Why Is This Trash Can Yelling at Me? Big Bellies and Clean Green Gentrification

rasanblaj Rasanblaj: n. assembly, compilation, enlisting, regrouping (of ideas, things, people, spirits. For example, fè yon rasanblaj, do a gathering, a ceremony, a protest). “Hey there, good looking!” On a misty December day in downtown Brooklyn, my walk along Fulton Street was interrupted by a slew of high-tech trash cans trying to grab my attention. […]

Yellow Water: Rupture and Return One Year after the Gold King Mine Spill

Beginnings Forged by glacial flows millions of years ago, the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado remain a mystical landscape to many visitors. The lure of their sky-bound rocky spires, regionally called “fourteeners,” a colloquial title that references their higher-than-14,000-foot elevation, draws thousands of tourists annually to explore nostalgic remnants of the “wild west” in […]

Good Earth: Exploring the Old Lead Belt

Lead mining in southeast Missouri is more than just an industry. It is an ingrained and defning aspect of the environment and community. In 1719, when French explorer Philip Francois Renault discovered high concentrations of lead in the region, he was unaware that he had stumbled across the largest lead deposit in the world. One […]

The Politics and Ecology of Water: Notes on the Drought in California

California is great in size and diversity, the third largest state in the union, with the largest population. The state is comprised of distinct regions and countless enclaves, from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles, from arid basins to frigid peaks, from immense agricultural flatlands to unyielding urban growth. Proposals to split the territory have endured […]

The Promising Predicament of the Keystone XL Pipeline

Politics makes visible that which had no reason to be seen. —Jacques Rancière Whether ultimately approved or not, the Keystone XL Pipeline offers a telling window into the contemporary politics of fossil fuels in North America. Although oil pipelines have been around for a century, they have long been neglected in scholarship and public debate. […]