5 posts tagged “wildfire”
Come this Wednesday night to UCSD for a roundtable of local urban planners, activists and lawyers who will give presentations on the unequal treatment of immigrants during the fire and misleading explanations for the causes of the fire. All the information for this is located on the roundtable wiki.
Presenters:
Andrea Guerrero - ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
Pedro Rios - American Friends Service Committee
Rick Brady - City of Santee (UCSD Urban Studies Planning alumni)
Enrique Morones - Border Angels
A Roundtable follow up to the 2008 Culture Conference:
Crisis, Emergency, Global Processes
Sponsored by the UCSD Sociology Department
disaster," instead of a case of mismanaged urban planning, ill-led concepts of fire "prevention." Therefore the causes fell on to nature, instead of socio-political reasons.
For many around the world who watched the news coverage of our local crisis, it appeared that only middle- to upper-class, Caucasian home-owners were affected by this disaster. Newscasters biasedly compared the state-of emergency disaster to New Orleans's Hurricane Katrina in a fashion that portrayed San Diegans as wealthy, coordinated, charitable and peaceful in contrast to New Orleaneans who were portrayed as poor, disorganized, and violent. Essentially, San Diego "citizens" were framed as united, while New Orleans "refugees" were portrayed as lacking in unity. Just like Hurricane Katrina, the media coverage and the treatment of the San Diego fires were embedded in long-standing issues of class, race and ethnicity.
This roundtable aims to bring out many the socio-political reasons that contributed to the fire and the politics of who's stories were represented in the media and which ones remained untold. For example, many of the fires’ human victims were migrant workers living in canyons who, largely because of their extreme marginalization, were not able to be reached and informed about the fires. In stark contrast to the mainstream coverage of property owners (like the TV reporter standing outside his own house for hours of coverage). The human toll of the fires was largely ignored, or even blamed on these victims for consuming UCSD Regional Burn Center resources for instance.
Please forward this invite to your networks!
As I watch this disaster unfold, I keep comparing how the news frames the San Diego 2007 Firestorm in contrast to how they framed New Orlean's Hurrican Katrina. Race and class are at the heart of the comparisons. So much of this sounds different when you are talking about SD's primarily Caucasian middle-upper class communities being affected by the fire - whereas in new Orleans it was primarily poor black people stranded in the hurricane.
we can see many differences just by comparing how the media and government talks about the evacuees who stayed behind despite a mandatory evacuation. In New Orleans, helicopters didn't rescue all the black people on their roofs, supposedly because they were hearing "gun shots." I remember the reaction from the news and online community was that those who didn't listen to the mandatory evacuation were complete "idiots" or people trying to defy the law- essentially those stupid poor blacks folks. In San Diego - firefighters can't focus their resources on fighting the fires because of the winds and because they are also busy doing emergency rescues on people who didnt' listen to the mandatory evacuation. HOWEVER - the news frames these people in a more sympathetic light - by saying well you can understand why these people are so attached to their beautiful homes they own because of all the hard work they've put into it and even though they should have listened we understand the pain they are - essentially we are sympathetic to middle-upper class folks for staying behind in the face of a fire if they are protecting their houses. White people again are reinforced as HARD-WORKING and PERSISTENT even when they FAIL to evacuate while blacks are framed as LAZY and UNOBEDIENT for not evacuating.
Remember how the media
said black folks were raping, murdering and eating each other in the
New Orleans Superdome? Now the media in San Diego frames the 10,000
primarily white middle-upper class folks from North County in the
Qualcom Stadium as peacefully sharing oral stories about their homes
and eating home-baked brownies dropped off by sympathetic volunteers, and getting massages by compassionate massage therapist volunteers!!!! And please notice the headline of the article by ABC about those who are giving massages, "CIVILITY REIGNS IN SAN DIEGO," as if the opposite - UNCIVILITY - reigns in other places. CIVILITY refers so much to those who are CIVILIZED and separates the civilized from the uncivilized. This implies that the situation in Qualcomm stadium is totally different from the situation in other uncivilized evacuee areas - like the Superdome, where the black evacuees were supposedly unpolite, violent, sweaty, dirty and smelly - and where the Black Evacuees were called REFUGEES. So at least San Diego has learned so much from Katrina - they are taking the names of people who enter the stadium, and they are not referring to them non-US citizens. We have no white refugees in San Diego- truly they are first-class civilized citizens! 
I have to admit that I am so upset right now that I am having a hard time finishing a deconstruction of this headline and the images - so if anyone wants to write more about this please do - and I will link to you.
I know the situations (Katrina and Southern California Wildfires) are completely different and do not stand for a sound comparison, but a comparison in media representation is worthwhile and reveals how the class and race of community matter. . For a reminder at how much race and class does matter in media discourse- here's a photo where I examined from the Hurrican Katrina and how the news framed a black man wading in water as "looting" while they framed a white man wading in water as "finding" floating goods. Btw- Many New Orleans evacuees are STILL homeless and not doing ok 2 years after the disaster. For those in Malibu and San Diego who had their mansions burn down - I wonder what will happen?
