SEEDED GROUND INTERVIEW WITH ALESSANDRA
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JUSTICE: Welcome to your audio companion formed in support of access and in the spirit of community. I’m Justice Shorter and you’re listening to the Disaster Justice Guidebook for People of Color with Disabilities. Each companion is comprised of remarkable reflections and recommendations gathered from interviews, with incredible People of Color. This creative collaboration is brought to you by Seeded Ground, the Adult Advocacy Centers in 1217 compound. May this offering be a salve and a sought out source of solidarity for all those most impacted by disasters in crisis.
This particular companion is guided by insights from Alessandra Jerolleman. Alessandra is a Latin American woman, mother, community advocate, and applied scholar who calls Louisiana home. She has been partnering with communities in support of disaster justice, equitable recovery and just climate adaptation for the past two decades. Her brilliance has been a beacon for many of us who wish to build with everybody and every mind. Her work encourages us to view every angle and aspect of disaster management through the lens of justice. Here’s Alessandra.
ALESSANDRA: So, a few things come to mind in thinking about disaster justice and maybe the starting place for me is always how can people have their basic needs met, their human rights respected and more importantly, their self-efficacy recognized, right? And their ability to remain in control of their life and their circumstances as much as possible.
And one of the things that I often see in disasters, primarily thinking about the immediate response period, but also moving a little bit into recovery, is that people’s decisions begin to be constrained. And sometimes that is a result of simply resource scarcity and emergency. Sometimes it’s a result of a failure to prioritize people’s rights and dignity.
I think that one of the biggest strengths of mutual aid, is that it is directly responsive to the needs of individuals and it allows them to be full participants as opposed to more charity model, which is often one of people being expected to take what they’re given with gratitude and not ask for anything to be particularized to their needs. And in emergency management, I think that’s been a big challenge. Because there is resource scarcity. And there is the presence of emergency. And it’s always been, I think, a difficulty that the field has had in determining when it is reasonable or not to meat people’s needs and what crosses the line from a desire to need?
I’ll give you a classic example, and that is the things that people are fed when they’re part of any mass eating, right. If they’re in a shelter just being given food assistance after a disaster, it took a long time to even begin to recognize that it might not be appropriate to expect everybody to be okay with bologna, which is a pork product, right? We moved little bit further down that continuum, but generally speaking, folks are vegan, folks are vegetarian. Anybody who’s on a restricted diet. And folks with a hidden disability, right? And there are a lot of people with autoimmune and gastrointestinal conditions who have very real impacts from not being able to follow their diet. I’m actually one of them. We don’t currently account for that in the systems, right? We expect that we will not be able to individualize to everybody’s needs. Some of that is true. There are limitations in that space and in that context. And some of that is also again the measure of priorities that are made. So, I bring that up because I think that’s a space that’s worth thinking about and it isn’t always thought about.
How can people be empowered to still be able to take care of themselves, have access to what they need, particularly, when they begin to interact with these larger systems that may, intentionally or not, be discriminating against them. And certainly, when you also have persons with disabilities, persons of color, you have a lot of other, right, implicit biases that come into play. Systemic biases in the way aid is and isn’t distributed. And the kinds of resources people get. And all of that comes, comes into play as well.
The other space is when it comes to hazardous materials incidents, a lot of the time in my work I talk about natural hazards, but we know that for frontline communities and, but also really any space in the United States, if there’s any kind of natural hazard event, there are likely hazardous material consequences, right? Whether it’s pig farming operations having sort of spills. Whether it’s industrial facilities here in Louisiana and cancer alleys that as a result of a hurricane, experience more releases, right. And one of the biggest challenges there that’s often sort of left to the side and not talked about is what happens with assistive equipment that deaf persons have. So many of the decontamination procedures for persons who are exposed to hazardous materials are not necessarily able to permit people to retain access to their assistive equipment, right?
Whether it’s, sometimes lack of training, in terms of how to decontaminate; for example, certain types of motorized wheelchair, right? Or other kinds of equipment. And there’s a similar challenge when it comes to evacuations in terms of what people are permitted to take with them, how much space there is, whether they have access to electricity, all of those kinds of things. And so that, that, to me is a big issue that’s faced.
