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The Safe Side of the Fence

World War II's Manhattan Project required the refinement of massive amounts of uranium, and St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Chemical Works took on the job.

Omar Pérez: Submarine Roots, Resisting (un)natural disasters

omarperez

I am interested in seeing how social ties and networks have been used to cope with (un)natural disasters. My research focus on places under disasters conditions such as Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, in which social ties have made the difference between life and death. Furthermore, “natural” disaster has been used to approved austerity measures and unjust policies to impoverished communities like in New Orleans after Katrina. These policies were not new, as they are rooted in structures of power to preserve the status quo. Yet, people have resisted, “through a network of branches, cultures, and geographies” that has stimulated a reflective process of looking within for solutions rather than outside. As often this outside solutions are not only detached from community’s reality but can perpetuate social injustices and inequalities.

McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. A. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.

Bullard, R. D., & Wright, B. (Eds.). (2009). Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to reclaim, rebuild, and revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Westview Press.

Annotated Bibliography (EIS)

This link complements the Essay Bibliography of the Project Environmental Justice framing implications in the EIS.

EPA Database on EISs

This (EIS) database provides information about EISs provided by federal agencies, and EPA's comments concerning the EIS process.

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seanw146

I found the part where the healthcare worker relates to the difficulty of his position most compelling and persuasive. A man on the burial team talks about some of the challenges he faced. He says that they are in denial about the disease. For example, a man’s wife died from the disease. They took the body and marked the room with the health tattoo, do not enter and barricaded the door. A health team was tasked to disinfect the building but the moment they left the husband bust the door down and went inside. He died as well. “You see the challenges? You tell people, don’t do this, they pass behind you go do it, don’t do this, they say we are eating free money, the government is lying”.

                I was probably influenced by the fact that I am a healthcare worker and while not the same situation, I can relate to his dilemma. 

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seanw146

Dr. Knowles points out the structural failures of the World Trade Center due to steel beams and poor fireproofing material. Dr. Knowles connects the burning of the Capitol Building in 1814, the 1850 Hague Street boiler explosion in NYC, and Chicago’s Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903 to convey the different aspects of a structural disaster. The Capital Building focused on the investigation, the importance of the sentimental value of the building, and rebuild it as well as the difficulties involved with doing so. The Hague Street Explosion investigation attempted to pinpoint the root cause of the disaster, but after thorough investigation there were many failures at many different levels which led to the ultimate failure. The Iroquois theater fire revealed issues with public policy, regulation compliance, and public perception in addition to its investigation.

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seanw146

1) “The logic of state soverignty in the control of migration clearly prevailed over the universality of the principle of the right to life.”

2) “By analogy with the therapeutic mesasures applied at the end of life for patients suffering from illness deemed incurable, we can describe the measures and procedures devised to allow foreign patients without residence rights to stay in France, receive treatment, and have their living costs paid, as a compassion protocol.”

3) “Precisely because he or she is illegally resident, the sick immigrant may undertake medical tests or seek treatment under a different name, so that the cost of treatment is coverd, or simply to avoid being denounced and deported.”

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seanw146

1)            Personal trauma: this includes not only the direct, immediate effects of the disaster but also the long-term mental and physical effects from the disaster.

2)            Way of life disrupted “disaster capitalism”: the next part of the syndrome includes business taking advantage of the situation for profits; the main case being private companies profiting off of federal funding to rebuild the homes and lives of the citizens who were affected.

3)            Displacement: the well-off are able to relocated after the disaster has ended but for those less fortunate, there permanent effects are worse, and there is little they can do to relocated to their homes and communities after the superficial aspect of the disaster have ended.