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In their introduction, Vermeylen's argument for a particularist and decolonial approach to justice through a recognition of plural ontologies and epistemologies that decenters Western liberal discourse and its theory of justice. How does bringing the lens of coloniality into environmental justice literature alter our visions of energy futures? Can we make appeals to environmental justice without recourse to liberal theories of individual rights and property ownership? More specifically, I am wondering how our team can study and address this dynamic plurality of ways of understanding and experiencing in/justice in this site, and how can we engage this plurality in productive ways? What axes of difference and inequality should we be looking for/at (race, gender, class, sexual orientation, citizenship, housing status, etc)? If the Anthropocene is coloniality by another name, how can we foreground this in our approach?

The authors productively place three bodies of theory in conversation, abolitionist theories, urban political ecology, and decolonial theory, to rewrite the intellectual trajectories of EJ as extending the legacy of the Black Radical Tradition. What are our intellectual and political genealogies as students and researchers of the quotidian anthropocene? What genealogies are we pushing against? Drawing from their examples of spaces and historical moments of interracial solidarity, what kinds of coalitions do we see ourselves partnering with and contributing to as (largely?) newcomers to the activism in Austin?

In this fascinating review, the authors show how environmental justice is reproductive justice (following the water protectors at Standing Rock) and how this intersection reshapes understandings of the environment, embodiment, and exposure. I was particularly interested in the concepts of social and cultural re/production, and how we might think about this in light of Austin's rapid gentrification. They discuss an intersectional approach as a multi-scalar approach, from climate change to chemical exposure in the home - and I think this could be extended to a inter/multi-generational approach to justice (esp given our focus on renewables). The authors show how the RJ framework rethinks the individualism of reproductive choice as the right to conceive and bear children in conditions of social justice and human flourishing - then how does the current energy system (and future energy transitions) negate or create these conditions, and for whom? If we think about biological/cultural reproduction, how do we also incorporate the concept of reproductive labor into our analysis? Finally, I think they make an important point about the harms of documentation, and it would be great to hear everyone's thoughts (Esp those who have participated in earlier field campuses) on what the goal and ethics of our knowledge production are?

Walsh's piece gives us a concise history and geography of environmental racism in Austin, by drawing our attention to how ineequality is written into city law and urban planning. The ongoing legacies of segregation have shaped social life from access to public services to access to recreational spaces. Given the foundations of environmental racism in zoning laws and land use regulations, so succinctly highlighted by Walsh, how does/must the process of energy transition address these issues? Can there be zoning for justice, and what would that look like? In what way can our work at the field campus contribute to the existing work being done by orgs like El Pueblo and PODER?

1. "But with every explosion that shook the Japanese plant it became clearer: there was nobody -- not in Japan, nor Russia, nor the United States -- who had the relevant know-how, equipment, or strategy to handle a nuclear disaster. No international nuclear emergency response group exists today." pg 194

2. "But in the interest of sustainable, socially legitimate solutions, arguably deisions about even the technical responses to disasters should not be left to scientists and engineers alone." pg 196

3. "While national and international disaster relief organizations have refined their response techniques over the past decades, nuclear emergency preparedness and response has hardly gained traction." pg 200

Per Bech - Danish Psychiatrist who provided the author with a story about a patient of his. He is an innovator in clinical psychometrics. 

Journal of the American Medical Association - in 1992 published an article about giving weight to the combination of doctor's experience and biological plausibility. 

Hellmuth Kaiser - a teacher to the author and taught him about fictional cases portrayed on stage. 

Oxford University Press - began publishing a journal devoted to case reports of patients. 

New England Jounrl of Medicine - opened an issue with a case history to highlight patient experience. 

Lone Lindberg - coauthor for Dr. Bech, point out that spontaneous recovery from depression late in life is rare

Leston Havens - psychoanalyst - uses an interesting approach with his patients

"The outside world's response to Haiti's continuing cholera epidemic offers a revealing window on this disheartening dynamic"

"The source [of cholera] is clear to public health experts: Cholera was brought to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers quartered in a United Nations peacekeeping camp that spilled its waste into a tributary of the Artibonite."

"The UN has, thus far, refused to acknowledge responsibility for the cholera catastrophe"