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1. One of the things I teach my disaster studies students is that disasters replicate whatever structures of inequality exist in a society.
2. The effects of the 3.11 Triple Disaster in Japan, for instance, were shaped by two preexisting cleavages in Japanese society:
3. Rural depopulation (as people from the country move to cities, especially Tokyo) and the demographic crisis (few babies, many elderly).
4. In the US, we see this most clearly in how the experience of disasters and disaster response so often reproduces white supremacy.
5. Today we're watching as the major structure of inequality and power in Puerto Rican history—colonialism—shapes and determines Maria.
6. We see colonialism's shadow not only in the inattention paid to the crisis in Puerto Rico, but also in the incapacity of the PR state.
7. Puerto Ricans' experience of Maria is inextricable from the attack on the Puerto Rican state led by mainland banks and investors.
8. Likewise, historians are bad at prediction, but my guess is that citizens' responses to Maria are and will be shaped by imperial politics
9. I don't know enough about Puerto Rico and it's politics to know what that will mean exactly. Local knowledge, which I don't have, matters
10. That's why I gave to @popdemoc's Maria fund. I trust them to have connections to local groups in PR that will build a more just PR.
11. (Which is not a full throated endorsement, mind you. I wish I had the connections to give to PR organizations directly.)
12. Anyway, point is: be on the lookout for how US imperialism shapes and determines the experience and aftermath of Maria. Fin.
13. Brief addendum to this thread: be on the lookout also, always, for patriarchy and misogyny.
14. Patriarchy structures disaster experiences often in jess publicly visible ways, because it structures private, familial experiences.
