Mr. Walter Kälin, who serves as the representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, will be joined this week in New Orleans by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign’s (PPEHRC) National Human Rights Monitor Willie J.R. Flemming of the Cabrini Green public housing projects in Chicago.
The visit to New Orleans Mr. Kalin of the UN and Willie JR Flemming of the PPEHRC comes a week before the Global Day of Action and Mobilization, in which PPEHRC actions by poor and homeless families across the United States will focus on the massive violation of the Human Right to Housing across the country.
Himself facing trumped up charges and potential jail time after a recent un-provoked arrest at a non-violent march in New Orleans to stop the demolition of over 4,000 units of public housing, Mr. Flemming is nonetheless returning to the city as part of a project to document and expose the reality of Human Rights violations faced by the poor in the United States before an international audience.
Mr. Kälin, who is in town at the invitation of several civil society organizations, met with public officials and civil society organizations in Washington D.C. on January 14th and will be touring the Gulf Coast and Houston and talking with internally displaced survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as well as Human Rights monitors.
“From New Orleans to Cabrini Green to Indonesia to Zimbabwe displaced poor people are seeing the wholesale destruction of our communities and violation of our Human Rights. Attacks on poor people and people of color everywhere need to be documented, exposed and fought. The struggle for the Right of Return and against the demolition of viable public housing in New Orleans in the midst of a housing crisis of unknown proportions is one of the most pressing Human Rights struggles in the country right now,” says Mr. Flemming.
Mr. Felmming’s accompaniment and documentation of Mr. Kälin’s visit is part of ongoing support by members of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign for the struggle for Gulf Coast residents and displaced people everywhere’s right to return and right to housing and healthcare, subjects which will be the focus of the Campaign’s Human Rights Tribunal and massive poor people’s “March for our lives” at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in early September. Mr. Flemming will use the opportunity of Mr. Kälin’s visit to build momentum in the south for the March for Our Lives, where there will be substantial representation of the Gulf Coast communities affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.