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| Hurricane Katrina 2005 |
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| Great Flood 1927 |
Week by week, our class becomes more engaging and interesting. This week I thoroughly enjoyed our class discussions and the honest sharing by fellow classmates. I am choosing to blog this week about our reading and class discussion regarding the great flood of 1927. I’ll have to be honest, I felt a bit silly not know anything about this flood, especially as Professor Gerstenblatt unfolded its absolutely devastating story. While this flood was one of our country’s greatest natural disasters, it was also disastrous economically, politically and racially. Several times during my reading of this text, and our time in class discussing it, I couldn’t help but compare certain details to one of “our” natural disasters, Hurricane Katrina; also devastating on many levels. Just as the Mississippi flood of 1927 exposed class divisions in America, so did Katrina nearly 80 years later. Just think about how much destruction we saw in the press and as we discussed in class, just how much WE DIDN’T SEE. Just how is it that we continue to make the same mistakes we did almost 80 years ago?
The following is a link with a cool story about the music inspired by the 1927 flood. It is a history of sorts, starting with a song written by Charley Patton in 1929 and his influence on musicians for decades to come.
It is appalling and heart breaking that history keeps repeating. And Julie, I'm sad to say that "we" will continue to make the same mistakes as long as we put profits before people.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the music lesson :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6C_5wxkuAQ
Learning about the Mississippi flood was equally shocking to me. Our discussion in class showed me the grim reality of how economics is such a powerful motivation in this country. I hadn't even thought about the economic gain from the prison system. Interesting how while many problems in our society are complicated, the simple motivation of economic gain and manipulation seems to be a common factor.
ReplyDeleteI also felt silly not knowing about this flood. It is disturbing to see that money has so much power over peoples lives. When we were talking about the prison system it reminded me of a story i heard of a guy who was accused by his girlfriend of raping her daughter. At the time she said that he raped her little girl he was in prison. So it seems logical to dismiss the case because how could he have raped her if he was in jail? Well the DA kept pushing trial and the judge realized that the case made no sense so he dismissed it and reprimanded the DA, but this goes to show that they will keep pushing for someone to go to jail even if they know the guy was innocent. They do this because they've already invested money in putting him in jail and they need to reach a quota to get their bonus at the end of the year. Its sad to see how people's greed can take over and its at the cost of everyone in their way.
ReplyDeleteThis was such an interestingly horrific similarity to learn about. I had no idea this had happened before Katrina. I have a friend that's lived in New Orleans for many years and I got to have an interesting talk with him about this particular incidence. He had actually moved elsewhere two weeks before it hit and then back afterwards so he didn't live the experience. However he says, everyone there seemed to know about this previous occurrence with the flooding, all of which who knew about the flood, knew about the bombing of the levy the first time. He said that the same area was flooded this time as before, that simply put, they weren't going to change the levy as it would cost too much money to improve it.
ReplyDeleteWhile this is kind of off topic, I asked him about the racism from the first time in comparison to Katrina. His response is that racism is so prevalent and recognized in New Orleans, everyone acknowledges it and talks about it so much so that it's progressive in a sense. His thought is that at least there, they confront it, while everywhere else people pretend not to notice.
Krystal Hasselmeier