Analyze

The political process is also always a learning process, a process of attunement. And becoming attuned to relations of power also means becoming compromised, to a certain degree, despite whether this attunement takes the form of compliance or resistance. For instance, the oil and gas industry has had a large influence on the structure and character of renewable energy advocacy in Austin, Texas, even as it was being developed as a strategy of resistance to petroculture. In particular, there was the purposeful move to imitate the mineral rights contracts that the oil and gas industry had developed in order to drill on private land, creating similarly structured leasing agreements for what would come to be known as “wind farms” in many of the same locations as former drilling sites. The idea here was to create a wealthy landowning class that could help lobby for renewable energy, much like previous land owners had for the oil and gas industry. Secondly, the Texas Renewable Energy Industry Association (TREIA) collectively decided to invite the utility industry to join their ranks in order to pursue renewable energy at the utility scale through the use of Renewable Portfolio Standards. And while Austin’s early energy advocates still speak of this as a winning strategy (and indeed it was), it also reproduced the utility as a center of power and promoted a top-down style of environmental advocacy that had long shut Austin's minoritized and marginalized communities out of its environmental benefits. Building support in this way, by appealing to those who are not only likely to share your perspective and its blindspots, but that have also already shaped the political landscape in their interest, this creates the perfect conditions for injustices to transpire, persist, and even intensify. Thus, part of the struggle for just transition entails keeping the question of what counts as environmental justice or injustice held open at the same time that the former is being pursued and/or the latter resisted. 

Adam, James. 2023. "Petro-ghosts." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

This image reminds me of how mutual aid and communities keep each other fed, and safe, and how local practices are actually best practices. My own research， although not immediatley related to the specific public health concern of COVID, will focus on Indigenous food soverignty, particularly the right and autonomy to ferment and distribute alcohol (紅糯米酒) within the Amis community, and their current fight with the local health department on declaring whether or not their alcohol is "safe" for public consumption and distribution.

Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan journalist and author tweeted: 'There were two anti-police brutality protests in Nairobi today. The one featuring white people made it's way to the US embassy undisturbed. The one led by working class and poor folks ended in teargas and arbitrary arrests.'

On March 25, 2020 the Kenyan government imposed a curfew to limit movement in Nairobi to prevent the spreading of COVID-19. In the ensuing months, the police 'enforced' the curfew by killing as many people as COVID-19 in Nairobi. The police have had a long and bloody history in Nairobi. Missing Voices Kenya have documented the shocking number of people who have lots their lives to police brutality over the years. Although groups in poor neighbourhoods such as Mathare have long held protests against police violence, the recent murder of George Floyd in the US has lent momentum to this movement. Thus, these groups took to the street to walk to the apartment where Yasin Moyo, a 13 year old playing on his balcony was killed by police, to demand that Black lives mattered- everywhere. The protests ended in the police tear gassing protestors.

A separate group comprising of many white protestors marched to the US Embassy to protest extrajudicial killings in the US and Kenya. From reports I have been reading about the protests on Twitter, these groups were left unharmed by the police. It is thus important that we recognize the the situatedness of protests agains police violence in different parts of the world, and the specific histories and contexts that shape each one of them, while recognizing their common themes.