The New Orleans City Council’s Dec. 20 vote to demolish 4,500 apartments at the B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, St. Bernard and Lafitte public housing complexes did not go by without a fight. Tensions quickly escalated during the meeting as dozens of residents and activists gathered outside council chambers vying to get a seat inside.

Bill Quigley, law professor and director of the Loyola Law Clinic, was at the forefront of the protest and said he has been working alongside public housing residents since the early 1970s.

“I am not the leader. I am part of a team of residents, lawyers, social workers, affordable housing advocates, allies, and organizers,” Quigley said in an e-mail to The Maroon. “I think it’s important social justice work to work with the people who have the least power in our society.

“Even though poor people speaking out and demanding justice is always controversial, I am proud to work with them.”

Quigley voiced his opinion publicly outside the council meeting in interviews with local news media outlets. The event earned extensive coverage, in part because New Orleans police officers used pepper spray and Tasers on demonstrators after several people tried to break through the gate to City Council.

Quigley said it was the quickness of the council’s decision that led the meeting to descend into a fiasco, and said the event illustrates the problems the city has been facing since Hurricane Katrina.

“(City council members) announced their votes before anyone spoke, locked out hundreds of people who wanted to attend the public meeting, arrested many people, pepper sprayed others, and violently Tasered people in the back,” Quigley said.

“Some people get the inside track on a decision, they think they know what is right for everybody else, the decisions are made in advance, and the insiders and powerful are happy and cannot understand why everyone else is not happy. It was an embarrassment for our city.”

Supporters of the council’s decision contend that demolishing the housing projects will help to break the cycle of poverty that plagues New Orleans. They point out that not many residents will be displaced by the demolition, since many of the housing units have been closed since Hurricane Katrina.

Quigley said he thinks the City Council did what they thought was best, but he said many national and local religious leaders and human rights organizations disagree.

“We think they missed a big opportunity and bought into the pressure from the federal government and those who stood to make hundreds of millions off this,” Quigley said. “Residents have always asked for one of two things: First, if hundreds of millions of dollars are going to be spent, guarantee that the city will not end up with less affordable housing afterwards -which is what is going to happen under the current plans. Second, if you will not guarantee that people can come back, then use the money instead to fix up the old apartments.”

Quigley said he is fine with the new mixed-income housing plan as long as lower-income people remain in the mix. He points to the St. Thomas/River Gardens development as an example of new plans excluding the poor.

Quigley said, “It was 1,600 apartments for poor people – now there are fewer than 100. Most people who support the City Council decision think St. Thomas is a big step forward – but it is a disaster for the poor.”

A tenured faculty member at Loyola, Quigley said he has great freedom to work on controversial issues and has enjoyed the support of the university for more than 15 years.

“Loyola has taken a lot of heat for these over the years, but Loyola has always supported my work on controversial justice issues – even when they are not so sure I am taking the right position,” Quigley said. “There have been campaigns asking the university to fire me before and they are ongoing again now.”

Despite some e-mails and blogs being sent to Loyola’s administration calling for university action against Quigley, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, said he doesn’t give them much thought.

“I do get a lot (of complaints about Quigley). But, it is within Bill’s rights as a faculty member and an American citizen to express his views on public policy. So I support his right to speak, as I would anyone’s,” said Wildes in an e-mail to The Maroon.

Though complaints about Quigley may lead to some lost. donations to the university, Wildes said he isn’t worried about the overall impact. “We do get the ‘I won’t give another dime again’ speech,” Wildes said. He continued to say, however, that when it comes to actual donations, most complaints come from people who have given little or nothing at all. “When I check, I often find that their promise for the future reflects their giving in the past.”

Jordan Hultine can be reached at [email protected].