After Hurricane Katrina hit, most of the news coverage showed the destruction that this deadly storm had created and what was being done to help those who had been affected. However, the news told nothing of the great inequality and complete loss of humanity that those of lower income witnessed. Reading about how minorities in New Orleans were dealt with in the aftermath of Katrina felt like reading a dystopian novel. I don’t understand why hard-hit communities were basically put under military dictatorship and why community members were treated like animals. These people needed HELP not abuse. Who were these police officers and soldiers protecting? It was certainly not the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The only possible explanation I could come up with besides these officers being the embodiment of pure evil, is what was talked about in the documentary Land of Opportunity. The article, “Police Brutality and Hurricane Katrina,” talked about a protest to prevent the demolition of 4,500 units of public housing that resulted in extreme violence of the police toward protestors. This exemplifies one of the main themes of the documentary: the government utilized a natural disaster to further its own agenda at the expense of the poor.

Question: How do we get local governments to actually care about the cities they are supposed to serve instead of caring about budget cuts?