ReachNYC Digital

I've spent the past two nights watching Spike Lee's "A Requiem For New Orleans", and its more than obvious that Spike Lee poured his heart out in the making of this documentary. Spike Lee, a proud New Yorker, really captured the heart of New Orleans, for an outsider.

Most critics missed the point, this documentary doesn't serve as a reminder of what happened in New Orleans, this 4-hour educational piece was put together to show what DIDN'T happen in New Orleans after Katrina. FEMA's slow response, Bush playing the guitar in California 3-days after Katrina, as if our country's largest supplier of oil had not been completely ravaged, and millions displaced. And to add injury to insult, after President Bush was quoted as saying that nobody expected the levee's to give in, a video surfaced showing that the federal government were briefed on the seriousness of Katrina.

As expected, Spike did his part in showing that African-Americans were mistreated, misplaced and missing, but in a catastrophic event of this nature, we are all one. New Orleans metropolitan area was 63% white before Katrina, and 47% of casualties, that were not African-American, were mostly white, proving that Katrina was an equal opportunity destroyer. While Lee spent 4 hours talking about the help that never made it to Louisiana, he didn't take one second to thank the help that did make its way down there. Overall, the documentary was very well put together, and shows that the U.S. was negligent in their response to Hurricaine Katrina. I think a more effective way Spike could've gotten his point across was to show more of how the media was ignorant and biased in their reports. Here are a few examples of Federal ignorance that were overlooked in the documentary, and if a 5th part was to ever be released, i believe these pieces should be examined.


"Now I don't get into calling people names and all that fact, but if you're gonna walk the streets of St. Tammany Parish with dreadlocks and "Chee Wee" hairstyles, then you can expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff's deputy" - Jack Strain, Sheriff St. Tammany Parish, Loiusiana.





"...so tragically, so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor...they're so black..." - CNN Reporter




"...and I want to encourage anyone who's been affected by Hurricane..uh..Ka..Corina to make sure their children get an education." - First Lady Laura Bush