Where?

While traveling around Chile with my study abroad program, I fell in love with Putre, a small village located within Parque Nacional Lauca. It felt most like my home in Montana, surrounded by tall snow capped mountains (many of which were actually volcanoes) and a plethora of hiking trails. I enjoyed Putre so much that I endured the altitude sickness once more to return to my Aymaran host family and their baby alpaca Bambi. While visiting I spent time learning about how the territorial disputes in Parque Nacional Lauca affect the health and identity of the Aymara community.  

The Aymara community has faced a long history of oppression and exploitation by the Chilean government. After the War of the Pacific in which Chile annexed land from Bolivia and Peru, they began the process of Chileanization to impart a dominant Chilean culture on the area. Chileanization forced assimilation and eliminated the ability to maintain indigenous identity, which especially affected the Aymara community, who were the main indigenous peoples in the area. The nationalization process required all indigenous people to register their land as private property in order to obtain citizenship. The privatization of the land created many conflicts within the Aymara community because they view the land as a community resource without borders. However, the privatization was not even the community’s main concern as large portions of indigenous territory have been stolen for various development projects. The government has not upheld their position that all legally acquired historical land assets would be kept by their original, indigenous owners. To this day the indigenous communities in Chile still lack constitutional recognition and full rights to their land. 

Parque Nacional Lauca is one example of the Chilean government taking advantage of indigenous communities and their land. Parque Nacional Lauca is located in the far northeast of Chile near the Bolivian border in the Andes mountains. Parque Nacional Lauca was originally classified as a Forest Reserve in 1965 and allowed the Aymara community to remain on their land and continue their traditional agricultural production. Then, in 1967, the priorities changed with the ratification of the Washington Convention, which required the protection of the flora and fauna from extinction and preserve natural beauty. The new priorities required land use regulations to ensure preservation even though the Aymara still owned 99% of the land and needed to use it in order to survive. In 1970 it was named Parque Nacional Lauca and in 1973 it was placed under the management of the governmental agency CONAF (Corporación Nacional Forestal), who began enforcing many land use regulations without consulting the Aymara community.  

The topic of land use is very important as land is directly tied to the identity and health of the Aymara community. The Aymara cosmovision is directly tied to Pachamama (Mother Earth). Along with language and history, Mother Earth is one of the three main characteristics of their community. The land is sacred and connected to their ancestors, traditions, cultural knowledge, and collective memories, all of which help form their identities. The Aymara view the land as living rather than an object; they see it as equal with humans, with equal rights that deserves to be treated with utmost respect. Additionally, the land is directly tied to the health of their community. Health consists of equilibrium, harmony, complementarity, and reciprocity with both their community and the earth. The earth cares for the Aymara so they must care for the earth. Their bodies exist to work on the land because this work is what supports their families and gives back to the earth, thus their wellbeing consists of their ability to practice agriculture. The land is also the source of food, water, and traditional medicine. Herbal medicine comes from the plants on the land, but also healing ceremonies need to be performed on their land to connect to the spirits and their energies who live there.

However, CONAF does not respect the Aymara connection to the land. The Aymara community feels that due to the park regulations they can no longer do anything that is part of their cosmovision, especially traditional ranching and agricultural practices. Ranching and agriculture sustained and continue to sustain life for their community. The regulations make hunting the puma and vicuña, a formerly traditional practice, illegal, in order to protect the animals. However, without hunting, the pumas attack the llama and alpaca herds and the uncontrolled vicuña brings diseases decimating their livelihoods. In terms of agricultural practices, they can no longer burn their fields to regenerate the soil. Additionally, there are restrictions on the harvesting of the queñoa and llareta plants to limit deforestation. Queñoa is used for both construction and traditional ceremonies and llareta is used to heat their homes; however, without the ability to use the land as they wish, they are losing parts of their culture.

The Aymara community does not view Parque Nacional Lauca in a positive light. The park fails to recognize that the Aymara also exist in the region and are owners of the land. The Aymara are not in control of their own space and their needs are placed below that of the plants and animals. The environment receives more protection than they do, but they too deserve the right to survive on the land. The Aymara community wants respect because they cared for the environment for thousands of years without destroying it and have valuable knowledge to contribute to the preservation. CONAF maintains that they include the Aymara in the decision making processes; however, members of the Aymara community say they do not have equal participation and that their concerns are never listened to nor addressed. CONAF and the Chilean government continue to not recognize the different meanings in the land, erasing the Aymara community. 

*This blog post is a summary and English translation of my independent study project that I completed while studying abroad in Chile on the Public Health, Traditional Medicine, and Community Empowerment program at the School for International Training. Thank you everyone who shared their knowledge and experiences with me during our interviews!

