Housing and Violence
EDIT/UPDATE: There is a very worthwhile discussion of this going on in the New Orleans LiveJournal Community Here END UPDATE
As we go back and forth over the issue of public housing in New Orleans we get the joy of scenes like the one currently being enacted downtown. It seems that things have tipped in the direction of violence between protesters and police down at the City Council.
Why is it that we, as a species, cannot seem to escape the urge to be just plain shitty?
A Little Xmas Pepperspray
to go with the SWAT teams deployed to City Hall
Joy.
Joy to the [CENSORED] world.
-Loki
December 20th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
It’s worth noting that woman pepper sprayed and dragged away was Jamie Laughner. She’s an anarchist and advocate from D.C. Google her name. She seems to get roughed up by the police everywhere she goes (Miami, D.C.). I’m not saying our police were perfect here (I really don’t know), but if someone is always getting strong armed by policed you’ve got to wonder if she’s not trying to provoke the action.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
From what I just read over the mainstream AP media wires, it wasn’t only one woman who was roughed up.
December 21st, 2007 at 11:16 am
[...] Did the intentional acts of protestors to provoke pepper spray barrages and taser shots help or harm the interests of the public housing residents they purported to represent? Is it a successful negotiation strategy to call the people with whom one has to negotiate “gangsters”? There are legitimate questions to ask about the effectiveness of the agitators in rebutting arguments made by HUD that their remains plenty of available public housing units, and I’m not aware of any valid criticisms of the good plans created by residents of Lafitte to re-develop their complex. [...]