waronterror . neworleans, . palestine . fbi . jena,

Two Years Since Katrina

(Rant warning...) I watched (most of) When The Levees Broke by Spike Lee again. It is Spike at his SpikeLee-est, the montage to open Act III--- if you do not cry, I don't know if you're human. The dead bodies to close Act II. One of the most difficult sequences to watch. The homage/ode to the city in Act III, the jazz funerals, the music; having Terrence Blanchard walk down a devastated street blowin on that trumpet: this is art. With purpose. Letting people tell their stories, disparate as they are, a true documentation of disaster. There was no natural disaster in New Orleans two years ago. The hurricane actually hit quite a bit east of the city. It was all an unnatural disaster, beginning with the failings of under-engineered and underfunded levees. That would have been bad on its own. But what truly happened was a catastrophic denial of human rights by all levels of government, essentially disregarding and ignoring the suffering of hundreds of thousands for days on end. Brown/Chertoff/Cheney/Bush/Blanco/Nagy/whatever/whoever--- none of this was natural. And two years out, things have only improved marginally. I hope one day NO will recover. And it will be no thanks at all to government.