Reminder: Pakistan Flood Disaster Politics Teach-In

[Mubbashir Rizvi]

Pakistan Floods- The Politics of an Environmental Disaster

Thursday, October 21, 6:30-9:00 GEA 105 (Mary Gearing Hall is on 24th street- Between Speedway and Guadalupe on 24th St)

The floods in Pakistan devastated some of the poorest rural communities in the world. Official estimates of destruction are so high that it's hard to fathom a recovery any time soon. Yet twelve weeks after the floods it seems that the international community has moved on. The terrible indifference to human suffering as well the lack of proper examination of this calamity echoes the troubling questions raised in the aftermath of recent environmental disasters like the earthquake in Haiti, Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

In the case of Pakistan, American and European media outlets cant seem to report on the human suffering without linking everything to terrorism and Islamic extremism. Fighting the flood coalition is organizing a teach-in forum to highlight the important questions that remain unasked by mainstream media outlets. We want to raise the following questions that were never addressed by the mainstream media? Secondly, after two months of a successful fund raising on campus we want to shift our focus to a political campaign to issues of social justice to demand accountability from

• How did race and religion play a factor on the coverage of Indus Floods? “Compassion Fatigue or Orientalism in Disguise?
• The making of disasters. How “natural” are environmental disasters?
• Humanitarian Donor or Profiteer? What is the role of World Bank and Asian Development Bank in this disaster?
• When a farmland became a lake, a student account of his village?
• Fight the Flood- Spread the Love- A report from UT student mobilization. What is to be done?

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Please help flood survivors in Pakistan!

Fightingtheflood.org

Chip in to donate water purifiers for safe drinking water in relief camps and affected communities.
Get informed and contribute: js​hare.johns​hopkins.ed​u/xythoswf​s/webview/​_xy-310577​3_1 or: waterfiltersforpakistan.chipin.com