On Wednesday, August 24th, a delegation of militant activists went to a meeting of the Exhibition Hall Authority (the bureaucrats and wealthy capitalists running the Convention Center) to publicly criticize the Ernst E. Morial Convention Center for trying to steal $329.5 million in tax dollars from the city budget. The Convention Center wants this money to build a hotel for its own profit, even though $329.5 million is more than enough to provide health insurance to every uninsured worker in New Orleans and house every homeless person in the city.
Alec Arceneaux and James Ponder of the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee attacked the hotel project for being a “grand larseny.” In their joint statement, they said: “We demand an end to this robbery. Return the people’s stolen tax dollars back to the general budget, and use it to SERVE THE PEOPLE.”
Gavrielle Gemma of the People’s Assembly: “We’re not here to appeal to your morals, because we know you have none,” she said. “We’re only here to warn you that there will be an eruption in this city.”
Dylan Borne of the New Orleans Workers Group: “The NOPD is terrorizing and locking up black and brown youth every day. Yet the biggest gangsters and criminals in the city still aren’t behind bars, they’re sitting right here in front of me.”
Belden “Noonie Man” Batiste, Congressional candidate, exclaimed that the whole board should be arrested. He also shamed Robert “Tiger” Hammond, so-called union leader of the AFL-CIO, for selling out to the board instead of representing the working class.
Kim Ford called the Exhibition Hall Authority the worst board she’s ever seen and criticized its members for living like Kings while the workers who showed up to the meeting spend “our last dollar trying to park outside.”