Frustrated over recent sweeps of their encampments, New Orleans’ unhoused residents staged a protest Saturday (Oct. 26) night by the Greyhound bus station, near one of the areas from which Louisiana State Police had ousted them just days before.
“People over profit,” they chanted as a stream of sequin-clad concertgoers passed by on their way to a Taylor Swift show at the Superdome. “Homeless people matter.”
The protest followed a chaotic week as state and local officials clashed over the homeless encampment sweeps ordered by Gov. Jeff Landry. City leaders said the sweeps posed a major setback to an extensive local effort already underway to relocate encampment residents to housing.
Organizers timed the Saturday protest to coincide with traffic from Swift fans headed downtown to see the pop star during her second night performing in New Orleans this weekend. The triple-show weekend has been expected to draw tens of thousands of tourists to the city.
Doug Parish, the most vocal in the group, held a sign that read: “Swifty is shifty on homeless along with Gov. Landry.”
Parish said government officials have a misconception of who the homeless are: “They look at homelessness as, ‘Oh, he’s on drugs, he’s, he’s an alcoholic.’ I have to be homeless because the rent is so damn expensive,” he said.
Parish led a group of roughly 30 protesters from the intersection near the Greyhound bus station down Loyola Avenue to Duncan Plaza across from City Hall and then on to the Superdome, where they said they planned to camp out until the end of the Taylor Swift concert.
The group — wearing plain clothes and carrying signs that read “Everyone deserves a home” and “New Era, New Movement” as a nod toward Swift’s “Eras” tour – stood in stark contrast with the massive crowd of fans in costumes that embodied the different eras of Swift’s career.
Parish said he recently started living at an encampment on South Claiborne Avenue and Gravier Street after a heart condition caused him to resign from his job in the maintenance department at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner. He said he could no longer afford his monthly $800 rent, buying a tent with his last paycheck and set it up at the encampment.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Troop NOLA, a contingent of state troopers that has been operating in New Orleans since the beginning of this year at the directive of Gov. Jeff Landry, and other state agencies cleared multiple encampments, including one at Calliope Street near the Greyhound Bus terminal. Officers transferred residents to a location across from the Home Depot on Earhart Boulevard.
Elizabeth Gutierrez, who also lived for two years at the South Claiborne encampment, said the new area that they were forced to relocate to is not safer, as state police officials have suggested.
“It’s all really stressful,” Gutierrez said. “The first night we didn’t go to sleep till three. There was a lady threatening to burn things up. There was a man beside us with a knife. He told us to move away from him.”
On Friday, an Orleans Parish judge signed a temporary restraining order halting State Police from conducting more sweeps of homeless encampments throughout the city. The restraining order followed a lawsuit against the state police and two other agencies, filed by two unhoused people who alleged that the state troopers violated their civil rights by illegally searching and seizing their property.
Lettie Vaughn shared a space at the South Claiborne encampment with Gutierrez. She said everyone there called her “Mamma,” as she ministered to the community there. Vaughn, who was also relocated by troopers this week, said she has managed to hold onto clothing and other items to share with other encampment residents who lost belongings in the sweeps. She said instead of pushing homeless people further to the margins, Landry should try to understand their circumstances.
“You cannot pretend homelessness don’t exist in the United States,” Vaughn said. “I would say this: ‘Jeff Landry, skip football and come visit these people for four hours [and] hear their story.”
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