“The story is not the hurricane the story is that a year later it still looks the same,” says a young woman standing in front of a still unreconstructed row of homes in New Orleans. The word Baghdad is scrawled across the side of a block of apartment buildings. This is New Orleans after Katrina as captured in Tao Ruspoli’s short film, Behind the Wheel: New Orleans, 9th Ward. As Laura pointed out yesterday Katrina and Rita reveal more than just an anemic response to a “natural” disaster. They reveal the disintegration of the state and its abandonment of the poor. They reveal the two worlds that this country has become. They reveal the insidious legacy of racism. They reveal a nation at war. In an instant, everything you own can disappear as the world stands by and watches.
It wasn't just an incompetent commander in chief and failed levees that created Katrina. It was years of neglect, deregulation, and the triumph of individualism writ large. The American empire cannot even rebuild its own streets, its own cities. On the eve of the Democratic Convention GRITtv looks back at what Hurricane Katrina says about our nation and, more important, asks what we must do to rebuild a city and a society whose leaders have drifted far from their mandate.
This week GRITtv will be marking the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a special week of programming. Today’s panel includes Ursula Price, Outreach and Investigations Coordinator of Safe Streets Strong Communities, Jordan Flaherty, Editor of leftturn magazine and a contributor to Red State Rebels, and Damon Hewitt, Associate Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
We also have an interview with Laura Belsey, the producer and director of Katrina’s Children, a remarkable film that tells the many stories of post hurricane New Orleans through the clear eyes of its children. Behind the Wheel is part of a larger project spearheaded by the Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative. We’ll be showing more of it in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.