Report and Analysis of Protest Against Kurt Weigle and the DDD

On Saturday, November 14, about 80 people protested at the Iberville Development and the home of Kurt Weigle, the chief of the Downtown Development District (DDD). The protesters rallied for the repair and reopening of the more than 200 now closed apartments at the Iberville Housing Development, the removal of the DDD's Henry Charlot from the Iberville Advisory Council, and the prompt establishment of a public works program--direct government employment without contractors-- that pays prevailing wage for all who need it, be it immigrant or native workers.

The action began 4 PM at the Iberville Public Housing Development on Basin Street. Here residents and other local supporters of public housing joined forces with dozens of solidarity supporters who were in town for the annual meeting of the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS). Many of the AHS attendees are involved in similar struggles, from Connecticut to California, in their own communities and therefore the action was an important way of building a national solidarity network and movement in defense of public services. Public housing residents and non-resident supporters of public housing addressed the rally. The speakers emphasized the human stake involved in the defense of public housing. These speakers included Eloise Williams of Survive, Iberville residents Cary Reynolds and Cody Marshall, and Jay Arena of C3/Hands Off Iberville. After these speakers finished Cary led the protesters on a tour of the development. The contingent stopped at the Iberville Court to listen to Mike, a resident, give insights concerning the ongoing battle to defend the neighborhood.

Following the tour protesters travelled to the uptown residence of Kurt Weigle, located at 4516 Perreir Street, in a leafy and comfortable uptown neighborhood, where the protest reconvened in the public space just in front of the DDD director’s home. About seventy people were part of this action. While Weigle refused to leave his bunker despite repeated requests, protesters conveyed their message, chanting loudly against gentrification, ethnic cleansing, the DDD and for public housing. Some protesters held signs denouncing Weigle and company for attacking public housing and Charity hospital. Sam Jackson of MayDay New Orleans, George Mahdi of MERGE, Alex Glustrom of the Tulane Branch of the Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital and Mike Howells for C3/Hands Off Iberville spoke to the rally in front of Weigle's home. Speakers noted that while Weigle is lobbying for the purge of the residents of Iberville from their homes nobody is conspiring to drive him out of his home. Howells in particular emphasized that if Weigle wants to drive people out of their own homes, then the public housing movement had the right, indeed the responsibility, to go to his home to show our opposition and make him see and feel the pain he is inflicting. He should not be able to rest comfortably in his home as he works to drive families from their own dwellings in his drive for profits.

The protest actions on Saturday highlighted that the struggle to defend public housing is still very much a part of the fight back to defend public services in New Orleans. These actions also send the message to the real estate sharks that Iberville will not be easy pickens.

The event was also a milestone since it represented the first time--beyond speaking out at their board meetings--that the Downtown Development District, and its leading operatives, had been targeted publically for their central role in pushing gentrification, privatization and ethnic cleansing. That is, a leading contingent of the local anti-racist, working class movement for the first time organized a demonstration against the DDD, a key agency for managing and promoting the affairs and interests of the New Orleans’ real estate, tourist and banking capitalists.
Weigle and the DDD do not like to be placed under public scrutiny. They prefer to work in the shadows, to fly under the radar, as they push their corporate agenda, with two prime goals being the destruction of Iberville and ethnic cleansing one side, and the permanent closure of Charity Hospital and the steamrolling of a mid-city neighborhood through the construction of the LSU hospital, on the other. Thus, Weigle and company are able to work full time on these and other attacks on working class people and communities in our city, but with little or no public scrutiny. This was the intention when the DDD was set up in the mid-1970s by the state legislature and at the behest of real estate and banking interests, such as Joseph Canizaro. Instead of going through the city council, which with all its problems provides some level of public input and scrutiny over ‘redevelopment’ schemes, the capitalists were able to do an end –run around these bourgeois democratic institutions. With the DDD’s creation they had their own agency, funded through a special taxing district, where their chief lieutenants, like Weigle, could push their agenda full time, unfettered by the constraints of “quaint” forms of local democracy, like elected city councils. Therefore, rather than all tax dollars from corporate businesses in the downtown business district going into a central fund where we could decide if they would be spent on housing, education or health care, for example, the capitalists have arranged for these tax dollars to be routed to a fund to destroy what we have left of Public education , housing and welfare!

The DDD action, beyond defending Iberville, was an important step in challenging a key anti-democratic foundation of capitalist rule in this city. Sadly, some organizations provided various excuses for why they could not confront the DDD. If we are to advance the movement for justice in New Orleans and across the country, we will have to quit hiding behind excuses and begin challenging the DDD and their various incarnations.