NEW ORLEANS – A day of demolition for the B.W. Cooper housing complex
here was stopped today by three local housing activists who chained
themselves to the facilities as the bulldozers were getting ready to
continue tearing down the 1,000-unit complex. After attempting to start
work for an hour, bulldozer operators gave up for the day when the three
activists – Jamie "Bork" Loughner, Elizabeth Cook, and Joy Kohler –
refused to leave.
The three were subsequently arrested and are still in police custody at
this hour. Loughner has been charged with possessing a false explosive
device, terrorizing, resisting an officer, and criminal trespass. Allies
in the activist community here suspect that the authorities intend to
keep the three jailed through tomorrow's scheduled meeting of the City
Council, at which a final vote to approve the demolition of B.W. Cooper
and three other public housing complexes is expected to be taken.
"We won't be stopped in our fight to secure public housing for all
citizens of New Orleans of any ethnicity," Loughner and Cook said in a
statement. "The government's attempts to sweep us aside and suppress our
voices will not be successful, and even from jail, we won't be silenced."
The day of civil resistance against demolitions in a city that is still
desperately short of affordable housing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
was endorsed by three local activist groups: MayDay NOLA, C3 Hands Off
Iberville, and Friends and Residents of B.W. Cooper
The planned destruction of New Orleans public housing, part of a wider
plan to dissolve poorer communities and gentrify the city post-Katrina,
has sparked unprecedented resistance in New Orleans and solidarity
across the country. In today's New York Times, architecture critic
Nicolas Ouroussoff calls the demolitions "one of the greatest crimes in
American urban planning."
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