Original subtitles

My name is Shelton Shakespeare Alexander.

I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana, by the way of Violet. And I had to get out of

here right before COVID hit. I've been in Houston, Texas for the last four

years. Back in the day, I was in the sixth grade.

And the teacher said we were eight feet below sea level.

And if a storm comes, our precious NOLA will fill up like a bowl.

We were young.

Most of us was like, okay, and so.

We love red beans, yacame, and gumbo.

Mixed with the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.

Add some Creole seasoning, cayenne pepper, splashed Tabasco. For real.

First it was Camille, followed by Betsy. The elders seen it all before.

2005, Katrina came ashore. I thought it was all over, for sure.

Who that?

We say that's for sure.

When people ask me how I feel, I tell them I still don't know poetic flow. It

feels like it was yesterday.

That was 20 years ago.

And the things I've seen can make one angry and mean doesn't mean that's the

I feel or always felt.

People worrying about power and wealth, they like told me myself and I worry

about my mental health.

Try to recognize the signs because sometimes people won't tell you that

really need your help.

Help.

Never been selfish, less selfless meaning.

I had to stop worrying about a lot of things. Did what I had to do for my own

well -being like Marvin Sapp.

I never would have made it. Somehow, someway, mama, I'm okay because they

for me.

Oh, I believe.

He's the sole reason I'm still breathing.

Many people left me, he isn't leaving.

Whose side are you on are leaning?

Insults and shaming and demeaning. People dying in the streets, running and

screaming. Instead of helping those in need, they're too busy live streaming.

Saints, sinners, angels, and demons.

I wish I was dreaming.

Money is the root of all evil.

Chasing the bag, platinum and gold, mark 8 and 34.

Wishing the pride for the man to gain the whole world.

Then lose his soul.

Behold, crime rate increasing, murder rate out of control.

Storms coming from West Africa, searching for the bodies they stole.

Despite my anguish and disparity, I love my city if there's a need for clarity.

Damn same what happened to us in the Superdome, Convention Center, the jail,

well as charity.

We lost a lot of good sisters and brothers.

Firestorms and earthquakes don't give a damn about your color. I don't have to

like you, you don't have to like me, but at least we can respect each other.

If all this wickedness continues, more storms will come, one after another.

So I'll leave you with this Galatians 6, a man reaped with his souls.

What happens next?

Nobody knows the trouble.

I suppose as the wind blows and the water flows, it feels like it was

That was 20 years ago.

Did I answer your questions?

What else would you like to know?

Do you believe it in your heart?

I'll be with you wherever you go.

Peace.

I'm Russell Honore, Lieutenant General, United States Army, retired.

When did you get the order that you got to go to New Orleans? I'm glad you asked

that question because I moved without orders.

I didn't wait for orders. Uh -oh, because you got court -martialed for

don't get court -martialed for doing the right thing.

My name is Valerie Jean -Marie. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana.

That Friday before Hurricane Katrina, they told us we dodged a bullet.

So we all hanging out, and I was about to say, oh, yeah, we dodged the buddy.

ain't going to get Katrina. We ain't going to get Katrina.

Interesting thing, the Saints had a preseason game that night. The school

said, well, we're not going to close the school because the Saints got a game

tonight. What are people going to do with their children?

So they kept the schools open so a lot of people stayed in town on Friday.

Instead of evacuating, right? Instead of evacuating.

My name is Dr.

Calvin Mackey.

Professor of mechanical engineering.

I have a BS in mathematics from Morehouse College, class of 1989.

And a BS, MS, and PhD from Georgia Tech, class of 90, 92, and 96.

We didn't think New Orleans would be an eye.

But, you know, I was getting ready to do a tour. I was getting ready to tour the

state of Michigan, speaking at different universities.

And my worry was, if this storm did hit New Orleans, how was my family going to

survive? Saturday night, we had a charter plane arrive from Australia.

How the hell did that happen?

With a bunch of tourists laying at the New Orleans airport, they dumped them

at the airport, they made their way to the hotel.

I'm Wendell Pierce, actor, businessman, activist, resident of

New Orleans.

I flew into New Orleans that Saturday before Katrina.

I saw the airport was crazy. I was like, what's going on? They said the

hurricane. I said, the one in Florida?

They said, yeah. I said, well, yeah, that's... That was like a couple of days

ago. They said, no, it's earned. It's coming this way.

I have a Van Heerden, retired marine scientist and hurricane expert. I now

for nonprofits on environmental justice issues.

We started running the computer model, and the very first run we put out showed

that parts of New Orleans were going to go underwater.

I worked with the Times -Picayune, with Mark Slifstein, to produce an image that

they put on the front page of the newspaper in order to try and warn as

people. My name is Eli Ivory. I bought one of the Make It Right homes in the

Lower Ninth Ward in 2014.

I've been living here for nine years now. We were there. We actually had a

debate. on whether or not we should stay.

My dad said, hell no, we stay. And he actually wanted to try and put us in

preservers. And if it got too bad, we would have swam across the street to

another. It wouldn't have worked.

Looking back, that would not have worked. But he was a vet, so he was used

that. And it actually took a friend of his that cursed him out and told him we

need to get out. I was in the Westin on a large freeway in Detroit.

getting ready to speak at Lawrence Tech the next day.

And I had just come in, and I looked up at the screen, and they were talking

about this hurricane, you know, bullseye coming to New Orleans.

We begin with two words coastal residents never want to hear, Category

Sunday morning, the storm is bearing down.

The hotels tell these Australian people, hey, folks, you got to leave because we

got to empty the hotel. We got to get our staff home.

So my oldest son, he was working at the Hilton Hotel.

So that mean me and my baby boy, we was at home. So I said, Troy, where you

going? Mom going to make this money.

I said, boy, a hurricane coming. We got to get out of here. Mom going to make

this money. I said, OK, Troy.

So me and my son went to the Hilton Hotel.

I told my mother, you guys go. I'll just stay here.

I fell asleep.

I woke up a half an hour later, and they were still packing the cars.

That's when I realized God takes care of fools and babies.

And I ain't no baby, so I was a fool trying to stay because my neighborhood

20 feet of water.

My name is Trinzetta Howard, and I'm a resident of the Ninth Ward, New Orleans,

Louisiana neighborhood. So we load up my little tank tank.

It got us there. What did you call it?

Tank tank.

I just prayed that we could make it there to Houston.

So once we made it to our destination, the kids went to the mall.

We just had fun because we thought we were coming back home the next day.

So when we saw the photos of the city, I told the kids, don't open up nothing.

We got to bring this stuff back so that we can have money.

Now the rain is coming down. We can hear the winds whistling. I mean, it was

whistling. Now the tent tap dancing.

Oh, Lord, we got to do something now.

Power going out, windows getting blown out.

Katrina messed the Hilton Hotel, the Ruth Haven in.

As Katrina was approaching land, it took a slight jog to the east.

That move is what made things somewhat better than expected in New Orleans.

Thousands will spend tonight either in the Superdome again or in evacuation

centers and shelters around the city.

My name is Mark Morial. I'm a beloved son and a native New Orleanian. I served

eight years as mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002.

Remember, Katrina had passed, and it appeared as though the damage was

until the levees broke.

