I am currently in the process of transitioning my M.A. level course on Science, Technology, and Development with 11 students to virtual instruction. One of my interests in engaging with COVID-19 is to examine how it (should) informs development ideologies and practices. How should students of development studies retool -- conceptually, methodologically, practically -- in wake of the pandemic?
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!
Important date correspond to: close to a 50% of childs with less tha 3 years are in low income families. Whereas a 26% are poor (from the same group.)
As a sesearch from the Rotgers University, the students or researchers support:
- The child poverty in becoming more concentrated. With the numbers next to us, we can say that a 52.5% of the poorest childs live in census were the concentration is above a 40%
- Inner-ring suburbs of Orange, East Orange, and Irvington have seen the largest increases in child poverty.
- Essex County’s smallest municipalities have very low child poverty, although many have seen their child poverty rates increase by more than 50 percent since 2000
First of all I would like to highlight the first source used in the new. The map with the risk on air polution in Newark.
Now I'll point out the two qutes suggested:
"Air quality was analyzed using proximity to 5 factors: major roads, truck routes, rail lines, Newark airport are all nonpoint sources and facilities that have violated their major permit at least once within the last 3 years are point sources. Point sources were buffered 1 miles for the area of high risk, and 1.5 miles for the area of elevated risk."
(at the begging of the last paragraph)
"This project is an attempt to identify those areas of high risk and the people being affected by poor air quality. It can be used to inform the public about their risk and to influence policy makers and developers."
(the fourth paragraph)
As they sustain in their web page, their goal is: no poverty, zero hunger, good health weel being, quality educational, gender quality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastucture, reduced inequality, sustainable cities, partnership goals, peace, justice, strong institucions, life below water, and much much more.
What is more they divide their focus, though, on three ways: sustainable development, democratic governance and climate and disaster resiliance.
The author is Alex Napoliello, who covers Monmouth and Ocean counties for NJ Advance Media. Also he provide us where to can find his reporting on NJ.com and in The Star-Ledger (also mainlly contact: phone, email...).
Based on data from 2016 there are approximately 189,492 children living in Essex County. Statistics show that poverty in Essex has slowly decreased over the past few years, but children