Civil Rights Work
Common Ground contributed to the civil rights work that took place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The organization provided civil rights workers to take depositions from internally displaced evacuees of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Partnership between Tulane University, the Advancement Project, and Common Ground Collective provided an opportunity to protect the civil rights of Americans still struggling to recover from the storm.
They participated in the Anderson v. Jackson case, a class action lawsuit brought by displaced New Orleans public housing residents against the Bush Administration, alleging violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act), the U.S. Housing Act of 1937, the 5th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and International Law. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson sought to demolish housing units and to replace the existing units with fewer mixed units. Common Ground, the Advancement Project and Tulane advanced the argument that race-based discrimination was taking place, injuriously affecting the working class African American community populating the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The 5th and 14th Amendments were allegedly violated when the United States deprived community members of their right to due process, and it allegedly violated treaties to which it is a signatory by depriving Americans of the right to return to their homes.
Read more about this topic: Common Ground Collective
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, civil, rights and/or work:
“The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colours would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)