Hurricane Katrina, 20 Years Later

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This week marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf Coast. We revisit Democracy Now!'s initial coverage of the disaster, which killed over 1,800 people, forced over a million to evacuate and stranded tens of thousands of others with limited resources and aid.

As part of our coverage of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we speak with longtime New Orleans activist Malik Rahim, co-founder of the Common Ground Collective. In the weeks after the storm, we interviewed Rahim in his neighborhood of Algiers. He showed us how a corpse still remained on the street, and we asked soldiers and police why it hadn't been picked up. Twenty years later, we get an update from Rahim, who continues to grapple with Katrina's long-term devastation. "The sad part about it [is] it could happen today," says Rahim. "If a hurricane would happen right now, we are ill-prepared for it, the same way we was ill-prepared 20 years ago."

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

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