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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 Chernobyl Accident was the worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear technology. It is the keystone poster-child of most fears with nuclear energy. By addressing this accident—how it happened, what went wrong, how to prevent it—the IAEA seeks to reassure the future prosperity of nuclear power.

 The mission of the IAEA is to promote and help the development of peaceful nuclear technologies and promote safety standards as well as inspect compliance to the commitments to non-proliferation treaties. (iaea.org)

                The IAEA has worked with Iran to complete seven projects and has another nine in the works for development of nuclear power, spent fuel processing, radiopharmaceuticals, heavy water, and security projects. (en.mehrnews.com/)

                The IAEA just held a conference in Manila to assist the Philippines in determining whether or not to revive its mothballed nuclear power plant, under the larger umbrella of the future of nuclear in the Asia-Pacific. (bworldonline.com)

                The agency also responded to the Fukushima incident. During the incident, they assisted Japan by analyzing a plethora of data and sending recommendation and results of their work. Over the last 5 years, the IAEA has sent ten expert missions and will assist in decommissioning the plant. Meanwhile, the IAEA is helping with monitoring leak/contamination management and managing radioactive waste. They are furthering first response efforts by hosting drills to better train and equip first responders for nuclear disasters. (iaea.org)

1)  “Our goal in collaborating with this project was to develop a set of anthropologically oriented case studies, drawn from a community sample (in contrast to more common clinical studies).”

2)  “We invited persons identified as suffering seizure disorders, along with their families, to tell us stories about their illness and to describe their illness experiences - to tell us about their seizures, their efforts to find effective treatment, the responses to their condition by persons in their community, and the effects of the illness on their lives.”

3)  “Data from this study provide the opportunity for addressing not only problems of medical care and public health, but for reflecting on theoretical and methodological questions central to this book as well.”

Virtually all of the references include in their title “social”, “structural violence”, a mention of poverty or underdeveloped country/community, or gender/social-status/race. The nature of the references concur with the nature of the article and references mainly other research articles which portray some aspect of the authors’ argument. 

The Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act was drafted by congress in 1985 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) of 1985 which is a larger healthcare and social security law. The law passed in 1986.