2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

“The Body Economic” is an eye-opening piece about the role that government finances and the onset of economic depression plays in access to health and health benefits, and about the lasting effect that it can have on the social determinants of health as well. I found the passage in Chapter 1 where Stuckler discusses governmental debt and its difference from personal debt. Knowing now that it’s not possible, nor is it sensible, to try to alleviate governmental debt overnight since money goes back into an economy when it’s spent, it’s refreshing to read a piece that looks at “austerity advocates” for what they are – people with privilege who lead offensives against people without. To blame welfare recipients for economic drain when there are so many other contributory factors is nothing short of class warfare, and as we’ve explored, it most definitely affects access to public health services and the general quality of health. I think it’s safe to say that austerity is counterproductive; it does the opposite of what it’s intended.

The “post-communist” mortality crisis in Russia was interesting to read about. It was an example of a political-economic decline resulting in immediate, extreme, severe mortal consequences. I was curious when reading about it why I’d never heard about this part of the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s as if the USSR’s decline was a consecutive chain of unfortunate events that would eventually result in death. It’s saddening to imagine that an unemployment rate can jump from zero to twenty-two percent in only a matter of years because of a regime change; even more harrowing, conditions in a town can change to such an extent that men begin to die off by the millions. The rise of alcoholism as a cause of death only furthers the depressing image of post-fall Russia being painted in this chapter.

It was good to read about Malaysia’s strides in public HIV treatment and prevention, especially the mother-to-child prevention program. It’s unfortunate that health declined to such an extent in other countries in Southeast Asia. The IMF appears to have done more harm than good in terms of the spread of HIV and disease in these areas. It’s another example of the pitfalls of austerity and how it harms rather than heals.

My father grew up in the South Bronx. He carries that with him everywhere he goes, and in everything he does. I’ve seen his childhood home and wondered, a child myself, why it was so dirty and why it smelled the way it did and why there were so many flystrips speckled with dead flies to the point of obscurity. I wouldn’t learn until years later what the actual reasons for these conditions were. It was ironic to read about policies that called for a pullback in fire services because the aforementioned childhood home of my father did actually catch fire some years back.

My father moved to Queens when he was very young. Queens, of all places (like, who goes to Queens willingly?) He didn’t have many friends growing up (or so he tells me), but he always had two friends, Ryan and David. Today, only Ryan is alive. They lost David to AIDS some decades ago. My father’s never told me this himself; I learned it through my mother.

It’s saddening to read about how city policy hindered progress in regards to controlling the spread of HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, the inner city is like a petri dish wherein one can grow a culture of a germ unhindered. The overcrowdedness, the relative isolation, and the low quality of life don’t only enable the spread of HIV/AIDS, they encourage it. It’s important to note that there is a direct correlation betweent the number of AIDS deaths and the number of injection drug overdose deaths; drug habituation and AIDS are understandably linked. This is why systems such as needle exchanges are so important. I’m glad I got a chance to learn about those when we visited the Harm Reduction Committee.

It was interesting to read about how “planned shrinkage” redistributed people in such a way that injection drug users were sent to different places in the Bronx as well. Surely that would result in harmful spread. I suppose the question from here on in is, how do we combat urban decay such that we stimy the spread of HIV/AIDS?

What sticks out to me about this reading is the discrepancy in perspectives between those who enact urban renewal and highway building and those who are affected by it. Those who enact it seem to be either blissfully ignorant or wholly uncaring that the places they seek to “beautify” are the homes of real people with real lives. Crazy, right? I loved reading about Mary Bishop’s research and how she came to know the people who lived in the poorer areas of Roanoke. These places were typically populated by poor Blacks, who, as housing discrimination goes, were forced into these neighborhoods and kept there without any hope of upward mobility. This was an inevitable outcome of the Great Migration to the North by Southern Blacks. It’s interesting how history would show that, in truth, very little good came of the Great Migration for Blacks, but that’s an aside. I especially liked the explanation on page 65 of how public housing “made the poor poorer”. It truly was a last-minute decision, but I’m not sure if I could really fault the powers-that-be for that one. People were coming—a lot of people—and they had to do something, didn’t they? But more to the point, the people who were coming would settle in communities that were poor and hardly upkept, and those who did not live in those neighborhoods and neither experienced the discrimination nor lived the lifestyle that these people lived would decide to change the city to their own liking. Thus, urban renewal and highway building comes into the picture, which is disgusting. Although, the development of the Cross-Bronx did give us hip-hop, although at the cost of pretty much everyone living in the South Bronx.

I liked Reginald Shareef’s summary of how urban renewal worked. Urban renewal was full of promise, but initiated with ulterior motives. It seemed to bring promise of improvement to the neighborhoods that needed it, and thus improving quality of life, but in reality, it’s meant to cater to those who already have economic means and social standing. Downtown Roanoke is beautiful and consistently being developed, but at the cost of the Black community that once lived there. This is gentrification at work, and it threatens to take Bedford-Stuyvesant within the near future, sadly. I would like to know, personally, what steps can be taken to prevent gentrification. My own neighborhood, which is historically very white and racist, has become rather integrated in the past few years, and I’m not sure how that came about, given Howard Beach’s violent history and relative isolation. Perhaps whatever causes resulted in its integration can be translated to other neighborhoods to promote diversity.