“It’s evidence that when official channels fail, other parts of society respond.” (Feurer). The previous statement really sums up the disaster that followed after Hurricane Sandy. Everyone was basically looking out for one another after this horrific natural disaster. I remember that I had to travel to the Stop and shop down the street in order to do my nebulizer because I had a horrible asthma attack the day after. My experience isn’t as dreadful as those that the people of the NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses had to go through. I cannot even imagine staying in my home for a week because I was trapped at a higher level of a building and not having electricity/heat/power for 11 full days. Both the Huffington post and the New York Times Articles clearly send out the message that during these hard times, government officials were the slow ones to react and that has to be fixed. Volunteers made this difficult time smoother for all those that were suffering. Its truly sad how we were not prepared for such a thing and I hope the governmental officials took note of how devastating this storm was and have made plans to address the issues it brought up.

Question: What types of rules and laws would the government have to put into action to prevent something like this from happening again? Or is this type of consequence from a natural disaster inevitable?

In the “Law Enforcement Violence & Disaster” article from Incite-National, there was extensive description of the grievances committed against mainly black women, especially LGBT women of color. At the time of the floods, I was too young to fully understand the impact of racial politics in the handling of natural disasters, but I am very glad that we are learning about this in our curriculum now. This is the first time I have encountered the struggle of colored trans women in academic media in my educational experience. Up until now, I had only ever been informed of this group’s struggles in my personal time on alternative media sources.

Although I realize that a website like Incite National may write in a certain tone to gain the sympathy of its readers, I realize that this empathetic writing style may be necessary in elucidating a problem that may be invisible to much of mainstream America.

Question: How can we shape future policy to better amend issues that our readings bring up? How can we better educate our youth to bring to light the issues that marginalized groups like black trans women face?

The issues we face as a society in todays world are subject to an intimidating number of factors, factors whose subtlety at times require a nuanced approach in which intellectual creativity must be applied in order to truly asses all the catalysts and results of said issues. Racism is one such issue, and the recognition of environmental racism as a hurtful paradigm made apparent by the natural disasters of recent history proves to be a step in the right direction in the process of addressing the not so obvious connection between race and income, and the government protection received in the face of tragedy.The failure of protecting agencies to justly care for the victims, instead falling back on the institutional racism and classism, especially given the gravity of the situation these communities faced, is a blaring example of the country’s backward approach to race and the environment. The fact that organizations are using these tragedies as a crutch for their abusive city planning is inexcusable, as we should not as a society accept that profit in the face of disaster is an acceptable facet of capitalist opportunism. The Toxic Soup article was a clear summary of how this racism directly affected those who went through Hurricane Katrina, where as the New York Times article demonstrated how it is communities come together in the face of this injustice in order to make up for the lack of federal assistance.

This article highlights the obvious inequality that exists within our society. Interestingly enough, however, I have heard of a few individuals who deny such phenomena.

I am sure that a storm like Sandy caused many headaches for all New Yorkers. Unfortunately, not everyone was able to get back on their feet at the same time. This articles proves that not every neighborhood of New York gets the same amount of attention and support from the agencies that are supposed to keep an eye on their well-being and provide them with standard services. Once money is involved, companies as well as the governments tend to forget that a family’s inability to live in a high-class neighborhood doesn’t determine whether they get the help they need promptly or after weeks. At the end of the day, it’s human beings that all of those companies are dealing with, so how about they come up with recovery plans that would benefit both, low and high income families, simultaneously. In other words, not focus all of the resources on the people that are able to quickly pay for them, such as the upper class, but also spread some of the help to the middle and lower classes.  Like Levin, from the article, states “cost should be the last consideration.”

Question: Do you guys think that if the government/agency officials were part of the middle and lower classes, that then and only then advocate better for the people with less resources?

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.

The author of “Toxic Soup Redux: Why Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Matter after Katrina” not only introduces “environmental racism” to the reader but also does such a good job at presenting evidence of the practice that one does not even question the legitimacy of this phenomena. As a chemistry major hoping to enter the research field, the idea of areas like “Cancer Alley” arising because of chemical industries, is unsettling.

Personally, I found “Law Enforcement Violence & Disaster” to be structured and read like a fact sheet, which took away from the seriousness of the subject matter. The subject matter was one in which I have a particular interest since reading “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander and attending several talks on mass incarceration. The construction of a makeshift jail immediately after Katrina is evidence of the high priority government places on incarceration, especially in predominantly African American communities.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, most of the news coverage showed the destruction that this deadly storm had created and what was being done to help those who had been affected. However, the news told nothing of the great inequality and complete loss of humanity that those of lower income witnessed. Reading about how minorities in New Orleans were dealt with in the aftermath of Katrina felt like reading a dystopian novel. I don’t understand why hard-hit communities were basically put under military dictatorship and why community members were treated like animals. These people needed HELP not abuse. Who were these police officers and soldiers protecting? It was certainly not the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The only possible explanation I could come up with besides these officers being the embodiment of pure evil, is what was talked about in the documentary Land of Opportunity. The article, “Police Brutality and Hurricane Katrina,” talked about a protest to prevent the demolition of 4,500 units of public housing that resulted in extreme violence of the police toward protestors. This exemplifies one of the main themes of the documentary: the government utilized a natural disaster to further its own agenda at the expense of the poor.

Question: How do we get local governments to actually care about the cities they are supposed to serve instead of caring about budget cuts?

I’m so angry. I’m just so angry at the way people were treated after Katrina and that I’m only finding out about it just now. Reading this week’s articles, it feels like Hurricane Katrina was a scapegoat for the plans already in motion to make a “new” New Orleans, one that pushes out lower-income families and minorities to make room for people of greater wealth. Police brutality is always a problem for those in the lower-income bracket, particularly for people of color, and so it’s hardly a surprise that verbal and physical abuse were employed, as well as unfair arrests. I’ve said this before in response to some readings, but it’s important not to forget that human beings are just that: human. While it may be more economically feasible to drive out poorer people, it’s not eradicating the problem. It does make me wonder, though: do y’all think the public housing would have been destroyed if Katrina hadn’t happened? Because I’m starting to think it would.

I don’t even really know where to go with these readings this week. Between governmental incompetence ranging from passively dangerous (underfunding) to actively harmful (policing), in response to states of emergency, I wonder what the point of government is at all. I think I’m thinking like Marx, but our government’s neoliberal leanings seem not to care very much for its people and only about what is most beneficial to the capitalist market system—handing out food and blankets does not help the invisible hand, so its uncared for. It would explain why the semi-anarchic Occupy movement would have gotten involved so readily. But how do you even go about fixing these problems? Can that be done on a community level? If the problem is funding, how do you get more besides just, well, asking, then being denied? If the problem is policing, how do you deal with those police from a community-level, if the people who could take actions against them are the very people responsible for giving their actions the green light? How are any of these problems solved without some grand governmental overhaul, which we can’t enact from our position as citizens anyway?