When those levees broke and that water pressure built, that's when all chaos

ensued. I'm Robert Lynn Green, Sr. We're at my home at 1826 Tennessee Street,

New Orleans, Louisiana, in the Lower Ninth Ward.

My mother's name is Joyce.

Hilda Green.

Her sunrise was November 8, 1931.

Her sunset was August 29, 2005.

Shanae Green is my granddaughter.

Her sunrise was April 11, 2002.

Her sunset was August 29, 2005, so they both died on the same day, my mother, 1

o 'clock in the evening, my granddaughter, 4 o 'clock in the

years old.

Her name is Sinead Green.

God bless.

Every day.

the neighbors around the corner, the Bynums, God rest their soul, elderly

in their 80s. We saw them at church that Sunday morning.

My father said, Bynum, what are you going to do? He said, I'm going to stay.

And they found them in their house, found Miss Bynum in a tree.

So she was trying to climb out of the waters, and the tree had fallen over.

They were in their 80s.

They were in their 80s.

We lost nine people in the neighborhood.

My name is Big Chief Donald Harrison.

I am from the Treme section of New Orleans, Louisiana, and I play

My wife said Katrina showed the true hearts of people.

One way or the other, huh?

One way or the other. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

It was very, very, very, very beautiful. Whoever it was, I don't know. But God

blessed them.

In Katrina, most of the people that lives were saved were saved by

Pulling them out and getting to high water. Neighbors helping neighbors.

People helping one another.

Because when the lights went out and the communications went out, it was hard

for the local police and first responders to even communicate.

My name is Eddie Campos. I'm the former chief of the New Orleans Police

Department. I was the chief during Hurricane Katrina.

The city was almost entirely underwater, and the communication system had broken

down.

I mean, it was gone, you know, and that's where a lot of problems came in.

didn't have the equipment. We didn't have radios.

We could not get to our commander in a timely manner because they were so far

away. We had to actually wade through waters to try to get with our command

staff. We didn't have any boats, so I had two officers. They were really good.

They knew how to navigate boats. So we got private vessels, and we were

starting the life -saving missions before the Coast Guard and everybody got

place. I'm Chief Murphy Paul of the Baton Rouge Police Department.

Prior to this assignment, I was a Louisiana State Trooper assigned to the

of New Orleans where I was born and raised.

Even we as first responders were going through the same trauma that the people

we are out there protecting and serving.

But you had to channel that, right? You had to hold that in because we had to be

strong when we were out there.

There are a lot of officers who have no idea where their kids are. They don't

know where their wives are, their spouses are. Eighty percent of the city

underwater.

Only high ground was available to them, that being the Superdome and the sliver

along the river, which we call that area around the convention center.

Now I'm nervous because I don't know what to expect when I go back home. Of

course, we came through the French Quarter.

I was like, where the water?

Where all the debris?

It was nothing over here in the French Quarter. So we was able to drive through

the French Quarter. We didn't want to go to the Superdome.

We saw it on TV, how bad it was. Didn't want to go there. I ain't want to go

there. I stayed at my house, me and my son.

Now we could see helicopters flying around.

And they were flying so low like I could touch it.

So every time I hear them flying around our house, I'll go run outside.

They got

him?

Oh, they got him.

What did he do with you?

They ain't doing it. I perceive this as a logistics operation.

Many people want to perceive it as a security operation.

Weapons down.

Weapons down, damn it.

Put the weapons down.

I'm going to pray against that, damn it.

Get them goddamn weapons down.

So we had troops on the street with guns, but we had thousands of old people

nursing homes.

With nobody checking on them.

And many of them died.

I'm Mitch Landrieu. I'm from New Orleans.

Born and raised.

13th Ward.

Going over to the St. Bernard complex where that Junior Rodriguez had called

and asking Junior what he needed. And he said, I don't know, but there are 35

people dead in the St. Rita nursing home. And if you don't get a helicopter

me tomorrow, another 35 are going to be dead.

We always have enough people to make sure nobody break into a shop, but they

didn't have enough people to take care of the people in the nursing homes who

were basically dependent on the government to take care of them. My name

Johnson. I'm born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Streetcar named Desire.

The question is, what did it desire? If these seats could talk, every one of us

would get up and run off this son of a bitch.

Because we get the worst of everything.

Everything to be issued out, we get the worst of. And whatever is going to be

given out, by the time we get it, it's too late and too little.

There are six bodies upstairs on the third floor. This morning I found one

in a wheelchair dead and the lady's bathroom and another lady laying on the

floor by the lady's bathroom dead.

And then there's this guy right here that's dead that's been sitting out here

for a while.

We are human beings and they're treating us like we're criminals.

Here we are in our own town and they will not give us nothing.

Systemic racism drives it. Let's be fast.

Systemic racism is at the heart.

of every freaking thing we touch.

Grandpa Marcel is a musician.

I was sitting in my living room in Durham, North Carolina, and I was just

staring at the TV in disbelief, not talking.

What are we going to do?

And Harry called me, Harry Connick.

He said, man, you want to go down? We can go see our homes. I can get us in.

Harry kind of came up with this idea.

Once we got there, he said, hey, we should go to Houston and just hang out

the evacuees there and play tunes for them. I said, yeah, I didn't bring a

I never even thought of it.

So I called my dad. I said, I'm going to go check on the house. What do you

need? He says, I need my passport because I have this gig in Canada that

like to make.

And I go in there with these hip waders on.

It's hot as hell, too. It's like 90 -something degrees with these hip

And there's three feet of water.

It's not as bad as it was in the Lower Ninth Ward, where it's 18.

My dad, of course, told me his passport. He gave me the wrong location for the

passport, so I spent 45 minutes looking in his file cabinet where it was not.

But right next to the file cabinet was a soprano saxophone that I had left there

in, like, 1988.

So I came out, and I said, man, I found a soprano.

It looked kind of banged up.

But we can find somebody to fix it in Houston.

It'd be great. More than 50 buses have arrived here.

Forty -two, meanwhile, are continuing to house as many as 23 ,000 people for up

to the next three months.

We went and we played a couple of tunes.

But we were up in the announcers' thing.

Where at? At the Astrodome.

This is crazy, man. We need to be down there with the people.

And the sheriff was like, hey, you know, we don't recommend this. Man, I ain't

come all this way.

Even Harry was like, man, we're going down there. So we went down there.

Harry said, yeah, we're going to be all right. You can't be following us. You

know, our people don't need to look like we need protection from them. So when

we went in the Astrodome, I mean, to me, they were my people.

Whether I knew them or didn't know them, it's like, I know y 'all.

Mm -hmm

My name is Kimberly Smith, former resident of the Lower Knight Ward,

resident of Poplarville, Mississippi.

How many years has it been since you've been here?

Ooh, since Hurricane Katrina.

This is Serena Ajean Polk, who was my firstborn child.

This is my little diva, my little everything for a while.

Who is she named after?

She's named after Serena Williams.

I was supposed to name her something else.

But when she won, Serena, I decided to give my daughter her name.

The coroner is trying to identify a child found buried in debris in the

Ninth Ward. This is the ninth body the fire department has found this month.

Before they found my daughter's body, I had a dream, and through that dream, she

let me know that it wasn't that she was with somebody else or somebody had

gotten her, because that was my biggest fear.

My daughter was my strength.

