Edgy New Orleans OKs Razing Public Housing

Amid Protests, Council Approves Public Housing Demolition As City Rebuilds From Katrina

(CBS/AP)  Despite occasionally violent protests outside, the City Council voted Thursday in favor of demolishing some 4,500 public housing units, a milestone in the city's effort to balance its heritage and its hurricane rebuilding efforts.

The unanimous vote to permit the federal government to tear down four public housing developments - a critical moment in a protracted fight between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and residents, activists and preservationists - followed hours of debate and periodic clashes in the street.

Police used chemical spray and stun guns as dozens of protesters tried to force their way into the packed City Council chamber. One woman was sprayed and dragged from the gates. Emergency workers took her away on a stretcher.

Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.

"I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting," said the dazed woman, Kim Ellis, who was taken away in an ambulance.

"Is this what democracy looks like?" Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor who opposes demolition, said as he held a strand of Taser wire he said had been shot into another of the protesters.

Quigley said he believed the crackdown violated public meetings laws.

Protesters said they pushed against the iron gates that kept them out of the building because the Housing Authority of New Orleans had disproportionately allowed supporters of the demolition to pack the chambers.

After roughly 30 minutes of on-again-off-again struggle to get into the meeting, protesters fell back, continuously chanting with bullhorns. An afternoon storm thinned the demonstrators, some of whom had been waiting since 7 a.m. to enter, and the crowd disappeared altogether shortly after the afternoon vote.

At the peak of the confusion, some 70 protesters were facing about a dozen mounted police and 40 more law enforcement officers on foot.

Details on arrests were not immediately available.

The meeting itself was mostly peaceful, although an early fight in the chambers between protesters and police caused a brief interruption.

Some public housing residents repeated during the daylong debate that they welcome the plan to replace the decades-old structures with mixed-income housing.

Other residents and their advocates said they fear the plan will result in loss of badly needing housing for the city's low-income black residents.

The vote crossed racial lines, with the three black council members joining four whites.

HUD says about 3,000 families who once lived in New Orleans public housing remain scattered across the country, and social workers say the number of homeless people in the area has doubled to about 12,000.

The housing projects have long been a center for high crime, conditions made worse by damage from Hurricane Katrina, reports Mike Hoss of CBS affiliate WWL-TV. But HUD says the transition from housing projects to mixed income was underway long before the hurricane.

There is no consensus on what's best for New Orleans' poor, even among public housing residents. Redevelopment would diminish the public housing stock and drive many into less stable voucher programs. Repair of brick and barracks-style projects badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina would keep intact poor but close-knit neighborhoods.

Mayor Ray Nagin said the resolution approved by the council includes language that will assure that public housing residents have a voice in the redevelopment plans.

Opponents were not immediately available for comment on the decision.

Thursday's vote was required before demolition work could begin, but several legal challenges to the plan have not been resolved.

[libsluvsuvs]

Posted by bennyblack1 at 01:54 PM : Dec 21, 2007
+ report abuse*****

well who do you think pays for that all that welfare,medicare and all social programs to feed and care for the "POOR"???

but you have a choice.

you can move to cuba or valenzuela and owe nothing..take michelle with you.

[klingon69]

Makes me very sad...you would think ignorance, intolerance, racism, etc. would be bred out, but it appears to still be in-bred.
Posted by rwassel at 08:31 AM : Dec 22, 2007
Unfortunately these stated qualities seem to be human nature. People are naturally distrustful of someone not of their group. I forget which country it is, but the word for stranger translates to the same word for enemy. Humans have always viewed people differnet from them as less than human; look at Nazi Germany and the Jews, The Japanese and Chinese, Whites and most any other race. Education and being proper raising would eliminate these things, at least you would think.

[rwassel]

Amen kailumego1.

Isn''t it sad that there are still so many ignorant people out there? People who have been blindly drinking the Kool-Aid that either their government, or their racist, bigoted parents have been giving them.

Makes me very sad...you would think ignorance, intolerance, racism, etc. would be bred out, but it appears to still be in-bred.

[klingon69]

They should not get rid of one housing unit, while there are homeless people in New Orleans especially with what happened there before. They have every right to continue every type of action of non-violent resistance possible until that happens.
Posted by ttinsly at 08:30 PM : Dec 20, 2007
I don''t believe that "storming the gates" would be considered non-violent.

