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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! 

The first hand interviews from first responders are compiled in a way that goes through the stories of what heppened, how health information was released and changed. The first repsonder stories are intermixed with testimonies from the EPA workers, showing differences in the science that was found and the press releases disclosing the health concerns. Many tear up upon realizing how their health will hurt their families. The doctors in the area caught onto the trends in poor health and started a monitoring program to make sure everyone got the medical screening and help they needed. The lives of all of the first responders and their families were changed drastically from their public service.

NYC Dept of Correction,

Legal Aid Society,

Susi Vassallo - monitored temperatures on Rikers Island,

Rikers,

Hailey-Means, Freddie McGrier (both inmates)

This policy addresses the issue of mental health, a prominent issue in today's medicine. It helps to evaluate treatment facilities, and defines that the burden of caring for young and middle-aged people is one of the states, where as those outside of the specified age range will be covered for mental disabilities by the national government.

Membership is contingent on each state depositing "the necessary legal instruments", and events are held in many different member states, to make educatiuon available all across the world. Those member states control the direction of the agency based on their needs and funding, so it is really self-run to a large degree. Correction to founding question: The IAEA was founded much earlier, in the 1950's to advance knowledge, safety, and peace associated with atomic and nuclear energy. The majority of the world is now involved.

"It is tempting for a medical social scientist to enumerate the cultural beliefs concerning thecause and workings of epilepsy, then compare these with beliefs in other societies. People of course reason about illness, and culture provides the logic of that rationality. I have resisted, however, focusing on the structure of reasoning. The transformation of these narratives and the modes of aesthetic response associated with stories into "beliefs" or "explanation" would be extremely misleading."

"I began this chapter with questions about the relation of "fainting" to "epilepsy" in Turkish culture provoked by Meliha Hanim' s stories about her illness. Through the course of our research it became clear that epilepsy belongs in popular discourse to the larger domain of "fainting." This should come as no surprise, not only because fainting is less stigmatizing than epilepsy in Turkish culture."

"Emine was silent. Her story was told exclusively by those around her."

Most of the argument is developed through the  Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) essays and reactions to the compilation. Laws, humanitarian efforts, and wars are also studied.

Many other research papers, articles, books, and sources of research were referencd in the article. The author read and studied a lot of research in various areas and covering all of the topics discussed in this paper, then strengthened ideas and concepts with enough support from hard research to write this article.