When the Levees Broke

Well I finally watched Spike's documentary. I just finish watching it a couple of minutes ago. I missed last weeks acts and promise that I would make sure my night was clear for me to watch the whole piece.

First let me say that the piece was very important in giving a really eye-opening perspective of what actually happened before, during and after Katrina. Yes homegirl in the airport had my dying. Many times I bust out in laughter as I watch her go through the motions. But as the Wu-tang said, after the laughter comes the tears. Now hear comes the tears...

It was very painful for me to watch, just as it was painful for me to watch as it was broadcast around the world on eveyr local, cable, and international news channel across the globe during the disaster. Many times I was on the verge of tears as I watched people who look like people in my family. I'm not joking I saw one young women who looked like my cousin Lesline who lives in Jamaica. I saw several others that reminded me of nieces and nephews who live in Jamaica and Dubai.

In any case this furthers my distrust in the government and also confirms what Kanye so eloquently stated during his live broadcast "that George Bush doesn't like black people". I don't take his comment in a literal sense. His comment was symbolic in the
sense that poor or black people are an expendable entity in America.

There is too much evidence for me to think otherwise. What I hope this film does is opens the eyes of poor and black people that you are on your own. If you don't represent a strong political block then you don't exist. After you pay your taxes, you still represent the same trash and debris that Katrina so swiftly created in less than 6 hours.

The government nor the countless agencies that state that they are here to assist the victims of Katrina are more concerned about red tape and budgets than to actually rebuild these communities.

Just like Harlem, New Orleans will be another gentrified and culturally exploited community where people will romanticize about the days of Louisiana before Katrina over $7 dollars Starbucks Lattes in the next couple years. What strikes me more than the incompetence of FEMA, the U.S. Government, the Bush Administration and various government agencies that are supposed to help these people is their lack of humanity for, as they put it the "refugees".

As one brother so firmly put it, "You would think Katrina blew away our citizenship too". The documentary also left me a bit frustrated that brothers and sisters, after being enslaved, oppressed, and lowered on the priority of "The things we need to fix in America list", would be so naive to believe that this country has anything that's related to preserving their livelihood. I also am upset that organizations like the NAACP, National Urban League, NAN, Congressional Black Caucus, and various black
organizations have failed the same communities that they are supposed to be looking out for.

What is the point of having all these so-called "black organizations" if you don't have the resources to serve your constituents. The CBC is supposed to be preventing and serving as somewhat of a "watch dog" to these gross inequalities. If you know that 100,000 black people don't have the means to get the eff out of dodge when Katrina the bitch hurricane comes around, then what hell were you doing? These are not accusations, just questions to provoke a more in depth understanding of what the role of these so-called "activists" organizations are.

Dr. WEB Dubios prophetically stated that "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line". This is untrue. The problem of the 20th and now the 21st century is the economic line. Financially empower the people, and you empower a generation. Had these folks had the CREAM to get out of dodge, that's exactly what they would have done. I think I have said enough, but hope everyone enjoyed my rant.

ox.out