PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dec. 19, 2007, 6:30pm EST

Contact: Jay Arena, (504) 520-9521

PUBLIC HOUSING ACTIVISTS STOP THE BULLDOZERS IN NEW ORLEANS;
3 ARRESTED

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.”