Every September, as National Preparedness Month rolls around, I’m reminded of the familiar checklists: stock your pantry, build a go-bag, plan your evacuation route. But the more I’ve worked in the space of equity and communications, the more I’ve realized a harsh truth: if preparedness doesn’t include everyone, then it isn’t preparedness at all. It’s privilege.
That conviction has only deepened after watching two recently released documentaries on Hurricane Katrina — National Geographic’s Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time and Netflix’s Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, executive-produced by Spike Lee. Nearly twenty years after the storm, these series do more than revisit history. They reveal the devastating cost of what happens when emergency systems are designed around privilege rather than inclusion.
What struck me most in these films is how predictable so much of the suffering was. Race Against Time shows that officials ran a full-scale simulation a year before Katrina hit. They saw the levees would fail. They knew vulnerable neighborhoods would be underwater. They understood that evacuation would not be possible for thousands without cars or money. Yet, the response systems were not designed with those realities in mind.
And as Come Hell and High Water makes painfully clear, “evacuation” became a privilege. Those with cars, money, and flexible jobs left. Those without — elders, children, people with disabilities, entire low-income communities — were left stranded, waiting in sweltering shelters that were never adequately equipped.
These stories are not relics of the past. They are warnings. When we plan for emergencies without including the most vulnerable voices at the table, we create systems that work for some and abandon others.
Preparedness in 2025 cannot be defined by batteries, bottled water, and backup generators alone. If the COVID-19 pandemic and recent climate-driven disasters have taught us anything, it’s that inequities widen under crisis. Privilege buys options. It buys time. It buys safety. But privilege cannot be the standard for readiness.
The true measure of resilience is not how the best-off survive, but how the most vulnerable are protected. That means:
As I reflect on these documentaries, I don’t see them as entertainment. I see them as accountability. Katrina revealed that preparedness built on privilege is fragile by design. And if we haven’t learned from that history, we are setting ourselves up to repeat it.
This National Preparedness Month, I challenge leaders, policymakers, and community planners: don’t settle for awareness campaigns. Move toward accountability. Ask not, Do we have a plan? but Whose survival is this plan designed to guarantee?
Real preparedness isn’t about who has the most supplies. It’s about whether every person — regardless of income, race, ability, or zip code — has a fair shot at survival.
Because inclusion isn’t just a moral imperative. It’s the only real measure of readiness.
Spread the word…
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It never once explains why any of them are worth a stranger's Saturday morning — and without that, you're not recruiting volunteers, you're posting a chore list and hoping someone feels guilty enough to claim a line item. People don't volunteer because a task needs...
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