Joint Center Urges New Responses to Disaster Preparedness

That's the message conveyed in three reports commissioned by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and released at a national conference on disaster mitigation on May 15-17 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel inNew Orleans.

The conference, "Race, Place, and the Environment in the Aftermath of Katrina: Reclaiming, Rebuilding, Revitalizing," is sponsored by the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) at Dillard University inNew Orleans. Participants will examine the progress of rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast region and take a closer look at the state of the recovery inNew Orleans.

One presenter is Reilly Morse, a senior attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice inBiloxi, whose paper Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hurricane Katrina, will be released today. In it, he describes how environmental injustice, starting with segregated settlement patterns, has had serious health consequences for low-income people of color and others. In the case ofNew Orleans, the legacy of inequality became life-threatening when Katrina hit. Morse makes specific recommendations aimed at reinvigorating the environmental justice movement, which first gained traction by protesting discriminatory placement of hazardous waste sites. Morse's report can be found on the Joint Center's website at www.jointcenter.org.

"The papers commissioned by the Joint Center consider some of the most fundamental issues underlying the disparate outcomes suffered by people of color during Hurricane Katrina," said Ralph B. Everett, President and CEO of the Joint Center. "The authors offer analysis of the social conditions giving rise to the tragic outcomes, the reasons behind the inadequate disaster response and possible strategies for addressing these social conditions and ensuring effective emergency response planning."

The other papers in the series are: Understanding the Role of African American Churches and Clergy in Community Crisis Response, by Karyn Trader-Leigh; and In the Wake of Katrina: the Continuing Saga of Housing and the Rebuilding inNew Orleans, by James H. Carr, H. Beth Marcus, Shehnaz Niki Jagpal and Nandinee Kutty.

The Joint Center is one of the nation's premier research and public policy institutions and the only one whose work focuses primarily on issues of particular concern to African Americans and other people of color.

SOURCE Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

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