New Orleans Xmas Solidarity Rally at Sen. Feinstein's home in SF

A delegation of Bay Area activists demonstrated outside Senator Diane
Feinstein's home in San Francisco's affluent Pacific Heights
neighborhood Christmas Day demanding a halt to racial and ethnic
cleansing in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Demonstrators drew attention to the Department of Housing and Urban
Development's (HUD) plan to demolish 4,600 habitable public housing
units in New Orleans this holiday season. The homeless crisis in New
Orleans is one of the worst in history. Post-Katrina rents are nearly
double what tenants paid before the levees broke and Katrina Survivors
face long waiting lists to get into the city shelters. Families are
being forced to sleep in their cars or crowd into studio apartments.
Demonstrators contend that reopening New Orleans public housing,
instead of bulldozing it, would give many Katrina Survivors an option
to stay in a city that seems to be forcing them out at all costs.

Sen. Feinstein has not addressed this crisis. Feinstein is on the
Senate's Appropriation's Committee that funds HUD and has not
cosponsored S. 1668 the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, a bill that
would guarantee a unit for unit replacement of the demolished public
housing units.

Outside of Senator Feinstein's home, protesters held signs that read,
"Hey Diane, Don't be such a Scrooge! Support the Gulf Coast Recovery
Act!" and "How HUD Stole Christmas..." Activists also noted that
destruction of public housing is not just an attack on the poor but a
Civil Rights issue and a feminist cause, since the majority of public
housing tenants in both New Orleans and San Francisco are women of
color and their children.

The delegation of activists and organizations in attendance were Bill
Schwalb from Veterans for Peace, Betita Martinez from the Institute
for MultiRacial Justice, Katrina Solidarity Network, Earl Gilman from
Nuevo Topo Collective, Carl Kramer from the SF Living Wage Campaign,
Liza Kachko and Lisa Milos from Bay Gulf Solidarity, David Welsh from
Haiti Action Committee and the San Francisco Labor Council, Anne
O'Neill from CodePink and social justice filmmaker Loni Ding.

Activists observed that Senator Fienstein's five-story estate would
make an excellent homeless shelter.


To join the fight for Public Housing in New Orleans please contact
action [at] peopleshurricane.org

To get plugged into the New Orleans solidarity movement in the Bay
Area please email Katrinasolidarity [at] gmail.com