I was 20 years old when Hurricane Katrina made landfall. From my hometown of Mount Vernon, New York, I watched the levees break and the people of New Orleans drown on rooftops, in the Superdome, in the silence of a government that decided Black lives were disposable. I cried, yes. But even in my tears, I told myself: That’s not me. I was in the North, shielded, so I thought, from one of, if not the, worst, climate disasters of my generation.
Now, 20 years later, as a Harlem resident, I know better.
Katrina wasn’t just a “natural” disaster; it was a manufactured catastrophe, born from the unnatural neglect and systemic divestment that defines environmental racism. While it all seemed so distant before, I now live with the slow violence of climate crisis every day. The New York City train stations flood routinely. The air quality fluctuates with a menace I never used to track. Last summer, smoke from Canadian wildfires turned our sky an apocalyptic orange. None of us are safe. And none of us are separate.
Black suffering was built into the levees
Katrina didn’t just expose the weaknesses of New Orleans’ infrastructure; it exposed the lie of American equity. More than 1,800 people lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands were displaced, the vast majority of them Black. Black women, in particular, bore the brunt. A report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that post-Katrina recovery efforts failed Black women on nearly every front, from housing to employment to healthcare access. Their labor was expected; their pain was ignored.
A Brookings Institution analysis noted that in New Orleans, where Black residents made up 67% of the population pre-Katrina, they were the least likely to own cars, the most likely to live in low-lying areas, and the least likely to receive timely government assistance. Survival depended not on merit or preparedness but on race, class, and ZIP code.
This is not history. This is a mirror.
Environmental racism doesn’t respect state lines
What happened in New Orleans echoes in New York. Communities like the South Bronx, East Harlem, and Brownsville — Black and Brown neighborhoods — are disproportionately affected by heat islands, poor air quality, and flooding. A 2021 report from the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance found that these neighborhoods experience up to 15 more extreme heat days per year than their whiter, wealthier counterparts. Asthma hospitalization rates are highest in the very ZIP codes where public housing sits beside expressways and power plants.
The same systemic disregard that left Black New Orleanians abandoned on rooftops now lets Black New Yorkers suffocate slowly under the weight of fossil-fueled neglect.
This Black August, we remember and we act
Black August is a time of remembrance and resistance. We honor those who struggled for Black liberation inside and outside the walls of prison, across continents and generations. Katrina must be part of that memory, not as a “storm” but as a signal flare, an unheeded warning of what happens when policy, poverty, and pollution collide.
If we are to truly honor the memory of those lost, displaced, and discarded, we must build a future worthy of their names. That starts with a transition away from big oil and extractive industries that poison our communities. It demands serious investment in Black neighborhoods — not after disaster, but before it. And it requires us to lead in demanding climate policies that center the most affected, not the most comfortable.
We can no longer afford to see climate injustice as someone else’s issue. If Katrina taught us anything, it’s that when the levees break, the flood doesn’t check your address.
Twenty years later, the water is still rising. But this time, I won’t pretend it can’t reach me.
Alexis R. Posey, J.D., is chief campaigns officer at the Cultural Engagement Lab and General Counsel for the Center for Cultural Power. She writes at the intersection of culture, policy, and racial justice.