(no subject)
I’m watching a Katrina/New Orleans documentary, When the Levees Broke, and it’s breaking my fucking heart.
I knew New Orleans had a history with hurricanes, but I didn’t realize it was so thoroughly interwoven into the culture of the city. There was Betsy in 1965, Katrina in 2005, there was an even more powerful storm than Katrina back in the 1927, deemed the greatest natural disaster of the US until Katrina slammed its way in. They started building the levees in 1965, and they stillhaven’t finished them. (By “they”, I do not mean New Orleans and Gulf coast residents. I fully believe they’ve been victimized here. This is political.)
People just go up to the Superdome as a matter of habit, because they know it’s the strongest structure around, the only one capable of withstanding a Category 5 storm. The people who were around for Betsy-or any of the smaller ones between-just stay home, because they kept everything before, they’ll sustain this, too. They pray, sure, but they stand. I cannot imagine living with that fatality and fear.
And they’re rebuilding. It’s slow, yeah, and they’ve lost most of the outside support, and a lot of the proposed solutions to future storms (because there will inevitably be more) will do things like cut the state in half, or just ignore other parts of the state because they’re too “at risk”. But they’re rebuilding. God bless these people. New Orleans will never die. She’s coming up on her 300-year anniversary. She’ll change, but she’ll never die.
(Unrelated to anything else, I'm noticing a trend. The white people interviewed for this thing all have that strange, TV, California non-accent. The black people all sound like I'm taught New Orleanians should sound. I wonder what that's all about.)