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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! 

This paper analyzes the effect that disaster has on the mental health of those afflicted by the disaster. The type of disaster and its effect on certain mental health afflictions is discussed. The field of disaster and this correlation with mental heath has long been in existence and under study. This paper discusses the current state of the field of disaster and mental health research. An overall summary of previous findings is discussed as well as the treatment of mental health disorders after disasters and any challenges to studying disaster related psychopathology. Limitations in current methodologies are also discussed as well as future areas of research are also discussed.

I further researched health care and illness rates in the area surrounding Chernobyl before the incident, to see if there were any very obvious differences in terms of how health care was handled. I also expanded on what was presented in the article and researched some of the major issues faced by those exposed. In addition, I researched more on the governmental influence and actions taken post Chernobyl in terms of testing of citizens as well as leaderhsip efforts. 

This article is discussed and referenced in STS based courses and emergency response seminars and planning committees. The paper is also cited in a book Edited by Richard Hindmarsh and Rebecca Priestley entitles "The Fukushima Effect."

Those that complete the course requirements and achieve all their points will graduate with an MS in Narrative Medicine. 

Paul Farmer cites this paper in some of his other studies and articles written after this. The article has also been cited in a book entitled "Social Medicine in the 21st Century" by Samuel Barrack. This article has also been cited in: 

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/10612556/3585352.pdf;sequen…

http://opensample.info/blindness-survey-methods-response-from-sudan-stu…;

Humanitarian aid is not directly a form of emergency response in a sense of EMS, but it does give help and attention to those in areas of need, and often times, forms of aid are medically related. Though emergency response isn't directly addressed in this paper, humanitarian aid is a form of a response to an emergency situation. This paper focuses more on the analysis of humanitarian efforts to those that at one time may have needed emergency response in the moment due to violent act. Yet the paper focuses on the social aspects of humanitarianism and its tie to gender based violence, not EMS or emergency response.