PRESS RELEASE
Bush Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans Gets Approval
Dec. 23, 2007 (EIRNS)— On Dec. 20, the New Orleans City Council, at a raucus meeting, approved the Bush Administration's proposal to tear down four public housing developments, which domicile 4,600 housing units, 3,600 of them available to low-income households. Bush's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson put forward the proposal.
According to Maine-native Emily Posner, who spent "15 months doing post-Katrina relief work and witnessed the current housing crisis in New Orleans," in a letter to the Dec. 23 Kennebec Journal, "The housing projects slated for demolition received minimal storm damage and many units did not flood." This demolition will be carried out in a city in which, due to Hurricane Katrina, there are 12-15,000 homeless, and over 200,000 persons still displaced. Posner reported that "the lack of affordable housing has caused rent to increase 40-70%" in New Orleans.
The reason for HUD's action is Afro-American ethnic cleansing/genocide. On Sept. 28, 2005, only two months after Katrina had demolished New Orleans, and while teams were still trying to retrieve bodies, HUD Secretary Jackson declared, "Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time. New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again." Jackson's plan worked out to reducing New Orleans' African-American population by 25%, to turn it into an "environmentally friendly" mecca for gentrification and tourism. The public housing does not have to be torn down.