With a combination of unconventional urban planning, anarchic urbanism, and government failure, Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong is a fascinating place. What was the most crowded, densely-populated place on Earth for 40 years is now demolished, its citizens all evicted. With no governmental bodies or legitimate police force, it was a lawless, self-regulating city.

The city’s construction dates back to the Song dynasty, and it was long caught in the power struggle between China and the British-run Hong Kong government. Institutional abandonment of the city peaked during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 to 1945, a conflict between China and Japan. Administrations fled to tend to the war effort, leaving the people of Kowloon on their own.

The city became increasingly lawless throughout the 1940s, drawing in large populations of people running from the law, looking to engage in organized crime, or suffering from poverty. In the coming decades, the population would increase exponentially, hitting a striking population density of 1.2 million people per square kilometer in 1987 by most estimates. (For context, the population density of Mumbai is 28,210 people per square kilometer.)

The city consisted of around 300 interconnected high-rise buildings. The boundaries of the city were comparatively small and confined, so as more people moved to the city, the buildings grew higher to accommodate them. Typically, building infrastructure and housing is a long, gradual process, requiring governmental supervision and approval; in Kowloon, these processes weren’t in place, so building took place at a rapid rate. Kowloon came to resemble a single unitary block rather than a collection of individual buildings. Most streets were around six feet wide, leading people to create makeshift bridges between the towering buildings in order to travel through the city. The height and clustering of the buildings made it nearly impossible for light to reach the streets, leading locals to begin calling the city Hak Nam, meaning “the City of Darkness.”

With the lack of an official governmental body, Kowloon was in a state of perpetual legal limbo. A system of self-government emerged, with prostitution, drugs, violence, gambling, and even unlicensed medicine and dentistry becoming commonplace. For all intents and purposes, the city was an anarchist society of its own.

In 1987, the British and Chinese governments announced the official demolition of the city. The area had become overtaken by the Triads, a Chinese mafia group. Both governments helped to compensate the 33,000 residents who were displaced, and the demolition of the city finished in 1994.

This case study raises many questions about urban planning, housing, self-governance, and displacement. Since its demolition, there has yet to be a city comparable to Kowloon in terms of density and governance (or lack thereof) — and it’s doubtful there ever will be.

Sources:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city

https://www.businessinsider.com/kowloon-walled-city-photos-2015-2

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23886841#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5732597/

https://mumbaisuburban.gov.in/demography/

AirBnb has come to revolutionize the tourism and hospitality industry over the last 15 years, offering travelers a wider variety of places to stay at properties with special features and lived-in amenities. While AirBnb may appear to benefit the communities of “Hosts” by increasing tourism and offering a new source of revenue for property owners, a study from the Economic Policy Institute found in 2020 that holiday rentals actually harm local economies more than they help. This is largely due to AirBnb’s negative impact on housing prices and supply, an effect that some scholars have coined as “the new gentrification battlefront” (Cocola-Gant). Increases in AirBnb listings empirically increase local rent and house prices as homeowners and landlords’ pivot towards the lucrative holiday market reduces the supply of long-term affordable housing (Barker). In this way, property owners accumulate capital at the expense of original residents, pushing them out to make room for wealthy travelers in a pattern tragically similar to traditional gentrification. In this case, however, the richer “replacements” for original residents cycle in and out of the property rather than remaining permanently, making the sting of insufficient supply even harsher for lower-income members of the community as homes may sit empty for non-tourist seasons of the year. 

The “AirBnb effect” is visible in major cities that traffic in tourism, but it may be particularly damaging to rural resort communities, where housing supply and affordability is already an issue thanks to their remote nature and often high numbers of vacation homes whose wealthy owners use them only periodically (Bolstad). The tension by this dynamic only heightened over the course of the pandemic as so-called “Zoom towns” cropped up where upper-class people increasingly moved to resort areas to take advantage of the ability to remotely access work from scenic and relatively uncrowded locales. Living in Sun Valley, I witnessed the flood of second-home owners and rich AirBnb renters to my town, driving up our COVID rates at the same time they crunched housing supply. As a result, many local workers have been forced to live in tents, campgrounds, and cars, a situation that becomes increasingly precarious every winter (Baker). This is a pattern unfolding across the American West, one that highlights the blurry boundaries in a tourist economy between economic benefit to small communities and exploitation of local workers and resources.