[klingon69]

Fire codes are not the issue--this is about peoples tight to petition and hold elected officials accountable. That supersedes fire codes. If the meeting hall was inadequate, the meeting should have been rescheduled, postponed, televised--city councils do this all the time.
Posted by andor3 at 04:36 PM : Dec 20, 2007
Maybe they should''ve held the meeting elsewhere, but the fact is the maximum capacity had been reached, and there was NO violence until the protestors started trying to storm the gates.
If you really believe that it supersedes the fire codes, you have proven your lack on knowledge. Very little supersedes the fire codes. The fire chief can and will order the police, mayor and city council if they choose. In my town the firechief can write tickets, and has full arrest powers, just for people who "stand" their vehicles in the fire lane while picking up somebody.

[kailumego1]

Taxes, taxes, taxes, why are Americans always crying about taxes, especially when it comes to social programs, when the majority of TAXES goes into giving corporations tax breaks, fund illegal wars gunrunning, subsidies to the rich, funding backhanded deals with companies like Haliburton, and Osama Bin Laden, etc. etc.

You people only whinnnnnnnnnnnnn repetitively when the thought of your tax money being given to the poor, particularly blacks, of which this "free market enterprise" is founded on the principle of having an "underclass" which to exploit.


All of you lamenting over taxes going to feed the poor, black women having babies, babies, babies, etc. etc. means absolutely nothing, because if you''ll get your head out of your A[SS] and critically think for a moment, the idea of having an "underclass" is an absolute necessity if "BIG BUSINESS" is to survive.

Where are the intellectuals on this post?

Big business desperately needs an "underclass", e.g. the poor, the socially inept, etc. to "fund" it''s elaborate scheme for imperialistic dominance, globally, e.g. WalMart, Home Depot, Eastman Kodak etc.

[kailumego1]

Your argument, therefore, should not be with blaming the poor and downtrodden for your taxes, but blaming them for supporting "Big Businesses" continuance in global domination--because as long as the poor and downtrodden fail to envision the "dream" and keep giving away precious resource dollars to Big Business, then we all FAIL.

Do you morons know exactly how much tax dollars goes to funding social programs, e.g. welfare, 1%, yes 1% look on the back of your tax booklet sometimes before speaking out of turn.

The majority of your so-called welfare dollars goes to military spending, military spending, military spending, what part of this equation don''t you people understand.

Our government, past and present has never really been for the "PEOPLE", it has always served as a springboard for "BIG BUSINESS''S" or the INDUSTRIALIST''S opportunistic HEGEMONIC CONTROL, since after the Civil War, when some citizens were forced and literally "blackmailed" into working for industrialists.

Corporate America, the industrialists, the mercantile, etc. play on your misanthropic collective consciousnesses, your disdain for black folks, Africans, outsiders etc., to keep you in the dark, while they cleverly consume wealth and power at your expense, and you''re too blinded by your own hatred to see the rug being pulled right from under you...

[michellem99-2009]

Benny dear..I hear yer dear..I am pissed that we GIVE to other nations,fight wars..give to illegals. I met a nice lady who wanted a newspaper and asked the person w/ her. No Sah. I bought her that bloody paper and wss happy to do it. She told me why she wanted that paper. Yer post hit the nail on the head. I don''t like paying for the schools. I have to. I WONT HELP OTHERS DRINK SMOKE. I can''t. I heard a woman say she handicap by having a child. Nope. Yer got a baby yeah right. I told her yer could not handle it. Lady I was born Legally blind with C/P. Shut yer trap. That was years ago. My vet room mate is a heart/diabetes/COPD patent. I am not down on those that truly need the aid. The lazy able bodied ones are the ones. My mother told me ye need it. I don''t have a problem that.

[rwassel]

bennyblack1 -

Exactly. So why do some ignorant people on here bit** and complain about paying taxes? I may not agree with the Iraq war, but I can''t stop paying taxes. Others might not agree with welfare, but get over it.

Oh, and I would NOT agree that "every dime is for the health and welfare of individuals in some shape". See: Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere, Halliburton, etc.

[bennyblack1]

Interest, I might add, on Federal Reserve Loans made to the US Government at a rate of 33%APR. And the Federal Reserve is not just a US Bank. It''s part of a conglomerate of world-wide reserve banks. Gee, if you can, think about THAT for a minute.