PTH members write about the New Orleans film, Trouble the Water
We were happy to have the filmmakers Tia Lessin & Carl Deal attend and discuss the film with us!
Trouble the Water is a powerful film, which deals with the effects of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath on the people of New Orleans in 2005. It deals with the real reality. Many people were left behind, because they couldn't afford to leave—including children, women, the disabled and the elderly.
Trouble the Water features two amazing people, Kim and Scott Roberts, who taped video footage of Katrina and its aftermath from their own experience living through it, every step of the way.
People were like prisoners in their own city. They not only felt like prisoners—some actually were prisoners, locked-up when the hurricane hit, left without food or water.
FEMA, a government agency, was supposed to relieve people with financial help. But some never received this help at all. Many people left town and relocated. Many people returned to find that they had eviction notices placed on their homes. Even for people who came back, as far as rebuilding, there was only rebuilding for a few. Some parts of New Orleans were rebuilt—the business district, tourist sections, where people traveled for the Mardi Gras. People that lost their homes, lost everything, never really got the help they needed—financially, mentally, emotionally, or even spiritually.
The United States is called the most powerful country. The government should be able to help anyone, anywhere. Poor people, black people, white people, elderly people, disabled people—people, period.
This film ran in so many dimensions. We see soldiers in New Orleans, National Guard who were returning from Iraq to find their communities devastated due to this tragedy. While the government had the war in Iraq going on, you see people in New Orleans who had their own war going on—the war called "How to Survive." No matter what, war is war.
How did it make us feel? We had a lot of mixed feelings. Sometimes we think it's always greener on the other side, sometimes not. Either way, yes, there is a connection between the New York City homeless to people’s loss of homes in New Orleans. It's also a connection between the struggle here and the struggle in New Orleans.
Here at Picture the Homeless, we deal with different issues—police harassment and disorderly conduct charges, financial difficulties, housing—and we do rallies, protests, campaigns, civil disobedience. In New Orleans, they face the same issues.
New Orleans didn’t get a lot of support from official agencies. They weren’t really any help to the people—e.g. FEMA, the Red Cross, National Guard, the Navy base in New Orleans. The support that was there was support among themselves—support among the people, with the people. Between New York City and New Orleans, we have connections, but we don’t support each other enough.
Are we still struggling? So many people died in the aftermath of Katrina, many bodies disposed with no though of Human Dignity. In New York City too, we struggle for dignity for those buried in Potter’s Field. Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s time, five years after Katrina, are we still struggling? Yes we are. We are still struggling for Human Rights.
Through it all, in Trouble the Water, Kim and Scott Roberts never lost hope or faith. Their story is exceptional—the film is phenomenal.
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