ABSTRACT

It was the images that struck you first: the lifeless body of a fellow citizen cast off to the side of a street, a starving dog gnawing at a bloody limb. A mother gripping her infant daughter at the New Orleans Convention Center, begging-pleading-for someone, anyone, to whisk them away from their uncertain future. An elderly man in a wheelchair, clinging to his last shards of breath. A news reporter breaking down into frustrated tears on national television. People-fellow human beings-rummaging in garbage cans or blown-out storefronts for food and water because FEMA had yet to realize that New Orleans was, in fact, a city

located in the United States.2 The collapse of civil society: live and in unliving color.