Rural resort communities like my own are trying to come up with solutions to the AirBnb problem, with ski towns like Vail proposing taxes on short-term rentals whose revenue could fund affordable housing options (Bolstad). However, banning short-term rentals is prohibited by red states like Idaho, and more moderate policy packages like taxing are adamantly opposed by property developers and owners, as well as lobbyists for the tourism industry (Bolstad). The most recent proposal at home has been a program called Landing Locals that markets itself as the “Anti-AirBnb” and has already rolled out in resort areas like Lake Tahoe, California. The program “offers cash incentives of varying levels to short-term-rental owners to convert their properties into seasonal or long-term employee housing” (Guckes). Critics of the program argue that it only gives property owners more capital that, as a one-time incentive, may not translate into long-term changes. But at this point, local leaders are desperate. As with the issue of traditional gentrification, the economic value of place is coming to blows with its deeper significance as a source of rootedness, identity, and community. 

Baker, Mike. “A Town’s Housing Crisis Exposes a ‘House of Cards’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 July 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/31/us/sun-valley-workforce-housing.html.

Barker, Gary. “The Airbnb Effect on Housing and Rent.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 12 Oct. 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/garybarker/2020/02/21/the-airbnb-effect-on-housing-and-rent/?sh=50af0b192226.

Bolstad, Erika. “Swamped by Vacation Rentals, Small Towns in the West Are Fighting Back.” In These Times, https://inthesetimes.com/article/rural-housing-crisis-vacation-rentals-bans.

Gant, Agustín Cócola. “Holiday Rentals: The New Gentrification Battlefront.” Sociological Research Online, vol. 21, no. 3, 2016, pp. 112–120., https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.4071.

Guckes, Andrew. “Ketchum Eyes Self-Proclaimed ‘Anti-Airbnb’ to Address Housing Crisis.” Idaho Mountain Express Newspaper, 29 Apr. 2022, https://www.mtexpress.com/news/blaine_county/ketchum-eyes-self-proclaimed-anti-airbnb-to-address-housing-crisis/article_2f6a40e4-c727-11ec-af09-530de281a7fb.html.

Jack Ritzenberg

The Chamoru people are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, which are divided between the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Micronesia and the unincorporated US territory of Guam.  The United States’ involvement in Guam first began in 1898, when the US Navy acquired Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. In 1901, the US Supreme Court gave legal credence to the Navy’s authority over Guam in decisions known as the Insular Cases. The court ruled that the US Constitution wasn’t fully applicable on “unincorporated territories”, which allowed naval governors to implement a brutal colonial regime. Among many human rights abuses, naval administrations allowed racial segregation, imposed heavy taxes that often resulted in the military taking control of family lands, and forced CHamorus to speak English. More specifically, they banned the native language, Chamorro, outside of interpretation purposes and burned Chamoru-English dictionaries. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a ban on speaking CHamoru in schools was lifted. For the US military, language became an important tool to gain control of place in their effort to colonize Guam. 

In the Guam of today, despite US patriotism and high rates of military service, there is considerable resistance to military buildup on the island. This resistance started most prominently in the 1990s, with Nasion CHamoru— the CHamoru Nation— staging protests throughout the decade. During this time, the island has also seen a major resurgence in pride in CHamoru history and identity, and a renewed interest in the CHamorro language after years of bans throughout US occupation. This interest has been seen particularly strongly amongst young adults and children, and the interest has been fostered through new immersion CHamorro schools on the island. This new crop of CHamorro speakers is particularly historically important, as due to the actions of the US, the language is under threat to disappear in the next 30 years. As of a census a decade ago, of the 165,000 on the island, only 25,827 were speakers and just 2,394 of this small number were under the age of 18.

Though this renewed interest in CHamorro has not been directly connected to resistance acts, the fight to preserve and continue CHamorro seems to be part of a larger struggle against US colonialism. Because language was such an important tool for the US to gain control of Guam, re-learning the once banned language is an important act of resistance, and serves as a reclamation of place for the oppressed indigenous populations of Guam.

Sources:

https://thediplomat.com/2016/08/guam-where-the-us-military-is-revered-and-reviled/

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/guam-resistance-empire/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/the-fight-to-save-chamoru-a-language-the-us-military-tried-to-destroy

https://prismreports.org/2021/06/04/guam-wont-give-up-more-land-to-the-u-s-military-without-a-fight/

By Maeve Sebold

COVID-19 has had and continues to have drastic impacts on individuals, communities, and industries across the globe. One of these effects is population change. Two of the main population changes resulting from the pandemic are migration out of dense cities into outlying suburbs and reduced immigration. Although many people have left cities, a significant percentage of these individuals were bound to move out anyway; thus, cities need to turn their attention to attracting new residents and immigrants and not focus on those who left.

