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St. Louis Anthropocene: displacement & replacement

JJP

A brief essay about St. Louis' notorious eminent domain history--

--along with 2 recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles about "urban renewal" projects that are scheduled to reoccupy the Mill Flats area, which hosted the most notorious episode of displacement of African-American communities: the Chouteau Greenway project (will it serve or displace low-income St. Louisans?); and SLU's Mill Creek Flats high-rise project, which certainly will, and whose name seems to me an especially tone-deaf if gutsy move...

https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Margaret-Garb-St-Louis-Eminent-Domain

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/steelcote-developer-plans-more-apartments-brewery-space-in-million-midtown/article_811eaf96-76e1-5c20-a870-1e79abd3f06e.html

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/chouteau-greenway-project-aims-to-knit-st-louis-neighborhoods-together/article_55fea4e6-6829-5c80-9168-313305b4e3bb.html

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wolmad

“ Living with long-term stress related to loss of family, community, jobs, and social security as well as the continuous struggle for a decent life in unsettled life circumstances, they manifest what we are calling ‘chronic disaster syndrome.’”

“One of the recurring themes that we heard from those who were still displaced in trailers or temporary living situations (e.g., with relatives), but more so from those who had returned and were, in a few cases, back in their homes, was that, even if the neighborhoods were being rebuilt, people had lost so much that nothing would never be the same.”

“But the failure of an effective recovery in New Orleans has created yet another kind of “disaster”—the ongoing disaster. New Orleans offers an example of the perpetuation of a “state of emergency” that was initiated by Katrina but has been sustained by ongoing politicoeconomic machinery—a machinery that ultimately needs to “have a disaster” to justify its existence.”

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Andreas_Rebmann

This study was published in PLOS Medicine, and publishes studies across the spectrum of medical science. It is peer-reviews, and authors pay a publishing fee. It goes against the “cycle of dependency that has formed between the journals and the pharmaceutical industry.” In 2014, PLOS Medicine was given an impact factor (which measures how often studies published in the journal are cited in other studies) of 14.429, ranking 7th out of 153.

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wolmad

“Studies of traumatic event experience have shown that most people who experience an event do not develop psychopathology”

"Persons who live in a community where a disaster has occured may differ in their degree of exposure in the event. They may be affected directly, being present at the disaster site, or indirectly, having loved ones present at the disaster site or seeing images of the disaster in the media."

“The key functions of pre-disaster preparation efforts are to prevent or minimize exposure to potentially traumatic disaster-related events and reduce likelihood of additional post-disaster stressors, which are both associated with post-disaster mental disorders. Local governments and communities can reduce the likelihood and severity of disaster exposure”

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Andreas_Rebmann

They have a lovely list on their website

Financially: Securing funding during unstable economic climate. Maintaining and improving their programs that rely on international funding. Having reserves to respond to new emergencies.

Human Resources: Finding experienced and committed staff, and qualified medical staff.

Operations: Security in areas of conflict. Balancing speaking out with accessing populations. Accessing appropriate medical treatments.

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wolmad

1. The article analyzes the existing international nuclear regulatory groups and determines their capabilities and possible shortcomings in organizing such a group.

2. The article analyzed how nuclear emergency response has been handeled in the past and how goverments have prepared for future disasters.

3. The article outlined some requirements a nuclear emergency response agency would need to meet and some chalenges it would face.

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wolmad

There are 2 major groups of stakeholders described in the film, the Marine Corps and the people effected by diseased linked to the marine corps camps. The marine corps needed to grapple with the problems of waste disposal and the aftermath of how to deal with the effected people, while the people effected needed to survive the diseases, rebuild their lives, and persue justice from the military.

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wolmad

The article was written by Paul E. Farmer, and his colleaues at Partners in Health, Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, and Salmaan Keshavjee. Dr. Farmer is a physician-anthropologist, and is one of the founders of Partners in Health. He and his global colleauges have worked extensively on community-based treatment strategies and have implimented them in poor and rural areas both in the US and abroad. He and his colleauges have written extensively on both health and human rights, and about how social inequalities effect the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. His work, and the work of his team has been published in various journals such as the Bulletin of the World Health OrganizationThe Lancet, the New England Journal of MedicineClinical Infectious Diseases, and Social Science and Medicine.

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