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.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Press Release--Protest at home of DDD director Kurt Weigle
Press Release
November 14, 2009
Community to Rally at Home of Downtown Development District Director Kurt Weigle
DDD Must be Removed from the Iberville Advisory Committee
Public Housing residents and community supporters will rally at the home of Downtown Development District (DDD) Director Kurt Weigle, located at 4516 Perrier St., at 5:30 PM on Saturday, November 14 to defend the homes of the Iberville Public Housing residents. Weigle’s home was chosen as the most appropriate site for the demonstration since he has been relentless in his efforts to drive the African American working class residents of the Iberville from their homes.
As part of the DDD’s agenda of destroying Iberville, Weigle has succeeded in placing a DDD operative--Henry Charlot--to head the Iberville Advisory Committee. The committee members were selected by the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and commissioned to forge a redevelopment plan for the Iberville. Placing the DDD to head, let alone participate on this committee, is like placing the proverbial fox to look over the chickens. Kurt Weigle, the DDD director, has made perfectly clear his agenda to destroy Iberville. In a May 21, 2009 interview with WWL-TV, reporter Susan Edwards found that from the perspective of “Kurt Weigle …redeveloping and demolishing Iberville removes a barrier to investment, opening the corridor up to more than just retail and residential possibilities.” Edwards reported that Weigle believes that "It [the demolition of Iberville] is going to have a positive effect on the medical district, the construction of the two hospitals...will have a much greater potential to attract investment around them.” Mr. Weigle is enthused by how much people will feel safer with the violent removal of the working class African American community of Iberville. He exclaimed to Edwards that “It's going to make people feel the area is safer than it may be perceived to be today, and will make the area one of the most attractive for the entire city.”
It is unconscionable that Weigle and the DDD has anything to do with a committee designed to develop a plan for the Iberville. New Orleans does not need the DDD’s demolition and privatization agenda for Iberville. Instead, we need to not only defend all the units at Iberville, but expand the number of Public Housing apartments in the city. Indeed, underscoring the city’s desperate need for affordable housing, a 2008 study by the federal government found that New Orleans renters spent more of their income toward rental housing and utilities than renters in any other city in the US. The Weigle/DDD plan to destroy Iberville would only aggravate this crisis even further.
A first step toward defending Iberville and expanding affordable housing is to remove the DDD representative, Henry Charlot, from the Iberville Advisory Committee.
Sponsor: C3/Hands Off Iberville and May Day New Orleans. For more information call 504-520-9521
November 14, 2009
Community to Rally at Home of Downtown Development District Director Kurt Weigle
DDD Must be Removed from the Iberville Advisory Committee
Public Housing residents and community supporters will rally at the home of Downtown Development District (DDD) Director Kurt Weigle, located at 4516 Perrier St., at 5:30 PM on Saturday, November 14 to defend the homes of the Iberville Public Housing residents. Weigle’s home was chosen as the most appropriate site for the demonstration since he has been relentless in his efforts to drive the African American working class residents of the Iberville from their homes.
As part of the DDD’s agenda of destroying Iberville, Weigle has succeeded in placing a DDD operative--Henry Charlot--to head the Iberville Advisory Committee. The committee members were selected by the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and commissioned to forge a redevelopment plan for the Iberville. Placing the DDD to head, let alone participate on this committee, is like placing the proverbial fox to look over the chickens. Kurt Weigle, the DDD director, has made perfectly clear his agenda to destroy Iberville. In a May 21, 2009 interview with WWL-TV, reporter Susan Edwards found that from the perspective of “Kurt Weigle …redeveloping and demolishing Iberville removes a barrier to investment, opening the corridor up to more than just retail and residential possibilities.” Edwards reported that Weigle believes that "It [the demolition of Iberville] is going to have a positive effect on the medical district, the construction of the two hospitals...will have a much greater potential to attract investment around them.” Mr. Weigle is enthused by how much people will feel safer with the violent removal of the working class African American community of Iberville. He exclaimed to Edwards that “It's going to make people feel the area is safer than it may be perceived to be today, and will make the area one of the most attractive for the entire city.”
It is unconscionable that Weigle and the DDD has anything to do with a committee designed to develop a plan for the Iberville. New Orleans does not need the DDD’s demolition and privatization agenda for Iberville. Instead, we need to not only defend all the units at Iberville, but expand the number of Public Housing apartments in the city. Indeed, underscoring the city’s desperate need for affordable housing, a 2008 study by the federal government found that New Orleans renters spent more of their income toward rental housing and utilities than renters in any other city in the US. The Weigle/DDD plan to destroy Iberville would only aggravate this crisis even further.
A first step toward defending Iberville and expanding affordable housing is to remove the DDD representative, Henry Charlot, from the Iberville Advisory Committee.
Sponsor: C3/Hands Off Iberville and May Day New Orleans. For more information call 504-520-9521
Monday, November 9, 2009
Letter to the Iberville Advisory Committee
November 9, 2009
Ms. Laura Tuggle and Ms. Lillie Walker-Woodfork
Members of the Iberville Advisory Committee
Dear Ms. Tuggle and Ms. Walker-Woodfork,
C3/Hands Off Iberville wrote to both of you in August of 2009 presenting our concerns about the so-called ‘Iberville Advisory Committee’, whose members were handpicked by the Housing Authority of New Orleans' top lawyer, Wayne Woods. In our earlier communications, we expressed outrage at the committee appointing an operative from the Downtown Development Distract--an agency which has a long, clearly articulated agenda of demolishing Iberville--as the chair! We demanded that the committee expel the DDD representative, but you have refused to even discuss this issue, let alone take any action.