There are several factors influencing the “flight from density” (Brookings). First, the pandemic led to an increase of remote work. More and more employers realized they could shift to work from home with ease by utilizing platforms such as Zoom. Suburbs are generally also more affordable and provide more space, both indoors and outdoors. There was also an increased desire for guesthouses and separate “in-law suites,” as many families took elderly relatives out of nursing homes and more immediate family members, like adult children, returned home. 

This “flight from density,” however, is notably more possible for those of higher socioeconomic status. Ben Popken of NBC News stated that “it’s a K-shaped recovery. Wealthy people are doing well, and affluent people are more able to work remotely.”  The socioeconomic component to suburban life is central. “While people across incomes continued to move around as they had before the pandemic, it was higher-income zip codes that saw a sharp change in movement at the height of the pandemic” (Bloomberg). Remote work serves as an “additional release valve” for pricey housing markets. However, this release valve is not available to those who need it the most. Most of the American work force, including essential workers and low-wage workers, are unable to work remotely. Their jobs are also often located in dense, urban centers, so suburban life is not a viable choice for many lower socioeconomic classes.

There have been some questions regarding if these migrations out of the city were a result of the pandemic or if they rather aligned with historical patterns. A study done by the Cleveland Federal Reserve discovered that the “mass exodus” out of cities was not actually out of step with historical precedent and was in fact due more to a loss of in-migration than departures.

Throughout modern U.S. history, “departures have always exceeded arrivals in large cities” (Slate). Historically, immigrants and “natural increase,” or new births have counterbalanced this. During the pandemic, however, immigration significantly dropped. “Monthly green cards issued to immigrants abroad fell from 40,000 a month in 2019 to fewer than 5,000 in April, May, June, and July of 2020” (Slate). There is also a backlog on visa and immigration processing, which can potentially negatively impact dense cities.   

Although there were changes in immigration policies during the Trump administration, namely a focus on restricting immigration, the numbers were largely in step with previous decades. “With the exception of refugee admissions, there has not been a dramatic, across-the-board “Trump effect” attributable either to the administration’s policies or rhetoric on immigration levels” (MPI). Immigration did, however, see a drastic reduction during the pandemic. “And while Trump acted to limit mobility in response to the coronavirus outbreak, trends suggest that immigration was dropping in advance of his proclamations” (MPI).

Susan Wachter, a professor at Wharton School UPenn, told NBC that “the pandemic has fast-tracked long-term demographic shifts.” The pandemic compressed moves that would have happened a few years down the line that were inevitable. However, this only relates to in country, domestic moves and does not account for loss of immigration.

In an article published by Bloomberg, titled “More Americans Are Leaving Cities, But Don’t Call It an Urban Exodus,” the authors state that this phenomenon is less of an “urban exodus” and more of an urban shuffle.” The data shows that most people who moved “stayed close to where they came from… In the country’s 50 most populous cities, 84% of the moves were to somewhere within the perimeter of the central metro area” (Bloomberg).

So, although many are leaving cities during the pandemic, “the key to survival will not be focusing on those who have left – they did always want that yard – but on those who have not yet arrived,” specifically immigrants (Slate). For example, Michael Hendrix, Director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute, is concerned about attracting new talent to New York City. Hendrix believes the city needs to consider “whether New York is attractive to new people again and not just for the rest of the country but the rest of the world.”

Migration patterns are important as they can affect “housing prices, tax revenue, job opportunities and cultural vibrancy” (Bloomberg). Thus, urban areas and neighborhoods like New York City, need to focus on what attracts people, namely immigrants, to live there in the first place. Policy makers need to concentrate on what makes dense urban areas attractive, such as increased housing, protective tenant practices, a social safety net, clean public areas, aid for small businesses, and more public spaces (Slate).

Sources:

Bolter , Jessica, and Muzaffar Chishti. “The ‘Trump Effect’ on Legal Immigration Levels: More Perception Than Reality?” Migrationpolicy.org, 8 June 2021, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trump-effect-immigration-reality. 

Frey, William H. “Pandemic Population Change across Metro America: Accelerated Migration, Less Immigration, Fewer Births and More Deaths.” Brookings, Brookings, 20 May 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/research/pandemic-population-change-across-metro-america-accelerated-migration-less-immigration-fewer-births-and-more-deaths/#:~:text=Together%2C%20low%20immigration%2C%20more%20deaths,in%20at%20least%20120%20years. 

Grabar, Henry. “The Real Problem Facing American Cities.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 22 Feb. 2021, https://slate.com/business/2021/02/us-cities-shrinking-why-new-york-los-angeles.html. 

