New Orleans residents faced a standoff with demolition workers in the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans on Thursday morning after city officials ordered the violation of a temporary restraining order against demolition. Community members and legal activists have been working to insure that all residents receive notification and give permission when their property becomes a target for demolition.

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There is another issue that is perhaps even more important [than the bulldozing], the FEMA sponsored elevation requirements. As you probably know New Orleans and most other cities will not issue building permits to repair structures in the statutory flood plain (most of New Orleans and vicinity) when they are more than 50% damaged unless they are elevated to the base flood level. This is not because this is believed to be a wise policy but because FEMA threatens to withdraw flood insurance from communities that do not require this.

As the city attempts a Lower 9th Ward land grab, concerned community members and groups are fighting back.

Joyce Green died on the roof of her Lower 9th Ward home as her New Orleans neighborhood flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Helplessly, her son watched her die as the water rushed dangerously below them. Just last week he was able to return to their collapsed house on Tennessee Street for the first time, and found her skeletal remains amidst the ruins. He was able to identify them because they were wrapped in the clothes she was wearing the day she died.

A man known to the neighborhood around Felicity and St. Charles as a harmless but friendly mentally-disabled individual was shot Monday afternoon by Sixth District New Orleans Police. Witnesses reported at least ten bullet casings on the ground after police opened fire on the man. Although the police spokesman said that the man lunged at a police officer with a [three inch] knife before he was shot, witnesses all say that the man was backing up when he was shot numerous times by police. Staff at the Burger King nearby say that the victim was a daily customer there, and never hurt or threatened anyone. Onlookers expressed anger at the police for responding with excessive force to the situation, and for taking this man's life unnecessarily. One shouted at police after the incident, "Are your officers not trained to disarm a man with a knife without using lethal force?"

Sixth District officers are already under fire for their excessive behavior in several incidents, including harassment of relief volunteers and unlawful search of peoples' homes. This incident calls into question the legitimacy of a police force known both historically and recently for corruption and brutality.
Pictures from the murder scene

Other incidents of police violence:
Police beating of a relief volunteer |  Common Ground Press Conference on Police Accountability after volunteer Greg Griffith was arrested |  Update from Friends and Families of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children

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"We're back- to take it back!" was the call in the streets as Katrina survivors and their supporters marched on New Orleans city hall on December tenth. "We won't bow down" she sang and the crowd sang and swayed with her in Congo Square, New Orleans on December tenth, International Human Rights Day. "We will show the nation/ our determination." Fifteen hundred people gathered on Saturday for the March for Human Rights and Right to Return for Katrina survivors. The March followed the Gulf Coast Survivors Assembly in Jackson, Mississippi, where Katrina victims drafted a "People's Declaration: Survivor's Assembly Demands." Marchers delivered the document, demanding basic needs such as temporary housing and access to health care and education so that residents can begin rebuilding as well as a voice in the political rebuilding process, to City Hall at the end of the march.