CODES

Tower Grove Neighborhood, St. Louis, MO: Reparative Justice

The 2027 class of CODE Scholar will work with the Missouri Botanical Garden with an inclusive theme of reparative justice, an approach centering on those who have been harmed, focusing on healing and repairing past harms to prevent them in the future. The combined scholarly expertise of ethnobotany and conservation biology, with the historical resources of Henry Shaw’s papers and the specimens in the herbarium, make MOBOT an ideal site for transdisciplinary problem-solving.

CODE Scholars will work over a period of two years in research teams with Michelle Bonner, Robbie Hart, and Andrew Colligan to explore the institution’s history of enslavement, retrace the erasures of Black and Brown residents who lived in the area that is now Shaw Nature Reserve, and study the indigenous knowledge and cultural context underlying specimens in the Herbarium.

CODE Scholars can help MOBOT tell these stories with intentionality and sensitivity to welcome more diverse guests to the Garden.

Alton, IL: Resiliency and Spatial Justice in the Face of Climate Change

As a Mississippi River town, Alton has a storied past. After the Missouri Compromise, Alton was a key stop for the Underground Railroad and a hub of activity for abolitionists and those escaping from slavery. The city was also the site of racial segregation throughout the twentieth century. Redlining meant that black communities were relegated to parts of the city at the mercy of the river’s frequent flooding. Extreme flooding again hit Alton in spring 2019 leading to concerns about racial justice in the context of climate change. Working in their research teams, Scholars consider water quality, flood management, housing practices, and segregation in the context of history, literature, geography, and environmental science.

Teams work to define what spatial justice should look like in this region, a concept that Edward Soja explains as “fundamentally, almost inescapably, a struggle over geography.” Spatial justice is “the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and opportunities to use them” (2009). Contributing to the work of spatial justice, our community-engaged approach can foster online environments in which project participants consider their subject position in relationship to power and privilege as it operates in everyday interactions as well as in broader global contexts.

Teams are working with the YWCA of Southwest Illinois, focusing on racial equity in relationship to mental health and violence prevention; with the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center on science education and misinformation; and with the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) on equity in education. 

This year’s cohort is partnering with Heartlands Conservancy and the Jackie Joyner Kersee Food Agriculture and Nutrition Innovation Center (JJK-FAN) to help imagine more sustainable and socially just approaches to water infrastructures. The world economic forum has called water security “our most urgent challenge today.” Flash flooding, contaminants, disappearing habitats, and lack of access to clean drinking water make water infrastructure fundamental for the health of our communities, our access to food and clean drinking water, and our biodiversity.

JJK-FAN is situated in the Southern American Bottom, a collection of smaller watersheds that form the flood plain for the Mississippi River. These watersheds are pivotal to the health of several under-resourced towns in East St. Louis School District 189, including East St. Louis, Cahokia, Washington Park, Fairmont City, and Brooklyn, IL. Because ecosystems rarely follow municipal boundaries, it has been pivotal for these towns to collaborate across governmental boundaries to address flooding and wastewater management.

This area flows with a bioregional history directly tied to water infrastructure. People, plants, and animals have relied on the area’s rich alluvial soil, and the region is part of the Mississippi Flyway, a major migratory route for birds. The region was home to the Pre-Columbian Cahokia Mounds Civilization and its central trading network, and Mississippi’s frequent flooding may have led to the civilization’s decline. Later, deforestation of the riverbanks due to increasing steamboat transportation resulted in transformation to the river’s channel and to the floodplain itself. The 20th century brought expanding industries and pollutants to these Southern Bottom’s watersheds. Industrial attempts to mitigate flooding, including a complex levee system have resulted in increased flooding in some areas. We’ll dig into SIUE’s archives to trace the long history of connection between natural and build environments in the Southern American Bottom.