[Posted Dec. 19, 2007]

“Big Easy” Residents
Angry Over Razing
Of Public Housing

By BlackAmericaWeb.com and Associated Press
  
     Flyers posted around New Orleans suggesting that homes owned by whites will be destroyed if public housing units are demolished as planned have led to renewed emotional and racially-charged debates between black and white residents in the Big Easy.
      The flyers read: "For Every Public Housing Unit Destroyed, A Condo Will be Destroyed. If there will be no homes for us, no relief from high rents, there will be no homes for the rich either! Sincerely, The Angry and Powerless."
Former residents and advocates are seeking to stop the demolition of more than 4,000 public housing units at a time when New Orleans is in the midst of an acute housing shortage because of Hurricane Katrina.
The FBI is investigating the origin of the flyers as a possible act of "domestic terrorism." The Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's New Orleans office, James Bernazzani told a New Orleans radio station that his office has opened an investigation to determine whether this "rises to the level of a terrorist threat." Bernazzani says he wants to "see if there's anything behind this."
      The redevelopment plan (which will implement a modern-day, "mixed income" neighborhood), has grown more emotional since it was unveiled in mid-2006 as tens of thousands of former residents and other poor residents found themselves unable to find housing in New Orleans because of a housing shortage and inflated rents.  

     Critics of the effort say the redevelopment plan will drive poor people from neighborhoods where they have lived for generations, but HUD denies that and says the plan will create an equal amount of affordable housing as existed before Katrina hit.
New Orleans now has more white residents than before the Katrina struck over two years ago.
      Some current and former public housing residents and their supporters claim the redevelopment plan is an effort to rid the city of its poorest residents. But hundreds of other New Orleans residents have expressed their opposing views about the flyers and the public housing issue on radio, television and online, particularly on www.nola.com.
      Last week, protesters angry about the pending demolition of dozens of public housing buildings stormed a City Council meeting in a confrontation that ended with a prominent civil rights lawyer being hauled off in handcuffs.
      The protesters gathered at the City Council chambers to demand the council's members stop the demolitions. But when the council took no action, the protesters broke into chants and shouts and forced Arnie Fielkow, the council president, to call the session into recess.
      In the ensuing chaos, a civil sheriff's deputy grabbed and shoved civil rights lawyer Bill Quigley up against the wall where he was handcuffed. Quigley has led a legal fight against the demolitions. The deputy's report said Quigley allegedly refused to leave the premises and shouted "I'm not going anywhere." Quigley said he saw no reason for being detained and taken to a sheriff's trailer on the grounds of City Hall. He was released shortly afterward and cited with a charge of disturbing the peace.
     "We live in a system where if you cheer or chant in the City Council you get arrested but you can demolish 4,500 people's apartments and everybody's supposed to go along with that?

     That's not going to happen," Quigley said. "There's going to be a lot more disturbing the peace before this is all over, I'm afraid."

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