And even in her death now, she's still my strength. Even though then I was an

adult, the loss of my daughter made me, it forced me to learn to live

life from a different aspect.

How old would she be today if she is alive?

She just made a birthday.

What was that? December 8th. December 8th. She just made a birthday. She'd be

25.

25 years old.

I'm sorry.

This is a difficult moment for me.

So I've learned to accept the death of my daughter and learned how to pray

And it made me a better mother for my other two children.

My name is Phyllis Montana LeBlanc. I am from New Orleans, Louisiana.

And this is in memory of my mother, Mrs.

Clovena Rita McCoy.

Boom, boom, boom.

I'm all of her. She's all of me.

The process was, we're all coming back.

Even had signs, you know, everybody, black, white, red, yellow, whatever the

hell.

We all in this shit together.

Black and white, you know, let's get this shit together. Yeah, New Orleans.

The Lower Ninth Ward was an area where Black people could become homeowners

in the 30s, the 40s, and the 50s.

Longshoremen, teachers, blue -collar workers.

When people said you shouldn't, couldn't, or wouldn't rebuild the Lower

Ward, that was a place that people built a community and built neighborhoods

when they could not buy homes anywhere else.

After everything, yes, I came back. What condition was the house?

It looked like someone took a really huge bucket of mud and just threw it all

into the house.

We weren't able to go back until October.

From August until October. And I remember my father sitting in the chair

uncle. He kept looking at the wall.

Up and down. I said, Dad, what's going on? He goes... What's 20 feet?

I said, what's 20 feet?

You know, he was trying to hope that the water maybe hadn't risen that high in

the house. We got to our apartment complex. They had military police there.

we got back to those apartments, mildew was everywhere.

That's when I got to see the rooftop peeled off. Big old hole in the ceiling.

It was your worst nightmare.

I'll never forget a friend called me and said, don't let your parents go back

alone.

He said, because if they go back alone, it'll kill them. I remember driving up

to the house and it was like losing a member of your family.

I didn't know that you would be so connected to inanimate objects that my

and father were just in tears because their whole life, you know, their whole

life. My name is LaToya Cantrell.

And I'm the mayor of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, first woman to leave

the city.

I cried the time when we turned on my block and I saw the community garden

that I planted with my neighborhood destroyed.

That brought tears to my eyes. I had a nervous breakdown in Georgia.

I had enough out there.

I had enough out there. No public buses, no taxes, no nothing. You have to fend

for yourself.

Once again, I don't drive.

I'm going to move back to the city where I was born and raised, where I could

catch the bus and get around like I used to. So 10 months after Hurricane

Katrina, I moved back home.

My house I found, $1 ,100 of rent.

Huh?

Before Katrina, it was $650.

$1 ,100 of rent? Man, what's wrong with y 'all?

My husband came back.

He told me, don't come back. He said, you don't need to see it, because he

it was so devastating.

So it took me six months to come back from Texas just to come see the house

all. We lost everything.

My name is Davida Finger. I'm a clinic professor and director of the law clinic

at Loyola New Orleans College of Law, director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law

Center. I'm from New Orleans. I grew up in Metairie. I was not here for Katrina.

I came back a few weeks after the storms happened.

I was in a law practice in Seattle, Washington.

I came and volunteered with the Red Cross initially.

About a decade of my life is a complete blur.

I just... Why is that?

I just did post -disaster work. That's what I did. I had never done it before,

but I just dedicated my life to it. There was a plan, there was a report

was written,

a white paper called The House That Uncle Sam Built.

And that was written by a group, the Bureau of Governmental Research, good

government group.

But what that did was pretty much state a case from a different perspective

that the city of New Orleans was on the verge of creating and having too many

and too much affordable housing.

My name is Soledad O 'Brien. I am a journalist. And during Hurricane

was working for CNN.

In New Orleans, of course, there was not a lot of housing.

And I think there was a real effort to try to kill off some of those public

housing facilities, even the ones that had withstood the storm just fine.

There was an effort to take them down, kind of use the opportunity of the storm

to try to say, oh, and that can go too.

If you pull, you got to get out of here, man.

There's no place for you here.

None. I've been homeless for five months.

I've been having to sleep in my car, my truck, and they just turned down our

development.

For what reason? They want us out. I think they want the land right up in

They want this land right here.

I can't tell you how many.

news interviews I did at the time where the opening question is, why should we

rebuild such low -lying land?

I said, why should you rebuild South Florida?

Why should you rebuild San Francisco after the earthquake?

Why should you rebuild Northern California after the wildfires? Why?

There's no reason other than some of you thinking, oh, this is just a

neighborhood with some poor black folks. We can forget about it.

Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University and author of The

Great Deluge, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

20 years after Hurricane Katrina, my disappointment is the way the financial

system treated poor neighborhoods, particularly brown and black people of

The neighborhoods were not given what they needed to continue. One leads to

conclusion that.

It was a concentrated decision by insurance companies and bankers,

sector, to not rebuild Gentilly, to not rebuild the Lower Ninth, to not rebuild

half a dozen essential neighborhoods.

Also the resources that were talked about but did not hit the ground fast,

fast enough, and or equitably.

The resources in terms of a program that was created, the Road Home Program.

It discriminated against neighborhoods that were majority African -American

mine. It didn't mean now that if you were white, you were not

discriminated against. No, what it meant was if your community was predominantly

African -American, you were.

Louisiana got $10 billion in federal money to create and oversee the Road

Program. It's the largest housing recovery effort in American history. It

supposed to cover the costs that insurance and other federal aid didn't.

Road Home Program was ill -designed and screwed many black

homeowners because it predicated the compensation for the rebuilding upon the

appraised value of the home.

In wealthier neighborhoods where homes were worth more, that meant the road

usually paid grants based on costs of repairs.

But in the poorest neighborhoods, a home's pre -storm value tended to be

than the cost of repairing or rebuilding it. We're not getting all that we need

to get our city, our area back together at this point. If you lived in the night

ward, the Louisiana Recovery Authority said, well, we're going to give you...

$90 a square foot to rebuild your house.

But if you live on Magazine Street, we're going to give you $170 a square

What kind of bullshit is that?

The plywood costs the same, the two -by -four, because the people on the

authority say, well, houses are cheaper than the night wall.

It's not cheaper to rebuild it, cuz.

That's how the government programs that distributed funding were set up to

distribute funding to the homeowners who could ride to the top to get the

funding.

So, again, it can't be a surprise that we've lost at least 20 percent of

the African -American population that was living here because our system

care if that was going to happen or not.

People from places like the Lower Ninth Ward, from parts of the Seventh Ward,

Hollygrove, from Gentilly, New Orleans East, neighborhoods of poor people,

particularly brown and black people of color.

They left and weren't really invited back. It was a fake invite. It was like,

come on back, but we won't pick up your garbage. We're not going to have buses

to go to school.

We're not going to do any city services.

You're not going to be able to get a bank loan. You're not going to be able

get a church, but come on back.

We love New Orleans, and a lot of times New Orleans don't love us.

And Katrina, in some instances, forced people to have a better quality of life.

in other cities. The city of New Orleans, our population was over 440

Today it's 380.

Black population, and we were like 70 to 75 percent before Hurricane Katrina,

and now we maybe be, we might be 58 to 60 percent.

