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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! 

"Opinions about how the state should address the fate of these Chemobyl victims also serve as a kind of barometer of the country's changing moral fabric"

"Cherobyl was a key political event, generating many effects, some of which have yet to be known; its truths have been made only partly known through estimates derived from experimental science."

" She told me that Ukrainians were inflating their numbers of exposed persons, that their so-called invalids "didn't want cover." She saw the illnesses of this group as a "struggle for power and mater sources related to the disaster." 

"The story of Anton and Halia (age forty-two in 1997) shows the ways such com- plicity functioned in the most personal arenas. The new institutions, procedures, and actors that were at work at the state level, at the research clinic, and at the level of civic organizations were making their way into the couple's kvartyra (apartment). Anton's identity as a worker, his sense of masculinity, and his role as a father and breadwinner were being violently dislocated and altered in the process "

A main focus of this article was the emergency response to nuclear power plant disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, or in better words, the lack there of. Points and arguments made include the fact that this won't be the last the world sees of nuclear mishap and risk and also the severe need to not only depend on accident prevention, but focus must be shifted onto being prepared during emergencies. During the essay the author point blank states that, the essay is to raise awareness on the need for the creation of an  "international nuclear response team." The essay then focuses on what we can learn from the nuclear accident in Japan in order to establish better post emergency protocols and responses. 

Overall, Schmid outlines the fact that changes need to be made on a global level. She illustrates where there are shortcomings in current protocols and the desperate need to establish a team that is equipped and trained to response to nuclear mishaps, such as the one seen in Japan. She also accentuates the need for this response team to be established should be fast and that we can no longer drag our feet, citing dangers seen at Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.  

Columbia University was one of the first medical schools to open a program in Narrative Medicine. This program was built within their College of Physicians and Surgeons. Rita Charon is the executive director of the program and is on the forefront of spreading the need for narrative medicine in the medical field. Colleagues of hers also believe that medicine has become too professional and clinical, and doctors focus on treating medical problems based off symptoms, not the patient. The educational program at Columbia created the opportunity to earn a Masters of Science degree in Narrative Medicine in 2009, making to one of the first programs devoted to only narrative medicine. 

This article focuses on the fact that there not only biological aspects of disease and the spread of it, but also social factors that need more attention. The article cites that epidemic disease is linked with social conditions such as structural violence, education, income and more. The article addresses the fact that social conditions have an effect on disease prevention and many diseases quickly become diseases of the poor due to this. There are social conditions that effect patient's abilities to defend themselves against disease based off money, social condition, infrastructure, access to food etc. The concept of structural violence and its effects on disease spread within the poor community is discussed and analyzed. Overall, the main point to be driven home is the fact that disease spread can be decreased with the reconfiguration and addressing of social issues. 

Miriam Ticktin is a professor of anthropology and co-director of Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility. She has a PhD in social sciences from Stanford and has many recent publications, all focused around immigration and humanitarianism, mainly overseas, as well as social research in these areas.

http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4d54-6379-4e44-4d35

The American Red Cross is heavily based off team work and altruism. As stated earlier, those that respond are volunteers, they are not obligated to help but they want to. The Red Cross volunteers work together as a team for the goal of aiding and tending to those in need, to the best of their ability. Their volunteering shows they perceive disaster as an unpredictable thing, but something that other members of the community can help those devastated get through.