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Elena Sobrino: anti-carceral anthropocenics

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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.

Elena Sobrino: toxic capitalism

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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 referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.

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a_chen
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The article has reveal the trust issue (crisis) dealing between the local publics and the health department workers on the spread of Ebola (and anyone that assist with the work of spreading the awareness of Ebola). This issue is revealed via the several violence acts happened in the area. These cases are reported with briefs of scenes and relevant data.

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xiaox
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The film portrayed the far-flung MSF experience offer people who suffered in Democratic Republic of Congo and post-conflict Liberia. They have to make decisions of who going to save because of the limited resource.  Besides, they have to balance and fixed their own mentality when watching amount people dying every-day. Kiara Lepora who was the Emergency Coordinator in the mission, have mentioned that Liberia is like a big car accident, but they might cannot do something for help the people. She thought she could do well before arriving, and she said was not in to aftermath.  I think they are all doing their best for helping people in the mission, and the problem is they are not as individual, they cannot stay there forever. They need to balance the thinking that they are work as a team as MSF, and it will keep going forward.

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a_chen
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The aim of OSHA is to assure the safety and working conditions (prevent workers from being killed or seriously harmed at work [https://www.osha.gov/Publications/3439at-a-glance.pdf]) for either the public or private sectors workers and employers by referring to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The content of the act is reach through the works by training, education and assistance. This act has a coverage to all 50 states and the outer continental shelf lands.

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xiaox
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  • “the immigrant’s body was entirely legitimized through its functions as an instrument of production, the performance of which was interrupted by prefect, then inscribe in a ministerial circular ion the legalization of undocumented immigrants, and finally translated into the law on entry and residence of foreigners, is of course only one of many regulatory provisions covering the granting of permits.”
  • “Legal recognition of the suffering body had been established.”
  • “Because the allocation of a scarce commodity was locally managed, there were wide disparities in the treatment of applications and hence inequalities of access to a right from place to place. “

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a_chen
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The vulnerable population in this study has highlighted the lack of health facilities and health care that deal with incarcerated group. And furthermore to resulted in a worse situation in the health quality. “…leaving the addicted subject to withdrawal during incarceration and more vulnerable to overdose upon release.” [pg. 5] That is incarceration looks like providing protective health to the general public, but afterwards it becomes a health risk to the publics once the incarcerated group been released from the prisons and jails.