Twenty years ago today I was at Burning Man, and word was just filtering in as to what was happening in New Orleans. A group of people took a large flatbed truck, loaded it with food, water, scrounged lumber, tools and other supplies, and set off for NOLA to see what they could do to help. Burners Without borders was born out of that:
https://burnerswithoutborders.org/

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8.....ricane_katrina
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/28/malik_rahim
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8.....ordan_flaherty

The Katrina Tribunal:
https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/ka.....nment-ignored/
-what little help came for these people came from mutual aid efforts within theor own community, which is always the case in such disasters.

Katrina was a natural disaster, sure, but what happened to NOLA was the result of dritical government failure in planning, and deeply enrenched systemic racism which was exposed by the different ways that Katrina affected and still affecting black people there. There are around 120,000 fewer black people there now than ther were before Katrina hit. Something close to 1800 people, mostly poor and black, died there.

Kanye West was quoted at the time on Democracy Now! as saying " I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a Black family, it says they’re looting. If you see a white family, it says they’re looking for food. … George Bush doesn’t care about Black people."
-Anybody else here rememberbwhen Kanye was sane?

The last part of that inspired this song, which was put out a week after the hurricane hit:
https://rappersiknow.bandcamp.com/t.....t-black-people

The state authorized vigilantes to shoot to kill looters there, and some of them were shot. They were all black. Cops even fired on and killed black people like Henry Glover there. People were stranded in flooded jails, and left starving on rooftops for a week.

I find myself reminded of this in the way that Kristi "Puppy killer" Noem said that the feds wouldn't punish people carrying long guns in DC, which is understandably illegal there.

The great Greg Palast recently updated a film about Katrina that he made at the time, which illustates the failure of Louisiana government to plan for and deal with the Flood, the way that they dearly with it and it's lingering affects on the city, and the complete failure of FEMA there. The film is updated with how this relates to the Kerr County Flood and Trump's current plans to end FEMA:
https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoint.....ugust-19-2025/

It's hard to wrap your head around just how vast the destruction in NOLA was and still is. but the state's plan to ethnically cleanse it of black people has been relatively successful.

There are even more stories from Katrina than there are people. Here are a few:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lampshade

https://www.npr.org/2013/09/08/2168.....a-hit-hospital

And the story of how, after his home in New Orleans was destroyed, Musician Biff Rose hit the road, and I finally got to see him perform when he washed up here in the East Bay, where he ended up having a romance with a DJ from Berkeley campus radio station KALX.

-I may well end up updating this post, but I wanted to get it up as soon as possible, so watch this space.