Copy
Stories from the South in your inbox.
It's come time for my annual refrain: We're less than one week in, and it's somehow both already August, and still August.

This week—and this year—is proving just how arbitrary the deadlines we collectively assign to certain parts of the year can be. In the face of renewed fear and surging cases of viral variants we're still learning about, we're still sending our children back to school—just as a new eviction moratorium staves off the threat that they won't have homes to return to.

I want to reiterate something I've harped on a few times in this letter over the last year and a half: As unlikely as it may feel, and as exhausted as we may be, now more than ever is the time for movement.
Become a Scalawag member today.
These deadlines, the promises we ascribe to them, and the ways we act on those self-fulfilling prophecies are in some ways indicators of our collective confidence of spirit. Remember that the precariousness of our systems are for the most part man-made. That means they can be changed. Panic, fear, and uncertainty are some of the most influential and powerful feelings we can harness as a collective. This week, some David and Goliath lessons about just that.
'A lifetime of damage' on a creosote plume in Houston's Fifth Ward
Xander Peters, Scalawag

“At first they were saying, ‘It’s not our fault.’ Now all of a sudden, it’s just, ‘We feel sorry for the residents.’ If you’re so sorry, come [get] your ass out here and do something.” 

Cancerous chemicals are sickening Black residents at alarming rates in Houston's Fifth Ward. Neighbors who want accountability from the polluting company are stuck: Texas courts say the burden of proof is on them, but they say the proof is in the cancer their families are getting. For Dianna Cormier-Jackson and many others in the Fifth, this story begins a generation ago, back when the area was reasonably priced and close to the Southern Pacific rail yard where many families found work. But fast forward seven decades, and what was once the largest Southern rail yard is under new ownership, and hasn't run for 37 years.

Today, at least 110 nearby homes in the neighborhood sit on a plume of toxic pollution. Union Pacific, the company that owns the site today, has refused responsibility for any contamination or related illness. For now, the only way to escape the chemicals is to move, and that's not possible for everyone, especially those taking care of sick family members. Community organizers want real action—including removal of the chemicals, relocation, and full coverage of the medical bills they say they’ve acquired as a result of the exposure. [Link]
1. On the Louisiana Coast, an Indigenous Community Loses Homes to Erosion
Duy Linh Tu & Julian Lim, Scientific American

For the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, climate change has forced a permanent retreat inland. In 2020, five major storms slammed the Louisiana coast, the most ever in a single season. For many residents of the Isle de Jean Charles, 80 miles southwest of New Orleans, the unprecedented barrage was a final warning. Now, the remaining Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw members who made the island their home have decided to leave.

The state of Louisiana has been preparing for this day, too. It is using a $48 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to build 150 homes in Schriever, a town 40 miles inland. Residents of Isle de Jean Charles are guaranteed a new home there—but to get it, they have to give up their residency on the island.

All but four families have taken the deal, the tribe’s chief Albert Naquin says. The development in Schriever is scheduled to open by the end of 2021. This will mark the end of the tribe’s presence on the coast. Louisiana loses about a football field of coastline every hour—and for some, that loss is very personal.
2. The Community of Brown Grove vs. Wegmans
Tyrese Coleman & Melody Schreiber, The Washington Post Magazine

"The house I grew up in, the graveyard where my grandmother, great-grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins are buried, and the homes of many family members all line a dirt road adjacent to the plot where Wegmans plans to build. My godmother can walk out of her back door and, within 100 feet, cross over the property line of the proposed center. During a visit last summer, I saw the signs of coming disruption: cones and orange markers, cleared ditches with long tubes, diggers and other heavy-duty machinery. All around Brown Grove and the surrounding neighborhoods, I saw yard signs with a Wegmans truck circled in red and crossed out with a slash."

Brown Grove, Virginia, home to a few hundred residents, is a Black community that has been long neglected by county officials. Calls for road improvements have gone ignored. There are no sidewalks; the church has provided the only playground and public park; and some residents were only recently added to the county water system, while others still draw water from wells.

Last year, the town was scouted for the construction of a 1.1 million-square-foot, $175 million Wegmans distribution center. The company says it will add jobs and tax revenue to Hanover County. Activists say that the massive center would bring 24-hour floodlights and steady truck traffic to a site marked only by trees and swamps.

Importantly, the facility would sit on the unmarked graves of Brown Grove’s founders, and would disturb environmentally critical wetlands that help provide well water for many homes and serve as an ecosystem balance to nearby infrastructure like Interstate 95. "I’m afraid that if we don’t put a stop to this, Brown Grove is not going to be a place that people who grew up here will want to come back to," says Bonnica Cotman, a lifelong resident and a founding member of the Brown Grove Preservation Group, a collection of concerned individuals. "The community will die."
3. A Socialist Manifesto for Gen Z, By Gen Z
Calla Walsh, Teen Vogue

"The tools to build interracial, intergenerational working-class power are here. If we, the generation whose souls have not yet been crushed by capitalism, choose to use these tools, we can shift the tide in favor of socialism—the only system that will guarantee us a livable planet and life unburdened from economic exploitation, crushing debt, and racial castes."

The youngest delegate at this week's Democratic Socialists of America National Convention urges members of her generation to mobilize toward building a socialist future—and challenges the concept of "Gen Z saviorism," which she says shifts the responsibility to fix the world’s problems from the shoulders of the systems that caused these problems to younger generations who will be forced to bear the brunt of the impacts. "We are not saviors, and we need to be activated in a socialist way. As passionate as I am about youth organizing, above all, I believe in the power of intergenerational organizing."
Actually, Compared With Earth, Hell’s Climate Policies Are Super Progressive

We've seen the headlines: “We are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people.” —United Nations. “Record-setting heat wave shows that climate change is creating hell on Earth” —Los Angeles Times

Finally, a reply, from the fine folks at McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Dear People of Earth (i.e., Future Residents of Hell),

Where do you get off with such baseless slander? When it comes to climate, we Hell-people are doing great compared with you. Before belittling us in your “memos,” please learn from us. We’ve been low carbon since the Fall of Man.

When God gave Satan the keys to Hell, it was a temperate 239.4 degrees—the melting point of brimstone. After the Adam and Eve debacle, we experienced relentless population growth from people who died in their sins. Our core temperature rose, and the human souls began to melt too quickly. We realized that if we didn’t take dramatic and coordinated action, our fiery lakes would dry up and we’d be left like Earth, with a climate in disrepair and a patchwork of piteous policy proposals.

While Earth has been busy wrecking its climate, Hell has transformed into a super-progressive climate-investment landscape. We’ve taken a bold stance on clean energy, and seen tremendous positive spillovers for our torture program.
Did someone forward you this email? Sign up for yourself!
Scalawag · PO Box 129 · Durham, NC 27702 · USA
Unsubscribe from these emails.