It’s New Orleans remembrance time; that time where, for the last ten years at the end of August, public attention returns for a bit to the city that abandoned its poorest. Mostly black, in a majority black city, democracy failed as spectacularly as the public safety system. Not only the levees, but also the social contract was breached. Poor people clinging to rooftops in the richest nation on earth. The pictures shocked the world and broke our hearts.
Ten years on, the city’s back. The levees are rebuilt, but the social contract lies in shreds. Let’s remember. Hurricane Katrina didn’t destroy New Orleans. The storm’s eye passed to the east. It was the levee breaks that followed that wiped out entire neighborhoods. Public safety systems that had never served all residents well, failed the most vulnerable. A million were displaced, hundreds of thousands lost land and loved-ones.
2015-08-27 New Orleans’ Deadly Floodwaters: Now From Gentrification
2015-08-19 Katrina and Conservative Failure, Ten Years Later
2007-09-05 Hurricane Katrina: Who’s to Blame for this Unnatural Disaster
2007-08-08 America’s Shame: 2 years after Hurricane Katrina
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