New Orleans True Video

VIDEO re-Mix: A Small Band of Public Housing Rights Advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects and Marched down Canal Street calling for the Re-opening of habitable public housing and schools
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HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT! Public Housing Update, January 15, 2007:

SURVIVORS VILLAGE

MLK Day: St. Bernard Residents Go through Fence, Clean Out Apartments
New Orleans, LA (January 15, 2007) -With mops and buckets in hand,
displaced residents of the St. Bernard Public Housing Project will go
through the barbed wire fence surrounding their homes to clean and
rehabilitate them. On Monday, January 15, Martin Luther King Day, the
residents will rally at 12:00pm at Bynum Drugs Store, 3838 St. Bernard
Ave, and then enter the property to restore their homes at 12:30.

“Our homes are livable, and we are cleaning them out so that we can
live in them,” says Sharon Seans Jasper, a St. Bernard resident and
organizer. “We will not let the city destroy them.”

“The residents who will be cleaning their apartments have current
leases and therefore have a legal right to enter their homes,” says
rally organizer Endesha Juakali of Survivors Village. “However, the
police may not honor this right. Therefore public housing residents
will be evoking the spirit of Dr. King on this Martin Luther King
Day.”

HANO and HUD plan to demolish over 5000 units of affordable public
housing, housing that is desperately needed for families that wish to
move back to New Orleans. In a market where rents have increased
between 70 and 300 percent since Katrina, inflated rents and the lack
of subsidized housing has been a major factor in preventing evacuees
from returning to their homes. Finding private landlords that accept
housing vouchers is extremely difficult, and finding affordable
housing without subsidization is nearly impossible for public housing
recipients.

HUD’s own cost analysis reveals that their plan to demolish and
rebuild will waste taxpayers’ money. A recent motion for summary
judgment filed in a current suit to reopen the development (available
at: http://justiceforneworleans.org) cites HUD documents that show the
demolition and redevelopment of public housing “will end up costing
over $175 million more than extensively modernizing the developments,
and upwards of $450 million more than simply repairing them would
cost.” The motion also argues that the demolitions have racial
implications. “Prior to Katrina over 5,100 African-American families
lived in New Orleans’ public housing. Nearly 14 months later, only
approximately 1,000 have been allowed to return. HANO’s actions
clearly have disproportionately harmed African-Americans and have lead
to the overall decline in the city’s African American population since
Katrina.”

Despite overwhelming support for the re-opening of public housing,
HANO and HUD have consistently ignored public opinion and advocated
for its demolition. HANO has received a resounding and unquestionable
“NO!” to their plans from public housing residents at their recent
court-mandated ‘resident consultation meeting’. Angry residents
accused HANO of “ethnic cleansing,” and told them “being poor is not a
crime.”

Media contact: Endesha Juakali / survivorsvillage@gmail.com /
504.239.2907 or 504.284.6975
Stephanie Mingo / vmingo@bellsouth.net / 504.529.3171
January 15, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VIDEO: repost: On Saturday, December 3, 2005, immediately following the Hurricanes of infamy, a band of housing rights advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects on Basin St. Saturday in support of New Orleans residents’ right to return to their homes and called for the re-opening of the city’s public schools (2 or 3 public schools are open in Orleans Parish now). With 80% of the city flooded from hurricanes Katrina & Rita, and over a million Gulf South residents dislocated from their lives, the housing shortage, rapidly rising rents, and lack of sustainable government supports faces many thousands of people who wish to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Evictions - both illegal and legal - are epidemic in the New Orleans area and returning home or the lack of ability to return to a home, rain down further struggles on the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In particular, people who needed public assistance to meet basic needs and the right to their home find the rug pulled out from under them as the city makes plans to tear down public housing, closing even livable and marginally damaged housing with little or no dialogue with displaced residents.

