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Disproportionate Impacts

gracefine

In my opinion, something that is ethically wrong with this case is the fact that much of the pollution coming from biomass factories like Enviva are disproportionately affecting Black and Brown rural comminities. These communities experience health issues from the saw dust and can be seen cleaning sawdust off their outside belongings. It is important to see how much thes communities are impacted when looking at biomass corporations.

Grace Fine Annotation

gracefine

The complaints of Duplin County residents and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network about general permitting for hog farms in Eastern NC. These permits would give way to more ground and water pollution due to the relaxed regulations on corporate farms that hold multiple different numbers of livestock. Plans for the implementationa pipline called the "Grady Road project" interrupt the family and small scale farms in the ares. A quote from the Duplin County NAACP president Robert O. Moore says:

"The corporation has refused to implement any technology to clean up the water, citing the cost of doing so was too expensive. Yet the cost of this biogas project rivals the cost that would have been to implement cleaner and safer technology to ensure the safety of those living near these operations."

Many local groups in Eastern NC counties have previously tried to receive assistance to help with their agriculture waste managment systems, yet fall short due to many government officials only focusing on corporate farms. 

Read more at the link: https://southerlymag.org/2022/03/24/biogas-could-do-more-harm-than-good…
 

COVID-19 collaboration call: project reflections & directions (Response)

makasuarez

I am particularly interested in comparative approaches on how different sites (and academics in those places or studying them) are thinking about COVID in their localities. How are people dealing with issues of trust and information in an era when entire archives are in danger (like the police archives in Guatemala which had been rescued in the past decade and are now in danger). This question expands beyond COVID but has become crucial in the context of Ecuador where reliable data is hard to come by. Another important aspect for us is how indigenous communities are fairing amid the pandemic (here a fabulous article on the terrible situation in Brazil—which is not so different to Ecuador's). This touches on issues of communication, infrastructure, language, systemic racism, and more. Finally, I am also interested in ways in which we might be a able to contribute to some of these issues from our academic spaces. Collaborators (which can take many forms) are certainly welcomed.

Mobilizing comedians/political commentators

makasuarez
One of the mediums of communications that has reached well beyond the US are monologues by well-known comedians that are partly explaining, partly commenting on current BLM events. One of them is Hasan Minjah and his message We Cannot Stay Silent About George Floyd where he calls on migrants in particular to act in the face of racism rather than perpetuate it. Nearly 4 million people have seen the clip, which is part of Minjah's broader Netflix TV series The Patriot Act (who makes these videos and pays for them is also relevant here). In Ecuador, this video circulated mainly among English speaking young adults, mainly via WhatsApp. It triggered many group discussions around what is happening in the US and how we might think about this political moment with regards to our own racist history. The second video is by Trevor Noah and has over 8 million views. In it, he explains what racism means in relationship to the social contract and how it has failed for too many people. To me it is particularly interesting to see the pedagogical approach their videos take and the truly diverse audiences they speak to. The ripple effect the videos have is important for thinking about how the BLM movement has mobilized political sentiments well beyond the US and what mediums can effectively do this (and for whom).

Maka Suarez

makasuarez

I'm a co-founder of Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography, a space for academic experimentations supported by two top ranked universities in Ecuador (University of Cuenca and FLACSO-Ecuador). We are located in Cuenca, where I am assistant professor of medical anthropology. Together with a team of researchers we have been tracking covid19 with a specific focus on Latin America through Spanish language podcasts, collective texts, webinars, and online forums.

My current ethnographic interest is on documenting data distrust networks from the neighborhood scale to the national level in Ecuador, and how these networks have produced distinctive approaches (and failures) to the current pandemic.

Maka Suarez: thinking about air pollution locally

makasuarez

I was interested in learning about how air pollution has been talked/researched in the New Orleans area. Mainly, the need to highlight local specificities and historical analysis. A 1950s study on air pollution in New Orleans (Air Pollution and New Orleans Asthma), for instance, documented asthma incidence among black communities (sadly the article still uses the N word), and its relationship to underground fire burning in nearby dumps. The study is more comprehensive and did a census in part of the city as well as a number of medical tests on 84 individuals.

A second study, this one from 2007, documented asthma in children (Prevalence of Indoor Allergen Exposures among New Orleans Children with Asthma). It has a relevant focus of the differences between document indoor allergen exposure in different areas of the US and how subtropical weather in NOLA plays an important role in the kinds of allergies that children with asthma face. One of the main findings of the study can be summarized in the following quote “our data show that asthmatic children in New Orleans may be exposed to a greater number of allergens at moderate to high levels compared to asthmatic children living in other inner cities and to the general population.”

Finally, a third reference, the book Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast talks about something, others have already pointed out (@Omar Perez Figueroa for instance) regarding areas that undergo dramatic change and hardship after natural disasters like hurricane Katrina and Rita. This book, particularly chapter 5 (though I can’t access the full text) explains the highly toxic environment that resulted (and remains) in the New Orleans area due to little clean-up action following the disasters. Lack of funding, deference to poorly resourced local authorities, and policy-failure all affect New Orleans (and many of our sites of research) particularly the fate of vulnerable communities.

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Kristine.Gerges

In the College of New Jersey Hurrican Sandy oral history, The oral collected some information about residents affected by Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey. All the stories about the effects of such a hazard include all groups and classes of people, such as poor or rich, young and old, and families and single people. Hurrican Sandy's damages were distributed among all groups of people, by destroying houses, drowning people, and lost of electricity and water for days and months. This oral history shows the different stories and events of all the different groups that were affected really bad in the Hurrican 

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Kristine.Gerges

Hurricane Sandy impacted the community by distroying homes and landscapes. The Red Cross's decision to give out $310M as a recovery of the Hurricane is such a great way to step on solving such a vulnerabilitial hazard. Hurricane Sandy impacted buildings and lives, including children who lost their homes. Having a fund for the recovery of such an event is a great way to help people who lost their homes or beloved ones. Government started to help the hurricane victims right after the Hurricane by providing them homes or food. However, I believe that having a fund for recovery will be more flixable to help the hurrican victims. Lots of families lost family members in the hurrican. The Red Cross is helping with money, which cannot bring lives back. However, I believe that I is relieving to just think about those victims and consider them in the plan as well. There also lots of organizations were helping with the recovery form Hurricane Sandy by providing volunteers to build up houses and volunteers to make children recover from the event by providing performing arts. $310M fund will help those organizations do their job of building houses and bring kids' spirits back.