My name is Jacques Morial. I'm a community servant.

That loss, you know, really transformed the culture of this city.

It's not just the people who were displaced away from here, but...

The people who were displaced across the city. What makes the city is the

communities. And what makes the communities is not the buildings, not

dwellings, but it's the people. And when you move these people out of here, you

don't have the same community. You don't have the same soul.

You don't have the same spirit. You don't have the same behavior.

During the evacuation, a lot of people ended up in some iconic cities like

Atlanta, like Houston, like Dallas.

Large population of New Orleans went there.

And you know what they found?

Buses that run on time.

Public transportation.

Better schools.

And many of those families took advantage of that.

And they could find jobs.

Jobs that paid decent wages.

My name is Graylin Bryant Banks. I'm a native New Orleanian. Born uptown in the

13th Ward, New Orleans, Louisiana.

People in the hotels, people behind the cabs, all these people in the

hospitality industry.

The experience that they had solidified them in other places. They became

managers, supervisors.

The kids were in better schools.

There was not as much crime.

They were making more money. They were getting respect, right? They were

respect as much as this city, like a siren song.

Calls you back. Keep calling you back. Keep calling back. But once you factor

your kids in, you see they doing good, you doing good, you and your man, y 'all

ain't fighting about money, no, because you got money.

Me and my son live together, so you got father and son shouting and shouting,

doing the dynamic duo.

Dynamic duo?

Dynamic duo.

And we rocking and rolling in Houston, Texas, man, and just living and having

fun right now.

I'm Sheldon Alexander, age 31.

From New Orleans, Louisiana, now currently living in Houston, Texas. I

Houston culture. I'm able to be around my dad more now than before.

And I look at my dad as like, he's my dad, but he's also like my best friend,

too.

And I'm grateful to say I actually have a dad that actually, you know, gave his

part, you know, being a part of my life.

I've been living my best life, working a regular job.

I earn my respect on the job, do my thing.

You know, every now and again, I might hit them with a little something, but

other than that... Hold on. Hold on. A little something, something, something?

Just a taste, all right?

Just a taste. Not too much, right? Not too much, you know.

Just stay in my land, stay humble.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the black middle class depended upon other black

people. We don't have Fortune 500 corporations here. We only have one. So

had a lot of doctors, you had lawyers, you had dentists, you had people that

made their money off the community.

So if the community disappears, they have to disappear, too.

So I call Houston New Orleans West, and I call Atlanta New Orleans East. I would

estimate, you know, maybe 30 to 40 percent of the black middle class

left and never came back.

Because if I'm a doctor, I'm a dentist, and I have young kids and I have to

move, and then I went and established myself somewhere else, I lost my entire

practice in New Orleans, I'm there.

Would you include teachers, too?

I would include teachers, too. My name is Sharice Harrison Nelson.

I am known as Queen Recy.

I'm the Maroon Queen of Guardians of the Flame Maroon Society.

I was an educator, formerly employed by the New Orleans public school system.

As an award -winning teacher, I won local, state, and national awards,

and I was fired. And I did everything right. I went to school, earned a

bachelor's.

went on to earn a master's with honors.

I don't think most people in this country understand the hurricane that

through the schools after the natural hurricane. Well, that is correct.

It's not Katrina that did the damage. It's many of the elected officials in

state and this local community that on the heels of the storm, they terminated.

almost all of the school employees.

And so it wasn't just teachers, teachers, paraprofessionals, cooks, bus

principals. At the time, there was an act that was passed where the schools

would be a part of the recovery school district that was created and maintained

by the state.

So local control went away.

and our local teachers pretty much did as well.

They blew up the whole public school system, and they summarily dismissed

of 5 ,500 primarily black middle -class teachers. So those hardworking teachers

who had toiled for years had no job to come back to.

So when they had no job to come back to, they effectively could not come back.

As I speak around this country on education, those teachers are all over

country. I mean, I was in Utah and met a teacher from New Orleans. I'm Reverend

Willie L. Calhoun Jr.

I've been a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward now for a very long time.

New Orleans now has served as a model to talk about school reform, but actually

it's talking about...

neighborhood destruction.

Do you know how you destroy a community?

You strip the schools out of the community.

And when you strip the schools out of the community, you destroy the

And that's what has happened. The school that was closest to us, which was about

four or five blocks away, is still not, is just non -existent. After Katrina, we

had all these progressives come in with this bullshit about charter schools.

They brought that shit from up north.

They fired over 5 ,000 public school teachers, most of them African

Middle -class workers, they fired them. And they brought in young teachers from

up north, knew nothing about the culture. They call them Teach for

They brought in all these Ivy League people, you know, telling our kids

you know, Cape Cod. And when you go on vacation and a kid, like, what is

vacation, right?

Teachers who, well, I'm not going to call them teachers, were sent into the

classroom without the tools to teach.

They were just...

trying to get children to be quiet. And the thing about New Orleans is this,

right? If you don't know their culture, if you don't know their history, if you

can't meet a kid where they are, you can't teach them. I don't want to know

you know your physics, if you know your English.

The question is, do you know these kids? Do you know what would make them move?

Do you know what would make them tick?

That's important. Of course you know your subject matter. The question is, do

you love these kids like you love your own? Are you just here to get two years

removed from your college debt? Do you love this community like we love this

community? The kids that have trouble reading and writing, they have no place

go because the entire school system in New Orleans is controlled by commerce.

There's some data that shows 40 % of the city cannot read at fourth grade level.

The schools are worse off now than they were.

pre -Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans had good schools, they had bad schools, but for the most part,

schools was generating people that can go out into the world and compete.

I saw the state provide frozen sandwiches for children.

I saw the cafeteria workers put them on the ground to melt, to thaw before

lunch. I saw them give children frozen milk, but the sheer

magnitude.

of giving a child, who probably was living in a trailer, a lunch that

they could not consume, criminal.

My name is Reynolds Barrett, president of Xavier University of Louisiana in New

Orleans. I was born in Haiti, but I grew up in Brooklyn. New Orleans suffers

from an equitability issue of not everyone has the financial means,

educational access.

We have issues. We have inequalities in access to health care. It's not just New

Orleans. It's also, take Louisiana, go next door to Mississippi.

The country is changing.

And the country only will be hobbled if we don't make sure that those

necessities of life are available, including education is available to

We are literally dumbing down our students.

And there's a whole...

Theory about the easiest way to control a population is to dumb them down. The

fact is there are people that benefit from keeping an underclass in their

Right? They benefit from it. We are still a state of privatized prisons.

Privatized prisons.

Angola is a working plantation.

Right? You can still call and get some niggas from...

the jailhouse, to come and cut your lawn.

And that's, to me, immoral.

That's the conditioning that has been part and parcel of our existence. And if

we don't do anything, not them, we, meaning you, don't do anything

about it, we're going to get the same thing we've been getting.

Educational equity is probably the greatest civil rights struggle in this

country. Even though we have great schools, take in New York City, Bronx

School of Science, right?

Or take Central in Philly, right? They're great high schools.

But the majority of American kids don't go to those great schools.

Even though we know that the talent curiosity in the brain that is in most

people in this country is unlimited.

Lack of education?

What they do?

They pick up the guns.

We don't make guns, but they're frequent everywhere.

And in the black community, you get a gun like you get a stick of gum.

