Analyze

relate to the public image and reports on the data inititatives in turkey

I would love to have the community that has come together around this project to collaborate on creating some resources that could be interesting to broader academic and non-academic communities. For example, it would be great to work together to create some timelines on the platform around various themes relevant to COVID-19, and to do critical readings toghether of key scientific or official documents using the annotation features.

Beyond creating the "products" themselves, I think we would get a lot out of exercise in terms of thinking together on these kinds of projects.

In the US, many public intellectuals on the left have been discussing how this pandemic has challenged the seemingly inevitable dominance of neoliberal governing regimes and ideologies, and has expanded the conditions of possibility for social democratic or socialist ideas and policies. However, the imagined post-neoliberal era is no necessarily concieved of in the same way.

A couple of helpful examples include:

• In a widely shared video (2020), Naomi Klein draws on her previous work on disaster capitalism in the Shock Doctrine (2007) to argue not only that “Coronavirus Capitalism” must be resisted, but that there are many social democratic ideas “lying around” that are both crucial to responding to the current public health and economic crisis, and made possible because of the shock to the system. These ideas include the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, canceling student debt, guaranteeing paid sick leave, and providing permanent shelter to the unhoused.
  
  The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.
  
  
  
• Marxist geographer David Harvey wrote an article (2020) for Jacobin magazine that examined the pandemic through the lens of Marxist theory of crises, examining the mutation and transmission of the virus through neoliberal globalization’s production of nature, the failures of neoliberal healthcare systems to respond, and the crisis that the pandemic and its response pose to most forms of consumer capitalism. He contrasts the current COVID-19 economic crisis with the Great Recession, and argues, among other things, that:

…the burden of exiting from the current economic crisis now shifts to the United States and here is the ultimate irony: the only policies that will work, both economically and politically, are far more socialistic than anything that Bernie Sanders might propose and these rescue programs will have to be initiated under the aegis of Donald Trump, presumably under the mask of Making America Great Again.

All those Republicans who so viscerally opposed the 2008 bailout will have to eat crow or defy Donald Trump. The latter, if he is wise, will cancel the elections on an emergency basis and declare the origin of an imperial presidency to save capital and the world from “riot and revolution.”

At least in these articles, Klein is essentially issuing both a warning and an optimistic call to action while Harvey seems to be arguing neoliberalism’s incapacity to deal with this kind of crisis may lead to an embrace of at least some aspects of a “left-leaning” economic policy regime, but one that may well be represented and enacted through a nationalistic lens, likely at the expense of left movements, civil liberties, democratic participation, internationalism/transnationalism, marginalized populations, and migrants.

Harvey, David. 2020. “Anti-Capitalist Politics in the Time of COVID-19.” Jacobin, March 20, 2020. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/david-harvey-coronavirus-political-econo….

Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Macmillan.

———. 2020. “Coronavirus Capitalism — and How to Beat It.” Online Video. The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/coronavirus-capitalism/.

Finding a way to protest while observing social distancing, Never Again Action is organizing people in the US to protest in their cars in front of immigration detention centers. They are calling on state govenors to release all immigrant detainees in order to protect them from dangerous, crowded, and unsanitary conditions.

This image is a screenshot of one of their Facebook posts about an action at the Hudson County Detention Center in Kearny, New Jersey on March 22, 2020.

(As of 3/22/2020) The Sunnyside Greenmarket (42nd &, 43rd Ave, Sunnyside, NY) in Queens, NY remained opened, but instituted several measures to comply with social distancing including:

• Preventing customers from handling produce
• Chalking the sidewalk to keep customers in line six feet apart
• Many of the vendors were wearing gloves and/or masks
• Food scraps were no longer being collected

Local grocery stores, however, were not instituting these kinds of policies. Aside from changing hours, providing (I assume) employees with gloves and masks, and, in some cases, providing an hour during the early morning for elderly shoppers, the practice of shopping saw little change (except, of course, for shelves that were more bare than usual).

• I am situated in New York, NY (Queens), and am teaching anthropology at John Jay College (CUNY) & STS at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
• I have been involved in the Disaster Studies Network for some time, focusing on slow disaster, nuclear waste, and remediation. I'm interested in what forms of public and collaborative STS can be developed, particularly during times of crisis.
• I can be reached at delatorre.pedro@gmail.com
• I am especilly interested in the following questions:
• How is the aftermath of COVID-19 crisis being imagined in different settings? How is this shaping beliefs, practices, and policies?
• How, in different settings, have dominant political regimes and ideologies shaped COVID-19 preparation and response?
• How is ‘social distancing’ practiced and interpreted in different COVID-19 settings?

The article describes infrastructure as something that needs to be built with a focus on people as well as the environment. This can improve transportation (reduced air pollution in Newark), create a more sustained access to power and energy, increase economic mobility, make communities more resilient, improve health, etc. This company has done work on sustainability projects in regards to infrastructure in Newark, which demonstrates their engagement with sustainable and resilient infrastructure. 

Nearly half of Newark's school's are contaminated with dangerous levels of lead. Or so they were two years ago when this article was published. This relates to infrastructure because we are poisoning poor, primarily black and hispanic communities, whom already have low resilience. Because they live in empowerished neighborhouds, their children go to lower income schools, and when they drink the water provided there, they put themselves at risk of cancer, infertillity, and other results of lead poisoning. If Newark's infrastructure was more balanced between white and black communities, there would not be impoverished areas that have poisonous drinking water at schools, as the water standard in the schools would have been raised to that of higher income communities. 

The incredible amount of awful potholes in Newark called for this report. This report lists all of the streets and the dates that they will be paved in Newark, and it is one fat list. Newark roads are awful. Bad roads=poor infrastructure= weak resilience. If there is a disaster, someone who lives in a poor area may hit a pothole and be completely stranded and die, as a result of the poor infrastructure of our roads in Newark. I once hit a pothole in Newark and the bang from my wheel hitting the edge of the hole was loud and drastic enough for me to worry about a flat tire. I didn't get a flat, fortunately, but my tire frame was bent.