When the New Orleans City Council met Thursday, Dec. 20, to unanimously support the demolition of the homes of 4,500 families, they literally locked hundreds of people out in the rain, who chanted, “Let us in!” while people inside chanted, “Let the people in!” Both inside and out, police attacked the people. Photo: BBC

At about 1 p.m. outside City Hall today, a sign posted read "City Council Meeting," with an arrow pointing towards an entrance that was closed, chained and padlocked.

Someone had written on it, "Your democracy is chains, locks, tasers, pepper spray, clubs, guns, lies and jails."

About two hours earlier, police had attacked people locked out of City Council chambers with tasers and pepper spray. The City Council was voting on the demolition of four New Orleans public housing complexes - home to 4,500 families before Katrina.

Because the people were excluded from the proceedings, a few in front of the gate began pulling on it and managed to break some handcuffs the police had lashed around it.

When the gate came open, however, nobody outside rushed in. Instead, police rushed out firing tasers and pepper gas, while others inside sprayed it through the gates at the disenfranchised people.

Soon there were a half dozen bodies sprawled on the adjacent lawn. Viola Washington, a prominent city activist, was pepper sprayed. "I didn't do anything except say, ‘Let us in!'" she said.

Edwin Lopez, a photojournalist from Santa Barbara working with Common Ground, said he was taking pictures "when the police opened the gate. The police came out spraying and one had what looked like two tasers." Lopez was flushing pepper spray out of his eyes with water as he spoke. At a paramedic wagon on Perdiddo Street nearby, his co-worker, videographer Mavis, was being treated for a pepper spray attack as well by EMTs.

Two women were punctured by taser wires as a result of the police attack. One was shot in the back and immediately went into a seizure. She had to be hospitalized, and reportedly one other person was too. Another woman was shot in the chest with a taser.

A short while later attorney Bill Quigley of Loyola University, a legal advocate for public housing residents opposing demolition, showed reporters a wire that transmits electricity that had been removed from one of the women.

When police were finally able to wrest control of the gates away from protesters whose collective strength had opened them, they sprayed a cloud of pepper gas that drove the protesters back. Photo: GPax

Maria Piamascaro, a New York City-based reporter for the Swiss weekly Hebdo, said she was inside the chambers and was taking pictures of a woman being beaten by police, when "a police officer told me to stop and threatened to arrest me. Then he pulled me out of the chambers. When I tried to get back in through another entrance, the police told me I'd be sent out of the country if I didn't leave. I've been in riots in New York and other places in the U.S., and I've never been treated like this."

There were a number of arrests, both outside and inside City Hall.

When I arrived for the City Council meeting a little before 10, I saw a crowd of people over at one side of the building, where the attacks later happened. Over there people said they had been told to wait there to get into the meeting. I went in the usual front entrance and the guard at the metal detector asked me if I was going to the City Council meeting.

I had heard him tell other people who answered yes that they had to go back out and go to the side entrance. So I said I was going to the Men's Room, which is at the front of the hall that leads to City Hall chambers. From there I could see several police down the hall barring people from going any further. Further down the hall a metal barricade with a line of police behind it lay ahead.

Outside the crowd began chanting, "Let us in!" "Stop the demolitions!" and "Housing is a human right!" It began to rain.

To “protect” the City Council from the protesters, New Orleans spared no resource, even mounted police. Photo: Fraugg

The rain began to come down harder; the chants became louder and more spirited. Finally an organizer called everyone together to say they were declaring victory and that they'd shut them down. He announced a time and place to get together to make the next plan to stop the demolitions, since the City Council vote was a foregone forlorn conclusion.

Thunder and lightning began and the rain became a downpour. The crowd dispersed, chanting, "No justice, no peace, we'll see you in the streets." The rain turned even heavier, and the streets of New Orleans began to rise into rivers again.

Email Michael Steinberg at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This story was originally posted to http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2007/12/11690.php. For the latest updates, visit www.defendneworleanspublichousing.org, www.peopleshurricane.org, www.justiceforneworleans.org and http://neworleans.indymedia.org.

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