In The Movement: Ursula Price from New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice

NOWCRJ PRESS RELEASE: New Orleans, LA, January 11, 2019—Workers from across New Orleans will converge on the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Monday to declare a national emergency over President Trump’s war against workers, communities of color, immigrants, women and the LGBTQ community. The announcement coincides with President Trump’s appearance at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention and comes as President Trump’s shutdown over the border wall is forcing hundreds of thousands of federal workers to struggle with how to provide for their families. President Trump suggested on Thursday that he may upend the democratic process and constitutional norms to raid disaster relief funding, including money budgeted for Louisiana infrastructure projects intended to protect against hurricanes. The irony of cutting disaster prevention funding to pay for a manufactured crisis on the southern border is not lost on immigrant reconstruction workers who face the threat of deportation from Trump’s anti-immigrant vendetta, Black New Orleanians watching a federal erosion of police oversight 13 years after the Danziger Bridge, or poor New Orleanians still unable to afford to return to New Orleans even as Trump cuts taxes for corporations and the rich. The declaration is being organized by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice and the New Orleans People’s Assembly. Workers who helped rebuild New Orleans and who bore the impact of the government’s catastrophic response after Hurricane Katrina will give testimony on how Trump’s national disaster threatens their safety and economic security and will break out their clean up gear to remind the American public what happens when the response to a national disaster is negligent.