Janisse Ray is best known for her 1999 memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, in which she wove her story of growing up on a junkyard in rural South Georgia with the history of the landscape around her. She reckoned with the irrevocable loss of the South’s old-growth longleaf pine forest.
She is often asked about despair, about hope, about Southerners' relationship with the natural world — all topics we talk about frequently here at Southerly. Charlotte-based journalist Allison Braden spoke to Ray about hope and despair, about her work and perspective on building community in rural Georgia, how the pandemic has shaped her thinking, and the challenges of fighting environmental destruction in the rural South.
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Photo courtesy Janisse Ray
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"What gets me up in the morning to fight isn’t hope. Now, that’s a sad thing. A lot of people are paralyzed by hopelessness. I’m not one of them. So the question becomes, how can I better fill my heart with love? How can I be full of love more and more of the time? The thing that keeps all of us silent are these fears for our survival and our fears for our safety. I believe the job of a writer, the job of a thinking person, is as Camus said, not to be on the side of executioners. It’s your job to rise up in your courage until you can say what needs to be said."
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Each hurricane season, eastern North Carolina braces for the worst. But emergency planning, response and recovery efforts neglect a major marginalized population: rural Latinos. Without emergency alerts in their language or recovery support specific to community needs, immigrant workers and families navigate an emergency management system that fails to include them, putting their jobs and livelihoods on the line to survive a disaster and its aftermath. Enlace Latino NC wrote about the emergency alert system, and how it fails to include Latino communities — leaving them at risk during storms.
Two years ago, Latria Graham wrote an essay about the challenges of being Black in the outdoors. Outside Magazine says countless readers reached out to her, "asking for advice on how to stay safe in places where non-white people aren’t always welcome." She didn't write back, because she had no idea what to say. But this summer, amid protests demanding racial justice nationwide, she wrote about it.
COVID-19 can be made more serious — and, in some cases, more deadly — by a specific type of industrial emission called hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs, according to new peer-reviewed research by ProPublica and researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. That may help explain the disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths in communities like West Baton Rouge Parish, home to Port Allen.
Mountain State Spotlight — the newly launched investigative outlet covering West Virginia — reported this week on how skyrocketing natural gas production has caused record-low gas prices, squeezing producers and distributors who can't afford to upgrade aging infrastructure. That means no one is paying for upgrades in rural communities, and they're losing service.
Mason Adams spent a year reporting this three-part series for 100 Days in Appalachia about three counties — Gainesville, Georgia, Sevier County, Tennessee, and Dickenson County, Virginia — and what their economic transitions tell us about the future of work in America.
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News flying under the radar
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A sinkhole in a parking lot built on top of a coal ash structural fill site off NC Highway 150, in Mooresville, North Carolina, caused coal ash to leak into a nearby stream. NC Policy Watch is keeping track of what's happening. In Mooresville and nearby Huntersville, there have been high rates of rare cancers reported for years. Some residents have been demanding answers, as coal ash could be a contributing environmental factor. It's likely hidden underground as historic fill dirt — but records only go back a few decades. Kevin Beaty wrote about it last year.
The water department for the city of Guin, Alabama is suing 3M — one of the area’s largest employers — over chemical pollution discovered in the city’s drinking water source this summer. AL.com reported that "The city alleges that 3M knowingly and willfully disposed of those chemicals in ways that did not prevent them from entering the water supply and that the company was aware of potential health impacts of PFAS chemicals dating back to the 1970s, citing internal 3M documents and studies on the health impacts."
Charleston, South Carolina joined Baltimore, Oakland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. in filing a climate lawsuit last week, InsideClimate News reported, "joining close to 20 other cities and counties seeking to hold the fossil fuel industries liable for damages resulting from increased flooding and precipitation, droughts and intensifying storm surges, in addition to sea level rise and stronger hurricanes."
Even if you live far from areas where wildfires or hurricanes are a risk, you should pack a "go bag." For New York Times, A.C. Shilton details what you should put in it and why.
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This is what hurricane response looks like during a pandemic
Protecting people who evacuated during Hurricane Laura from COVID-19 has added a new layer of responsibility for agencies, cities, and organizations. Read the story.
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This Black Memphis neighborhood is trying to stop an oil pipeline. They’re running out of time.
Boxtown residents have had little say in the Byhalia Connection pipeline project, which could erase their properties’ value and threaten Memphis’ water supply. Read the story, published with MLK50.
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