When The Levees Broke documents New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, showing widespread devastation and lingering wounds. Katrina stands out among 21st-century catastrophes for exposing structural failures and a deeply flawed, multilayered response. Many victims experienced abandonment as government and institutions failed to protect vulnerable communities. Personal visits to the city reveal vacant homes, pleas like "SOS" on ruined buildings, and stories of loss and dislocation. Social privilege shaped perceptions that survivors should simply leave, ignoring complex ties to place and family history. The film blends intimate testimony with political context, tracing the city's beauty, ugliness, and contested recovery.
Katrina is the catastrophe that best illuminates the dark path that has led us to 2025. To this day, no one can pin down exactly who or what was to blame for the disaster and its even more disastrous response; the failure was total and multilayered. And, as Lee's documentary made plain, it was the moment when Americans realized that their country was capable of fully abandoning them, even in their time of greatest need.
In 2009, I took a community service trip to the city as part of a college group. We toured some of the many vacant homes left behind by Katrina, saw propped up against ruined buildings boards that bore scribblings like "SOS" and numbers that denoted how many dead bodies were inside, and listened to the horror stories of our guides as they explained what the city felt like in the ensuing months.
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