After the storm, thousands of people lost their jobs. Local businesses have since hired scores of undocumented workers to help rebuild the region. Some communities have adjusted to these population shifts by creating new businesses. Yet many who traveled to the Gulf Coast looking for work have had difficulty making a living wage.
Dee Davis and the Center for Rural Strategies developed a media campaign to illustrate the struggles of rural Gulf Coast residents to re-establish their lives after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The project aimed to help Americans understand conditions along the rural Gulf Coast and explore how America's failure to formulate effective rural policy is reaping disaster.
Ten photographers from Kamoinge, a New York-based collective of African-American photographers, documented ravished communities impacted by the hurricane and the devastation's far-reaching ramifications on the economic, social, and racial fabric of its residents; the resulting body of work explores the despair, as well as the hope and resilience of the many residents who have lived in these communities for countless generations.
Tena Rubio developed the Katrina Uncovers/New Orleans Now series for the National Radio Project; as part of the project, she produced a 30-minute show on street art, a one-hour show about New Orleans two years after Katrina and a three-part series on the immigrant/migrant workforce in New
Orleans
Katy Reckdahl covered the working poor in New Orleans, their struggles to return to the city after Katrina, and the hurdles they faced once they arrived home.
