[NYTr] Activists Chained to Bulldozers in New Orleans

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Eric Laursen <laursene at earthlink.net>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Dec. 19, 2007, 9am EST

Contact: Jay Arena, (504) 520-9521

ACTIVISTS CHAINED TO BULLDOZERS IN NEW ORLEANS: 
CIVIL RESISTANCE TO PUBLIC HOUSING DESTRUCTION BEGINS

NEW ORLEANS -- A small group of local housing activists chained
themselves to bulldozers early this morning that were slated to resume
demolition of the B.W. Cooper housing complex. The Cooper houses are one
of four public housing complexes that the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development plans to raze, eliminating more than 4,500 apartment
units in a hurricane-damaged city desperately short of housing.

The community activists chained themselves to the bulldozers on the
morning of a day when the New Orleans City Council is scheduled to make
a final vote on whether to approve the demolitions. We are refusing to
leave unless the City Council stops this illegal, unjust, and immoral
plan to destroy vital housing, said Jamie Bork Laughner of MayDay
NOLA, an advocate for the human right to housing. Along with MayDay
NOLA, C3 Hands Off Iberville and Friends and Residents of B.W. Cooper
make up a coalition calling for civil resistance to HUD's plans.

People here are prepared to resist what amounts to an assault on their
communities, said Laughner.

The planned destruction of New Orleans public housing, part of a wider
plan to dissolve poorer communities and gentrify the city in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, has sparked unprecedented resistance in New Orleans
as well as protests across the country. In today's New York Times,
architecture critics Nicolas Ouroussoff calls the demolitions one of
the greatest crimes in American urban planning.

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