By Special to M&C by John D. Alfone in New Orleans Aug 24, 2006, 9:18 GMT
Thank God for Spike Lee.
HBO president of documentaries Sheila Nevins (L),director Spike Lee C)and HBO Chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht pose for photos at the premiere of 'When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,' a documentary about the impact of Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans August 16, 2006. REUTERS/Lee Celano
If a nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members, then America is headed down the wrong track.
Lee's 'When the Levees Broke-A Requiem in 4 Acts' is a searing critique of the catastrophe that befell New Orleans after Katrina made landfall that exposes America's racism, classism, and hypocrisy.
While many parts of the Gulf Coast remain in shambles resembling images more reminiscent of a CNN Baghdad newscast, producers Sam Pollard, Judy Aley, Sheila Nevins put the spotlight back on the Big Easy and show they care reminding people of the disaster that happened last August 29th.
A 4-hour "requiem" that intertwines the cultural legacy of New Orleans with the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, at the heart of the documentary is the question why thousands of predominantly low-income African-American New Orleanians found themselves trapped inside a city with 80% water submersion.
While the documentary points to Dick Cheney’s vacation fly fishing trip and Condoleeza Rice's shopping on Broadway & playing tennis with Monica Seles during Katrina’s critical week as buildups to the tragedy, critics often question why the abandoned did not just leave.
A prominent topic the documentary addresses is neighboring Jefferson Parish’s decision to block the Crescent City Connection bridge out of the city. Interestingly, officials from the agencies involved in the blockade — the Gretna Police Department, the Crescent City Connection police department and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff Office-have stood behind their actions after the Oakwood Center mall located near the foot of the bridge across the river in Terrytown was set on fire. Currently, the incident is at the center of a U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation.
Already, conspiracy theories abound whether levees along New Orleans' Industrial Canal were exploded that disproportionately caused more flooding and destruction to African-Americans living in the Lower 9th Ward.
While this controversy might be deciphered as fodder to get people to subscribe to HBO, parallels abound.
The logic behind the question rests in the fact that by blowing a levee adjacent to the Lower 9th Ward, the storm surge coming down from Lake Pontchartrain would not conjoin the Mississippi River thereby flooding the French Quarter and Uptown areas (indisputably, areas where greater concentrations of wealth exist but in the case of Uptown falsely believed to be homogeneously white).
As shown in the documentary, during the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 a Mississippi River levee was indeed blown up in St. Bernard Parish in a rural area below the city in an effort to protect the city itself from dangerously high waters.
While some critics accuse Lee of having a racially motivated agenda because his documentary does not mention people affected by the 17th Street Canal levee breach (many who are white) in the Lakeview area, the assertion does not have much ground to stand on because the film as a whole offers a racially balanced tableaux of New Orleanians affected by levee breaches.
While more blacks appear in the documentary, it should also not be forgotten that pre-Katrina the city was predominantly black and that most of those who found themselves stranded in New Orleans after Katrina were African-Americans. If Katrina’s aftermath is racially motivated and the levees adjacent to the Lower 9th Ward were blown, why does Lee not depict the havoc wreaked upon middle-class white New Orleanians and explain if the 17th Street Canal levee was also blown?
Because the 17th Street levee neighbors Lake Pontchartrain, which caused most of the flooding in the city of New Orleans, a conspiracy can almost immediately be ruled out because much of the destruction there resembles that found in Mississippi which was in large part caused by natural causes.
While the film is technically sound and asks the difficult questions, the only shortcoming is why former mayor Marc Morial (1994-2002) is not scrutinized in the documentary. While most of Morial’s screentime in the documentary consists of praising the heroics of the Coast Guard, sadly Morial (whose administration's contracting practices has netted more than 12 indictments and guilty pleas) is tacitly complicit in the calamity that befell New Orleans.
Under his administration, drainage, sewerage and levee systems deteriorated as poverty spiked culminating in the images viewers around the world witnessed last year. When Orleans Levee Board President Billy Nunngesser tried to undertake surveys to determine the structural integrity of the flood protection system, Morial and former Governor Mike Foster appointees on the Levee Board appeared more concerned with building a movie theater and letting out legal services contracts than building levees.
To this day, nearly 300,000 New Orleanians remain displaced from the city. The only comparable exodus of people from their homes on American soil include Japanese-Americans placed into internment camps during World War II and 1838’s “Trail of Tears” when Cherokees were forced by the American government to move west of the Mississippi River.
While many New Orleanians have moved on to better lives, too many others find themselves away from their home living in depressing conditions. The Lower 9th Ward, comprised pre-Katrina largely of African-American homeowners, still finds itself without Category 5 levee protection which would ultimately create a buffer for an area that encompasses people of many races and classes.
While much has changed, much has remained the same.
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