Bodies on display: from parking pads to Agent Orange

Abstract

What can a parking pad at the front of a house and agent orange, a defoliant used by the US military in its “Operation Ranch Hand” during the war in the Vietnam, possibly have in common? How unsafe does everything need to become to justify action? These are just a few of the questions at the centre of the stories I share in this piece; a piece that traces my/our experience trying to “get” something from our city to make access happen, and another story from decades earlier centred on restorative justice and the toxic chemical (dioxin) legacy of the American war in Vietnam.