It is a poorly kept secret that our prison system needs massive reform – this is something that I’ve known about vaguely since I was fifteen or so. I did not know, however, the extent to which prison reform could be actively opposed. I thought it was a no-brainer! Our prisons are overcrowded and inadequate – this must be addressed. The conditions that Morris and Rothman describe, namely the unsanitary facilities and overcrowded compounds, are absolutely dreadful. I hadn’t realized how complex the politics of imprisonment really are. The competing interests, between the state and federal governments, plus their comprising departments, make navigating prison reform a nightmare, as illustrated by the Prison Fix reading. To me, being “tough on crime,” is a poor and superficial way to win political points. Often this means racial profiling and jail time for minor offenses, like drug possession. This is applicable not just to California, which the reading is about, but to the US as a whole. Our prisons wouldn’t be packed to the gills if we didn’t jail activists and drug users.

I had never really wanted to visit Los Angeles before, but now I definitely don’t want to. If what Davis is describing is close to reality, it sounds like an awful, racist, classist, city of the rich. I’d like to stay far away from Los Angeles. I definitely subscribe more to Olmsted’s philosophy of public space: it should be common ground for people of all classes, races, religions, and so forth. What’s going on in Los Angeles, its shameless and deliberate militarization, is just plain wrong. Los Angeles is not only wrongfully pandering to the wealthy, but it does so at the purposeful expense of the poor. It is immoral, irresponsible, and frankly, criminal. Los Angeles is not ignoring the needs of the majority of its citizens – it is consciously denying them. This is no way to promote a healthy, happy, and productive city. I believe by being so short-sighted, Los Angeles developers and legislators are poisoning the future of the City of Angels.

These readings definitely do not portray Rudy Giuliani and his administration in a positive light. The Quality of Life campaign, based on the “broken window theory,” operates on such flawed logic that it boggles the mind. It is only superficially positive: who wouldn’t want order, safety, and aesthetic? However, when scratches beneath the surface of this campaign, one sees it for what it is: a way to treat symptoms without addressing their causes. And this, most people would agree, is folly. Shooing homeless people, arresting pan-handlers, breaking up innocuous, if not angsty, groups of teenagers – these fail to address root problems both in New York and the broader context of the United States. We are living in an age of massive inequality that provides an acidic environment for societal illness to flourish. As a result, chronic poverty, unemployment, and even literal health problems continue to erode the wellbeing of America. It is terribly offensive for Kelling, as cited in Erzen’s piece, to suggest poverty is a matter of choice. Like hell it is! This policy is woefully misguided, having the effect of targeting both the homeless and people of color, without actually providing any visible evidence of actual improvement in “quality of life.”

Reading these articles is admittedly frustrating. It is frustrating because people realize there is a problem – mounting inequality in the political and economic spheres – but little is being done to remedy it. Sure Occupy Wall Street gave it a go, but it ultimately fizzled out, despite the evocative language used in the #OWS reading. Occupy Wall Street attempted revolutionary change – if the Harvey piece can be believed – yet it failed to deliver despite public support. I fear that the problem is apathy. Thanks to publications like the New York TImes, countless people are aware of the gravity of American income inequality. However, very few people believe there is anything we can actually do to change it. After all, money is power. How are we, the 99%, supposed to change the state of affairs without large sums of cash? How are we supposed to change the dominating principle of money buying power and influence? I don’t know if realistically there is a way to change this; it would mean an ideological paradigm shift. But maybe not believing it is possible is part of the problem.

The concept of “environmental justice” is an interesting one; before reading “Toxic Soup Redux,” I didn’t have a clear understanding of what the term meant or where and how it applied. Afterwards, though, I definitely recognize that such environmental racism exists and that it is appalling. This aspect of discrimination is something that needs to be brought to the forefront of the environmental conversation. Environmental justice doesn’t just apply to the US: it is globally applicable. In my Politics of the Developing World class, we watched a documentary about gas flaring in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The people of the Niger Delta were forced to live with toxic gases being burned by foreign oil companies, and no matter how much they protested, demonstrated, and organized, they were continually ignored, and all because they lack wealth and influence. I would even argue that environmental racism is indeed worse in the developing world, where many of the environmental regulations we have here are either nonexistent or disregarded entirely. The environmental justice movement therefore must be worldwide: it’s the only way we’ll be able to combat not only environmental racism, but the behemoth of environmental degradation itself.

I found this week’s readings to be particularly interesting and especially salient, as climate change becomes the object of the largest scientific consensus since the theory of evolution. And, it is ubiquitous – the entirety of the planet is threatened by climate change; it transcends class, race, and border. As a participant in the People’s Climate March, it was heartwarming to read about the movement that I felt very lucky to be a part of. I really think such collective action in one of the largest cities in the world (and in other cities across the globe) goes to show that citizens care about climate change, and that it cannot be ignored in favor of selectively beneficial politics, ie, our oil obsession. I was shocked to read about the depth of Bush’s failure at handling Katrina. It is downright shameful that money was diverted from basic city maintenance in order to fund largely fossil fuel motivated “wars on terror,” to supposedly protect highly vulnerable urban areas. Meanwhile, natural disasters are far more likely and more damaging than acts of terror. The article by Graham is a must-read for people studying Katrina, and even politics more generally. It sheds invaluable light on what was really going on behind the scenes pre and post Katrina.

Gentrification is an incredibly intricate process with lots of moving parts; I’m not sure how effective it is to try to reduce this complex phenomenon into a series of stages that can be applied across cities. In this sense, I agree with Rose (1984) who was mentioned in the Lees piece. To me, gentrification cannot be generalized, precisely because it involves so many actors. It truly is, as Rose put it, a “chaotic concept (34).” Nevertheless, I find Lees’ model to be interesting, and I wonder how it would hold up when applied to New York neighborhoods – like Red Hook – that are currently undergoing gentrification.

I’m conflicted about how I feel about gentrification. On the one hand reinvestment does tend to make a neighborhood safer, while boosting its economy and its physical appearance – this is evident and quite familiar to New Yorkers from the Park Slope example. But this comes at what cost? How can these positive ends be achieved without the secondary effect of displacing lower income residents? Is that even possible? More should be done by the state and the gentrifiers to ease this incredibly stressful process for those displaced.

Before reading these pieces and even before watching Uneven Growth, I had no idea of the extent of the housing crisis. It is absolutely heartbreaking that this city is becoming a place where only the rich can thrive; to me, this goes against the very fiber of New York City’s being. New York City is facing a threat that just keeps growing, yet it is addressing these issues with woeful inadequacy. According to the Jacobin article, De Blasio’s inclusionary zoning will not only fail to remedy the housing crisis, but it will worsen it. This is because, the Jacobin article posits, the city government is reluctant to put people before profit. If this is true (this source is openly biased, admitting it offers a leftist perspective, so the reader should be critical) it is a downright shame, especially because low-income workers far outnumber the wealthy. Quite frankly, I think NYCHA needs to get it together. The NY Daily News article shed some light on the major challenges it faces. It seems like Mayor De Blasio has his work cut out for him – hopefully NYCHA reform will restore the Authority’s effectiveness.