Incorporating Movements for Racial Justice into Planning and Management of U.S. National Parks

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Rose ◽  
Aleksandra Pitt ◽  
Rose Verbos ◽  
Lark Weller
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Planning And Management ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Justice Movements

The National Park Service (NPS) is the federal land management agency responsible for 423 units across the United States. Many of these parks are considered iconic cultural and environmental landscapes. However, scholarship from a number of disciplinary approaches has positioned the national parks and their management as problematic, particularly from Indigenous and racial justice concerns. National parks, like many cultural landscapes in the U.S., are infused with racial relations, with unpleasant histories and contemporary experiences that have both subtle instances of marginalization and explicit episodes of material violence. Recent developments in racial justice movements raise fundamental questions for the social and political maintenance, stewardship, and sustainability of the NPS. In a critical approach that centers whiteness as a lens of institutional critique, we consider the ways that the NPS could more critically engage with racial justice approaches in its planning and management. After acknowledging that histories of U.S. national parks as spaces designed for White, upper class people led to the displacement and marginalization of Indigenous and people of color, we look to contemporary avenues for increased racial justice. Through both local, small-scale initiatives and agency-wide, national policies, we consider how racial justice movements are both expectant and galvanized in this moment, providing a setting for the NPS to redress and make amends for previous harms and missed opportunities. Specifically, we identify recent federal and institutional policy and legislation as promising mandates for progress. We identify specific place-based tactics used by individual NPS units, such as renaming parks and geographic features, or interpretation that is both more accurate and more inclusive of marginalized populations. Our research examines planning and management as potential strategic practices that can more fully highlight and progress racial justice. We offer a range of specific questions that might guide more inclusive planning and management work in the NPS. Finally, we encourage the NPS, as an institution, as well as individual park units, to support contemporary racial justice movements, while simultaneously adhering to the agency’s historical dual mandate.

Blue Solidarity: Police Unions, Race and Authoritarian Populism in North America

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark P Thomas ◽  
Steven Tufts
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Police Unions ◽  
Justice Movements

With a focus on police unions in the United States and Canada, this article argues that the construction of ‘blue solidarity’, including through recent Blue Lives Matter campaigns, serves to repress racial justice movements that challenge police authority, acts as a counter to broader working class resistance to austerity and contributes to rising right-wing populism. Specifically, the article develops a case study analysis of Blue Lives Matter campaigns in North America to argue that police unions construct forms of ‘blue solidarity’ that produce divisions with other labour and social movements and contribute to a privileged status of their own members vis-a-vis the working class more generally. As part of this process, police unions support tactics that reproduce racialised ‘othering’ and that stigmatise and discriminate against racialised workers and communities. The article concludes by arguing that organised labour should maintain a critical distance from police unions.

Renewable Energy on Tribal Lands: A Feasibility Study for a Biomass-to-Energy Plant on the Cocopah Reservation in Arizona

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Lauren K. D’Souza ◽  
William L. Ascher ◽  
Tanja Srebotnjak
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Alternative Energy ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biomass Energy ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Energy Plant ◽  
Energy Projects ◽  
Alternative Investment

Native American reservations are among the most economically disadvantaged regions in the United States; lacking access to economic and educational opportunities that are exacerbated by “energy insecurity” due to insufficient connectivity to the electric grid and power outages. Local renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and biomass offer energy alternatives but their implementation encounters barriers such as lack of financing, infrastructure, and expertise, as well as divergent attitudes among tribal leaders. Biomass, in particular, could be a source of stable base-load power that is abundant and scalable in many rural communities. This case study examines the feasibility of a biomass energy plant on the Cocopah reservation in southwestern Arizona. It considers feedstock availability, cost and energy content, technology options, nameplate capacity, discount and interest rates, construction, operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, and alternative investment options. This study finds that at current electricity prices and based on typical costs for fuel, O&M over 30 years, none of the tested scenarios is presently cost-effective on a net present value (NPV) basis when compared with an alternative investment yielding annual returns of 3% or higher. The technology most likely to be economically viable and suitable for remote, rural contexts—a combustion stoker—resulted in a levelized costs of energy (LCOE) ranging from US$0.056 to 0.147/kWh. The most favorable scenario is a combustion stoker with an estimated NPV of US$4,791,243. The NPV of the corresponding alternative investment is US$7,123,380. However, if the tribes were able to secure a zero-interest loan to finance the plant’s installation cost, the project would be on par with the alternative investment. Even if this were the case, the scenario still relies on some of the most optimistic assumptions for the biomass-to-power plant and excludes abatement costs for air emissions. The study thus concludes that at present small-scale, biomass-to-energy projects require a mix of favorable market and local conditions as well as appropriate policy support to make biomass energy projects a cost-competitive source of stable, alternative energy for remote rural tribal communities that can provide greater tribal sovereignty and economic opportunities.

Craft Beer's Unlikely Alchemist

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Theresa McCulla
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
The United States ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Brewing Industry ◽  
Washing Machine ◽  
Craft Beer ◽  
History Of

In 1965, Frederick (Fritz) Maytag III began a decades-long revitalization of Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, California. This was an unexpected venture from an unlikely brewer; for generations, Maytag's family had run the Maytag Washing Machine Company in Iowa and he had no training in brewing. Yet Maytag's career at Anchor initiated a phenomenal wave of growth in the American brewing industry that came to be known as the microbrewing—now “craft beer”—revolution. To understand Maytag's path, this article draws on original oral histories and artifacts that Maytag donated to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History via the American Brewing History Initiative, a project to document the history of brewing in the United States. The objects and reflections that Maytag shared with the museum revealed a surprising link between the birth of microbrewing and the strategies and culture of mass manufacturing. Even if the hallmarks of microbrewing—a small-scale, artisan approach to making beer—began as a backlash against the mass-produced system of large breweries, they relied on Maytag's early, intimate connections to the assembly-line world of the Maytag Company and the alchemy of intellectual curiosity, socioeconomic privilege, and risk tolerance with which his history equipped him.

