20 YEARS LATER: TO REMEMBER, TO FIGHT, TO PRESERVE

It’s been twenty years since Katrina, but I swear it feel like twenty days ago. Folks in Houston always wanna compare it to Harvey — and with all due respect, it wasn’t the same. Harvey was a storm. Katrina was a storm too, but what destroyed us wasn’t the rain or the wind. It was when the levees broke and drowned us. Whole neighborhoods. Whole histories. Whole bloodlines gone in a night. And the way it happened? It felt like a decision. Like the world decided that a majority-Black city, one that gave so much to America, didn’t deserve protection.

My family line goes back to the 1700s — Louisiana Creoles, native to New Orleans. Creole is a language, a rhythm, a plate of food, a parade in the street. It’s brass horns echoing down Claiborne, red beans on Monday, gumbo on Sunday, second lines that turn grief into joy, and Mardi Gras Indians stitching history into every bead. Creole is the way we carry ourselves, the way we celebrate, the way we survive. It is the foundation of Black New Orleans — and a huge influence on American culture itself.

I was just starting high school. Freshman year. Our yearbook pictures had just come in, and back then — at the very beginning of the MySpace era — we passed around copies like trading cards. If you had a big stack, that meant you knew a lotta people. We’d flip through them like a hand of Spades, looking for a common face. “You kno her?! Oh yeahhhh, that’s my lil potna.” That’s how we showed we belonged.

And it was Jamboree season — the back-to-school football game at Tad Gormley Stadium. Everybody knew Jamboree wasn’t about the game. It was about being outside, showing off, being cute. All week it was, “What you wearing to Jamboree?” We were ready. But then the vibe shifted. Somebody said, “You heard? There’s a storm in the gulf.” At first, we brushed it off — “Oh, you lying!” But my mama ain’t play. She worked for the Department of Justice, and when the government said evacuate, she was already packing.

By Wednesday morning, we were on the road: one car with me, my mama, and my grandmother; another with my daddy and my brother. What should’ve been a four-hour drive took nineteen. By Thursday we landed in Richmond, Texas, with my mama’s side of the family. We thought we were safe. But then Sunday came, August 29, 2005. And from Texas, we watched our city drown.

On TV, we saw our people — Black people — stranded on rooftops, waving shirts for rescue. Elders with no medicine, babies with no milk, bodies floating in the water. The Superdome and the Convention Center turned into nightmares — no food, no water, no light, no safety. Women assaulted, children crying, families begging for help that never came. While my people stayed, they saw death up close, and instead of compassion, they were shot at to “regulate.” Treated like criminals instead of citizens. The death toll rose into the thousands.

And while we were fighting for our lives, forced into survival mode with no resources, they profiled us. Evacuees. Refugees. Looters. Thugs. Most people didn’t leave because they didn’t have the means — so they stayed and did the best they could. And they were left there, stranded for seven days before buses finally came. That shit was racial! We weren’t seen as citizens worth saving — we were painted as a problem to control.

I say we and us because they did that to my people. I was blessed to get out early, but I still live with the results of Katrina — trauma, survival syndrome, depression, and more. All of this stays with me every day. And no matter how much this country loves to consume what we create — our music, our food, our language — they did not care to protect us. They failed us: in planning, in protection, in response, in recovery, and in respect.

You’d think the federal government would’ve done everything to protect New Orleans. There should’ve been a barrier made of gold around that city — to guard what Black people had built and given to the world. But instead, when the levees broke, they left us to die. Leaders like General Russel Honoré and Mayor Ray Nagin fought to get us what we needed, but the truth still stands: the people were abandoned.

People love to call us resilient. But let me tell you, that word feel like a curse. It feel like a burden. Resilient means we can be neglected and somehow still be expected to dance, to sing, to rebuild, to smile through it all. It’s like America’s excuse to keep breaking us, ‘cause they know we’ll keep rising. But we tired of carrying that word.

Twenty years later, I carry it all with me. I’m grateful for Houston — the place that took us in and gave us space to start again. But I’ll always be a 504 girl. I love a second line, I love a brass band moment, I love when I hear bounce in the middle of a DJ set — it remind me that New Orleans will never die. Our soul can’t be erased. Not by water. Not by neglect. Not by time.

Because Katrina wasn’t just about water. It was about Black life, Black history, Black genius — overlooked, underestimated, but never destroyed. We’re still here. We’ll always be here. And as long as I’m breathing, I’ll do everything in my power to preserve what they tried to erase.

As Kanye said then, and it still rings true now: they don’t care about Black people. But we care about us. And that’s why we stay shive. Because in New Orleans, even after death, the second line always comes — and we dance our way forward.