“The swamp reclaimed the city. Snakes and alligators and fish swam through swallowed neighborhoods, only the roofs peeking out.
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Pans Labrytnth meets Beasts of the Southern Wild.
BACKGROUND
The people of the 9th Ward didn’t suffer bc of a natural disaster. They suffered, bc they were poor and black. The crisis is covered in the finger prints of slavery, Jim Crow, capitalism, genocide, religion. It’s what happens when large swaths of people are not only left out, but forced to be their own gravediggers and pallbearers. It’s those layers that complicated and exacerbated the crisis. Who was saved and who was abandoned. Whose bodies littered the road to the “greater good”
Their is old African american folktale that says Hurricanes are lost Souls of the Sea who unleash their wrath annually on their oppressors.
Hurricane Katrina formed in the sea off the coast of Africa, and gathered strength as she crossed The Atlantic, following almost the exact route of slave ships.
The people of the 9th Ward didn’t suffer bc of a natural disaster. They suffered, bc they were poor and black. The crisis is covered in the finger prints of slavery, Jim Crow, capitalism, genocide, religion. It’s what happens when large swaths of people are not only left out, but forced to be their own gravediggers and pallbearers. It’s those layers that complicated and exacerbated the crisis. Who was saved and who was abandoned. Whose bodies littered the road to the “greater good”
