What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation

With an eye toward community organizing and radical scholarship, What Lies Beneath, is both a people’s history and a collective vision for the future of New Orleans.

In August 2005, thousands of New Orleans residents—overwhelmingly poor, largely people of color, the majority black—were left to face one of the worst “natural” disasters in US history on their own. They were left to die in prisons, in nursing homes, and on the street. Survivors were criminalized as “looters” for struggling to obtain food, water, diapers, medicine, and other essentials of life that no one else could or would provide. As Katrina’s waters receded and the body count soared, an ugly truth (re)surfaced: The lives of those who are poor, who are vulnerable, and who are not white are not valued by the US government.   While commentators across the political spectrum, celebrities, and other observers expressed outrage that the US government would let this happen to Americans—even “those Americans”—millions outside of New Orleans live without adequate health insurance; clean air and water; decent education, housing, nutrition, health care, and work; and freedom from police brutality and state repression. And thousands are deported, displaced, and dying in prisons and illegal wars from coast to coast, gulf to gulf.

Short and accessible, this anthology, featuring such voices as Common Ground, SONG, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Suheir Hammad, Jordan Flaherty, Joy James and Ross Gelbspan, takes readers beyond the Superdome. It explores the complexity of this turning point in US history as representative of the nation’s direction and priorities.

“Here, finally, is clear-eyed and fascinating analysis of what Hurricane Katrina has to teach us about politics, power, human connection, and working for justice. What Lies Beneath is crucial reading—an organizer’s handbook for the 21st century.”
—Hon. Barbara Smith, co-founder, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, Member, City Council, Albany, New York

“What Lies Beneath is a book that will keep alive the memory of one of the most dramatic and terrible events of the new millennium—the catastrophe of the Katrina hurricane and its aftermath.… At the center of story are the unavoidable issues of race, class, and the shameful callousness of officialdom. The book will keep us thinking for a long time about what happened, why it happened, and provoke us to examine honestly the nature of the society in which we live.”
—Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

“What Lies Beneath reveals how ‘natural’ disasters like Katrina are increasingly man-made and caused by corporate greed, how those who have no role in creating climate chaos bear its worst burden, and how those involved in the crime of climate catastrophes use the disasters they have created to dispossess the poor, women, and people of color in the name of a ‘cleanup.’”
—Vandana Shiva, author of Earth Democracy

“What Lies Beneath is a work of fury spawned not by the inchoate forces of nature, but by activists, poets, organizers, and scholars. This brilliant little book is a written response to the forces of state, corporate, and media power which converged to isolate, demonize, destroy, and finally forget those many black and poor people who found themselves bitterly alone in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”
—Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of We Want Freedom