Again, even separate and apart many forms of discrimination and bias that exists that compound the problem. And my vice, I suppose there, or thing that I think is sort of twofold, I think there is a larger scale advocacy piece, right, for recognition of the need for different kinds of training, different kinds of resources. So, we’ve seen in emergency management a bit of a shift with regards to things like being able to have slightly different cots and shelters for the elderly, in some circumstances. Or requirements with regards to facilities where federal resources are being given out and whether or not there’s access to translation or sign language or other things. But there’s, there’s still a long way to go in terms of that, of that advocacy.
The individual piece, I think, in terms of preparedness, to me, is sort of taking the time to kind of layout and lift the things that an individual needs in order to retain sort of their normal level of day-to-day self-sufficiency or the greatest level of self-sufficiency possible under the circumstances.
And that might be needing to be certain that there’s, you know, particular amount of space. It might have to do with access to, again, particular kinds of food or assistive devices or electricity, other kinds of services. And to a certain extent, having that sort of list in place and understanding in place, being certain to ask for it on the front end can sometimes help, depending on the circumstances. Some cities and states maintain registries of persons, for example, that need power to be brought back on first. Now, pausing right there, right, there are so many reasons why people with very good reasons choose not to be on any type of registry, and I, that’s a personal decision, right? Based on all of those, all of those factors, but it is a space where there is some work being done by the public health departments to, again, like prioritize resumption of electricity.
The other challenge there though, and I’m thinking of evacuation because I’m here in the New Orleans context is often the, what’s termed special needs in evacuation is limited to a particular person, right? And so it can separate people from family. It can separate people from others that they care for. I mean that was a problem I seen in other events. I mean, as you know, persons with disability are still very often caregivers for others. And so, if there, there were instances where children were put, minor children, for example, because they weren’t able to be evacuated with their caregiver who required special evacuation, right? And so, there are, there are issues like that as well.
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JUSTICE: Disaster justice is also a commitment to people of color with disabilities in facility settings and carceral systems. As we continue to advocate for a future inclusive of collective liberation, Alessandra shares a few ways for us to protect our people who are inside of nursing homes, group homes, jails, prisons, ICE detention centers, psychiatric facilities, or any other type of institutional setting during a disaster.
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ALESSANDRA: That’s a huge concern. And as you know, there’s a really wide range of types of facilities in which a person could be, right, including those in which a person might be by choice or necessity and those in which a person might be against their own will because if we’re thinking institutions, are there also many persons of color with disabilities in the prison system, particularly, in a state like Louisiana. But, I mean the United States, as you know, unconscionable levels of incarceration.
In a medical setting, nursing home-type setting, assisted living-type setting, and all of those kinds of environments for either concerned family member or even the person themselves. Certainly, I would recommend asking very specifically what the plans and the protocols are that the facility has in place with regards to whatever hazards present the greatest risk in that location.
And for people who are maybe not aware of what the biggest hazards are for them in that state, in that county, in that community, they can look to things like the hazard mitigation plan for the county or the city, which are often publicly available. There are also, for folks who have access to connected internet, and the ability to sort of navigate interactive map, there are a handful of digital tools that have been put out such as by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency that will tell a person for a specific geography, you know, you should be concerned more about hurricanes and not about earthquakes. Or should you be thinking about tornadoes, but you know you’re not in the flood zone, right? Those kinds of things.
So, there’s some avenues to get a rough understanding of the kinds of hazards to consider. And honestly, the best way to know what you might also need to worry about in a particular community is to talk to somebody whose lived there a long time, has that knowledge of what’s happened in the last 60, 70 years in that community. With some kind of understanding of sort of the potential hazards and the potential risks, then thinking about, again, asking what kinds of plans the facility has that includes things like evacuation, being able to lockdown for certain types of hazards and also if there are any sort of modifications to the building or the structure that provide additional protection.
