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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 three points that I looked up to further my understanding of the article were the PIH, how long it existed and its efforts were credible and successful in the treatment of facilitating the decrease and prevention of diease in rural areas. I looked up HIV/AIDS treatment in the US and found that up until recently, people could not afford treatment; this I found was in parallel with Hati- whose citizens could not have access to the medications they needed either. This surprised me, that a country with so much wealth, ignores its own citizens. The third point I looked up was structural violence to see if it was a credible term or if it was something made up by the author.

The narrative of the film is describing how disorganized the system of healthcare is. The film gives a one on one view of how people without insurance are left to wait for hours upon end to recieve care, then have no way to pay after they recieve treatment. The film provides a in person account of what people have to deal with, only public hospitals take patients who do not have insurance and treatment time is months in advance. The healthcare system is overflowing and the amount of resources to treat people with special circumstances are significantly less than the number of patients that need to be treated.

Three points I looked up to further my  understanding was hand, foot and mouth disease because I was not familiar with it and it interested me. In my research I  found that it was spread easily and is common today-credible in health studies. I looked up Dark Winter to advance my understanding of the article. Through this search I found that the threat of biological weapons is very much an active threat and the US must be prepared, whether through vaccinations or research into global data on sickness. I finally looked up TB DOTS.  I found that it was a strategy to stop the spread of a TB epidemic: through attacking it quickly with a cure to those infected.. It also supported the article’s idea of global health security.

Emergency response is duscussed in this article as one of the routes that provide healthcare to different groups of people/organizations. Violence can happen to them too- as an incident at checkpoints as mentioned in the article.

This article is referenced online, as well as in the History and Technology Journal published in 2003

Three ways the document is supported is using the history of France is allowing dieased immigrants into the country- none at all, with some exception and then applying a protocol. The article is also supported through using doctors and their perspective on the immigrants- not caring, wanting to follow the law or being compassionate. The last way is this article is supported is through claims filed by the immigrants themselves-whether they were completely legitimate in their reasons, had medical records falsified or their identity falsified- and the overall effects on the country.

The report was published by the Select Bipartisan commitee.

The system relies on partnerships for funding and credibility- IBM, capital factory,telemental health institute, health wildcatters. It relies on a patient provider relationship and a provider-provider relationship.