Less than 20% of pre-hurricane residents actually reside in New Orleans now, which currently hosts thousands of new building contractors, laborors, developers and gaggles of various military, security and law enforcement personel now set up shop in the no-flood zones, in a former arts high school, on enormous cruise ships and in public spaces in the city centers. With 80% of the city flooded and by devastating hurricanes, evictions, both illegal and legal, happen quickly, often with little or no legal formality with as few as 5 days or no notice at all in this tumultuous housing market and with little or no regard for any notion of housing rights. Residents of the cities extensive public housing wish to return home and reclaim their lives - or at least check on their home - however there is little dialogue with the Housing Aughority of New Orleans and information that HANO housing will be closed and bulldozed circulates fear and anger from displaced survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Despite the fact that most New Orleans residents are out of town, a few dozen marchers gathered in front of the Iberville Public Housing projects just outside of the French Quarter to show support for the city’s poor and working people and marched freely down Canal Street to the Federal encampment by the Mississippi Riverwalk. The marchers called for the re-opening of habitable public housing and public schools, dialogue and the right of residents to return home. The Coalition to Save Iberville, New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NO HEAT), the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, and Common Ground Eviction Defense represented at the march and can be contacted for support of Housing Rights.

Housing Is A Human Right.

Related Links ::: Common Ground Collective, Loyola Law Clinic Katrina Help Site, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 77 mgs 20 minutes
Here’s a Bandwidth Challenged Version 6 mgs

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 31 MB 18 minutes

This piece, entitled “Si Se Puede!” or “Yes, We Can!”, beckons to the call of migrant workers to come together and unite as a community to fight for justice and self-determination in Post-Katrina New Orleans. The piece is put together from footage shot by New Orleans resident, community member and videographer Mary Beth Black, and chronicles some recent events and developments relating to immigrant worker rights along the Gulf Coast.

The government’s decision to open up rebuilding to private contractors has had serious implications for poor workers. In the wake of Katrina, unprecedented numbers of migrant workers of various races came to New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast from all parts of the USA, Latin America and South America, hoping to find decent work, pay, and accommodation through the reconstruction effort, and have instead found themselves in shockingly exploitative situations. Ensnared between laws that benefit contractors and leave them with no rights, and the financial need that brought them to the Gulf Coast in the first place, many of these workers are forced to live and work in circumstances that are unhygienic and dangerous, and more often than not, are cheated of their fair wages.

This piece, which we hope to continue as a series in the future, addressing upcoming issues, includes footage from the historic May 1 Immigrant Labor Rights Rally in New Orleans, interviews with workers, and the Indigenous Labor Rally in Lee Circle, which saw indigenous peace runners unite in solidarity with the fight of migrant workers.

Related Links ::: National Immigration Law Center, New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 8 mgs 13 minute segment

“Marchin’ to New Orleans” tells the story of American veterans who have been radicalized by what they have witnessed while working as tools of our administration, and have returned home to see their country with a fresh perspective. More than just victims of reckless foreign policy, these individuals have chosen to use their use their experiences to raise consciousness about a capitalist system that values economic interests over human life.

This is a segment from a piece that chronicles a six-day march along the Gulf Coast that began in Mobile Alabama and ended in a rally at New Orlean’s historic Congo Square Park. Along the way, veterans are joined by residents of the Gulf Coast who share stories of abandonment first by FEMA and then by the American media. Marchers are shocked and outraged to see that eight months after Katrina the repair of the Gulf Coast seems to have barely begun, while the general public has little knowledge of the continuing devastation.

Parallels and connections between the situation at home and abroad emerge as the march approaches New Orleans. Exploitation of immigrant labor recruited to rebuild the city emulates the presence of foreign contractors in Iraq. Many in Iraq and on the Gulf Coast continue the struggle to survive without the basic infrastructure of daily life—electricity and clean water, healthcare and education. Taxpayer’s dollars that are being used to tear down Iraq are concurrently absent in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.

Related Links ::: Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice Coalition

Bayou Sauvage Tour + City Hall Rally
Click Image to Download the VIDEO 13 mgs 8 minutes

Stop the Illegal Dumping in New Orleans East!

We are one big inter-connected tidal pool of humanity floating on a gorgeous and endangered wetlands. This is a VIDEO tour of the Bayou Sauvage and Chef Mentuer Landfill Site for the new illegal dump for millions of tons of hurricane debris plus views of the May 10 rally against the landfill at City Hall.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the region is left with literally millions of tons of debris to collect and dispose of as an essential part of the recovery process. New Orleans Mayor Nagin, who is up for re-election on May 22, claimed “emergency powers” and circumvented public hearing processes and safety standards to designate and begin dumping debris in New Orleans East - not 20 yards from the Bayou Sauvage wetlands and a mile from a community of thousands of predominantly Vietnamese and African-American families.

