Hurricane Katrina this past week was certainly the worst episode in what has become an all-too-familiar and tragic cycle, and our nation is now faced with a set of unprecedented challenges.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Unfortunately, one of the biggest misperceptions the American public harbors is that Katrina was a week-long catastrophe. In truth, it's better to view it as an era.
The Katrina matter was terrible.
I'll never forget Hurricane Katrina - the mix of a natural and a man-made catastrophe that resulted in the death of over 1,500 of our neighbors. Millions of folks were marked by the tragedy.
The reality of Katrina didn't really strike me until the first time I flew up in a helicopter and saw areas of the city that I had ridden my bicycle as a youth being fully flooded.
What happened after Katrina is that people were stirred to action; there were an enormous number of contributions by people trying to make a difference. But then we forget. We've forgotten Katrina victims, we've forgotten the face of poverty.
What happened with Hurricane Katrina was the American electorate was forced to look at what lay behind the veneer of chest-beating. We all saw the consequences of having terrible government leadership.
Oklahoma City, Katrina... those happened to other unfortunate people. But 9/11, that happened to us all. And that was pretty much the genesis of 'Reign Over Me.'
It strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.
A good two years after Hurricane Katrina I remember feeling so devastated and so ignorant that there was so much damage still left. I felt like here I was an American and this is an American city and the government hasn't done enough and people haven't given back enough. Everyone forgot and the city was lying in waste.
Events like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy were unlike any weather disasters before. They showed the world who suffers the most from the impacts of extreme weather: low-income families and communities of color.