Community Groups Storm and Take Over New Orleans HUD Office
Several community organizations, including Power U Center and the Miami Worker's Center from Miami, took over the US HUD administrative office in New Orleans today, Friday August 31, 2007 at around 12:30pm. The groups are in New Orleans to commemorate the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The groups and residents are demanding that HUD open St Bernard's Parish housing project, which serves low-income Black residents. Two years after the area was evacuated in the post-Katrina floods,the housing project remains empty. Residents and groups have been prevented from rehabilitating and filling the vacant units, and the federal government has refused to do so.
US military vehicles, including armed Hummers, have surrounded the 25 people encamped inside, who refused to leave the building unless HUD officials acquiesce to community demands.The community effort to open St. Bernard's Parish is symbolic effort of the dislocated Black community of New Orleans to return to home. Residents such as former public housing residents have been met ignored, criminalized and otherwise excluded from the rebuilding of New Orleans.
Denise Perry, executive director of Power U, is in the building and available by phone: 305-491-7764.
forward,
Max Rameau
Take Back the Land
a project of the Center for Pan-African Development
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