You can't get an education that would afford you to understand you don't need

pick up the gun because if you got the knowledge, the knowledge is the power.

And that's going to allow you, one, to have better self -pride. Two, you're

going to have a better education. Three, you're going to earn more money.

Four, you're going to have a better quality of life. So why do you need to

violate?

You don't need the volley. You don't need a gun. We got three options. Either

we're going to take something, break something, or make something.

If we're not given the education, the inspiration, the motivation, and the

support to make something, like make a living, make a life, make a difference,

oh, I'm going to take something.

And what we're seeing right now is a generation of young people that no one

decided to put their hands on, to nurture, to mentor, to educate.

And they have no other options but to take a break.

The beginning of the crime problem in New Orleans is undereducated poor kids

that if they're not educated, they get convinced to go into contraband economy

and they'll go out and do what they got to do. Sometimes they do crazy, stupid

stuff and end up in prison or they shoot one another on the street like animals.

Anybody knowing me know, and I'm still like this here today, don't call me

10 o 'clock.

You call me after 10 o 'clock, something wrong.

So... 10 o 'clock that night, I just took my medicine.

Just took it.

Now my phone is tap dancing on the dresser.

I looked up at the clock.

Finally, I answered the phone.

It's my best friend on the other end of the line.

He said, Valerie, get around here fast.

Your baby's hurt real bad.

That was his exact words.

But I screamed and said, my baby's dead.

My friend didn't say that, but that's what I said.

When I got there, his friends, the same people I told him I didn't want him to

hang with, this was going to happen to him. I could hear them out of my right

ear. Dad go to his mom and get to the police.

Later, police grabbed me. She would ask me all kinds of questions.

Do I know a girlfriend, this and this?

No, no, officer, I don't know her. Where's my baby?

I just want to know where my baby was at.

Finally, she let me go.

But this is what they're calling his name.

Barrett, mama out here.

Who did this to you?

Mama out here. Who did this to you? I could see him laying on his face like

sideways and not moving.

My baby died by these people who again sit outside 24 -7 and like they ain't

nothing. So I said, Ruby, who did this to my baby?

Well, I don't know.

I don't know, but it looked like he was trying to get in my yard.

Girl!

How you going to tell me you don't know who killed my damn baby, but you're

going to stand there and tell me it looked like he was trying to get in your

yard? Girl, y 'all sit outside and rain, slick, or snow.

You know who did this.

You know who did it.

And I said, I'm going to hunt y 'all. I can't hunt y 'all no damn move. And I

did for about two years.

I kept going around there hunting them, hunting them, because I wanted them to

tell me who killed my damn baby.

And they refused to tell me. But that's okay. I got justice.

So they found the person that did it?

Yeah, he had natural life with no parole.

I had a trial, and I won.

No, I'm not at peace, because I still don't know the real truth. Because the

young man said he killed my baby over a pallet bite.

Like a Huffy bite.

Yeah.

So I still don't know the truth.

And I'm not at peace.

I would never forgive him.

I would never forgive him.

But the one fear that I had that we don't talk about enough is the fear of

disappointing oneself.

Self -love.

More than 85%, probably 90 % right now, of my homicide victims are black boys

and black men.

You know what?

The suspects in those cases, those we arrest or we believe are responsible,

they're black men.

Spike, they're killing what they see in the mirror, brother. They're killing

themselves.

When you don't love yourself, it's easy for you to take the life of someone that

looks like you, that walks like you, the same swag.

They need love.

You can't have self -love when you talk self -hate. When you're in a society

that teach you you're ugly, you're stupid, you're big -lipped, you're big

you're big -ass.

You're dumb teaching you to not like yourself.

Self -pride.

Without self -pride... No good, huh? No good.

Michael Jackson was right. It starts with the man in the mirror. When you're

looking in that mirror and you don't like what you're looking at, you got a

problem. You know, black people been taught to hate their self. So we kill

other quick.

Self -love. We can't arrest our way out of this problem. We gotta love our way

out of this problem.

Whatever the challenges that young people face, you have to overinvest.

Mental health, recreation, education, after schools.

I say this all the time. No society in the history of humankind ever failed

because they invested too much in their kids.

Estimates are New Orleans is near bankrupt, more than $800 million in

sewer and water board alone more than $400 million.

You know, during Katrina, we had about 1 ,300 cops.

We should have had 1 ,600.

When I was the chief, I think we had 1 ,300 police officers. I think they're

down to 800 or 900 right now.

How much? Between 800 and 900 police officers from 1 ,300.

We can trace that to the fact that the city was on the brink of bankruptcy

Katrina. More than $100 million operating deficit.

It's like your bank account's almost overdrawn, $100 million.

Because our city is underfunded.

Mitchell Andrew tried to raise the amount of tax that the city gets from

tax. The legislature told him no. As much as I love the Saints, as much as I

love the convention center, they get more of the hotel city than the city of

Orleans. And the city of New Orleans has got to provide water, got to provide

for the police, got to fix the streets, got to have the red lights running, got

to clean the streets, and they're doing it on a minimum amount of money.

Because the state legislature won't give them more of the hotel tax.

I had to cut $100 million out of a $463 million budget. That's 25%. That's never

been done in the history of the country either, and that's nothing but pain.

I mean, you're actually cutting to the bone.

When Mayor Mitchell Andrew took office, he instituted some severe austerity

measures. One of them was a hiring freeze across the board, including

fire, and EMS.

And that hiring freeze remained in effect for, I think, six, seven years.

Right now, we don't have the officers to respond to calls for service, much less

effectively investigate crime or prevent crime.

20 % of Louisiana's income comes from running around the city of New Orleans,

the tax base for the city of Louisiana.

It's an imbalance.

That's got to be fixed.

And the problem started at the Louisiana legislature that tried to choke off the

city of New Orleans.

The only thing they like about it is coming to the Mardi Gras and going to

fine restaurant.

Then they go back to the dog -ass, small -country -ass town and talk about New

Orleans like we a foreign country.

Without New Orleans, Louisiana wouldn't be shit. We're looking at New Orleans in

the 21st century as a city in peril, trying to find its footing and showing

incredible amount of resilience.

If we can save the ragaboot hill of Louisiana from climate in New Orleans.

disintegration then that's a big message for the rest of the country we were the

heroes of the ninth ward and he was one of those heroes brad pitt the savior of

the ninth ward he was our savior and he brought this new project this green

project this carbon footprint replacement project to our community and

brought in 150 of those families built 120 houses because this ultimately is

about me it's not even

about all the people who have been working so hard on it. It's truly about

residents, the residents of New Orleans, and residents like Mr. Robert Greene.

And at this point, I'd like to introduce my friend Robert Greene.

Good morning, everybody.

I was doing...

Person who was on the stage who told the tragic story of our family.

I was the person who became the figurehead for Make It Right. I was the

who explained to the world the tragedy which made all the contributions that

Make It Right used to rebuild this community.

And I was crucial to that program.

I was crucial to inviting my neighbors. I was crucial to the point where I went

around the country speaking about the Make It Right program. I'm so happy that

we get the chance to bring our community back.

Gloria Guy is getting a house.

I'm getting a house.

Charles DuPlexus is getting a house. And many more of my neighbors are going to

join in.

