Act III of Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke reiterates the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. His point of view in the documentary was that the government wasn’t doing enough to help the people of New Orleans. The tone of the documentary, and something that was hinted at in the news, was that the process of cleaning up and restoring New Orleans took much longer than anyone expected. They were still recovering bodies from the rubble and many of the streets were still not cleaned up well after the hurricane occurred.
Many of the people in the documentary were upset because they wanted to return to New Orleans, but there wasn’t much to return to. It was as if no one cared that there were thousands of people displaced from the homes that they have known all their lives. The citizens of New Orleans were also upset at being called refugees by the media. The fact that the streets took so long to clean up and people being displaced and called refugees, the people of New Orleans truly felt like foreign citizens.
Another issue caused by the hurricane was that people’s medical records were flooded and destroyed, so people with illness and disease got sicker and died because they weren’t being treated fast enough.
One of the most damning facts in my mind was Bush staying on vacation after this tragedy occurred. I think that the film stated that Bush took two weeks to get to New Orleans and that certainly took me by surprise.