The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Safe Streets/Strong Communities are convening an expert hearing panel to examine the role of policing in the reconstruction of New Orleans, LA.

Time 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Advocates, public policy experts, and members of the community will provide testimony regarding how law enforcement practices and policies are blocking the right of return and interrupting the rebuilding process for low income communities of color in a number of areas, including:

• Policing and Housing : Evictions and Public Housing
• Police in the schools : their role in expulsions
• Labor and the Immigrant Community: how labor is used and how it is policed
• Prisons : the role of prison labor in reconstruction; blocking individual reconstruction through incarceration; federal funding of police and prisons before housing and individual assistance
• Mental Health : no hospitals or services, increased arrests, incarceration and killings of the mentally ill
• Federal Task Forces : the government's investment in supplemental local police through federal agents; lack of accountability
• Root Causes : Racism, Prison Industrial Complex, Post-incarceration marginalization and exclusion
• Federal Policy contrasted with treaties and agreements regarding Internally Displaced Persons

Invited Panelists:

• LaShawn Warren, Oversight Counsel, House Judiciary Committee
• Honorable Maxine Waters
• Honorable Cynthia McKinney
• E. Vincent Warren, Center for Constitutional Rights
• Dr. Ron Daniels, Institute of the Black World 21st Century
• Ron Hampton, National Black Police Association
• Judith Brown, Advancement Project
• Ajamu Baraka, US Human Rights Network
• Eric Balaban ACLU National Prison Project
• Maryelena Hincapie, National Immigration Law Center
• Lisa Kung, Southern Center for Human Rights