HBO has just released When the Levees Broke, a 4 hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina and directed by Do the Right Things’, Spike Lee. This was probably up there as one of the hardest films I’ve seen since Schindler’s List.
In October, 2005 Spike Lee made an appearance on Bill Maher’s Real Time HBO show making unsubstantiated allegations on why the levees fell. Lee tried to express to us viewers how the “powers that be” at one time had made a decision to blow the levees thus flooding out the poor to save the rich. He then went on to say he was in the process of putting together a new documentary that would tell the real story of what happened to the citizens of New Orleans after Katrina hit.
I immediately found Spike Lee’s statements on Bill Maher’s show to be completely irresponsible and I had to restrain myself from jump side-kicking my plasma television.
Since watching that Bill Maher episode I was convinced Spike Lee was going to create a Michael Moore Fahrenheit 9-11 piece of garbage. I found the idea that our government could be involved with something as sadistic as blowing up the levee system to be asinine and incomprehensible. Since I heard Lee’s statements I had to see this documentary.
I am sure like many of you; I was glued to my television set following Hurricane Katrina. I found myself confused and overwhelmed with so many emotions as the days continued to tick with no sign of any help.
That week I saw events unfold that I have never witnessed before in my life causing me to seriously do some thinking about our government and how the United States of America treats their poor.
I was screaming at my television; why don’t they fly helicopters over those people and drop medical supplies? Why don’t they drop food? Where is the army? (yea yea yea, don’t say Iraq, thats to easy). Where are our leaders? Who are leading these events? Where is their support? They need help!!!!
Growing up in Los Angeles my whole life I knew nothing about New Orleans apart from Mardi Gras so when I heard that there had been dozens if not hundreds of scientific reports going back many years regarding the stability of the levees I flipped my lid.
For weeks I was in a daze wondering how the richest country in the world could allow such a travesty to happen. Yes, the Hurricane a was natural disaster and no one could prevent such a thing but even Holland had built “Maaslandkering” a massive series of gates in the ocean that would protect the Dutch from a chance of a one in a million storm hitting them and flooding their below sea level country. I’ve known about this for years just from watching the Discovery Channel.
So much for American ingenuity!
Then to compound such neglect by not having an evacuation plan for the tens of thousands of citizens who had no means was something I could never imagine in a country like the United States. Granted some people made the choice not to leave but most had no choice at all. Reports by the scientific community knew about this population and no one created an emergency plan with them in mind.
You can probably understand my response when I saw the likes of Spike Lee on Bill Maher making those statements about the Levees. As if the issue was not bad enough, I felt it was criminal for him to spread propaganda and misrepresent the truth.
This week, over the course of two nights I watched all four hours of Spike Lee’s, When the Levees Broke. Apart from a few short scenes from some folks who probably have every right to believe the Levees were blown, Lee’s main focus was brilliant.
The documentary focused on the fact that this was much more then a race issue; it was a social class issue. The only problem with this documentary was that it was not long enough. Not that I could stand to watch more but there is just so much more story to tell.
There are some folks who have posted comments around the web that this documentary is nothing more then left wing propaganda to blame Bush. I found apart from a few interviews from some rightfully scornful people; this was not a Bush bashing film. Spike Lee places the blame on those who deserve it and continues on to show us things our news fails to. How up to 2 months ago (when he completed the movie) many of the victims were still waiting for their first FEMA checks from their government and from their insurance companies.
Just when you don’t think the story could get much worse Lee had filmed homeowners speaking with Mayor, Ray Nagin. They are explaining how they have owned their own homes for over 30 years and that they are not the poor refugees the media had made them out to be.
They are American citizens who had paid their mortgages on time every month in addition to that they paid their insurance premiums to assist them in a time of emergency. They go on to explain that even though they had covered themselves with flood insurance, their insurance companies are now changing the rules mid game with what their willing to payout.
Many today still have no place to live.
My first opinion regarding this movie was wrong. If anything, this movie will expose the real United States for what it is to the world, not that they don’t already know.
Last week NBC’s Matt Lauer had a sit down and it was not with some troubled American teen wearing a trench coat planning to shoot down his fellow students. It was not even with some Islamic fundamentalist who would like a few moments of Americas ‘ time to explain how he thinks things really are from his perspective.