I am so mad that the city I live in is filled with so much sweet words of prejudice. Not that this doesn't happen everyday everywhere - but it's just really intense when your city is burning down and there is so much racial and class politics in the media. As Raquel has written - the whole South side of San Diego county is burning down, but it the press coverage is scant compared to North County of San Diego - where all the super-rich super-luxury mansions are loacted. It's where people, like this person, go to escape their 2nd home or to their friend's hotel or book a room at the Aviara for $350 a night with sculpted flamingos and golf courses.
(South County is more middle-low income, racially and ethnically mixed and 10-5 miles from Mexico.)
You can read my other thoughts about the National news coverage of SD fires here, distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.
UPDATE: NPR just did a piece on how bloggers are either comparing or arguing against a comparison of Katrina vs.Southern Ca. Wildfires. They link to many other excellent blog posts that do some great comparisons.
this photo was taken by ABC News and was part of this story and part of The Stencil.
it was only today - Day #4 of the San Diego fires - did my friends on the East Coast start calling me to make sure I was not on fire and that my house was not burning down. This map demonstrates how truly catastrophic this 1 fire (of 8 other large fires) is- not because it shows how big this 1 fire is is, but because it shows how it compares to the city of Manhattan. Oh my NYC-Centric friends - the world doesn't make sense unless it is put into the context of your world? (I am not being 100% sarcastic, I am one of those NYC-centric people)
The stupid media has only been focusing on LA's celebrities up until today - and then they realized - wow the Malibu fire is sooo miniscule compared to the fact that the ENTIRE COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO IS BURNING DOWN!
Even my friend Roger in Sweden knew about San Diego's fires before my friends on the East Coast. That's horrible! He said the video he watched of the SD fires on Day #2, Monday - reported that the SD fires were worse than the LA fires. This is SWEDEN!!!!!! Can you believe that?
What's worse - I and many other bloggers in SD have been posting about what we are going through - so it's not like we've been silent. This clearly shows a need for more sophisticated and different levels of information reporting - if I and many others have been flickring and voxing about this for days and the large media conglomerates failed to pick up on the seriousness of this - it is clear something is wrong with how certain news is highlighted while some are ignored - and this also shows that we need a different outlet that focuses on first-hand accounts from bloggers and etc.
This happens all the time around the world - bloggers were posting about the recent Myamar/Burma killings of civilians - but it took a while for "official" news outlets to pick on it. This happens all the time in Africa and China. Just because people are writing about it online does not mean their information will get picked up. We need a new kind of media outlet that will be good at doing just that - specializing in first-hand online accounts. There is nothing democratic about the internet. hmm this sounds like just the kind of service Kenyatta has been talking about creating!
You can read my other thoughts about the distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.
this was photo overlay was created by tim
now I know why no one from the east coast or even in Northern California called me to make sure I wasn't burning up in the fires - because the National and local news outside of SD are really only focusing on the Malibu fires of Los Angeles! Even my friend in Los Angeles says they are barely mentioning what's going on in San Diego! Well world, although Kelsey Grammar has been evacuated and this is serious national news - I also want to let my faithful friends know that I am FINE and I am not burning up or in the line of fire at all. I am at least 15 miles away from the fires and there are also a few canyons in between me and the fires. See the map below - I am in where all the yellow freeways come together - so in San Diego proper. It's very hard to breath - we are all coughing and sneezing - burning nasal passages - the air is dusty.
It's not just the luxury homes of celebrities that are burning up - it's also luxury homes of the non-famous in San Diego. And in San Diego- Chula Vista and towns near the Mexican-US border are being evacuated also - so even more proof this is just affecting more than the super rich and famous. But even so, I feel so sorry for the rich non-celebrities of SD, they can only go to Four Seaons and book massages - but how sad they don't have papparazzi on them all the time.
You can read my other thoughts about the racial class politics of San Diego fires here, National news coverage of SD fires here, distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here. this was photo overlay was created by tim
Generic Asian Man: Help Fire!!! We need more help!!!
Crazy Monster: Sorry I'm busy thinking. But I will help you socially deconstruct the situation from a culturally materialistic Point-of-View ex post facto.
today is the second day of the San Diego wildfires. Raquel, Kevin,
Brian and I are sitting here working on our research while the rest of
San Diego is burning down - of course we are online and keeping up with
the news at the same time. Raquel at one point said how much she now
realizes firefighters are symbolic social heros. She said although
it's their jobs - they are out there fighting the fires while we are
working on our research proposals. and then I said - well it's not
like a bunch of sociologists would EVER agree to help a fire - we would
only volunteer to help socially deconstruct the situation after the
fires were done burning. So with that story - I bring you Crazy
Monster #4: Sure I will Help!
FYI - the firefighters aren't actually fighting any fires yet - they can't until the fires die down - they are busy performing emergency evacuations on idiots who wouldn't listen to the mandatory evacuation.
Read al the other Crazy Monster Cartoons here.