Patino, Marie, et al. “More Americans Are Leaving Cities, But Don’t Call It an Urban Exodus.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-citylab-how-americans-moved/. 

Popken, Ben. “Millions of Americans Moved During the Pandemic – and Most Aren’t Looking Back.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 11 Jan. 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/millions-americans-moved-during-pandemic-most-aren-t-looking-back-n1252633. 

By Will Budington

Growing up, I always thought School Boards were a place of public service. Parents sacrificed their evenings to attend boring meetings centered around budgets and curriculum. As my father would watch these meetings on the local TV station I could not help but think to myself that I hope I never reach a point in my life where I watch school board meetings on TV. It was this mundane, cumbersome process that many people have come to associate with School Boards. Sure, maybe they have been grounds for hot-bed issues like allowance of To Kill a Mockingbird or Huck Finn in libraries, but at the end of the day School Board meetings were simply a boring bureaucratic process. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, very few people who kept up with their local School Board happenings would probably consider them places of violence, but as debates about masks, vaccines, and even Critical Race Theory have emerged, School Board meetings are more akin to political rallies than soccer moms balancing a district’s budget. 

(Washington Post)

Beverley Anderson served as a classroom teacher for 36 years before running for School Board in Virginia Beach in 2012 when she wanted full-day kindergarten to be offered. After successfully lobbying for that change in policy, Anderson ran for re-election twice, won both times and found joy in the job. She loved touring schools, seeing classrooms, and advocating for teachers and students. The disruption caused to this peaceful system however, has completely changed Anderson’s experience. Anderson’s district has seen meetings run all the way to 1 or 2 AM reaching extreme levels of contention. After an especially heated meeting Anderson found a screw in her tire prompting her husband to encourage police escorts to her car. Now, Anderson faces a recall election over advocating for COVID-related safety measures.

Unfortunately, Anderson’s story is not out of the ordinary as many parents and board-members across the country have experienced threats, and even been physically attacked like one school-board member who was struck by a man in Mendon Illinois in September. These acts of violence have reached such an intensity that the F.B.I. has actually created a “threat-tag” to identify parents to who pose a threat to school board members.

(CNN)

Whether you agree with students being taught to reckon with the United State’s inherent racialized history, or you are in favor of a mask-mandate, one thing we should all be able to agree on, is that spaces created to better our children’s education should not be violent. We teach children at a young age to use their words, to ask for permission, to use their P’s and Q’s, not to strike people they disagree with. These violent actions taken by many disruptive anarchists across the country threaten the ability of our schools to function properly. COVID-19 has taken so much from everyone over the last two years, now it is starting to turn our School Boards from boring budget meetings to vicious and violent political debates. Without these bodies functioning properly, our Children’s’ livelihood is threatened, and that is a stance all parents should be able to agree on.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/death-threats-online-abuse-police-protection-school-board-members-face-dark-new-reality/2021/11/09/db007706-37fe-11ec-9bc4-86107e7b0ab1_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/us/politics/fbi-school-threats.html

https://khqa.com/news/local-mugshots/man-arrested-accused-of-striking-school-officials-at-school-board-meeting

The corporate consolidation of agriculture has had profound impacts on the ecological, economic, and social well-being of communities engaged in farming. Although this is a well-documented phenomenon—Wendell Berry has written about the estrangement from the land created by modern agribusiness since the seventies—the reforms needed to repair the relationship between agriculture and nature have yet to be widely implemented. Some ecologists believe the practice of permaculture offers a viable alternative to industrial agriculture. Permaculture is an approach to cultivation that considers the ecosystems and communities surrounding agricultural areas in its practice, potentially alleviating the “unsettling” trend Berry observes in agriculture.

Australian naturalists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren created the concept of permaculture in the seventies, mimicking natural biodiversity and preventing the deleterious effects of monoculture on soil quality. They were heavily influenced by observing the practices of Aboriginal land use and sought to create an approach to agriculture that was not only sustainable but regenerative, improving the ecological health of agricultural areas while simultaneously increasing yields.

A number of specific approaches to agriculture have been implemented in the effort to achieve permaculture. A common practice is polyculture, where multiple species are planted in the same area, mimicking natural biodiversity and preventing the deleterious effects of monoculture on soil quality. The advantages of polyculture are furthered through practices like companion planting, where crops that will not compete are planted together for mutual benefit, and agroforestry, where trees are incorporated into agricultural fields to decrease erosion and support ecological stability. However permaculture extends beyond farming to address social equity. Cooperative farms following permaculture practice collective ownership and labor and even use forms of democratic self-governance. In these communities everyone has what they need and no more, in keeping with the ethics of caring for the people and sharing the surplus.

