“Louisiana Winter” Students Set to Arrive in New Orleans

“Louisiana Winter” Students Set to Arrive in New Orleans

Date: Thursday, January 11, 2007
Contact: Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton at +1-510-508-5382

NEW ORLEANS, LA /PRNewswire/ -- In 1964, hundreds of college students from around the country came to Mississippi to register African American voters. In that spirit of democracy, 150 students from 24 colleges will return to the Gulf Coast this Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend to participate in Louisiana Winter, this generation’s Mississippi Summer.

The goal of Louisiana Winter is to promote the development of federal legislation based on the idea of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, which would hire 100,000 residents to rebuild and repair houses, schools, levees, and parks in New Orleans and the surrounding region.

As Jeff Mendelman from Stanford University states, “After I studied about the civil rights movement of the 1960s, I have longed to truly help the plight of fellow Americans. Louisiana Winter embodies the spirit of this type of aid, because we cannot wait any longer while people needlessly suffer in the Gulf Coast. And while some mourn the loss of New Orleans, I want to rebuild it into an even stronger cultural haven.”

Louisiana Winter starts off its week of events on Monday, January 15 at 9 am in front of the closed-down Martin Luther King High School in New Orleans. On this day, when our beloved nation celebrates Dr. King’s birthday, the Louisiana Winter students will be in the Lower Ninth Ward, asking how is it possible for the nation to celebrate Dr. King’s vision of a “beloved community” on this day, while the school that bears his name remains shutdown sixteen months after Hurricane Katrina.

After this rally, the students will march with the NAACP contingent in the King parade, and will be leafleting the marchers about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project and inviting them to a town hall meeting in New Orleans on Friday, January 19 at 7 pm at the Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries, and to a mass rally on Saturday, January 20, at 11 am at the Iberville Housing Development.

Throughout the week, Louisiana Winter students will be educating and organizing around the idea for 100,000 jobs for Gulf Coast residents in the following Louisiana communities: Algiers, Garden District, Gentilly, Lakeview, Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East, Pontchartrain Park, Pontilly, St. Bernard Parish, and Village d’Lest. Students will also be educating about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project in the following Mississippi communities: Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, and Biloxi. In addition, a town hall meeting will take place in Gulfport, Mississippi on Thursday, January 18 at 7 pm at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College-Jefferson Davis Campus Auditorium.

For more information, please visit http://www.solvingpoverty.com/.

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is the national effort by students to develop
federal legislation to create 100,000 jobs to rebuild the region using Gulf Coast residents.
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