But we get a chance to bring our community back.

And all with the help of Make It Right, we're going to get that done soon.

And as a group, and this is something that we need, something to spearhead the

change that's going to make things right for our community again.

And I thank y 'all for being here.

I came back here after Katrina with my father, who stayed in another part of

Ninth Ward. At the time, I was dating someone, and they heard about Make It

Right and suggested to me to apply for a home, which I did, and I ended

up having this home here.

It hadn't been completely constructed yet, so no one had lived in it before,

I started to fall in love with it.

My name is Brittany Robbins, and this is my Make It Right home. I've been here

since 2015.

They offered a lot of support.

They marketed specifically to teachers and first responders, and obviously

people who were living in the Ninth Ward before Katrina. You lived in the Ninth

Ward before? I wasn't, but because I was an educator, I was kind of like on the

priority list to be able to buy a home.

My name is Constance Fowler. We're in the Lower Ninth Ward in the Make It

community. They had incentives.

like thought second mortgages. The houses were really beautiful.

This building here, this home, was actually kind of a recruitment place

you would go and turn in your paperwork.

And the process was honestly really easy.

They had a lot of systems in place.

I had to pay a small deposit, and they kind of handled everything else.

I paid $1 ,500.

That's it? I paid $1 ,500.

Put in my application.

They did everything with the bank loan.

They got my interest rates to a good spot.

And then I showed up on closing day. They kind of handled everything in

On closing day, I paid $43.

How much?

$43. And I had a house. Not even $45?

Nah. So I paid $1 ,500 up front and $43 on the back end. And I had a house.

The beautiful house has began to have problems.

There was some odd plumbing issue with my guest bathroom.

I didn't know it at the time, but every time someone took a shower, the water

would leak from a pipe and then it would form in the subfloor and leak into

the guest bedroom.

It would basically cost $8 ,000 to repair because the way the floors are

the panels are all interlocked with each other, they would have to tear up the

bedroom and then half of the hallway. So I basically couldn't live in it for a

bit. The initial floor itself is made of some sort of composite.

So when it gets wet, it gets damp, it starts to break itself down.

According to the Timbersill website, this new innovative wood is made without

chemicals, so it's better for the environment.

But residents say the problem is it seems it can't withstand water.

That's a big problem in a place like New Orleans.

So a few months ago, I was in the bathroom and my leg fell through the

Your leg went through the floor? My leg went through the floor. I could see

straight into the ground.

So I have to now take my bathroom apart and then rebuild it. Since I bought the

house in 2015, we spent about $20 ,000 on repairs.

A few winters ago, the heat went out. We had a newborn baby.

And it was like, we got to figure something out. Like, we can't be in a

with base heaters with a newborn baby.

So we did some research, and we just had to come up with the money and replace

it because there was no other way that we were going to be able to keep living

in the house.

It's actually gone.

I have a foundation that's going to cost $50 ,000. How much? $50 ,000 just to

replace the foundation.

A five -year -old house was unlivable because of water intrusion.

That house isn't there. That was my first demolition.

As this house was being demolished, I walked through the neighborhood and

okay, what's my next one?

And that was a home on Rene.

That had been unlivable the first year.

My name is India King -Robbins. I'm the wife and partner of Brittany Robbins. We

live here in the Lower Ninth Ward.

I've been living here since 2016.

I think that the intention behind what Make It Right did, I think that when it

started, the intentions were true. Like, they just wanted to give people places

to live.

Then what happened?

They didn't do it right. Like, even this playground right here.

When I bought this house, I was like, yes, I'm going to have a playground

the street that my daughter can play.

Welcome to the Make It Right Playground here in the Lower Ninth Ward.

We're here today to do some landscaping work on our playground.

So Hyatt employees came out and helped us plant some trees and clean up this

playground, which is used every day by kids from the Lower Ninth Ward. So we're

very excited about the opportunity and the partnership.

That thing's so raggedy. It's so unsafe.

Like, people used to be doing drugs at that playground. Like, I would never let

my daughter go over there.

Now, when you had these problems, was there a person you could go to and make

them aware of it?

No, no. When I first moved in in 2015, Make It Right was still in existence. So

they had a little office a few blocks away where you could, like, go to them,

speak to them. They would have community meetings. It felt like a really strong

community. But about a year in...

They just kind of like faded out of existence.

And I think it's because they knew what was coming down the pipe.

In 2018, attorney Ron Austin filed a lawsuit against Make It Right.

Austin says the foundation's legal team has been defending, denying, and

delaying the process.

My name is William Bridge, and I am the CEO of Global Green. The lawsuit is a

group of homeowners that own the properties of Make It Right that are

about the condition of the homes and it's affecting their standard of living

it's affecting their health and they just want it fixed well i guess i got

explaining to do When the lawsuit came up and he made a settlement of $20

million and we were at the table to collect, he walked away from that

settlement. He walked away from his agreement. He left us standing holding

houses with all the problems that they have.

I think Blood probably didn't know half of what was going on.

He's a good man.

I spent about four hours with him in October last year. But he was surrounded

a group of people that were building homes that I think...

And over their head. The situation now is we are left holding a bag.

We don't have the same support we had when he came down here.

And I feel like I was used.

I feel like I was betrayed.

And now I'm left with a house that's going to fall apart one day.

So many things happening here. Why haven't you stayed?

I'm invested.

Like, you know, I still took out $145 ,000 loan. If I said I give up.

and try to sell it, I'll probably have to sell it under what it's worth. Aside

from all the challenges, like, we love it here, we're raising a family here,

I want to stay here.

We're just really hoping that the conditions can change in the city and in

community. You folks have taken on the responsibility of paying the homeowners

in Lower Knife Ward? Yes.

$20 .5 million?

Yes. We want to do a 20 for 20 at a minimum, where by the 20th anniversary,

we've been able to rebuild 20 families' lives with 20 new homes.

I grew up in Country Train Park.

It's like, I call it the Black Mayberry. We had access to green space.

And this was an appeasement, actually, you know, kind of something to calm the

waters. We'll give you something separate but equal.

And that's where 200 acres were given so we could develop 1 ,000 homes around

this golf course, which was designed by the landscape architect Joseph

Bartholomew. A brother? Brother, yeah, a black man.

His brother was sent to New York by a white patron.

studied landscape architect, came back and designed the golf courses in New

Orleans, around New Orleans, but his black ass couldn't play on them. Man,

here he had a chance to design a course for the game he loved and for the people

that he loved, and that was Punch Train Park.

The first black mayor came out of Punch Train Park, Dutch Morial, his son, Mark

Morial, was also mayor, now president of the National Urban League. Terrence

Blanchard, who you know quite well. This is my house where I grew up. It was an

incubator of black excellence because...

was expected of us. Who is the man I'm expected to be?

Live a life of purpose, of meaning, of significance.

They had a great expectation of us.

It was also one of the places that was in the deepest part of the flooding, you

know, after Katrina.

So I took it upon myself to heed a clarion call that they had given us

ago, put that call out so we as residents and my generation could come

for my mother and father's generation and rebuild Punch Train Park. It was one

of the most difficult things I've ever done, but we put together a resident

-initiated redevelopment, and we rebuilt our neighborhood brick by brick,

house by house, block by block, until we came back, and now we're on the

National Register of Historic Places to recognize those true pioneers of

Moses' generation that gave us the blueprint.

of how to survive in this world that does not have our best interest at

One in four of our people are permanently displaced.

