Save our homes in N.O.

TWENTY SUPPORTERS of affordable housing gathered in the Christopher Homes in the Algiers section of New Orleans on Valentine's Day to voice opposition to proposed cuts to federal affordable housing funding and to demand that federal officials reject the Housing Authority of New Orleans' (HANO) request for a Neighborhood Choice Grant to effectively destroy the Iberville Housing Development next to the French Quarter.

The protest represented New Orleans's contribution to the call by the National Alliance of HUD Tenants for a day of action against plans by the White House and Congressional leaders to drastically cut federal housing assistance to working and middle-class people in the U.S.

The new Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is proposing a 21.2 percent funding cut, effective immediately, in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs that aid the poor. This includes a $1.6 billion dollar cut in public housing funding below the level of the 2010 fiscal year.

Instituting this plan would also result in $1.5 billion in cuts to Section 8 vouchers below President Barack Obama's request for FY 2011. Funding for community development block grants, which aid cities, is targeted for a $2.9 billion cut, about two-thirds of the total FY 2010 budget.

Should these cuts be enacted homelessness in America, given the already dire economic situation, is sure to skyrocket.

Even without the proposed cuts to the HUD budget, New Orleanians endure the highest per-capita rate of homelessness in the nation. A 2009 study by Unity of Greater New Orleans, a housing advocacy group, concluded that 12,000 homeless people live in Louisiana's largest city. Since the time of that study, unemployment has increased in New Orleans.

The Valentine's Day protest was held in the isolated and economically challenged Algiers area of New Orleans, where HANO is seeking to relocate 263 public housing apartments now in the Iberville Development on the other side of the Mississippi River.

The corporate news establishments of New Orleans, including local TV news crews and the Times-Picayune newspaper, declined invitations to cover the protest. However, the New Orleans police did "cover" the lawful and nonviolent event. At one point, five NOPD cruisers converged on the scene. Thankfully, the police refrained from beating or arresting any demonstrators. The spirit of post-Mubarak Egypt prevailed!

RESIDENTS FROM the West and East Banks of New Orleans spoke out against many injustices, especially housing injustices, being inflicted on people in New Orleans, elsewhere in the U.S. and in the Middle East.

Eloise Williams, a long-time West Bank freedom fighter, noted that the working class of New Orleans needs to follow the cue from their brothers and sisters in Egypt in order to build the sort of movement that can stop the surge in ethnic and class cleansing locally since Hurricane Katrina. Public housing resident Sam Jackson of Mayday New Orleans noted that the February 14 action is just the beginning of the fightback needed to stop the proposed cutbacks to housing aid.

Bernice Adams, a resident of Christopher Homes, said that while she supports the repair and reopening of all the apartments in her neighborhood, she is against any attempt to force residents of the Iberville Development to move from their homes on the East Bank to her neighborhood on the West Bank. Groups represented at the protest include C3/Hands Off Iberville, the lower Algiers ACORN, Crescent City Anti-Authoritarians, MERGE and MayDay New Orleans.

Lawyer and human rights activist Bill Quigley lauded the New Orleans Valentine's Day action for bringing together local activists who refuse to allow the fallout from past defeats and victories to sideline them from the ongoing struggle for justice in a profoundly unjust environment.

The housing protest in New Orleans was one of at least 20 held in cities around the country. It marks one of the earliest attempts in the U.S. to mount a national mobilization to stop the bipartisan drive to savage federal assistance for the working class in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.