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Tonight's editor: ellinorianne
Please remember to rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 97
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
Tonight's eKos is a special edition to cover a very important environmental justice issue of Katrina, five years later. Katrina was more than a hurricane, more than a Government's failure to act and more than a disaster in the waiting, it was an environmental justice nightmare.
And five years later, the people of Louisiana's Gulf coast are in the midst of another nightmare, more costs that are unevenly put upon those with less of a voice and so much more to lose, from their livelihoods, their health and their very way of life.
Rachel Maddow made a very powerful hour of TV Friday night from Lousiana and I want to share it with you because she makes a very important point that I think is the antitheses to the Glenn Beck way of thinking, it's social justice at it's best. As Americans, we are in this together. All of us, no matter our color or economic status. It's time that those who have paid the most for our energy policies stop paying that price with their health, their communities and their lives.
"On this anniversary, there will be a lot of reporting over the next few days about this city's recovery from the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina," Maddow said. "Call it a recovery or call it survival, it's not over. And this isn't just New Orleans. This is America. And if we do not feel like we are all in this together, we better have a damn good excuse for that."
Uneven Katrina recovery efforts often offered the most help to the most affluent
"The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries," said James Perry, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. "For people who were well off before the storm, they are more likely to be back in their homes, back in their jobs and to have access to good health care. For those who were poor or struggling to get by before the storm, the opposite is true."
Louisiana's program to distribute grants to property owners whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Katrina was found by a federal judge this month to discriminate against black homeowners.
...
But there is a sharp disparity in how residents view the pace of recovery. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that while seven in 10 New Orleans residents say the rebuilding process is "going in the right direction," a third say their lives are still disrupted by the storm.
African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to say they have not yet recovered after Katrina, the survey found. And blacks in the city are 2 1/2 times as likely to be low-income than whites.
Storm fuels environmental awareness: A guest column by Lisa P. Jackson
With the lessons of Hurricane Katrina in mind, we immediately involved environmental justice and community advocates when responding to the Deepwater BP oil spill.
Environmental Justice personnel were in our Emergency Operations Center at headquarters and on the ground in the Gulf Coast. We held — and will continue to hold — community meetings with underrepresented residents, to meet them face-to-face and hear their concerns.
Communities that have not traditionally been part of the environmental movement must add their voices to this conversation. Their contributions will make our efforts to protect human health and the environment that much stronger. That way, the difficult lessons of Hurricane Katrina – and the Deepwater BP oil spill – will not have passed us by.
Five Years After Katrina, the Gulf Is Showing All of Us the Way Forward by Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Some bright spots...
The Gulf Coast is showing that a region that has been dominated by the oil industry can turn a new, green leaf.
Wind turbine manufacturing has recently created 600 new jobs in the region.
The Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation is working with a White House initiative to put solar panels on New Orleans homes, and is developing an ambitious urban farm project that will create new jobs in agriculture for workers displaced form the fishing and oil industries.
The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice is training workers for green jobs in the region.
The Alliance Institute is bringing organizations together across the region to work on projects like creating independent health care clinics in underserved areas, or advocating for the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act that would fund jobs and training in the areas hit hardest by these disasters.
In the Bayou, BISCO is looking both forward and back, pushing for new industries that will create clean energy and green jobs, and industries that will restore the region's damaged wetlands.
Here is a clip from Rachel Maddow's amazing hour of TV Friday night. It highlights the very real disparity in housing during the rebuilding and how many of the poor do not have a place to live. It is not an accident.
Katrina has brought more attention to the topic of Environmental justice, from courses focusing on the issue, Grad course looks at Katrina through environmental justice lens to changing how we talk about environmental issues in the media.
"The EJ (environmental justice) movement and literature about it have expanded over the years," she says. "This course offers a unique perspective by examining environmental justice struggles, such as those that have occurred in NOLA (New Orleans, LA), through the conceptual lenses of body politics and human rights. That is, the course begins with the assumption that all EJ struggles are intimately connected to the ways in which human bodies – especially racialized, gendered and classed bodies – are shaped, regulated, distorted and damaged by social structures and practices."
...
"In my view, any course on EJ needs to focus on New Orleans for a number of reasons," says Casper, who has taught at ASU’s West campus since 2008. "First, NOLA has long been ‘EJ Central,’ with some of the major figures in the EJ movement based there. Also, the city has a unique set of factors that make it particularly susceptible to catastrophe: urban poverty, an eroding shoreline, ‘natural’ phenomena such as hurricanes, institutional and governmental racism, and a legacy of corruption.
"Any ‘natural’ disasters are part and parcel social disasters, too. Hurricane Katrina was the most visible indicator of this, and recently we’ve had the BP oil spill to add to the mix."
