[permalink] Around 30 people attended a New Orleans Style Vegan Feast to benefit a housing collective that suffered serious damage from flooding by hurricane Katrina. The benefit, held on October, 15th in the Rogers Park neighborhood, successfully raised $600 for the Nowe Miasto Housing Collective in New Orleans.

Nowe Miasto, a three story warehouse at 223 Jane place in Mid-City, New Orleans, was formed as a housing collective for people to live cheaply and cooperatively.

Since 1999, members of the collective had been progressively renting more of the space, while at the same time repairing and cleaning until finally purchasing the building one month before Katrina hit.

Nowe Miasto has been a place for many events and workshops. Some examples are a women's self defense class and a women's health seminar. Louisiana Books 2 Prisoners operated out of the Nowe Miasto since 2001. Other prison activist groups such as Free the Angola 3 and Critical Resistance have used the space to work on projects. When the INCITE! Color of Violence III conference happened in New Orleans last March, many members of the collective were involved and the space was used to make huge banners, puppets, piñatas, and signs for the conference. The original organizers of a bicycle project called Plan B also lived in the housing collective.

The event was organized by Cassandra Burrows and Andy Allen with help from the Chicago anarchist community. Cassandra and Andy were both living at Nowe Miasto before the storm and were displaced from their home to Chicago.

One Nowe Miasto collective member said, "It's great to hear that people up north are supporting our efforts. We need to keep collectives alive in New Orleans." Comment here.

Additional Information Chicago Indymedia's New Orleans/Gulf Coast Solidarity Information Page | Information on Aiding Abandoned Animarom Katrina