So, for example, if you are thinking about hurricane risks, there’s, should be some plan for evacuation when the risk exceeds a certain threshold, but also plans for shelter in place for either rapid onset events where evacuation’s not possible because we see hurricanes are intensifying more quickly now. Or for a smaller scale event. Because there are risks to evacuations, particularly to folks who are medically fragile.
And so knowing what kinds of plans are in place and is, is, an important step knowing if they have access, for example, to backup generators, if they are keeping additional food and resources on site, if the facility is providing support to its employees and their families so that they can reasonably stay and continue to provide assistance in the event of a hazard for something like a tornado, certain kinds of hazardous materials incidents, you’re looking more at the ability of shelter in place, if there’s some kind of safe room, the wind rate of the facility. Some of this gets really technical, right?
This is where it gets hard to think about how do you distill this down into the questions that a family member or a person in such a facility might ask. So, to me the first question is simply, do they have a plan? Second question, what, if any, steps have they taken to help to sort of secure the building? Have they put in, you know, newer wind resistant windows. If we’re worried about wildfire, has there been some landscaping done for wildfire protection? There’s a handful of questions like that that can be asked.
That’s sort of step one. Another option related to that is to reach out to public health officials and ask them what the requirements are in the state. They do, — they are somewhat variable. But there have been some changes to laws after a lot of the tragedies that we’ve seen in recent years with deaths in some of those kinds of facilities. Another thing related to this is then, what do you do once you know, right?
For many people their options are pretty limited either because of finances, because of just the ability to take a family member from that location or remove themselves from that location and still receive access to care. So, there are definitely some very difficult decisions involved in this as well. But, for family members who can safely leave the facility, right, in the event of certain hazards, like a hurricane, for example, having a plan, right, having conversations with family members. Figuring out who, if anyone, might be able to say, for example, you know, pick up a grandparent and take them with them. Or whomever it may be, that can be a viable option as well.
When it comes to persons that are incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized where they can’t leave at will, you can ask similar questions, but we know that there are a lot less regulations and protections in place. Here in Louisiana with the heat that we’ve been having and with many other events that have happened in the last year or two, we’ve consistently seen that the health of incarcerated persons is not taken into account whatsoever, right?
The last thing that I would say is, again, thinking about the choice continuum, right, I mean some persons are in a particular facility location where that is the only choice for financial or insurance or geographic reasons. Others have some measure of choice and are sort of picking and choosing. And when that’s the case, you know, whenever possible, having one of the things that is considered in that decision also just be whether they have plans in place. Whether they’ve taken any steps to protect the facility and the location of the facility, right? With certain hazards, there are some relatively obvious visual cues, right?
For example, you know, if you are immediately next to a river, right, you might assume a greater level of flood risk. It’s not always 100% going to hold true, but there are some visible cues that help with that. If you’re in, are on the west coast, and there’s concern about Tsunamis, maybe the extent of proximity to the coast, right, is going to be something that can be taken into account.
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JUSTICE: Let’s talk about resilience for a second, shall we? More specifically, what happens when resilience is weaponized. When we are constantly expected to adapt when harmful conditions stay the same. When our lives are devalued, when decisions are made during crisis based on our disabilities.
ALESSANDRA: The first thing that I thought of was the broader conversations around resilience, in particular, and the expectations that sometimes are embedded in the idea of resilience that people should be able to bounce back. And when I talk to a lot of people in communities that are constantly impacted by disasters, they’re tired of being expected to bounce back.
And sometimes the language of resiliency it becomes, becomes sort of weaponized. It because a bludgeon suggesting to people that they have to be, simply able to take what’s thrown at them and be prepared to adjust and adapt. But that they shouldn’t ask why things are being thrown at them in the first place, right? They shouldn’t question the system or the larger patterns. And I think that that is very relevant to thinking about both persons of color and persons of color with disabilities and because I think there is very often this assumption that people are inherently resilient, you know, because they have been having to make due.
