Some thoughts from When the Levees Broke

The full title is When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. I watched the all four acts, but also the bonus material, so some of what I may mention will come from that.

Let me tell you right now that this is not organized. For one thing, there was a lot there. Some things still come back at odd moments, so this is not going to be exhaustive in any way. Also, most of the things that I am going to bring out relate more to other issues. Watching the documentary is a good way to learn more about Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, but for me - at least in this space - it has been food for thought for other things.

One actually already got mentioned in the Provident Living blog, in that even having the additional insurance for specific threats and having the government declare a disaster may not be enough. I don't have any good answers for that.

http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2018/07/making-plan-insurance.html

Another good lesson came from the son of one survivor who was not doing well until he set up a gathering of her friends. She needed emotional support, but the friends did too. I have an elderly mother, and even without going through that kind of destruction, she needs support. Younger people need their friends too. Putting back together a destroyed home and chasing down insurance and all of the physical needs makes for plenty of work, but a lack of fulfilling the emotional needs can be deadly too.

He saved his mother's life by getting her friends over. He realized it was necessary from watching other elderly survivors die off for no physical reason. It's hard to think of everything, I could feel guilty giving you one more thing to remember, but it's necessary. Since it is necessary, I'm glad I know.

I also had some thoughts about Sean Penn. He is in the movie. By his telling, he saw one person trying to locate his mother, and there was enough of a location given that it seemed possible. He headed out to try and find the mother, and ended up finding more people, at one time needing to dive in when someone trying to reach the boat went under.

Sean Penn has done some bad things, which I am not going to get into now. He has also done some questionable things that you could argue about. He has some issues. In this case, I still believe he did something good.

One of the ways in which many people seem to struggle with #metoo is that if they like someone personally, or know of good things that person has done, it becomes harder to accept that person doing anything bad. It happens. People do both. Sometimes they are on their way to something better. Sometimes they just can't get that some things are wrong, and all the excuse making on their behalf makes that worse. We can accept people being complicated without having to justify anything. That's just a reminder, because I feel like I have said that before.

Something that didn't strike me at the time because it was too early was that as they were evacuating people out of the city they just sent them anywhere, separating families. At the time the most obvious correlation was slave sales, because I watched the movie before we started ripping immigrant families apart without keeping track of who went where.

Okay, sometimes you have unaccompanied minors, or battered spouses fleeing their partners - I know there are exceptions. Generally, though, families want to stay together. It is easier and better to keep them together. It might have taken a little extra coordination then, but it would have made a lot of things easier later. Having your home destroyed, fleeing your homes... isn't that already enough trauma?

Finally, I am going back to the image of the Superdome (and the airport to a lesser extent) just full of trash. It looked so horrible, but there simply wasn't the capacity to process the trash. That was especially true with bringing in pre-packaged food for everyone, and with everyone needing temporary supplies. That made me think of the homeless population.

I see a lot of complaints about the trash downtown. I also see complaints about the urine and feces. I get it. I also know that when I was downtown recently I unwrapped something I had with me, and I had a really hard time finding somewhere to dispose of the wrapper. There used to be more cans. Granted, for every can you have, you have to have someone to empty it and somewhere to put what is emptied, but not having receptacles doesn't make the trash disappear. It actually makes it more visible.

I also know that when I want to use a bathroom that I don't like asking for a key or a punch code. If I really have to go, I do it, and I can, but it's not pleasant. (Also, sometimes for all that security it seems like those bathrooms should be nicer.)

So it just seems to me that we are setting homeless people up for failure. Sure, if someone poops in the middle of the sidewalk, that probably speaks more to anger than having nowhere else to go, but do you think having so few options for everything else might lead to anger? Do you think over-policing and contempt and constant struggle and lack of safety might lead to some anger? And do you think that more of the contempt and over-policing and attempts to just make them disappear - I know they need to be somewhere but not on my street - do you think those things lead us toward a good solution?

I'm not saying there are easy answers, but the anger against the homeless seems to assume more bad will on their part, and not from a fair assessment of the difficulties.

Anyway, those are some things I thought about after the documentary. There is a lot more that could be thought about, and I suspect other things that come up will take me back. For now, though, these thoughts will suffice.