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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! 

I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited 85 times. This is a pretty large amount of citations, which are primarily articles regarding societal effects of distress and disasters. 

The article is published in the Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology. It is meant for clinical oncologists and publishes articles on medical oncology, clinical trials, radiology, surgery, basic research, epidemiology, and palliative care. It was established in 1971 and is the first journal from Japan to publish clinical research on cancer in English. Since 1977, JJCO is a sister-journal to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and is linked through Oxford Journals. 

This PDF does not include the bibliography, but it is clear that a lot of the work is original due to his traveling and conducting of research. His citatiosn throughout the chapter indicate that he did reference other knowledgable and notable anthropologists and their work helped frame his argument. 

1. “…large­-scale social forces—racism, gender inequality, poverty, political violence and war, and sometimes the very policies that address them—often determine who falls ill and who has access to care.”
2. "the holy grail of modern medicine remains the search for the molecular basis of disease."
3. "In some senses, the model is simple: clinical and community barriers to care are removed as diagnosis and treatment are declared a public good and made available free of charge to patients living in poverty."
4. "The poor are the natural constituents of public health, and physicians ... are the natural attourneys of the poor."

This report does not address matters of disaster, but does dive into health issues faced by those discriminated against for being transgender and gender non-conforming.

1. I first looked up travel to and from Liberia during the Ebola outbreak, since it had been seized. There was a ban, which has since been lifted after, but people coming to and from West Africa are still screened and recommended to visit physicians. As of mid-2015 there wa still a 21 day monitoring period needed. http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/news/2015/05/cdc-downgrades-travel…'
2. I was interested if there had been any progress on treatment for Ebola, but found that the main form of treatment is supportive care. Doctors are informed to provide IV fluid and ensure that the patient's immune response and other bodily functions are functioning properly. A vaccine is being worked on but has not gone through a trial to prove safety and effectiveness. https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/treatment/index.html
3. I looked further into the vaccine being produced for Ebola. Currently, there is a combined phase 2 and phase 3 trial occurring in Sierra Leone called STRIVE (Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine against Ebola). The study is unblinded, so patients know whether or not they have received the vaccine. The vaccine is a rVSV-ZEBOV, or recombinant Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Zaire ebolavirus vaccine. This vaccine is also being used in phase 2 and phase 3 trials in Guinea and Liberia http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/strive/qa.html

The article's bibliography contains many references including the WHO, the Red Cross, and other organizations, as well as many other experts and professionals in the field.