.

But this time, he'll tell us about his experience of being wounded himself in that mass shooting

and the new book that it inspired called Big Reds Mercy, the shooting of Deborah Cotton

and a story of race in America. Mark, always good to have you on. I never imagine it would be on

something like this, but now I know. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. It's always a pleasure

to be with you all. And honestly, for all we've talked, it's only ever been about climate issues,

really, and I had no idea you were shot in a mass shooting. So before we get into the shooting

and the larger issues you explore in the book, would you set the scene for us? What was this parade and what

was happening as that brass band was playing that Whitney Houston song? Sure, this was a second-line

parade here in New Orleans, and second-line parades are an iconic ritual, even a sacred one, I would

say. They go back to the burial rights that enslaved

Africans brought with them when they first started arriving in Louisiana back in 1722.

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