Or that are personally responsible for being resilient, even when the structures are not there to support their resilience. Whether it’s bigger systemic issues around, you know, racialized differences and property values or access to care and we know in medical system there’s no shortage of research showing clear disparities in the care that that person’s got related to gender, to race, to sexuality. So, I think that is, that is something to really think about is just how that word is used in the first place.
When it comes to thinking about COVID and then I think of it more about triage and the idea of triage, the way it’s talked about for say a mass injury event, or mass casualty event, is that there will not be enough resources to render care to everyone and that if care is rendered haphazardly, if it’s rendered sort of first come first served, then the resources are going to be misused.
So, let me elaborate. This is not, I’m not stating my opinion or my philosophy, right, just sort of underpinning how triage is thought about. If a person, for example, is very unlikely to survive and it will take, let’s just say, you know, two EMTs half an hour of their time to attempt to assist this person with their survival or pain management and their still very unlikely to survive, if they — then does it make, is it logical to have rendered care to that one person instead of the, let’s say 10 others who had a much likelihood for survival with a more medical intervention more immediately, but if they wait that hour, their odds go down, right?
So, the idea is then to sort of prioritize those resources to those who are most likely to survive. To maximize the overall survival rates. That’s an over simplification, but, I think starting from there, then it begs the question of who gets to decide, right, and what gets valued. And those kinds of decisions are maybe treated as being very objective when there are clearly value assumptions there, because we could first and foremost ask what would it help, what would it cost or what would it take to just be able to render care to everyone, right? Is this notion of scarcity even real? And second, we would have to ask the parameters that are being utilized, right, are they appropriate? Are they just? Are they discriminatory?
You know in some cases, persons with certain chronic conditions, certain needs might have been further down the line in terms of their access to and ability to receive care. I am, I am not sure what the solution is to that, right, in terms of what folks can sort of advocate for and kind of what can be, what can be proposed. I completely agree that it is a big, that it is a big challenge and that the biases that are built into the medical system also need to be talked about much more. They need to be taken into account in all of these settings where any kind of care is being rendered to persons.
And I think there is a moral and ethical duty to, for the ways to provide the care to persons that they need and not just fall back on saying there’s not enough resources for everyone, right? Some people are going to get assistance and others aren’t.
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JUSTICE: Unjust resource allocation. The tap root from which so many inequities weave through the world. When there is harm, there must be repair. Wouldn’t you agree? So, let’s talk about reparations.
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ALESSANDRA: I think we’re long overdue for a more robust conversation about reparations. And reparations models, internationally include often things like access to physical healthcare, mental healthcare, access to resources to provide redress assistance for the many harms that are imposed upon persons and their descendants, right, when you live in a system of oppression. And if you look at food deserts, if you look at health deserts, if you look at how they correlate with the history of redlining, for example, right, it’s 100% clear that there is, there’s a debt owed and I don’t think, scarcity is, is not an excuse because as you pointed out, resources are put in many other places.
And the other thing in this country, is we often base resources on population, right? We have a direct correlation for certain services between the taxes that can be drawn from a population and the money that’s been available for things like schools and libraries and other things, right?
Healthcare is, to some extent, subsidized by the Federal Government in different ways, but you still have a local budget component. Local budget also reflects the ability of people to pay what their property is valued at, right, all of these other historic burdens as well. So, you have a situation where the system is built in such a way that you will always have separate and unequal from community-to-community based largely upon the racial composition of that community.
And I think that is, that is something that should be directly stated as often as possible, because when you’re asking for resourcing for these things, it’s not a favor, it’s not charity, it’s not even, you know, taking, it’s not even particular, like a small group asking for more than others. It is, it is a redress for the creation of the harm and the disparity in the first place, because the way the resources were allocated to begin with was not fair and equal and equitable.
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JUSTICE: Discrimination by delayed means that far too often our people are displaced much longer, or the journey home after disasters ends up being much harder. For example, when landlords or delinquent property managers refuse to make repairs, but please hear me when I say, we have the right to return to our communities just like everyone else.