Lets not sugar coat it, environmental justice is about environmental racism. Katrina was about race, as much as we want to say it is not, when the levees broke, it was about a lot of people of color suffering a great deal. It still is. The poor, disenfranchised of our society don't matter as much, it's a sad fact and it had a lot and still has a lot to do with the recovery in the Gulf. We do not live in a "post" racial society.
Help Pakistan
There has been a concerted effort on Daily Kos to bring attention to the disaster in Pakistan. You can find the latest diaries here and here.
Greg (Three Cups of Tea, Stones Into Schools) Mortnenson's non-profit (CAI) recommends supporting a local (Pakistani) group to which donations will likely have a large, immediate, and lasting impact-
Healing Development Foundation
http://www.hdf.com
(800) 705 1310
From their page about the flooding:
HDF is committed to work towards relief and reconstruction efforts in flood affected HDF program areas including Mardan and Tandoo Muhammad Khan. HDF already has the existing infrastructure and a team of trained employees and volunteers in place. Currently there is need for basic necessities like tents, blankets, cooking sets, utility containers, soap and bedding as well as, basic healthcare.
More details and videos at their site and their YouTube channel.
• • • • • •
Other groups that deserve support as well.
Doctors without Borders (MSF):
DONATE
The Red Cross:
DONATE
OXFAM:
OXFAM's Pakistan page:
With an estimated 6 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, I am concerned that so far the international community hasn’t responded with the speed or on the scale warranted by a disaster of this magnitude.
DONATE
• • • • • •
From the US State dept.
How You Can Help:
Text "SWAT" to 50555; $10 goes to fund for flood victims
(All times Eastern!)
eKos diaries from Monday, August 30, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Ecojustice - Katrina is All About Environmental Justice; Monday eKos Earthship | eKos | 10:10:44 PM | eKos, Ecojustice, environmental, Katrina, hurricane Katrina |
Macca's Meatless Monday...Besame Barcelona | beach babe in fl | 6:01:20 PM | eKos, climate change, meat production, resource depletion, health |
Rodents, maggots and steaming piles of hypocrisy at egg farms | Deep Harm | 5:57:42 PM | eKos, eggs, recall, salmonella, contamination |
Coral Reefs Dying from Climate Change | rebb | 4:47:22 PM | eKos, climate change, coral reef |
Judge quashes VA AG's subpoena of UVA/Michael Mann | seesdifferent | 3:43:19 PM | Michael Mann, climate change, global warming, eKos |
Science Tidbits | possum | 3:35:48 PM | Science, Teaching, Learning, eKos |
Celosia: Nature’s Prettiest Vegetable | NourishingthePlanet | 2:09:39 PM | Nourishing the Planet, State of the World, Indigenous Veggie, Celosia, eKos |
Broken food chains | Steve Masover | 2:07:51 PM | food safety, michael pollan, salmonella, eggs, factory farms |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 97 | Gulf Watchers | 6:00:03 AM | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
eKos diaries from Sunday, August 29, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Hawai'i Underwater - A Photo Diary | Haole in Hawaii | 11:29:05 PM | Recommended, community, eKos, Hawaii, underwater |
UPDATE: We just have to take it for ourselves. Nobody's going to help us. | Muskegon Critic | 10:32:23 PM | Recommended, wind power, community involvement, wind power, activism |
Sunday Train: Can Trains Help Win the Day in Australia? | BruceMcF | 9:55:55 PM | ekos, living energy independence, rail electrification, HSR, transport |
Time to blame climate change for extreme weather? | Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse | 9:28:59 PM | Recommended, climate change news roundup, climate change, environment, BP |
Biodiversity Photodiary: Carnivorous Plants and Friends (aka Little Blog of Horrors) | matching mole | 8:09:09 PM | biodiversity, conservation, fire, ekos, teaching |
A cautionary tale of corn and corruption in California | RLMiller | 8:00:43 PM | eKos, California, ethanol, AB118 |
Sourcing Skepticism ... | A Siegel | 3:58:30 PM | ekos, climate change, global warming, Rescued |
Climate News: 29 August 2010 | billlaurelMD | 1:59:39 PM | eKos, DK GreenRoots, environment, global warming, climate change |
Dawn Chorus: Spur Of The Moment | Kestrel | 9:55:24 AM | Dawn Chorus, birds, egret, heron, pelican |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 96 | Gulf Watchers | 5:59:59 AM | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Recession causes U.S. birthrate to drop edition) | Neon Vincent | 12:20:39 AM | Overnight News Digest, OND, science, space, environment |
eKos diaries from Saturday, August 28, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 95 | Gulf Watchers | 6:00:00 AM | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
You Are What You Use | Miep | 4:02:42 AM | economic development, consumerism, philosophy, politics, eKos |
A 'Death Warrant' in the Amazon {Earthship Friday} | eKos | 1:06:53 AM | ekos, ekos earthship, climate change, James Hansen, global warming |
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