Building an American Empire

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Frymer
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
White Settler ◽  
Settlement Policies ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
The Government ◽  
Land Policies

This book examines the politics of the United States' westward expansion, showing how the government's regulation of population movements on the frontier, both settlement and removal, advanced national aspirations for empire and promoted the formation of a white settler nation. The book details how a government that struggled to exercise plenary power used federal land policies to assert authority over the direction of expansion by engineering the pace and patterns of settlement and to control the movement of populations. At times, the government mobilized populations for compact settlement in strategically important areas of the frontier; at other times, policies were designed to actively restrain settler populations in order to prevent violence, international conflict, and breakaway states. The book examines how these settlement patterns helped construct a dominant racial vision for America by incentivizing and directing the movement of white European settlers onto indigenous and diversely populated lands. The book pays close attention to the failures as well, from the lack of further expansion into Latin America to the defeat of the black colonization movement. It reveals the lasting and profound significance government settlement policies had for the nation, both for establishing America as dominantly white and for restricting broader aspirations for empire in lands that could not be so racially engineered.

From Competition to Cooperation: A History of Canada–US National Park Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Young ◽  
Alan MacEachern ◽  
Lary Dilsaver
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
National Park ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores the evolving international relationship of the two national park agencies that in 1968 began to offer joint training classes for protected-area managers from around the world. Within the British settler societies that dominated nineteenth century park-making, the United States’ National Park Service (NPS) and Canada’s National Parks Branch were the most closely linked and most frequently cooperative. Contrary to campfire myths and nationalist narratives, however, the relationship was not a one-way flow of information and motivation from the US to Canada. Indeed, the latter boasted a park bureaucracy before the NPS was established. The relationship of the two nations’ park leaders in the half century leading up to 1968 demonstrates the complexity of defining the influences on park management and its diffusion from one country to another.

Planning Replicable Small Flow Wastewater Treatment Facilities in Developing Nations

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Gaber ◽  
M. Antill ◽  
W. Kimball ◽  
R. Abdel Wahab
Keyword(s):  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Local Development ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Funding Agency ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Technology Choice

The implementation of urban village wastewater treatment plants in developing countries has historically been primarily a function of appropriate technology choice and deciding which of the many needy communities should receive the available funding and priority attention. Usually this process is driven by an outside funding agency who views the planning, design, and construction steps as relatively insignificant milestones in the overall effort required to quickly better a community's sanitary drainage problems. With the exception of very small scale type sanitation projects which have relatively simple replication steps, the development emphasis tends to be on the final treatment plant product with little or no attention specifically focused on community participation and institutionalizing national and local policies and procedures needed for future locally sponsored facilities replication. In contrast to this, the Government of Egypt (GOE) enacted a fresh approach through a Local Development Program with the United States AID program. An overview is presented of the guiding principals of the program which produced the first 24 working wastewater systems including gravity sewers, sewage pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants which were designed and constructed by local entities in Egypt. The wastewater projects cover five different treatment technologies implemented in both delta and desert regions.

Racial Justice and Criminal Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Black Neighborhoods

The criminal justice system in the United States both reflects racial inequality in the broader society and contributes to it. The overrepresentation of African Americans among those in prison is a result of both the conditions in poor black neighborhoods and racial bias in the criminal justice system. The American system of criminal justice today is excessively punitive, when compared to previous periods and to other countries, and its harsh treatment disproportionately harms African Americans. In addition, those released from prison face a number of obstacles to housing, employment, and other prerequisites of decent life, and the concentration of prisoners and ex-prisoners in black communities does much to perpetuate racial inequality.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
American Society ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.

Rethinking Racial Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Black Institutions ◽  
American Society ◽  
Racial Lines

American society continues to be characterized by deep racial inequality that is a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. What does justice demand in response? In this book, Andrew Valls argues that justice demands quite a lot—the United States has yet to fully reckon with its racial past, or to confront its ongoing legacies. Valls argues that liberal values and principles have far-reaching implications in the context of the deep injustices along racial lines in American society. In successive chapters, the book takes on such controversial issues as reparations, memorialization, the fate of black institutions and communities, affirmative action, residential segregation, the relation between racial inequality and the criminal justice system, and the intersection of race and public schools. In all of these contexts, Valls argues that liberal values of liberty and equality require profound changes in public policy and institutional arrangements in order to advance the cause of racial equality. Racial inequality will not go away on its own, Valls argues, and past and present injustices create an obligation to address it. But we must rethink some of the fundamental assumptions that shape mainstream approaches to the problem, particularly those that rely on integration as the primary route to racial equality.

Privatizing Public Lands

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Collective Ownership ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Wildlife Refuges ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Privately Owned

In the United States, private ownership of land is not a new idea, yet the federal government retains title to roughly a quarter of the nation's land, including national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. Managing these properties is expensive and contentious, and few management decisions escape criticism. Some observers, however, argue that such criticism is largely misdirected. The fundamental problem, in their view, is collective ownership and its solution is privatization. A free market, they claim, directs privately owned resources to their most productive uses, and privatizing public lands would create a free market in their services. This timely study critically examines these issues, arguing that there is no sense of "productivity" for which it is true that greater productivity is both desirable and a likely consequence of privatizing public lands or "marketizing" their management. Lehmann's discussion is self-contained, with background chapters on federal lands and management agencies, economics, and ethics, and will interest philosophers as well as public policy analysts.

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