Second, we asked that all meetings of the ‘Iberville Advisory Committee’ follow the state sunshine laws and open deliberations to the public. Yet, here again, we have had no response, as your outfit, led by Henry Charlot of the DDD, continue to meet behind closed doors. Why the need for secrecy? What are you hiding?
Third, we have received no response in regard to our inquiry about whether HANO is placing new residents in vacated apartments. Are they being filled, or purposely being left empty? We know that city councilwomen Stacy Head has openly advocated for not allowing apartments to be filled by families that had previously been living in other public housing developments, which she helped demolish. Does the committee, including Henry Charlot of the DDD, share this same cruel and inhumane position as Ms. Head?
Ongoing developments lead us to believe that HANO, with support of developers, is pursing the ‘St. Thomas strategy’ to facilitate demolition. That is, the strategy, as was done at the former St Thomas development, is to remove as many current residents as possible from Iberville before they try to demolish. We see this clearly in the ‘vouchering out' plan HANO is pursing, with section 8 vouchers being issued to current Iberville residents. We see this plan expressed in the continued illegal and immoral use of one-strike provisions to throw families out of their apartments. A recent egregious case is that of Laura Smith who HANO evicted for something her son was accused of doing off the grounds of Iberville. Furthermore her son was not even living with her! Yet, HANO went ahead and evicted Ms Smith. These are some of the cruel, gangster-like tactics being employed by HANO to depopulate the development. What is the committee doing in the face of these injustices?
The Iberville Advisory Committee, by their silence, is complicit in this demolition strategy. But we at Hands Off Iberville, and others in the community, refuse to remain silent We will be rallying on November 14, at 4 Pm at the Iberville development to demand the following:
1. Kurt Weigle remove his outfit from the IAC. 2. All the units at Iberville remain as Public Housing. 3. The Federal government immediately implement a massive, national Public Works plan to rebuild and expand Public Housing and the Public Sector.
We invite you and other members of the Iberville Advisory Committee to attend this event and finally address the community’s concerns.
Jay Arena
for hands Off Iberville
Ms. Laura Tuggle and Ms. Lillie Walker-Woodfork
Members of the Iberville Advisory Committee
Dear Ms. Tuggle and Ms. Walker-Woodfork,
C3/Hands Off Iberville wrote to both of you in August of 2009 presenting our concerns about the so-called ‘Iberville Advisory Committee’, whose members were handpicked by the Housing Authority of New Orleans' top lawyer, Wayne Woods. In our earlier communications, we expressed outrage at the committee appointing an operative from the Downtown Development Distract--an agency which has a long, clearly articulated agenda of demolishing Iberville--as the chair! We demanded that the committee expel the DDD representative, but you have refused to even discuss this issue, let alone take any action.
Second, we asked that all meetings of the ‘Iberville Advisory Committee’ follow the state sunshine laws and open deliberations to the public. Yet, here again, we have had no response, as your outfit, led by Henry Charlot of the DDD, continue to meet behind closed doors. Why the need for secrecy? What are you hiding?
Third, we have received no response in regard to our inquiry about whether HANO is placing new residents in vacated apartments. Are they being filled, or purposely being left empty? We know that city councilwomen Stacy Head has openly advocated for not allowing apartments to be filled by families that had previously been living in other public housing developments, which she helped demolish. Does the committee, including Henry Charlot of the DDD, share this same cruel and inhumane position as Ms. Head?
Ongoing developments lead us to believe that HANO, with support of developers, is pursing the ‘St. Thomas strategy’ to facilitate demolition. That is, the strategy, as was done at the former St Thomas development, is to remove as many current residents as possible from Iberville before they try to demolish. We see this clearly in the ‘vouchering out' plan HANO is pursing, with section 8 vouchers being issued to current Iberville residents. We see this plan expressed in the continued illegal and immoral use of one-strike provisions to throw families out of their apartments. A recent egregious case is that of Laura Smith who HANO evicted for something her son was accused of doing off the grounds of Iberville. Furthermore her son was not even living with her! Yet, HANO went ahead and evicted Ms Smith. These are some of the cruel, gangster-like tactics being employed by HANO to depopulate the development. What is the committee doing in the face of these injustices?
The Iberville Advisory Committee, by their silence, is complicit in this demolition strategy. But we at Hands Off Iberville, and others in the community, refuse to remain silent We will be rallying on November 14, at 4 Pm at the Iberville development to demand the following:
1. Kurt Weigle remove his outfit from the IAC. 2. All the units at Iberville remain as Public Housing. 3. The Federal government immediately implement a massive, national Public Works plan to rebuild and expand Public Housing and the Public Sector.
We invite you and other members of the Iberville Advisory Committee to attend this event and finally address the community’s concerns.
Jay Arena
for hands Off Iberville
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