Search

PS. Extra-Local Actions: Hawaii. 2023

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

After the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, the state spent $1 billion in cleanup and land remediation for one year. It developed a standard for post-wildfire recovery program occuring in phases. Phase 1 is household hazardous waste removal with removal of visible waste like bulk asbestos. Chemical contamination in the soil is addressed later. Phase 2 is Debris Removal includes site assessment, documentation, asbestos assessment and removal, debris removal, hazardous tree removal, soil testing and contamination removal, and erosion control. California's Governor Newsom deployed 101 state and local government personnel for Hawaii. Survivors of the Camp Fire have also offered emotional and practical advice to Lahaina survivor. 

Sources:
https://calrecycle.ca.gov/disaster/wildfires/
https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2023-08-15/survivors-of-ca…

PS. Hazards in Hawaii. 2023

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

August 2023 Update:

 

October 2023 Update:
Hazardous Waste after the Lahain fires: After the Lahaina fires, chemical pollutants in the air and water present a hazardous health issue. Chemicals include benzene, polcyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, lead, asbestos. Half the buildings in Lahaina predated the 1978 federal health ban. Symptoms from this chemical exposure can include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite. Apart form these predictable materials, the debris contains combustion by-products of a unique construction material--caneck, made from sugarcane fibers and treated with arsenic as a termite repellant. 

Sources:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/maui-residents-face-lingering-toxic…
https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/08/toxic-debris-from-the-lahaina-fire-wi…

PS. Stakeholder Actions: Hawaii. 2023

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

State power in Hawaii: The state of Hawaii was the first state in the US to declare climate emergency. They have a pretty extensive climate change portal. The state is also reported as enacting many progressive legislations, such as banning some sunscreens to protect coral reefs, raise the smoking age, commited to goals in Paris climate deal. It also aims to be dependent 100% on renewable energy by 2045. The state has also banned chlorpyrifos, a chemical that in other parts of the US is resulting into multiple disabilities for agricultural populations. 

According to the maunakeasyllabus, however, the state of Hawaii participates in production of Hawaiin culture as a resource that undermines self-determination. In their words: 

“For the state, the work entails producing Hawaiian culture as a resource that can be managed in the first place. (Yúdice 2004: 4). Culture-as-resource works in tandem with public trust jurisprudence to make feasible the settler state’s governance of the differences of Indigenous communities and the pasts that produce it… What is expedient about this rendering of Hawaiian culture is that the state can protect it, usually under a management plan, thereby safeguarding the resource-glue that presumably coheres Hawaiian community; and thus allows the settler state to conclude that it protects Hawaiian culture without having to address Hawaiian self-determination.”

PS. Hawaii Community Assets. 2023

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

PS EcoGovLab skills mapping activity Spring 2023

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

I see immense skill in being able to conceptualize and envision a paradigm for research to translate knowledge-to-action. If one of our goals is expanding notions of what counts as data and expertise, we have members especially skilled in different ways of knowing, in different methodological styles, and in different content and thematic expertise. For e.g. just going by who is in the room today: we have skills in educating (whether to family members or to K-12 schools or university students); in designing curriculum across different environments; in collaborating with different kinds of knowledge partners (NGOs, government agencies, schools); in negotiating interpersonal relationships; in memorialization and archiving practices; and various technical skills.

This image hides vulnerable actors, historical dispossession, and organized resistance

danapowell
In response to

This image hides many things, including:

1. the slow but steady dispossession of smallholder (often African-American) farms that have been overtaken/bought out by Smithfield Foods to enlarge the industrial footprint of CAFOs;

2. the hogs themselves, whose hooves never touch the ground as they stand on "hog slats" inside the hangers as they move through the Fordist stages of transformation from individual animals into packaged pork;

3. the human operators, themselves, who are rarely wealthy, and are contracted for decades (or life) to purchase all "inputs" (feed, semen, etc) from Smithfield; in 2010, I took my EJ class from UNC-Chapel Hill to visit one of these operators at his CAFO, outside Raleigh, NC, and he was battling Smithfield and Duke Energy to be allowed to erect and operate a small-scale, experimental wind turbine that ran on methane captured from his pigs; years later, individual efforts at small-scale biogas would be overtaken by entities like Align LNG which now, in Sampson County, proposes the "Grady Road Project" to scale-up factory-farmed methane gas capture from much larger operations;

4. the legacy of resistance to this form of agricultural production, led by community-based intellectuals like Gary Grant, who as early as the 1980s was speaking out, traveling to state and federal lawmakers, publishing, and organizing against the growing harms of CAFOs in his home territory of Halifax County, NC. [See the suggested readings by Gary Grant and Steve Wing, Naeema Muhammed and others, that tracks this organized resistance and the formation of several community-based EJ groups in response].

