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Santa Ana, California

Misria
In response to

Over half of the neighborhoods in Santa Ana (shown in pink on the map below), California are designated disadvantaged communities (DACs) by CalEnviroScreen, the leading tool for assessing environmental injustice in California. GREEN-MPNA, a community-based organization in Santa Ana, is working to change this through its DAC-X campaign: an action-oriented movement to reduce disadvantage through pollution reduction, health equity, economic justice, and inclusive governance. Aware of the risks of gentrification, the goal is to x-out disadvantage in a way that empowers rather than displaces current communities. The University of California EcoGovLab has worked closely with GREEN-MPNA on the design and development of the DAC-X campaign. The four pillars of the campaign were chosen, in part, because they align with the State of California’s own criteria for designating communities as disadvantaged. DAC-X’s design also draws together a diverse array of advocacy organizations, government agencies and schools working against issues that contribute to disadvantage, knitting together threads of work that often run in parallel. The long term goal is to increase these organizations’ collective capacity to address disadvantage – in a way that recognizes the intersectionalities and cross-scale interactions that produce it. One tactic we have used to advance the DAC-X campaign is the staging of Environmental Justice Stakeholder Meetings that bring relevant governmental agencies together in one room to speak and respond to Santa Ana residents.Thus far, these meetings have focused on pollution reduction and inclusive governance. Going forward, we will continue to grow our network of alliances in Santa Ana by organizing Environmental Justice Stakeholder Meetings to address other pillars of the DAC-X campaign, bringing for example, health equity advocates to the table, or educational institutions that could support workforce development. The DAC-X campaign itself – and this poster – also results from an alliance – between EcoGovLab (Browne, Adams, Fortun) and GREEN-MPNA (Flores, Gutierrez & Rea).

Browne, Aiden, James Adam, Jose Rea and Kim Fortun. 2023. "GREEN-MPNA's DAC-X Campaign for Environmental Justice: Designing for Alliance." 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.

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FEMA has involved in fire grants, preparedness, mitigation and individual assistance in different emergency response. FEMA aim to recover after disaster in short term, and also rebuild and finance support for local government in long term.

However, from some research shows that FEMA seems is not good to approach disaster or emergency response. For the Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA received negative criticism because of the slow response, un-effective assistance. Besides, FEMA also has intense criticism in others disaster, such as Buffalo snowstorm (2006) and California wildfires (2007).

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The law has signed for emergency triggers financial and physical assistance through the FEMA. It is also funding for training as agency’s preparedness effort. It shapes the way of prepare for hazards, and make a better intergovernmental coordination.

 

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There is an interactive tool which can search some grant data by location and disaster. They apply diagram to show the data and easy to analyse. For example, Summary of Disaster Declarations and Grants which can see the Federal declared disaster occurred in each state, and also summary of FEMA’s support for fire, preparedness, mitigation, and assistance. There are also other graphics show different data of disaster and FEMA assistance.