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  • 2 hours ago
Through the eyes of urban planners, community organizers, displaced youth, immigrant workers, and public housing residents, this verité-style documentary reveals how the story of New Orleans is the story of urban America: how democratic processes can fail us, how economic crisis can pull the rug out from under us, and how (im)migration can prove to be a complicated bargain. As cities all over the world struggle to recover from disaster, whether economic, natural, or man-made, the lessons of post-Katrina New Orleans have only become more urgent.
Transcript
00:04New Orleans is a city that has always shown America what is possible when we have the
00:10imagination to see the unseen and the determination to work for it.
00:17In the wake of this quintessentially American city's greatest test, we see the stirrings
00:24of a new day.
00:40This is a rebuild area, a radical rebuild area.
00:43To make these changes, a great amount of disruption is necessary.
00:45It usually happens slowly.
00:47In this case, it happened quickly.
00:49It's raw opportunity.
00:59This is not devastation.
01:03What I see here is a prepped soil for agriculture.
01:28After passing everything I've already passed to here and I'm going without anything?
01:32I'm not going.
01:33I have to get the money to buy my house, at least.
01:49But we're not welcome.
01:52They're trying to make it more for tourists, trying to make it like Las Vegas where all
01:57the rich people stay within the city limits, and all the poor people, poverty stricken
02:02people live on the outskirts of New Orleans.
02:16We are going to have to stand up and make the powers that be understand we're coming back.
02:24We want to come home.
02:26We want to come home.
02:26This is our land.
02:27These houses belong to us.
02:29Some of these houses have been in people's families for generations.
02:32You can't take that away from people.
02:34You can't buy that somewhere else.
02:55We want to come home.
03:04We'll see you next time.
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