That loss, you know, really transformed the culture of this city. It disrupted

traditional neighborhoods and social cultural networks that supported people

so many ways, from informal social services to simple fellowship.

My mother said gentrification was on the way when she saw the bike lane.

I don't know how she knew that, but it was very disturbing to see it.

unfold before my eyes.

Before Katrina, you could get a house on there for $200 ,000, and that was

expensive. But now everything is full and out.

Neighborhoods like Treme, Central City, the 7th Ward, and the Irish Channel are

just some of the 13 neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, according to

study released in 2020.

So these are neighborhoods that were historically undervalued. They were

majority Black neighborhoods. They were neighborhoods like the ones near the

port.

They were neighborhoods that we call now the sliver by the river, which have

become some of the hottest neighborhoods in the city because they didn't flood

during Katrina.

Most of them were majority black, but those land values and home values and

rents doubled and tripled, and they became white neighborhoods almost

They are communities that we never thought that we would see the population

change, like Treme.

Treme is, you know, the first black community in the United States of

And we see the diversity of Treme changing in a way that people really

if we're going to lose our culture. As a matter of fact, people are gentrifying

New Orleans, moving into communities because they say they want to be in New

Orleans because of the culture and then calling the police about the culture.

Because the little kids, the next one on the corner playing the trumpet, the

next trombone shorty marching down the street, and they're complaining about

noise. When that is what made New Orleans New Orleans, and that would make

who we are. I call it privilege.

We have people coming here that we're going to be who they want us to be. But

see, what we gave the rest of the country was the blueprint on how to get

y 'all, how to...

strategically place you in places, shut down neighborhoods, strip your political

power. If you sit back and look at it in a Machiavellian -type way, you got to

admire it.

Oh, crooked, but damn, y 'all good.

Y 'all do this, and we don't even see it. It's a science.

It's a science. And when we look at it, we don't see it.

When we look at it, we don't see it, because I think we're scared of the

We're talking about what happened to her, Katrina, right?

So you still have trauma that we didn't get over. And then what happens in 2020?

COVID. We didn't even deal with the trauma from the crack cocaine epidemic.

The generational trauma.

And then we have Katrina, BPR spill.

And then we have COVID. People don't realize after New York, New Orleans was

second epicenter for COVID.

And now to the hot zone that is New Orleans, the city with the highest death

rate in the country. Streets typically vibrant with music and tourists empty

tonight. COVID came through this motherfucker like, you know, I want you,

and you.

You know, I don't give a shit what your hair look like, what your skin look like

or whatever.

I'm coming through this bitch and I'm going to take some of y 'all with me.

not vaccinated.

I'm not an anti -vaxxer fanatic.

It's just that when my mom got that vaccination.

She died.

We lost, you know, a few thousand people, but we saved millions. I get

But guess what, motherfuckers? And them few thousand that we just lost was my

mother.

I'm grateful and I'm glad the shots, the vaccinations or whatever, that it saved

millions because that's the whole purpose of it. And I know it's a trial

everything, but it cost me my mama.

All right, sorry, I guess we lost communications.

Communications, Chuck, right now we are looking at imminent landfall of this

storm. We expect landfall in the next couple of hours. They will be at 155

per hour. Storm surges upwards of 15 to 16 feet.

Can't catch a break, huh? You can't catch a break. How do we adapt the city

the future?

And that future is the impact of climate change coming.

Floods, fires, problems with water. We had problems with water this year

salt water was coming up the Mississippi River. Within the last month, at least

five river gauges bottoming out to the lowest level since records began as

as the 1890s. Drought along the entire length of the Mississippi.

Louisiana faces a potential drinking water crisis.

Millions of people there get their fresh water from the Mississippi River.

But the summer drought sharply lowered the river's water level. And now that

threatens to allow salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to contaminate the

drinking water supply. Not good.

You see this button? I'm in the Green Army. The Green Army is the...

Conglomeration of civilians throughout the state of Louisiana who committed to

find solutions for pollution. I tell the young generation, your great

-grandfathers fought World War I.

And grandfathers and grandmothers fought World War II.

To help people, other people live free.

And in many cases, many of us were not free when we fought those wars.

I don't think you can have a World War III.

But your war is here.

And that war is to survive climate change.

And it's up to the young people.

To do this, because the old people we got in the Senate, them old bastards

not do nothing about climate change. What did you call them? Old bastards.

The majority of the Senate does not believe in climate change, nor will it

any action. The war for this generation, the young people, is going to, how are

they going to save this earth?

That's their world war.

If I became independently wealthy,

My driver's license would read New Orleans, Louisiana.

What the hell? There ain't no place like home.

You know what I mean? If I'm down and out, I know who back door I can go to to

get some food.

I don't know how to do that in Houston. I can see a New Orleans person from a

mile away.

I can hear it in their plan.

The drummer here who got arrested in Germany, I think it was.

for possession of oregano that they thought was marijuana.

And they were like, I don't understand. Why do you have oregano?

And he said, it's not my fault. Y 'all food ain't got no fucking flavor.

It was just like one of these things where y 'all shit taste like shit. Y

ain't got no spices.

So I bring my own.

It was like, I don't expect that to happen, you know, anywhere else in this

country except right here.

New Orleans cast a bigger shadow than its size.

because it's a destination city for sports and entertainment and culture.

come here. In the springtime, you can fly into New Orleans. You'll see two or

three brides with their dresses coming to get married in New Orleans. New

Orleans is a state of mind.

New Orleans is an attitude.

New Orleans is an emotion and a notion with a lot of commotion.

Albert Murray said that culture is the intersection of people and life itself,

the literal intersection.

is culture.

And we have demonstrated the beauty of culture in New Orleans more than most

places I know in the world. We have a demonstration of culture, how people

with life, that is expressed in our music, of course, in our food, in the

deal with life and death.

New Orleans is female.

She mothers everybody who comes here. You can ask anybody. If you're not from

here, you come here, you coming back.

New Orleans is the northernmost Caribbean city that just happens to be

to the United States.

We're the only European Caribbean African city in the United States. We're

northern Caribbean. We're North Haiti, right? I tell people, go to the second

lines, especially now on Sundays.

Don't just look at the dancers and the musicians.

Look behind you.

The ladies selling beer, guys selling barbecue. We're bringing commerce into a

community that the city ignores.

This is our life, our culture. It is the flavor that makes us who we are. It is

the strength that keeps us going.

It's the blood that flows through our body. And that is what we love. We are

fighting for how do we raise another generation that understands the 300

history, especially of black people.

in this city and create an environment where they want to be, where they want

raise their family, where the next 300 years we have generations of Mackies and

other people here with their roots in this city.

New

Orleans

has a soul. It has a pulse. And that's what the people in New Orleans love.

and that's what makes us who we are. It hasn't been homogenized, commercialized,

fast -foodized the way so much of America is. So there's still soul,

still culture, there's still history. If we're going to build it back, let's

build it back better. Let's build it back and give us a chance without, by

way, forsaking our history, our real history, not our fake history, which is

we got into the Confederate monuments later on.

It's a great moment when you can take down a Robert E. Lee statue, but what do

you put back up in its place?

