Trouble The Water Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winning Film

[L. de soleil]

First of all I also would like to thank the producers and editors of the film,Policy Link, and everyone else involved in bringing this riveting documentary to us and inviting me to attend the premiere As a proud descendant of the gens du colour libre [free gentlemen of color] with French last name to boot, I am Creole and proud of the history that my anscestors made along with former slaves in building great city of New Orleans and the Cane River Plantations that sent the goods down river. New Orleans was the original New York of our country. The Mississippi was the transporter of most of the goods in our country at that time through the port of New Orleans.
Continued from above……. Ne wOrleans was also home to the largest population of free blacks in this hemisphere before the end of slavery. To see such a great city, whose people and commerce have propped up the finANCIAL SKELETON and international trade of our country in the first 200 years thrown by the wayside and its protections ignored ny the Federal Goverment and the Louisiana officials is outrageous. The film TROUBLE THE WATER is a godsend . It is devestating to watch regular American like you and me get thrown under the bus by local, state, and Fedderal officials. The films portrayal the heartbreak and the failure of our structures to help the most needy when we had the resources is mind boggling. The way the film takes us in and out of time sequence made me feel as if I were there, not the Louisiana born California raised woman that I am, but right in the moment suffering with my people. The Heroin Kim’s last name is Hall and I definitely have Hall cousins in my family. To overstate this films importance is not possible. The images of elderly left dying in the street. The officials lying about hospital evacuations. The prisoners left locked up to die, while their custodians gone to higher ground. The school buses and amtrak trains left idle while thousand s of home owneres and taxpayers who were financially disabled were left with no viable means of escape. Ordinary people like the films STARS and you and me forced to become heros and against impossible odds make it out alive. It is a heartwrenching gut check that every person in America SHOULD SEE! You dont have to have roots in Louisiana and New Orleans to feel thAT THEIR PAIN IS OUR PAIN! AND MOST IMPORTANTLY THAT this could happen anywhere in the US right now. It is an astounding achievement and I am so proud of the Heros in the film that shared their painful losses and new found conviction in spirit with us! I an equally proud of the filmmakers for taking a chance on a film that no major studios were interested in. Most importantly I would like to thank Policy Link for all of the brilliant heartfelt work they do every day for American s like me and you who can easily fall under the crushing wheels of bureaucracy and indifference. I will continue lo support there heroism in thier daily fight and after you see this film TROUBLE THE WATER …believe you will to. GO AND SEE THIS FILM, YOUR LIFE AND VIEWS OF OUR COUNTRY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING L.DeSoleil Arbiter of New Media ps one last fact [ the 9th ward is always portrayed as an impoverished area, but dont forget that 78% of its black inhabitants owned the properties they lived in which made it one of the largest homeownership areas in America for people of color. These were homeowners and taxpayers who were abandoned.] A rallying cry: IF IT CAN HAPPEN TO THEM IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU