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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! 

There are lots of programs currently to improve low income childrens quality of life and assist them on changing their socioeconomic status:

CCAP (Child Care Assistance Program) - Assistance for low income families working full time, in school or training full-time, or a combination equaling to full-time. Eligibility is based on income, family size, and work/school hours. 

CCVC (Child Care Voucher Centers) - Assistance for low income families that live in a selected CCVC county with a designated CCVC program. Rutgers Southern Regional CCR&R currently services Atlantic, Cumberland, and Gloucester counties with CCVC funding. The child care must be an approved CCVC center. Eligibility is based on income, family size, and work/school hours.

Kinship - Assistance for relatives caring for their relatives' children. Eligibility is based on income, family size, and work/school hours. 

CPS (Child Protection Services) - Assistance for families referred to our agency through the Department of Children Protection and Permanency (DCP&P). Eligibility is determined through DCP&P who will forward our office your information if child care is needed. 

PACC (Post Adoption Child Care) - Assistance for families who have recently adopted a child. Eligibility is based on  work hours with approval and referral from Department of Children Protection and Permanency (DCP&P).

PTCC (Post Transitional Child Care) - Assistance for low income families who are ending their second year of Transitional Child care benefits through the County Board of Social Services. Eligibility is based on income, family size, and work hours. Please contact us if you are interested in this program.

DOE/WRAP (Department of Education and Wrap Around Care) - Assistance for families who reside in an Abbott school district and whose child is 3 or 4 years old. Eligibility is based on income, family size, work/school hours, age of child needing assistance, and residency. Please contact us if you are interested in this program.

The poor monority children are more with exporation dates. Neighborhoods with highly concentrated poverty have higher crime rates, higher rates of chronic illness. This extremely troubling because theses children are not riskes at birth. This extremely troubling when these children are already brought into the world with a birth defect rate higher than the national average  in almost all catagories

The common nessesaties that arent given to children in the essex county ultimately handicap the community around them. All the issues directly influence the parents, and the state; because with all of these issues are things the government has a level of control over. By not trying to findd solutions so child poverty the state continues to have to fun child care, enrichment programs that are costly which we current cant afford. The quality of these programs slowly does down until they become another vulnerability themselves