08/30/2025
Marking 20 years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. 🖤🕊️
When the levees broke, the state’s violence was laid bare. Thousands of mostly poor and Black people in New Orleans were abandoned in the flood — including those locked inside Orleans Parish Prison, left to drown in their cells.
Rather than provide care or relief, the state built Camp Greyhound, a makeshift jail where over 1,200 people were caged in the weeks after the storm. People were arrested for curfew violations, for “looting” food and water, or simply for surviving. Many spent months and years locked up without trial. Some never made it home
This is how climate disaster meets the prison industrial complex (PIC): communities left to die, then criminalized for living. We see the same patterns today, from wildfires to floods to heat waves, where disaster response is driven by policing and imprisonment instead of care and freedom.
In the aftermath of the storm, waged a national amnesty campaign for prisoners of Katrina. Pictured include fans we used at actions and press conferences for years after, and a number leaflets with stories of imprisoned survivors.
✨Today, we continue to demand Amnesty for the Prisoners of Katrina. That means expunging records, ending the criminalization of survival, and refusing to let disaster be weaponized against our people.
On this anniversary, we remember, we honor, and we organize — for abolition, for freedom, and for a future where survival is met with solidarity, not cages.