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ALESSANDRA: I always come back to prioritizing the rights of individuals to make informed decisions that are what is, what they feel is best for themselves, right? There is a lot of loss of decision making and power that happens in disasters. Some of that is due to timelines and resources and other pressures. You pointed out that folks who are renters are very often priced out and displaced. Folks who are homeowners, sometimes are basically waited out, right? It takes too long to get assistance, it’s not available, to many of the types of assistance that people have access to require them to have money on the front end that they might not have if they had to spend, they didn’t have it in the first place so they had to spend it on prioritizing medical needs or other things that that were needed.
And so, we see a tremendous amount of displacement after disasters. We see even more of that among what are often described as vulnerable populations, the elderly, those with disabilities. And we definitely see a great deal of that with renters or folks that are sort of multi-family households.
In terms of, you know, sort of strategies to provide support, I think one thing that is needed is even just the recognition that being part of a community is more than just home ownership. We tend to do better at recognizing the right of persons that own land or own a home, right, as somebody who should have a voice in recovery and in deciding what’s going to happen. Even then, certainly not everybody’s voice is treated equally. But renters have even less rights that are recognized. Less voice when it comes to defining what a community, what a community looks like in part because they don’t pay taxes.
I mean that’s certainly the argument that’s made. Or assumptions about greater mobility. But I think there are also some normative sort of built-in things in the United States that have really prioritized property ownership as being key to citizenship in any real way.
One of the things that I think we very much need, in addition to recognizing the rights of renters, the unhoused, those who are also part of a community, in addition, just to that, I think that it is important to recognize the value of allowing people to stay in community and be able to support each other. Because one of the other things that often happens in disaster recovery is dispersal, and that dispersal impacts the ability that persons have to access their support networks. And some of that dispersal is directly occasioned by the government programs with which people interact.
So, many temporary housing assistance programs don’t guarantee that you could be in the same geography, same space with your neighbors or your close family, right? Often it’s a sort of first come first serve. Or there are other pieces that come into that. I think prioritizing the ability of people to stay in community and be able to support each other, is a really important and needed policy shift in addition to identifying more ways to give voice to renters.
The other thing that I would add is that often at the level of a city or a county thinking about resilience. They’re, generally, not thinking about people. They’re thinking about metrics that don’t take individual people into account. So, for example, in recovery, the number of homes that are rebuilt and have an occupancy permit, right, are inhabited again is a metrics. That metric doesn’t take into account who lives in that home. Property values might by a metric.
If home sales are going back up, right, if people are moving back, again, that doesn’t account for the fact that some of that could be gentrification. Some of that could be displacement and prioritizing of a right to return is, I think, a very important justice issue that requires thinking about what is happening with gentrification, protecting tenant rights and all of these other, these other components.
And while at the same time, recognizing that there are persons who may wish to move and the disaster can present an opportunity, right? That, it’s not to say that that is not ever the case, but we know that many people are consistently displaced either by disasters or by what’s happening in disaster recovery, administrative delays, bureaucratic violence. Or even longer standing sort of processes that have been happening in the community that are sped up and exacerbated. Including a lack of access to care and facilities, right? We see the nonprofit sector really strained in a lot of communities. We see huge health deserts. Having a disaster can also take away a lot of those services for folks.
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JUSTICE: Believe it or not, we’ve blown through most of our time with Alessandra, who has helped us understand old problems while lifting us up toward new solutions and ideas. Now, we’ve come to my favorite landing place, love. Here’s Alessandra’s love message to People of Color with Disabilities.
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ALESSANDRA: You are a critically important part of the community and part of the social networks. And that your contributions should be respected and valued and your place in the community honored in the day-to-day and also when there is any kind of disaster that we all stand to learn from each other and support each other in networks of care and love and mutual aid and that the systems that we have in place should support the ability to do that and not make it harder.
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JUSTICE: You are critically important. May those words and their loving intention stay with you always. I hope this entire interview served you in whatever ways you needed it to. Thank you so much for listening. For more information and to access other audio companions, or the full written Disaster Justice Guidebook, go to justiceshorter.com or AdultAdvocacyCenters.org.
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Transcribed by Michelle Houston
Justice Shorter 