It’s hard to believe, but yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Two years have passed, and still, to this day, there are tens of thousands of families without homes. Displaced. Thirty thousand families are scattered across the country in bottom-of-the-barrel FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in formaldehyde-laced trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt. These are not simply statistics. These are human lives.
For a minute there, all the celebs had high-profile donations and TV appearances to funnel money to New Orleans. It was rad. Red Cross was all over it. Salvation Army did their thing, too. Though the government (seemingly) turned its head, the people, the collective you-me-they-we showed compassion and kindness, doing all we could to throw a lifesaver to our drowning sister city.
But, two years down the line, have people forgotten about the devastation? They have forgotten, but it’s still there. New Orleans is not just back to normal. So, in the spirit of keeping awareness on a real tip, The Brave New Foundation has created this moving video, documenting the truth in New Orleans, in hopes of generating reaction, and thus support for Senator Dodd’s Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S1688). Watch the video, sign the petition. Help your neighbor.
This article appears in August 24 • 2007.