Wednesday, July 29, 2009

My Response to "When The Levees Broke"--Spike Lee Production

Families were swimming through 10 feet of water to find shelter or food. Waiting in stuffy attics or burning roofs for the rescue that for some did not come. Neighbors carrying elderly and disabled neighbors on their backs to safety, yet no place in the engulfed city provided it. Children kept up in a house with dead parents, with no one to hear their cries. Some of the people gave up hope and floated away—the force of the water moving their still bodies away from their loved ones.

Tens of thousands wait in a stuffy building, hoping for federal aid that was promised but hasn’t arrived. Thousands, needing medical attention but there are too many people to help, with no one to help them. 5 days pass before anyone responds to the prayers of an entire city of people.

A little girl is ripped away from her mother. Unsure of where she is heading…shoved along with the hundreds of others, exhausted from the days of waiting in the sweltering heat. Her mother, separated for days before word of hearing that she was living, breathing. Hundreds of miles away from the home they once knew the evacuees wait in places unknown to them, strung about all over the southwestern part of the country.

Back in the submerged city…the smells of death mixed with urine, sweat, sewage and other disposed waste. Bodies lay about all over the city, forgotten and left to rot for days. The chaos that surrounded this horrific event could be seen in every corner of the city. Although, now for the most part emptied, the city of New Orleans remains devastated by the storm.

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