I've debated whether this is a Campfire topic or belonged here, but I'll put it here. Did anyone else catch the documentary on PBS last night called A Village Called Versailles ?

I had no idea that there was a sizable, tight-knit Vietnamese community in New Orleans East. Considering the many hours of CNN and many news articles I had read regarding Katrina and NOLA, this fact never came to my attention. From the documentary, it appears that this neighborhood was just as devastated as the scenes we've all seen from the Lower Ninth Ward--businesses and homes just a total mess.

Katrina is not really talked about specifically much, but members here are familiar with the physical toll that it took on the city. To me, it was sad but also incredibly uplifting to see this community of people pull together and basically rebuild from scratch. The older generation had already lost everything in the Vietnam war, and here they were, facing the same loss, trauma, disruption and dislocation again as they were forced to flee and ended up in "camps" throughout the South. But they returned, and they rebuilt. If not for themselves, for their children, and their children's children.

I just mention this film because it is sort of the opposite of a lot of the more extreme survivalist or apocalyptic websites. It's an alternative way to think about how we can best get through crises like a Katrina. Instead of talking about hunkering down in your personal bunker with all your supplies and black rifles around you, setting up firing lines and barbed wire, fighting off all comers, here is a story of people who survive and even thrive through cooperation and shared sacrifice. I have long advocated community and cooperation as the key to getting through calamity and moving on, rather than the "rugged individualism" and often pro-violence bias and paranoia that is more popular on the Internet, like the obvious interest/obsession with guns for SHTF situations by many out on the web or the frequent mention of "looting" and how to "keep what's mine".

There's one scene that choked me up a bit. Immediately in the aftermath of Katrina, some residents went back to try and start putting the pieces together. There was no power, water, or any utilities. But they had to eat, and they made do with what they had. There's one brief scene were you see someone using a folding metal chair as a stove, with a pot of food on the seat and this guy lighting a fire underneath. It really reminded me of the resiliency of people and how an indomitable will is more important than "gear".

Anyway, if there are more broadcasts of this film, I would encourage everyone to see it. There are lot's of different themes you can get out of it, and I've only touched (barely) on this survival aspect of this remarkable community of people. It's also sort of a blue print for the rest of us. In a way, we're living through a financial/economic Katrina right now, but in slow motion. Personally, I feel like we're just in the eye of the storm, that the storm isn't truly gone yet. Granted, many of us may not live in communities with the same shared history, language, culture, etc. as the residents of Versailles, but it doesn't mean that we can't try to foster tighter knit, more mutually cooperative communities where we live, too.