Red. That statue? Yeah.

What do you think about that?

Slavery.

Torture.

Inhuman behavior.

The Confederate people put it up, and they want to honor the people who

the black people? They want to honor the people who, you know, ran terror when

the law said...

You know, black people have the right to vote and to be free. And they say, fuck

that. They ain't going to happen like that. We ain't letting that go. And

listen, if we don't pay attention today, they're trying to do the same thing. We

don't have a voting rights bill, right?

One of the problems with New Orleans is in Louisiana.

and the Republican politicians look down on the city.

New Orleans is kind of an orphan city.

Some people call it part of the Caribbean. Some people in the South

of it as a southern city because of its progressive mores. The Republican Party

in Louisiana has gotten more and more hard right, and they're not interested

pumping money into the schools and infrastructure of the city. They see it

the stepchild they wish they didn't have to deal with.

Four dogs got four assholes. Look around.

You asked me about the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I said that, you know,

the ugly is the uglier.

You know, let me talk about the good.

You know, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I had the opportunity to serve

on the Louisiana Recovery Authority. I'll never forget, I went over to the

Netherlands with Governor Blanco.

And the Netherlands have more people living below sea level than the entire

state of people in the state of Louisiana.

And some of the Netherlands have figured out how to protect themselves, but the

whole United States of America has not figured out how to protect this one

But in the Netherlands, I met middle school kids who understood the hazards

living below sea level like the politicians with me did not.

Other places have solved the problem. And delegations of Americans, you know,

even political folks, go and look.

Oh, it's the Netherlands. Look how beautiful this is. This really works.

have solved the problem. But it's expensive.

Do we just not care and we don't want to pay for it?

I'll never forget my son came home one day and, you know, he was in the third

grade. And my son said, Dad, I don't like science anymore. I said, boy,

crazy. He said, no, Daddy.

I don't like the way the teacher's teaching science.

I said, somebody's got to fix that. So we went in the garage. We started doing

all of this science, technology, engineering, mathematics with our hands,

kits. Third grade, huh? Third grade.

And I'll never forget, he came home one day.

I said, boy, what's your grades? He said, I got all As. I said, that's my

there. He said, Daddy, my friends want to know how I know all this.

I said, did you tell them you do this with your daddy in the garage?

He said, yeah, Daddy, but my friends need this.

Now, if my son, who grew up in a house with a PhD, and my mom was a pharmacist,

was going to a magnet school, felt that his friends who was going to a magnet

school wasn't getting this.

What did that say about Ray Ray, Sinead, Nate Pookie, Jose, and Mary, you know,

at the other schools in New Orleans?

I said, never again shall the children of New Orleans, especially the children

in Lower Nightwad, will exist and live in New Orleans without understanding the

hazards of living in such a place.

So in 2013, my wife and I put up $100 ,000 of our own dollars and started an

organization called Stemnola.

where we've exposed over 135 ,000 K -12 kids, 25 ,000 families to science,

technology, engineering, and mathematics.

I made this, I made this on propeller that if you spin it enough, it starts

going up. That's part of the good because now our children have

science, technology, mathematics in a way many kids in this country have not.

And now they're equipped not only with the language and the electrocon, but

they're equipped with, you know, with the possibilities of tomorrow.

I would like to say that many of our children in the city now, by

in the things that we've created, now realize that they don't have to wait on

the government. They actually can save themselves.

They have self -agency.

When you look in the city of New Orleans 20 years later, the poverty is so

prevalent until it's unbelievable.

We thought we saw it then. We see it more now.

And it is more economic than it is anything.

You see displacement of people.

You see all the homeless people here.

and you see the locals who are barely making it. But we need almost like a

Marshall Plan for the community in terms of how we need to come in, up -skill,

up -educate, and mentally support the young people that we see today.

The culture is back, which is a beautiful thing, and it's growing, and

more musicians and more people moving here to play music than were.

before Katrina.

A lot of people who have shown resiliency to coming

back and keeping things alive and moving them forward. What works in New

Orleans' favor is that so many people love New Orleans and it's home.

People fought to come back and people fight to stay here.

What's broken about it is What was broken then is still broken now, which

that the laws and the policies that govern are

not set up for most people to succeed.

And that's a really hard thing to reckon with, to know that the system is so

stacked.

And to think that in the past...

Two decades, we haven't been able to make a dent in why the system is so

for so many people.

And, you know, it's housing, but it's like I said, it's not just housing.

It's health care. It's education.

It's who's arrested and who's incarcerated.

Things don't happen in a vacuum. There's so much interconnectedness to what

builds a community.

It's real bad here in the waters, but this is my home.

I'm not going nowhere.

I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to continue to fight the fight that I've

been fighting since last year.

20 years later, we need compassion.

And you know what that means?

We need to give a damn.

We need to give a damn, even if it's not in my backyard.

Even if the people impacted don't look like me.

Even if the people impacted are not people that politically agree with me.

We need to give a damn.

We need to have compassion.

We want to live in peace.

We want reasonable prosperity for ourselves.

Most of us don't want it at the cost of somebody else.

And we want a future for our children.

I said at the time in 2005 that Katrina reminded me of the Dust Bowl. It's not

about a day. It's not about a year. It was going to take decades to heal. So

throwback city in many ways.

I'll try and make it in the middle of the 21st century.

New Orleans is one of the most African cities in America.

The slave owners allowed the slaves to walk outside the city on Sunday to speak

their native tongue and native language.

They found Congo Square.

The slaves came from all up and down the river to that space. That space was the

best space related to where they had been stolen from. And they could laugh,

cry, dance, sing, rejoice.

At the present time, I'm the big chief of Congo Square.

So Congo Square was a place where people of African descent could participate in

their culture from the motherland.

So if you were from...

The Yoruba culture, you would gather with people from the Yoruba culture and

continue your culture here.

And then an offshoot culture developed that is what we call New Orleans

So then jazz music was heavily influenced by that culture. You have to

the people that were creating the music here were living in the most dire of...

uh circumstances they were enslaved and they only had

sunday to be in congress where they call it practicing where they could be

free for a moment you can hear the cry in the music

and

if you listen to the blues singers or gospel singers The blues singer goes,

have mercy on me.

You can hear the crying.

It's not by accident Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson made the song Come

Sunday. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is on a Tuesday, but in the black community,

the Indian practice is on a Sunday. The second lines are on a Sunday. And all of

these rituals in the black community is a direct descendant of Congo

Square. Every day, my ancestors are inside of me, and I have to

keep that connection alive through the way I play.

Oh, yeah, what's that called?

That's called spur of the moment.

My brother, Donald Harrison, give it up.

20 years to life, the time should fit the crime.

Human lives cut down and out, left in waters to rot.

20 years to life, and my stomach still holds a knot.

Wall is gone, broken minds begin to heal.

Families ripped apart, silent auction blocks, no place to even kneel.

Gentrification replaced the foundation of education, leading to the need for

resuscitation, leading me to a state of determination to find relaxation in

silent meditation.

20 years to life, CDC, FDA, who? And a fork -tongued culprit who held the net,

gave my mama that vac shot. Now she lives after death.

20 years to life, Hurricane Katrina and Corps of Engineers handed down a

sentence, and I still haven't screamed yet.

Cut.