Gulf Coast Overflights for Environmental and Disaster Monitoring
Various flights with SouthWings to document Gulf Coast infrastructure and pollution.
Online Conference, April 2021: COVID-19 As Revelatory Pandemic in Latin America?
Digital collection for onliine conference, "A Revelatory Pandemic?
COVID-19 as Disaster
Photo essay curating insights from critical disaster studies for the transnational disaster STS COVID-19 project.
COVID, Disaster, Guatamala
Cover image for text on COVID and disaster.
COVID-19 as Disaster
Digital collection supporting a Transnational Disaster STS COVID-19 Collaboration Call, Thursday, July 9, 2020.
Covid-19 may be compuounded by both Anti-Blackness and preceding disasters
Roberto E. BarriosAnnotation of
In New Orleans, African American communities were not only hit hard by Katrina's floods, but also by violent policing during the catastrophe and a disaster "recovery" effort that was fundamentally Anti-Black (closing of publich housing and the privatization of schools and health care). Recovery efforts were not organized along ideals of racial justice that would have addressed gaps in educational and health care resources. Instead, they were imagined along neoliberal principles that systematically excluded the city's Black population. I am interested in looking into how the Anti-Blackness of Katrina "recovery" set the stage for the virulent way COVID 19 is affecting New Orleans' African American communities.
In the US Virgin Islands, Hurricanes Maria and Irma decimated what were already decrepit public school and public health systems. Public schools and hospitals had not been property repaired and remained under-supported as of early March 2020. In places like the Island of St. Croix, residents reported the hospital having only one physicial on staff, and indicated fear of misdiagnosis and prolonged waiting times kept them from seeking health care there. The clientelle of the public health system is predominantly Afro and Hispanic Caribbean. Meanwhile, US "mainlanders" (who are predominantly white) are reported to seek their healthcare off island, something only those with ample financial resources can do. Infection rates and fatality rates for the USVI seem rather low from official reports, but it is important to find out if this is because testing itself is not readily avialable in the territory.
Disproportionate and violent policing of racial/ethnic minorities has continued and evloved.
Roberto E. BarriosAnnotation of
In response to
Media coverage from hard-hit cities suggests there is a disproportionate number of arrests and citations related to enforcement of social distancing among racial minorities.
Also, police response seems to have followed very different patterns in the case of "re-open" protests and anti-police brutality protests.
St. Louis Anthropocene: displacement & replacement
JJPAnnotation of
In response to
A brief essay about St. Louis' notorious eminent domain history--
--along with 2 recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles about "urban renewal" projects that are scheduled to reoccupy the Mill Flats area, which hosted the most notorious episode of displacement of African-American communities: the Chouteau Greenway project (will it serve or displace low-income St. Louisans?); and SLU's Mill Creek Flats high-rise project, which certainly will, and whose name seems to me an especially tone-deaf if gutsy move...
https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Margaret-Garb-St-Louis-Eminent-Domain
Conference program:
A Revelatory Pandemic? Disaster Social Science and COVID 19 in Latin America
April 20 and 27, 2021