HBO and Spike Lee have collaborated on a documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. It is a chilling indictment on the current administration and its complete inability to govern in the face of adversity.

While I was watching this last night, my phone rang and it was El calling from Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. I posted about El last October. She was a Katrina evacuee that I took into my home for a few months. She had gone to work at a hotel in New Orleans with a couple of days worth of clothes in a beach bag, thinking she would ride out the storm in the hotel and then go home. She never went home again. After being evacuated to Texas, she was sent to Massachusetts. Her close family was scattered all over the country. Some of them have never returned, choosing to stay in the area they were relocated to.

El went back to New Orleans in January to try to rebuild her life. She has a new job and a studio apartment in Metairie. Last night she was thinking of me and her first few weeks in my home, about her disorientation and despair, and the trials and tribulations we went through to wade through bureaucracy and red tape just to get her a drivers license and car. We shared some laughs and some tears. She is doing well now and happy to be back in the area that she lived in all her life but she wanted me to know that it is still a disaster there and it is worse than they show on TV.

So watch Spike Lee's documentary if you have HBO or get someone to tape it for you. We should never forget the lessons this disaster has shown to us. And we need to make this administration pay the price when we go to vote this fall.

4 Comments:

 OldHorsetailSnake, at 7:05 PM, August 30, 2006  

 Officer Brian, at 2:06 AM, August 31, 2006  

 LARMOT, at 2:28 PM, August 31, 2006  

 LARMOT, at 2:28 PM, August 31, 2006  

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