After Katrina: What We Stand to Lose with Kristen Buras

When Hurricane Katrina roared up the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the Coast in August, 2005, the devastation was just beginning. The government was murderously unprepared—when the levees failed, 80% of New Orleans was underwater, 1500 people lost their lives, thousand more were injured, and property losses were estimated at $125 billion. The capitalist media consistently smacked its lips over suffering and offered an upside down world where victims became criminals, and mutual aid was portrayed as theft. The afterlife—the trauma, waste. and wreckage—of the catastrophe is ongoing and includes displacement, corporate theft, privatization of public goods, educide, and cultural sacking. We’re joined on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by Kristin Buras, an anti-racist activist, teacher, and researcher who is the director of the New Orleans–based Urban South Grass-roots Research Collective, a coalition with African American community groups that combines research and grass-roots organizing for racial equity. She is the author, most recently, of What We Stand to Lose: Black Teachers, the Culture They Created, and the Closure of a New Orleans High School.