Audio: 9 min 2 sec via DC radio pirates WSQT
From about 1 to about 2:15 PM on Dec 13, streets were blocked off for about five blocks around the HUD building at 451 7th st-because SDS and the rest of the coalition behind the "Stop the Demolitions" solidarity protest was occupying the 7th and D st intersection.
The core of the blockade was some SDS kids locked arm to leg each to the next in line lying down on the pavement. A large cardboard sign demanding an end to the Demolitions(held by Code Pink) took care of another lane of traffic. Finally, people from all of the groups involved milled around and reinforced the blockade.
As cold drizzle soaked the clothing of the young people lying on the ice-cold streets in the blockade, cops chose not to make arrests, so the blockades continued until the end of the planned rally.
While the civil disobediance was at its peak, Congresswoman Maxine Waters showed up ON FOOT(to pass the closed streets) and spoke out against Hud Secretary Alfonse Jackson, one of Bush's nominees and one of the key architects of the plan to destroy New Orleans's entire supply of public housing.
A New Orleans resident who spoke in front of HUD said that "economic development" means displacement for poor and oppressed residents. She went so far as to compare it to the theft of the continent from Native Americans!
In New Orleans, protesters on Dec 12 managed to halt bulldozers at the B W Copper housing complex to a dead stop on Dec 12. Googoe does not bring up news of any further demolition today-only protests in New Orleans! Earlier this week,New Orleans residents blocked the planned demolition of the Lafitte housing project in the Housing Conservation District Committee, and now a second demolition has been at least temporarily delayed.
"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."
The FBI is crying about "domestic terrorism' over the fliers, but remember-the FBI has not been able to stop the ELF in ten years-and until 2005 had not even been able to get any leads in the giant Vail fire!
Looks to me like what speakers in the DC solidarity rally described as the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans is starting to run into some serious resistance. It's all one war from Occupied Bagdad to Occupied New Orleans, and things are about to get real fucking ugly...
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