Independent Lens

The final death tally

739, the equivalent of two jumbo jets crashing in midair. Did you feel a sense of outrage at that number when it came out? I want to answer this very carefully. James Baldwin said to be black in America is to be enraged almost all of the time, and so in that spirit, I'm enraged almost all of the time. I am of that generation, so yes, I was enraged. Was I surprised or shocked? No, I know what happens during heat waves, and I could see that the city was not responding accordingly. And even if the city had responded in a more appropriate way, we would have seen differences, hopefully not as great, between poor communities that are under-resourced and communities that are better resourced. This is a map that has two things going on at the same time. We've put the circles in those communities that have the highest poverty rates, and then we've shaded in the communities that had the highest mortality rates from the heat. And as you can see, they're almost perfect overlaps. So the question is, did people die of the heat, or did they die of the social conditions in these neighborhoods, and the answer is both. I mean, had the heat not occurred, they wouldn't have died that week. That's for sure. But they would have died too soon anyway.