This week was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. For those who observe, the somber holiday marks the culmination of ten days of introspection and repentance. It's a time to sit with shortcomings and focus on becoming intentional in one's own path. It's also a time to recognize that human beings are fallible, and take accountability for our actions that have harmed others.
This week, like every week, we're bearing witness to history as we watch laborers take on unsafe conditions, and as climate disaster yet again threatens our most precariously-placed kin.
It's as convenient a season as ever to ask ourselves: What can we do to make things better?
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Forgiveness is a two-way street. It requires that someone on the receiving end of trauma or harm grants us the grace to make a fresh start. Learning and growing—and learning how to grow—are harder than they seem sometimes. This week's stories are all about how we get there, together.
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You're swamped? Join the club.
Ko Bragg & Virginia Walcott, Scalawag
"To question why someone lives where they do is to assume there is a better place for them to go instead of believing that a home is worth fighting for because people are worth fighting for. People in Los Angeles or Chicago don't live there because those cities are objectively 'better,' they live there for a million different reasons: reasons that change along race and class lines as often as they stay static, reasons that can change in a year, and reasons that could still force them to move or stay there forever."
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, downed power lines, damage to houses, broken traffic lights, and barren grocery stores are among an ever-growing list of everyday emergencies in need of residents' attention. Something that's definitely not on that list? "Urgent" work emails. You wouldn't know that from looking at our editors' inboxes, though. Apparently, not even a climate crisis can stop capitalism.
The good will and lauded hospitality of the people of New Orleans are being turned against them as a replacement for real help and support. As climate change worsens, they will soon be just one of many places to intimately understand this feeling. Every hurricane season, folks ask: Why don't people on the Gulf Coast just move? Scalawag Race & Place editor Ko Bragg and Visual editor Virginia Walcott have some choice words for those seeking a straight answer: Quit asking. [Link]
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Homelessness and eviction have always been public health crises. The pandemic made them even more deadly.
Sarah Glen, Scalawag
"It just makes it so much harder, and it's just cruel. It essentially criminalizes people's mere existence in poverty. Now, many people feel like they have to hide. It just makes the experience of being homeless that much more challenging. On top of everything else, now you've got to find a place where no one will bother you for existing." — Kate Moore, vice president of Strategic Planning and Partnerships for Austin ECHO
Our latest story in the Breaking Through COVID series looks at the intersection of vaccination and homelessness, eviction, and food insecurity in Texas, where more than 58,000 people have died from COVID-19. Less than half of all Texans are fully vaccinated, and state leaders are actively preventing local governments from enforcing regulations that can help keep people safe.
For the last 18 months, Southern Solidarity volunteers have been providing food to about 250 people in New Orleans every day. Their work centers on directly meeting the needs that their unhoused neighbors name. Vaccination is low on that list—for a number of reasons. [Link]
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1. More flooding is coming. Here’s how cities can prepare.
Zoya Teirstein, Grist
“Can we build our way out of climate change?” Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, asked. “I think the answer is a definite maybe.”
Today I learned: Air becomes 4 percent more saturated with water for every 1 degree Fahrenheit that the planet warms. That means that when the water comes back down as rain, it’s just heavier than it used to be. Old models of how to build against those odds aren't going to help us for much longer.
Designing a flood-resilient city in the age of rapidly escalating climate change requires thinking comprehensively: Each part of the urban landscape needs to play a role. In Norfolk, Virginia, the city government passed a zoning ordinance that requires developers to build on an elevated foundation, regardless of whether the property is technically in a flood zone. The ordinance also encourages people to make their way to higher ground by telling homeowners that the city will only be making “judicious” investments in protecting homes from flooding. In other words, the city spoke the quiet part out loud: Some neighborhoods are going to experience so much flooding that it doesn’t make sense to try to protect them.
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2. ‘A relief:’ How Memphis families are spending child tax credit payments
Hannah Grabenstein, MLK50
Two months ago, Renita Kelly hoped she would get the expanded child tax credit money that her family was eligible for, but she wasn’t completely convinced the payments would come. Like others in Memphis, the Kellys need that cash to spend on whatever is necessary, including their phone and light bills. Kelly said that the credit has put her in a position to have a steady influx of money, allowing her to budget for the first time. “It’s very, very useful.”
Many Memphis households who got their third child tax credit payments this week are in the same boat. And while it’s too early to measure the long-term impact of the expanded child tax credit, three mothers who are getting the payments talked about what relief it has brought them so far: School supplies, upcoming or past-due bills, and clothes and shoes for kids like 10-year-old Kaitlyn, 6-year-old Kolten and baby Keeon. “It’s always gone as soon as—before I even get it,” Kelly said.
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3. COVID is claiming Black morticians, leaving holes In communities
Adam Geller, The Associated Press
"When the last mourners departed and funeral director Shawn Troy was left among the headstones, he wept alone. For five decades, the closing words at countless funerals in this town of 4,400 had been delivered by his father, William Penn Troy Sr. Now the elder Troy was gone, one of many Black morticians claimed by a pandemic that has taken an outsized toll on African Americans, after months of burying its victims. And as Shawn Troy stepped forward to speak in place of a man well known beyond his trade—for his work in county politics and advocacy of its Black citizens—the emptiness felt overwhelming. Not just his family, but his community, had lost an anchor."
When the pandemic first hit, the very closeness and celebration that distinguish Black funerals put Black morticians at risk. Now, about 130 Black morticians have died from COVID-19, leaving their families—and communities—with big shoes to fill nationwide.
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A lawyer in Galveston, Texas, was cited on Monday for disorderly conduct after he was spotted walking on a beach (in the lead-up to this week's storms, I might add) dressed like Michael Myers, the murderous character from the Halloween films. I fail to see the crime he committed here, though?
From the Huffington Post: Officers responded to a 911 call about a man walking along the shore carrying what looked like a bloody knife. After the officers put the man in handcuffs, they realized the knife and blood were fake.
The man, identified as attorney Mark Metzger III, was ticketed for disorderly conduct and released.
“I guess there’s some people out there that don’t have a sense of humor or, you know, can’t please them all.”
Metzger said he was trying to find “a little bit of positivity in the gloomy doom." The Beach Patrol even played the movie theme song when they saw him.
“It felt like a scene out of ‘Scooby-Doo’ after they handcuffed me and pulled the mask off, like, I would have gotten away with it if wasn’t for those meddling Karens, you know?” [Link]
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