Permaculture has been advanced as a solution for many forms of broken relationships with the land beyond industrial farms. An example of this is Malawi, where climate change and deteriorating soil quality have contributed to endemic undernutrition. A large part of this problem has been over reliance on non-native crops and synthetic fertilizers, so implementing principles of permaculture offers a way to improve agricultural yields. The Kusamala Institute of Agriculture and Ecology is a Malawian NGO that was founded with the goal of sharing knowledge and resources around permaculture practices. The regenerative goals of permaculture differ from mere sustainability by offering a path to rectify past environmental deterioration. This has also been implemented in urban areas, as in Charm City Farms of Baltimore. This project involves buying vacant lots throughout the city and improving soil quality by composting and planting trees, bringing residents a space to interact with the land that had previously been lost to development.

The permaculture movement is not without issues. Critics such as Leah Penniman believe the term permaculture ignores the indigenous knowledge the practice is based on. In this way, permaculture has been considered a form of cultural appropriation, but it has also been accused of simply being a reframing of conventional agriculture techniques. Penniman hopes the term will be used less often and that the movement will shift towards creating an understanding of ancestral agricultural heritage. Despite these concerns, permaculture has been successful in bringing awareness to the continuity between food production and the environment and led to numerous attempts to create a healthier relationship between humanity and the land.

Works Cited:

Is Permaculture the Key for Escaping Poverty in Malawi?

https://theconversation.com/an-environmental-sociologist-explains-how-permaculture-offers-a-path-to-climate-justice-165938

Can Permaculture Help Us Build More Resilient Communities?

seedstock.com/2016/04/25/charm-city-farms-brings-education-and-fresh-food-to-baltimore/

Rhodes, Christopher. “Permaculture: Regenerative – Not Merely Sustainable.” Science Progress (1933-), vol. 98, no. 4, Sage Publications, Ltd., 2015, pp. 403–12, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26406312.

Land distribution in Latin America is the most unequal in the world, and Colombia has the worst land inequality in this region. In 2016, 84% of small Colombian farms had control/owned just 4% of the productive farming land and the top 1% of the largest farms in Colombia own 81% of Colombian land. This is bad because the small farms and farmers have no legal control or ownership over their land and therefore there is always a risk of their land being taken away from them. In addition, the farmers’ lack of land titles in rural Colombia is not only an issue of poverty and underdevelopment, but it also contributes to the illegal cultivation of coca and it helps the guerrilla movement of FARC and other organizations.

FARC was created in a time when a lot of Colombia’s farm land was under the control of the guerrillas and peasants could use the land to grow their crops in exchange for paying tribute to the guerrillas. By doing this it helped FARC to use this land to cultivate coca and also caused farmers to settle on land that they did not own and create farms that could and would be taken away from them by the guerrilla organizations. Eventually, farmers settled into their land a little more securely and permanently, but still without land titles.  

The current government of President Iván Duque is committed to increasing the number of rural Colombians that own the plots of land they live on and is ensuring that in this process they both own and can document that they own the land. They expect to end the year with 50,000 land titles granted which would be the most a Colombian administration has ever done.

Owning land is important because it gives these poor farmers wealth and security. This is because they own land and now have property and they also own the land they make their money on. When these rural farmers have official land titles for their land they are less likely to give their land to FARC or help them out because they are now legally responsible for any legal and illegal activity that occurs on this land.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/opinion/colombia-land-reform.html

https://www.newamerica.org/future-land-housing/blog/challenges-rural-land-reform-colombia/

https://colombiareports.com/colombia-the-country-where-a-million-farming-families-have-less-land-than-a-cow/

Please listen to this song before reading

From the beginning, it’s clear that Wake Me is not a conventional song. It starts with a slow guitar riff that accelerates until it gets to the song’s tempo, when the tap of a high hat brings the audience into Watchhouse’s first verse. Andrew Marlin’s soft, infectious voice tells us “like a rock that came rolling down a hill / I’ve been searching for something to kill ” (AZLyrics).

The first line is how Wake Me feels. This music takes you somewhere. The song’s rhythmic guitar walze along with its unconventional structure connotes an asymmetrical “rock” slowly dancing down a grassy knoll. The song is full of mandolin interjections and the pre-chorus is at one point followed by a verse. During the bridge, when Marlin says “but I’m in need of pleasant dreams” it seems like the “rock” is about to stop rolling; but when Watchhouse resumes for a repeat chorus, the audience realizes that the song has not ended (AZLyrics). 