Not only is New Orleans East a profound and unique multi-generational community that spans time and geography from New Orleans back to 3 villages in Vietnam, but it is also bordered by the nation’s largest urban wildlife refuge, the Bayou Sauvage, and home to many endangered species as well as alligators, turtles, egrets, nutria and other swamp critters.

Despite massive flooding and lack of government support, the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East has accomplished profound recovery and rebuilding on their own initiative, organized largely through the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, to account for the welfare of community members, gut and rebuild homes, and host many volunteers who have come to the region and need support for their work.

The Vietnamese community in New Orleans East is leading the fight against this landfill which Mayor Nagin approved by sideswiping law that demands community hearings before a landfill can be built. On May 10th, members of the Versaille Community and the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, together with the Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and also representatives of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network gathered together at City Hall and demanded that Mayor Nagin hear their protest. A 3 day moratorium was put on the dumping (to be lifted on Monday) until, Mayor Nagin said, he could “prove… that it is safe”.

The landfill is designated to be 100 acres, 30 feet deep and another 80 feet high. See the video tour of the Bayou Sauvage and the Chef Menteur Landfill site with Father Dung Nguyen and feel for yourself the unique and interconnected landscape that is threatened by the city of New Orleans’s illegal dumping.

For more info about the New Orleans East community after Hurricane Katrina, scroll down to story and view video.
For more info about the Landfill, see the story posted by Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East:::>>>
Related Links ::: FACTS ABOUT THE LANDFILL, Mary Queen of Vietnam Church

keywords: New Orleans East, landfill, Hurricane Debris, Katrina, environmental racism, Vietnamese community, wetlands, Bayou Sauvage, Illegal Dumping, Toxic Waste

Human & Voting Rights March: New Orleans, April 1 2006,
Click to Download VIDEO 27 MB 11′30 min.mov quicktime

On Saturday, April 1 2006, several thousand people marched across the Mississippi River Bridge from the Convention Center in New Orleans to Gretna, Louisiana to protest human rights abuses that occurred following hurricane Katrina and the upcoming mayoral elections on April 22.

When people tried to cross this bridge, the “Crescent City Connection”, while fleeing the city and the rising floodwaters immediately following hurricane Katrina last September, they were turned back at gunpoint by police from the city of Gretna.

Protestors marched on this symbolic bridge to also protest the upcoming elections for New Orleans mayor. With less than half the city returned, and most of the residents relocated to new addresses, displaced voters, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Rainbow Push Coalition, and other national and local civil rights advocates called for the post-ponement of the elections until equal access to the candidates, information about the election, and actual voting places can be guaranteed to all residents. In particular, voting rights advocates pointed to satellite voting opportunities given in the United States by the government to Iraqi and Bosnian citizens that are being denied to tens of thousands of displaced residents of New Orleans. Many protestors compared the expense and burden on poor and predominantly African-American residents to travel back to New Orleans just to vote for mayor to the poll taxes and Jim Crow laws that historically prevented African-American peoples from representation in electoral politics in the Southern United States.

The NAACP has set up a hotline for New Orleans voters:
1-866-Our-Vote (1-866-687-8683).
Pass it on.

HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL:
This past weekend’s protest in New Orleans coincided with some of the largest protests in U.S. history. In other cities around the United States, hundreds of thousands of protestors also marched against anti-immigration legislation and immigrant worker policies. To look more at both these protests and larger movements in relationship to universal human rights and equal representation, see related links:
Democracy Now! Monday April 3 2006, New Orleans indymedia

More video for a Free New Orleans and Peace On Earth at::: www.N.O.Tv Collective.org

Watch the video 22 mgs 15 minutes
Here’s a Bandwidth Challenged Version realplayer 9 mgs

They speak of St. Augustine’s place in Black History and the validity of the upcoming Mayoral Elections process.

BTW This was last night and includes a healthy dose of the Treme Brass Band.
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Capitalism & Racism in Religion

Click Image to Download the VIDEO 105 mgs 27 minutes
Here’s a Bandwidth Challenged Version 16 mgs RealPlayer

Several people have occupied St. Augustine Catholic Church in the Treme area of New Orleans, for over a week to date, to draw attention to the unjust treatment this parrish is recieving from the archdiocese.

This will be history some day. Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton stopped by this evening.

Related Links ::: April 1st star studded Return, Vote & Rebuild Rally

Watch the video 28 mgs 19.5 minutes