New Orleans Begins Demolition of the Lower 9th Ward

"On the eve of the holiday season, Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer, revealed that the city would immediately demolish about 2,500 'red-tagged' homes in the Lower 9th Ward. Before Meffert's announcement, a red-tag merely meant that a home was unsafe to enter. The City of New Orleans website specifically states in bold italicized text that 'a red sticker does not indicate whether or not a building will be demolished, only that the structure is currently unsafe to enter.'

"Yet the City decided to bulldoze red-tagged homes without informing homeowners of the new meaning of the red tags or the demolition order. This is a clear violation of due process, guaranteed under federal and state constitutions, which protects property owners from the unlawful destruction of their property. It is also a clear, opportunistic attack on the Lower 9th Ward community, whose historically black roots run deep in the neighborhood.

"Bulldozing a person's most emblematic tie to that land without their consent is not only plainly unlawful, it is a covert step towards the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans. Turning a natural disaster into an opportunity to whitewash one of the world's most multiethnic cities is not only the lowest form of racism, it would also spell municipal suicide for a city whose integrity resides in the preservation of its most dynamic neighborhoods."