Historical and Spatial Analytics for widening the "scope" of hazards

danapowell
In response to

The Sampson County landfill can be smelled before seen. This olfactory indicator points toward the sensory scale of these pungent emissions but also toward the geographic scope: this landfill receives waste from as far away as Orange County (the state's most expensive property/tax base), among dozens of other distant counties, making this "hazardous site" a lesson in realizing impact beyond the immediate locale. So when we answer the question, "What is this hazard?" we must think not only about the landfill as a thing in itself but as a set of economic and political relations of capital and the transit of other peoples' trash, into this lower-income, rural, predominantly African-American neighborhood. In this way, 'thinking with a landfill' (like this one in Sampson County) enables us to analyze wider sets of relationships, NIMBY-ist policymaking, consumerism, waste management, and the racialized spatial politics that enable Sampson County to be the recipient of trash from all over the state. At the same time we think spatially and in transit, we can think historically to (a) inquire about the DEQ policies that enable this kind of waste management system; and (b) the emergent "solutions" in the green energy sector that propose to capture the landfill's methane in order to render the stench productive for the future -- that is, to enable more consumption, by turning garbage into gas. As such, the idea of "hazard" can expand beyond the site itself - impactful and affective as that site might be - to examine the uneven relations of exchange and capitalist-driven values of productivity that further entrench infrastructures such as these. [This offers a conceptual corrollary to thinking, as well, about the entrenchment of CAFOs for "green" biogas development, as we address elsewhere in the platform].

psrigyan ecogovlab annotation 1

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

I hope to build and sustain relations of collaboration, understanding, and even friendship. I am using friendship the way Mike Fortun thinks about the concept in his "coming out soon" book. 

"Friendship is a volatile conglomeration and an opaquely patterned set of precarious habits and practices that nevertheless still comports us toward openness and attentiveness. Friendship is trying, always."

On a more professional level, I want to be supported in my career development with interdisciplinary research methods and styles that allow me to explore, experiment, and engage with diverse communities and knowledges. 

 

Santa Ana Community Assets Arts & Education PSrigyan

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

From my notes taken during the MPNA-GREEN and UCI EcoGov Lab event on June 4, 2022

  • Downtown Santa Ana (DTSA) Art Walk: "community-based arts showcase across downtown Santa Ana from 6pm-10pm on the First Saturday of each month." The showcase exhibits artists from the Santa Ana and wider OC community 
  • Comunidad Unida Aire Limpio (Comité CUAL): One of the first of its kind in Southern California, this community monitoring air network in Santa Ana established as a grant by the California Air Resources Board has a network of over twenty Dylos air monitors which offer air quality data to residents for environmental justice characterization. 
  • Community Resource Fairs & Walkathons: MPNA has hosted community resource fairs and walkathons, such as the 15th Annual Madison Park Neighborhood Association Walk-A-Thon in 2017. According to the resident who shared picture of a community resource fair, these events offer opportunities for entire families to exercise, bike, and walk, and overall having a festive time. 
  • The Frida Cinema: Orange County's only non-profit arthouse and independent theater. The Cinema has a long history of partnering with social and environmental justice organizing for community mobilization. 
  • Santa Ana Movies in the Park: "The Santa Ana Movies in the Park series will take place every Wednesday, beginning June 8 through August 31, 2022 at various City parks throughout Santa Ana. Pre-movie festivities will begin at 5:30 p.m. and will include exhibitors, jumpers, and arts and crafts for kids. Movie screenings will begin promptly at dusk. Free popcorn will be provided to the first 500 guests each night, while supplies last. Food vendors will also be offering affordable and delicious dinner and dessert options. The series is free to attend."
  • ALMA Science Academy: "Aspire, Learn, Mentor & Achieve (ALMA) Science Academy is a STEM education and mentorship program for under-resourced Santa Ana youth grades 4-6". 
  • Santa Ana College: Opened in 1915 for students from Santa Ana High School, this fourth oldest community college in California serves over 18,000 undergraduate students. 

reflection call annotation 4 by prerna

prerna_srigyan
Annotation of
In response to

I would like to think more about the politics of collaboration. Who does what kind of labor in a transnational project? How do we make our political and ethical commitments visible?

This brings me to the infrastructures at present for collaboration: How do we navigate between using the platform for collaboration and using the Collective call time? I would like to suggest that we have rotating roles for note-taking, archiving and analysing Collective call data. We can use Otter.ai for live transcription. It is not the best in terms of encryption but it's smooth and easy. Do people have other suggestions of live transcription softwares? 

To archive the existing Collaboation Calls, we can (I can contribute) make a Timeline essay which would serve as a log and place to annotate meta-analysis of those calls.