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Anonymous (not verified)
Lee argues that EJ practice has long stagnated over an inability to properly define the concept of disproportionate (environmental and public health) impacts, but that national conversations on system racism and the development of EJ mapping tools have improved his outlook on the potential for better application of the concept of disproportionate impact. Lee identifies mapping tools (e.g. CalEnviroScreen) as a pathway for empirically based and analytically rigorous articulation and analysis of disproportionate impacts that are linked to systemic racism. In describing the scope and nature of application of mapping tools, Baker highlights the concept of cumulative impacts (the concentration of multiple environmental, public health, and social stressors), the importance of public participation (e.g. Hoffman’s community science model), the role of redlining in creating disproportionate vulnerabilities, and the importance of integrating research into decision making processes. Baker ultimately argues that mapping tools offer a promising opportunity for integrating research into policy decision making as part of a second generation of EJ practice. Key areas that Lee identifies as important to the continued development of more effective EJ practice include: identifying good models for quantitative studies and analysis, assembling a spectrum of different integrative approaches (to fit different contexts), connecting EJ research to policy implications, and being attentive to historical contexts and processes that produce/reproduce structural inequities.

St. Louis Anthropocene: displacement & replacement

JJP

A brief essay about St. Louis' notorious eminent domain history--

--along with 2 recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles about "urban renewal" projects that are scheduled to reoccupy the Mill Flats area, which hosted the most notorious episode of displacement of African-American communities: the Chouteau Greenway project (will it serve or displace low-income St. Louisans?); and SLU's Mill Creek Flats high-rise project, which certainly will, and whose name seems to me an especially tone-deaf if gutsy move...

https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Margaret-Garb-St-Louis-Eminent-Domain

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/steelcote-developer-plans-more-apartments-brewery-space-in-million-midtown/article_811eaf96-76e1-5c20-a870-1e79abd3f06e.html

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/chouteau-greenway-project-aims-to-knit-st-louis-neighborhoods-together/article_55fea4e6-6829-5c80-9168-313305b4e3bb.html

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harrison.leinweber

Outside of this class and STS 6834 at Virgina Tech, it was difficult to find other places where this article was referenced. Because the article was published as part of a collection of articles related to this same topic, I assume that those who purchase the book for educational and research purposes read and discus the article at some length.

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harrison.leinweber

The citations ranged widely. Many of the citations at the beginning of the article seemed to not be related to treatment as much as they were to social issues. There were also several articles that the authors referenced that the authors had written previously. Finally, there were also articles relating to treatment and statistics based on different treatment strategies on micro- and macro-scales. These citations show that the authors may have a decent support in social reform. I'm not sure how common it is to cite your own works as fact in academia, so I will withhold comment on that.

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harrison.leinweber

Scott Knowles is the Head of the Department of History at Drexel University in Pennsylvania. He specializes in the history of technology, disaster, and public policy. He has a number of other publications that are relevant to the DSTS Network including a book, The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America, and co-authored "Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster, and a volume on the Fukushima disasters. He is not professionally situated among emergency responders; however, he does conduct research on the subject.

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harrison.leinweber

This program is viewed as a novelty to the public, as it is the first college of its kind to offer a degree in homeland security and emergency preparedness. A number view it as a step in the right direction and an innovation. The program does not appear to have been around for long enough to yeild graduates, so those results are still unkown.

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harrison.leinweber

this report has spread to a number of academic institutions and their websites. This report seems to be relatively old, so I was unable to find any news reports that cited it. It appears that there are a number of other articles related to this topic; however, I was unable to find any direct connections between them and this report.

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Anonymous (not verified)
" Then, after the scale of the disaster had sunk in and victims began to realize they were barred by the local and federal authorities from returning home, another kind of trauma set in. Families had to find a place to live, a way to replace lost income, a place for their children to go to school, a way to obtain their prescription medications and telephones, a way to pay mounting unpaid bills for homes they no longer inhabited. Without their personal documents, they had to try to track insurance policies, if they had them, bank accounts, and health records, to begin the slow process of accessing government or insurance funds to help pay for their displacement and their hoped-for recovery. The reality of how much had been destroyed, not just in personal physical property but in whole communities, whole ways of life, had just begun to be felt" "The ongoing conditions of displacement have prompted some to report that, despite the length of time since the actual disaster, New Orleans is still in a state of “responding” rather than “recovery.”4 This ongoing predicament is key to understanding that what we are calling “chronic disaster syndrome” is different from posttraumatic stress disorder, in which traumatic events are isolated in time and symptoms are related to events in the past. In the case of Katrina displacement, conditions that are traumatic continue; they are ongoing. " " “Cleaning up the mess” in this case included a deliberate effort to get rid of the poorest sectors of the population, who were seen as a drain on public resources— those who lived in public housing. The notion that subverting support for public-sector recovery and using disaster to enrich private contractors by evicting and “erasing” the poor were part of a deliberate plan was affirmed for residents when they heard one of their state lawmakers say, in regard to the loss of public housing from the storms and flooding, that “God did what we could not do.""

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harrison.leinweber

This article discussses why Haiti can't "build back better" after the series of disasters that have come its way. The article mentions that Haiti has become reliant upon international contractors as aid when building back because of local and international distrust of the government. This combined with the fact that many public health experts think that the UN is responsible for the cholera outbreak has caused fewer donations, and those donations that are recieved to be used less efficiently.