'Louisiana Winter' Students Arrive in New Orleans for Week-Long Campaigning

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 150 students from 25 colleges gathered at Xavier University to begin their week-long campaign to generate interest in the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, which would hire 100,000 residents to build and repair houses, schools, and other structures in New Orleans and the surrounding region.

The students have chosen the name "Louisiana Winter" to describe their campaign in the Gulf Coast in honor of "Mississippi Summer", a student-led effort in 1964 to register African American voters.

At the orientation, Joshua Barousse, a San Jose State University student, stated that the overall goal of the students was to get a bill introduced into Congress, and then passed, based on the idea of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project. Barousse stated, "We are in Louisiana and Mississippi for three reasons: to impart information about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, to do fact finding so that the legislation reflects the needs of the Gulf Coast citizens, and to begin the process of creating a national movement to support the development and passage of the bill."

At the orientation, student leaders highlighted the fact that 8,700 signatures had already been gathered in the past week by Color of Change, a human rights organization based in San Francisco, who have initiated an on- line campaign to petition Congress to develop and pass such legislation.

Students announced that their first public action is going to be at 8:30 am on Dr. King's birthday in front of the still closed-down Martin Luther King School in the Lower Ninth Ward. At the event, a statement will be read from Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who has sent a message to the Louisiana Winter students for this rally. The students hope to dramatize the contradiction between Dr. King's dream of an America based injustice and the social suffering of the citizens in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

For more information, please visit http://www.solvingpoverty.com/ .

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is the national effort by students to develop federal legislation to create 100,000 jobs to rebuild the region using

Gulf Coast residents.