Filtered lives

By Michelle Bonnet Hale

I understand why those young people climb up on the HESCO barriers to watch the flood raging down the Mendenhall River.

The term “disaster tourist” has come into our language lately, used pejoratively. I understand why the term is being used, though I wish it were not thrown around so casually: There is no excuse for invading someone’s home territory that is under threat just to see what is happening. 

However, there is also nothing that substitutes for the experience of witnessing an actual event like that river raging through our community.

With witnessing, however, comes the responsibility to act.

In the summer of 2026, a boat ran out of fuel in Stephens Passage and placed a distress call. The massive support vessel for Mark Zuckerburg’s yacht was nearby, but strangely not monitoring VHF Channel 16. However, an UnCruise vessel in the area was. The UnCruise vessel rescued the boat in distress.

In January 2026 massive protests erupted in Minnesota against the expanded ICE presence there and ICE actions against immigrants. Minneapolis residents took to the streets to protect their neighbors. Two of the protestors were shot and killed by ICE agents.

On September 11, 2001, passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 voted to storm the cockpit of their hijacked jet, and with a “Let’s roll,” did just that, losing their lives in a field in Pennsylvania to prevent the plane from reaching Washington, D.C.

On the first flight I took after September 11, the pilot came on the loudspeaker and said, and I paraphrase,

“If you see something wrong on this plane, do something. Do not sit quietly. Do not wait to be told what to do. Do something.”

Action is the commonality here. Passivity is not.

We learn to take action by acting.

We can learn a lot about floods by going to school and studying hydrography. We also learn a lot about floods by seeing and hearing them happen. The 2023 flood was stunning and horrifying to watch, as tree after tree separated from land into the river. The tragedy of it hit home as homes were lost. The 2024 flood was much worse, and it was a nightmare that still has my friends and neighbors traumatized.

This is how we learn. A child who sees a raging river might grow up to be an expert like those we have at the University and our National Weather Service. We learn to be courageous, as those passengers on Flight 93 were, by seeing others express their courage and by being courageous ourselves. We learn to be attuned to VHF Channel 16 and to rescue boats and passengers in distress by seeing others do that and doing it ourselves.

We learn the most about the awesome power of water released suddenly from a lake the size of Auke Lake by seeing and hearing that water.

After September 11, when that courageous group of passengers stormed the cockpit of Flight 93, the infringements on our personal autonomy became worse. We spent decades taking our shoes off in airports. We bit our tongues in order to not offend Transportation Security Agents as they patted down the most intimate parts of our bodies. We surrendered our rights, one by one. With that loss of autonomy has come another little loss of courage.

We live filtered lives and I don’t have an answer or solution; instead, I admonish myself to take note of how I experience the world. Now we watch video feeds of the Mendenhall River. 

“Your freedom ends where my freedom begins,” goes the adage. In an early form, it was “your freedom to throw a punch ends with my nose.” 

The young people aren’t free to watch the river from the HESCO barriers. Their freedom ends with the freedom of rescue personnel to be safe from having to rescue them. Their freedom ends with the HESCO barriers themselves, there to provide freedom from the ravages of the floodwaters to hundreds of Valley residents.

There is every reason to help people and no reason to gawk, and never a reason to get in the way. But I worry, a lot, as the filters slip into our lives, one by one. We see the river on video. When we travel, we surrender our freedom. I know those people should not be up on those HESCO barriers and I will never advocate for that, but I know why they’re there.

If we are to be men and women of courage, we have to practice that courage. To practice it, we have to recognize the need for courage right in front of us. We need to put our phones down and pull our earplugs out and turn off our video feeds, see and hear what is happening in our world, and act.

• Michelle Bonnet Hale’s roots go deep in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. She and her partner share their household with various relatives and three dogs. She served for six years on the Juneau Assembly.