Talking to kids after Katrina and Rita hit and the levees broke in New Orleans, filmmaker Laura Belsey spent months interviewing a cohort of young people from the Gulf Coast about their lives in 21st Century America.

One young boy, Dakota, cried as he told her what he believes he should have done differently in order to prevent the tragedy that dispersed his friends and wrecked his home. To prevent the waves and the abandonment. I should have appreciated more, and argued with my mom less, he says. Another, Sam, talks about unfairness. It's not fair that his house stands while others don't.

An array of young girls fidget and squirm as they speak in soft voices about dead bodies and dead dads. You can’t see what they see in their minds eyes but you can study their fiddling and wonder.

Talk about learning from the experience of the Gulf. It's not only on the Gulf. Just how many of our kids--do you think--believe they're to blame for their loved one's pain. And how blithely our media stoke that sense of blame: sick, suffering, poor? It’s your fault. Then there’s that unfairness – kids know it when they see it, but for their entire lives they're told that this tilted slope’s a level playing field. If only you run fast enough.

Laura Belsey talks to one little girl about her experience in the Convention center. She remembers having no water to drink. It’s not that there was no water. “There was water" she says, "but our people kept fighting." So it was never handed out.

Not to hammer this too hard – but well, you get the point. I hear a question about our priorities.

The novelist Arundhati Roy has faith that we can turn this around. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way,” writes Roy. “On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

I agree. But we need a quiet day. And we need to listen. Three years after August 2005, how about, today or tomorrow or next week, finding a quiet day to listen to your children? Maybe you'll hear how they're breathing.