“the disposability of this landscape is linked to white supremacy”

Marshes and land polluted in South Richmond CA
Astra Zeneca property, a Superfund polluted site in Richmond CA on the S.F. Bay

For KQED in San Francisco, I spoke with reporter Ezra David Romero about the condition of “sacrificial zones” – landscapes where legacies of toxicity become exposed to new dangers of sea level rise along waterfronts that are historically colonized and segregated. Read the story.

Explosive Cultures: Bombscapes and the Order of Law

I’m happy to mention I’ll be one of a cohort of 2018 DHI Faculty Fellows… Here’s a quick blurb of the project:

“Explosive Cultures: Bombscapes and the Order of Law”
Javier Arbona investigates the ordo: the shared spatial, imaginative, and cultural ties between the order of the explosive and the order of the law. Specifically, this project seeks to reveal the cultural landscapes—or “bombscapes”—produced by the seeming opposition, but actual co-evolution, of explosions and the legal attempts to control them.

Spaces of the 1942 Black Sailors’ Uprising in Vallejo, California

I wanted to give a quick heads-up that, at long last, one of my articles that took forever to publish has been released. This article reflects some of the work in my dissertation and book project, albeit much strengthened through the publishing process. I hope some of you can find it useful in your classes or research. I’d also like to think it’s an interesting story in its own right, even if not directly related to what you do! Not many people know that this uprising took place, or what it meant for anti-segregation struggles in the Bay Area during WWII (the subject of my book ms). The article was published in Landscape Journal, which I am very happy about. Although it took a long time, they did invaluable editing work and I received very helpful anonymous peer review comments. If you don’t have an institutional access, email me and I can send a PDF.

The intersection of Virginia and Sacramento Streets, or the vicinity identified in Pearson’s account of the shooting of black sailors—an anonymous and unrecognized “anti-memorial” to the 1942 uprising. The city of Vallejo truncated Virginia as part of 1960s urban redevelopment, creating this “paseo,” or pedestrian plaza. The Marina Tower looms large over the site (Photo by author, 2015).
The intersection of Virginia and Sacramento Streets, or the vicinity identified in Pearson’s account of the shooting of black sailors—an anonymous and unrecognized “anti-memorial” to the 1942 uprising. The city of Vallejo truncated Virginia as part of 1960s urban redevelopment, creating this “paseo,” or pedestrian plaza. The Marina Tower looms large over the site (Photo by author, 2015).

“Anti-memorials and World War II Heritage in the San Francisco Bay Area: Spaces of the 1942 Black Sailors’ Uprising,” published in Landscape Journal

Abstract

This essay excavates a little-known uprising of black sailors in Vallejo, California, a World War II boomtown where, in late December 1942, African American Navy personnel rose up to resist racism and to contest segregation at the Mare Island Navy Depot. White personnel sent to put down the revolt shot at least two unarmed black sailors. I focus on one site of reported violence: a downtown intersection, a location and incident interpreted in a woodcut print by artist Frank Rowe. The image contrasts with the uprising’s invisibility within the downtown spaces of the city. Accordingly, this text introduces a different understanding of the design concept of the “anti-memorial” to describe this elusive site of oppression as a geographic space that destabilizes and de-territorializes readings of the World War II home front, concluding that the Vallejo anti-memorial is a limen between the existing spatial memory that conceals military oppression and its potential reclamation for justice.