The second line, however, shows the sadder side of Watchhouse. The song’s tune may be melancholy but is mostly innocent, like a rock rolling down a hill. The soft flow of the song is juxtaposed, however, by the narrator’s feeling that sometimes the world is on top of him. The “rock’s” purpose in rolling is that it searches for something to “kill.”

Emily Frantz, Marlin’s wife, comes in and out of Wake Me “With harmonies so easy they sound like kitchen table talk” (“Watchhouse Press Page.”). The duo make up Watchhouse (formerly known as Mandolin Orange) and Wake Me is a good representation of what they do. Watchhouse simultaneously tells stories and works to cultivate the vibe or feeling Frantz and Marlin feel they represent. It can be taxing for the pair, though, who tend to “[sing] soft songs about the hardest parts” of their lives (“Watchhouse Press Page.”). Marlin shared that sometimes being “paid to relive a lifetime of grievances and griefs onstage” can be too much. 

As a reprieve, in early 2020, Frantz and Marlin left their child, Ruby, with Frantz’s mom and went on a trip to the Appalacians with new collaborator Josh Kaufman. The trio left “conceptions of how they had worked, recorded, or even sounded… in the past” (“Watchhouse Press Page.”). Soon after, when COVID hit, the couple got their first chance to stop moving since they were 21.  In staying still, they got a chance to “sit with ourselves and set intentions” (Watchhouse. [watchhouseband].). The pair realized that they did not want to leave their sound “in the past.” Rather, they decided that their name, Mandolin Orange, was not reflective of what they had originally set out to do. The playful pun that is Mandolin Orange does not reflect the serious feeling Frantz and Marlin want to bring their audience. In April 2021, Marlin and Frantz announced that they were changing their band’s name from Mandolin Orange to Watchhouse, explaining that “Mandolin Orange was born out of my 21-year-old mind. The name isn’t what I strive for when I write, because it doesn’t match what I picture when I invite people into my songs… we have long been burdened by… our band name…” (Watchhouse. [watchhouse]).

Better Way, released in conjunction with Marlin and Frantz’s name change, is Watchhouse at their best. The song connotes a familiar feeling of melancholic bliss with an unconventional structure that “shifts slowly from a bluegrass trot into a spectral marvel… [that] frames a new future” (“Watchhouse Press Page.”). With their name change and release of Better Way, Marlin and Frantz made it clear where they’d been taking their listeners all these years.

The Watch House is located in Chesapeake Bay and is a reference to the biannual trips Marlin used to take there as a teenager. The House was calm, secluded, and beautiful, without any electricity. Marlin “would sit there, sans electricity, reveling in an admixture of silence and communion – thinking, looking, being… that was the Watch House, and that is the place Marlin & Frantz now aim to shape in Watchhouse” (Watchhouse. [watchhouse]). The serenity of The Watch House is the vibe Marlin and Frantz try to carry to their listeners. Place doesn’t have to be spacial. For example, one’s “home” can be with someone rather than in a certain location. For the pair, The Watch House is a place no longer tied to its spacial location in Chesapeake Bay; it is a feeling. 

When he was young, Marlin found his sound at The Watch House, modeled after what the place made him feel. When he met Frantz, he got a chance to bring someone into that place. While together, they transformed The Watch House into the sound of their love and career. Marlin wrote their most recent album, Watchhouse, beside a crib while he cajoled Ruby to sleep. The Watch House is now a part of Ruby’s life too. Place isn’t necessarily linked to a location. That Watch House has become a part of Marlin, his wife, and millions of fans in the process.

Sources:

Watchhouse. [watchhouseband]. (2021, April 21). FRIENDS! Our band is now called
Watchhouse . Same music, same us. We’ll tell you more about it: [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/watchhouseband/status/1384899847770320899 

“Watchhouse Press Page.” Shore Fire Media, https://shorefire.com/roster/watchhouse. 

“AZLyrics – Request for Access.” AZLyrics.com, ttps://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mandolinorange/wakeme.html. 

Watchhouse. [watchhouse] [Spotify About] https://open.spotify.com/artist/2WqEbbet6L2ndAbvhRVb2S 

“Mandolin Orange Change Name to Watchhouse.” Shore Fire Media, https://shorefire.com/releases/entry/mandolin-orange-change-name-to-watchhouse. 

