Katrina: Past and Present

The levees broke. My heart broke. A moment in time that changed all others after- like every moment truly. Our country’s poverty and choices brought to the fore on TV, in pictures, in the cries and pleads for rescue. And though I wanted to fly home to my birthplace to help, I couldn’t or at least I thought I couldn’t, so I didn’t. I stayed transfixed in a state of helplessness, guilt and inaction- much like now. Others, many others, did help and for them I am so grateful. I called my family and supported them from a far on my dry land. My kin who had the means left New Orleans never to return. And the others that stayed, at least those that survived, managed. Like the city, we were all forever changed. On this 20th anniversary, can I remember the lessons Katrina taught me? 

In those twenty years since the storm, the whole stretch of time of my career, I have researched the root causes that put certain people at risk for poor health. We call them “social determinants of health” and they are often, if not always, “environmental determinants of health,” because the place you live (and what you look like) determines your chances at a healthy life. Over the decades I have become more and more proximate to those determinants of health and they continue to reveal their truths to me. I now call them “structural determinants of health” because our social structures and choices and actions determine who lives a healthy life in America. We are a part of the legacy of a country built on a dream of freedom for all that is interwoven in a fabric of racism, fear, sexism, hatred and greed. We can choose to change those structures and weave in compassion, love, empathy, commitment, strength and faith.

O Katrina, my teacher, reminding me of the truths I didn’t want to face twenty years ago that haunt me into our current times. I still sit shocked, angry, overwhelmed, immobile and silent in our current American storm. Can I write a better ending- or rather create a better beginning- this time?

New Orleans, my soul city seated at the bottom of the drain of the great American Mississippi River for more than 300 years. Land taken from the Chitimacha people that has struggled through slavery, disease, pollution, and corruption but somehow persisted by celebrating community, spirit, music and life. A complicated and complex mixture of life itself, just like me. Just like you.

As new disasters come our way, my wish is that we don’t repeat our mistakes- especially the one we made in Katrina, and again in COVID, and again now- the false belief that we are individuals who can survive alone. The truth is we need each other. We are a highly connected, empathetic, mutualistic human species that need each other to thrive. Every time I visit the sacred place that is New Orleans, I can feel her changes, and it reminds me that everything is changing all the time all at once. On this twentieth anniversary, let us come together as a compassionate community and make choices that uplift our planet and all of us on it and of it, especially the less resourced in our neighborhoods and across this abundant world rich of diverse places and people, with a chosen storm of love, freedom and justice for all.