Analyze

Why is the rate of incarceration in Louisiana so high? How do we critique the way prisons are part of infrastructural solutions to anthropocenic instabilities? As Angela Davis writes, “prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.” One way of imagining and building a vision of an anti-carceral future is practiced in the Solitary Gardens project here in New Orleans: 

The Solitary Gardens are constructed from the byproducts of sugarcane, cotton, tobacco and indigo- the largest chattel slave crops- which we grow on-site, exposing the illusion that slavery was abolished in the United States. The Solitary Gardens utilize the tools of prison abolition, permaculture, contemplative practices, and transformative justice to facilitate exchanges between persons subjected to solitary confinement and volunteer proxies on the “outside.” The beds are “gardened” by prisoners, known as Solitary Gardeners, through written exchanges, growing calendars and design templates. As the garden beds mature, the prison architecture is overpowered by plant life, proving that nature—like hope, love, and imagination—will ultimately triumph over the harm humans impose on ourselves and on the planet.

"Nature" here is constructed in a very particularistic way: as a redemptive force to harness in opposition to the wider oppressive system the architecture of a solitary confinement cell is a part of. It takes a lot of intellectual and political work to construct a counter-hegemonic nature, in other words. Gardeners in this setting strive toward a cultivation of relations antithetical to the isolationist, anti-collective sociality prisons (and in general, a society in which prisons are a permanent feature of crisis resolution) foster.

My interest in NOLA anthropocenics pivots on water, and particularly the ways in which capitalist regimes of value and waste specify, appropriate, and/or externalize forms of water. My research is concerned with water crises more generally, and geographically situated in Flint, Michigan. I thought I could best illustrate these interests with a sampling of photographs from a summer visit to NOLA back in 2017. At the time, four major confederate monuments around the city had just been taken down. For supplemental reading, I'm including an essay from political theorist Adolph Reed Jr. (who grew up in NOLA) that meditates on the long anti-racist struggle that led to this possibility, and flags the wider set of interventions that are urgently required to abolish the landscape of white supremacy. 

Flooded street after heavy rains due to failures of city pumping infrastructure.

A headline from the same week in the local press.

Some statues are gone but other monuments remain (this one is annotated).

A Starbucks in Lakeview remembering Katrina--the line signifies the height of the water at the time.

Reading:

Adolph Reed Jr., “Monumental Rubbish” https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/06/25/monumental-rubbish-statues-torn-down-what-next-new-orleans

P.S. In case the photos don't show up in the post I'm attaching them in a PDF document as well! 

Several stakeholders are presented in this film. First, the families in the communities that were affected. This especially focused on Emmanuel Urey’s family who had to decide to leave some of their children behind in Liberia as they could not secure the necessary affidavits to bring them all to the US. Next, The first responders who have to deal with a public that does not trust them and does not follow health instruction. The government is the last main stakeholder presented in the film. They are trying to control the disease as well as treat those already infected which has many social issues on top of the medical issues such as starvation, water shortages, and shooting their own citizens to enforce the measures designed to protect them.

I used my already existing knowledge of the UN's structure and purpose to further synthesize the role and ability of the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. I also followed up on what sort and amount of aid US AID has been giving to Haiti. From their website, I discovered that they have donated $4.2 billion to date and have assisted in improving legal protections for vulnerable populations. Finally, I followed up on the fact that at press-time, the UN had not admitted responsibility for the cholera outbreak. I found a New York Time article dated 17 AUG 16 that says they had and are making significant new actions toward improving the situation.

Scott Gabriel Knowles, PHD is a department head and associate professor at Drexel University in the department of history and the center for science, technology and society. Prof. Knowles specializes in the history of technology, disasters, and public policy.

I'm not sure if other systems have been modeled off this one; however, it seems as though the Disaster STS network uses a similar system of annotating works in order to share their concepts and engage in discussions with others.

This article presents an argument for “compassion protocol” by examining what France has done—provide citizenship to immigrants who are not and suffer from a serious medical problem so that they can take advantage of full benefits of the healthcare system. This goes along with the larger theme of the difficulties in placing value on the lives of people who need care and weighing the costs of distributing that precious resource.

MSF is focused on providing aid where aid is needed, thus the name "Doctors without Borders." They don't care what the policital or socioeconomic status is in a region, they'll provide aid no matter what. They're also able to provide their own funding rather than relying upon that of local governments.

Dr. Vincanne Adams is the “Former Director (2000-2012) and Vice-Chair, Medical Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine (joint program with UC Berkeley Anthropology). Areas of research and publication include: Global Health, Asian Medical Systems, Social Theory, Critical Medical Anthropology, Sexuality and Gender, Safe Motherhood, Disaster Recovery, Tibet, Nepal, China and the US.”

Taslim van Hattum is a Director at the Maternal & Child Health Portfolio at The Louisiana Public Health Insitute, part of the Greater New Orleans Area Hospital & Health Care, and studied at the Louisiana Public Health Institute as well as the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

Dr. Diana Bianchi is the director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development with experience in prenatal geneticist, pediatrics, and obstetrics.

I looked into each of the disasters mentioned in the article to find out more about them. I had not heard of the theater fire or boiler explosion before, and found those very interesting.