By Greta Garschagen

New York City was damaged by Hurricane Sandy, which hit the city on October 29^th, 2012. The subway system was completely flooded, the storm surge reached 13 feet, waves in New York Harbor were 32 feet high, and 43 New Yorkers died. The strength of Sandy was unbelievable, the National Geographic described the hurricane as a “raging freak of nature.” In result of the storm surge, water from the ocean rushed into a power station on the lower East side, causing a blackout for everyone below 34^th street. Seawater from the storm surge submerged the East River Park, causing trees to be ripped out, and the park destroyed. Hurricane Sandy was eye-opening for many people, and for the City of New York who saw weakness in their city’s construction.

One of the solutions is the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, a $1.45 billion plan that would build 2.4 miles of flood protection systems. The systems would include floodwalls, floodgates, and other innovations that would prevent similar destruction that Hurricane Sandy caused. NYC.gov’s website for “The East Side Coastal Resiliency Project,” explains that because of climate change and rising sea levels, the resiliency project “will address these threats by reducing flood risk to property, landscapes, businesses, and critical infrastructure while also improving waterfront open spaces and access.” The project proposal was first launched in 2015, but because of many reviews, environmental impact statements, and community pushback, the construction just began in Fall 2021. The City of New York believes that this project will be beneficial to the longevity of the East Side, protecting it from the rising sea wall.

While the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project’s purpose is to protect the Lower East Side, East Village, Peter Cooper Village, and Stuyvesant Town residents, many members of the community are outraged. One of the reasons for anger is because the city’s earlier resiliency plan, which was more supported by community members, was abandoned without much explanation. Community members have expressed their anger with the City of New York’s lack of transparency and consideration. The new plan will demolish park amenities, bulldoze almost 1,000 trees, and bury the existing park and coastline. Many residents of the area are heartbroken and confused that their waterfront would be buried, and the place would change entirely.

A lot of community members also have expressed that it seems the city is targeting this area because some areas are lower-income. An article that was written in 2019, quotes Datz-Romero, a resident of the Lower East Side for forty years, “I sometimes think that in any other neighborhood, they wouldn’t have dared to suggest getting rid of nearly 1,000 trees…I don’t know whether they would have gone for an approach like that on the Upper West Side” (Kensinger). Furthermore, the subtitle of this article is “Other people can go to the Hamptons; we go to the East River Park,” further expressing feelings of inequitable treatment. Many community members of the Lower East Side feel as though the the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project will hurt people more then benefit them. It seems to be the destruction and change of the place that seems to irritate community members the most. Furthermore, the construction would displace people and groups that use the park daily, and the community groups who have worked hard to improve the parks along the East Side coastline (Kensinger). Community members are not happy to see their beloved park be destroyed, even if it is for the purpose of protection from rising sea levels.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project was postponed, and community members began to realize how crucial outdoor spaces are because of COVID. The construction that was planned would prohibit access to the East River Park, which was unacceptable to many community members. As pictured above, activists for the East River Park staged a week-long protest, and pressed City Council to hold an emergency hearing, in hopes to stall the project. On November 1^st, 2021, the Department of Design and Construction began construction in one section of the park. The DCC even promised residents that at least half of their park would remain open and accessible during construction of other parts of the parks. Yet, no matter the accommodation that the DCC made, people held a sit-in on November 1^st in order to protest the construction. Activists blocked the entrance for workers, held their signs up high, and sang protest songs. The protest led to arrests after two people refused to move out of the way.

It does not seem that the City of New York anticipated New Yorkers to react in the way they did to the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project. The project was a post-Sandy plan that many people believed would be the first step in many projects that would build up protection around New York City, starting with Manhattan first. Maybe it is because the project took six years to begin, and community members do not fully remember the chaos and devastation that Sandy caused. Or, residents near the East River Park are unable to agree to changing the park into a landscape they do not recognize. It definitely seems that community members of the East Side feel an attachment to the East River Park. Even with the threat of the rising seawall, residents of the East Side do not want to see their park buried.

Works Cited

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/hurricane-sandy

Kensinger, Nathan. October 17, 2019. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/10/17/20918494/nyc-climate-change-east-side-coastal-resiliency-photos

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/weather/2020/10/28/the-only-storm-that-ever-scared-me–a-meteorologist-remembers-hurricane-sandy

Robert D. Bullard, “Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first Century,” In The Quest for Environmental Justice, (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005),

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/escr/about/resiliency-and-flood-protection.page

https://ny.curbed.com/2019/10/17/20918494/nyc-climate-change-east-side-coastal-resiliency-photos

https://www.archpaper.com/2021/05/east-side-coastal-resiliency-project-breaks-ground-opponents-arent-backing-down/

East River Park activists stage weeklong protest outside City Hall, push for emergency hearing