“Cobalt mining is the slave farm perfected” and it shows how the supply chain creates patterns of exploitation & disenfranchisement for Black folks across the globe.
My latest:
When Chicago Police killed Ronnieman Johnson in 2014, separate footage was also released to “prove” that he had a gun. Later, two forensic video analysts reviewed the case and concluded that “errors” by the technician lab stretched the pixels, creating the shape of a gun.
The most gut-wrenching part of the last 2 years is definitely the lost lives, but as a young person, it feels even more demoralizing because we have learned so few lessons.
We coukd have restructured our entire world and our relationships with each other, and we didn’t do it.
Very few people really understand what it means to “sweep” an encampment. For the state to throw away or trash every single one of your belonging and your shelter, and then offer you virtually zero assistance. Now it’s coupled with the threat of incarceration or citation.
Michael Broadway, a Black man incarcerated at Stateville prison in Illinois, died last Wednesday, partly due to extreme heat. While incarcerated, he earned a degree from Northwestern.
A reminder that the climate crisis is here. Even if you don’t feel it, the most vulnerable do.
historians are claiming that the killing of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán by a Georgia state trooper is the first time a forest protector has been shot & killed by police in the US
This is a HUGE deal, but it is crickets from most environmental organizations in this country. why?
This is Herbert. He’s 88 y/o & he’s lived on the same farm in Southwest Louisiana his whole life. He’s surrounded by ~ a dozen petrochemical plants
He’s seen cancer ravage his family and his livelihood, his cattle. And he’s seen nearly every family and farm around him disappear
In what might be the first non-university encampment set up for Palestine, it looks like ~ a dozen people have been arrested roughly 5 hours after it was erected here in New Orleans.
NEW: Last month a man in rural Alabama called me about a flooding crisis. He said it was manmade, the state was trying to flood a historically Black community out of town
But it's deeper than that:
How the push for electric cars is erasing a Black town
"Black employees were subjected daily to such slurs as the N-word, Aunt Jemima, negra fea (ugly Black woman), cochina, (pig) and 'cucaracha, (cockroach)"
“'They’d write stuff on the bathroom walls — ‘gorillas, go back to Africa.’"
All this for $12/ hour
🧵: Over the last few years, I’ve seen family/friends from LA & Chicago make the move to PHX, AZ. None have lasted in the desert city for > 1 yr.
So last summer I traveled to the fastest growing city for Black folks outside of TX to understand why:
NEWS: Los Angeles just officially approved an ordinance to ban new oil wells and to phase out drilling in the next 20 years.
LA County has the largest system of urban oil production in the country, primarily concentrated in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
Atlanta is one of the fastest warming cities in the country and it sees 75% more flooding events than in 1950
So, naturally, the city is plowing forward w/ a plan to rip up its forest (which protects ppl from heat & floods) … for a $90M police facility
🧵
If you haven’t tapped in w/ LA/
#EchoParkRiseUp
these past 2 days, you need to.
Journalists getting arrested, shot at w/ projectiles.
Cops “joking” about setting protesters on fire.
The city is spending thousands to forcibly remove unhoused folks from a local park.
The midwest is in the middle of a massive jail boom that is, ironically, partly fueled by COVID relief
At least 9 of the counties found in the analysis have used/planned to use COVID funds to build the detention facilities
Meanwhile, jails drove millions of COVID-19 infections
Debra’s water has been brown for more than three decades, no matter where she’s lived in the Lake Charles, Louisiana area. The EPA has come to the area dozens of time and declared the water safe, but she’s seen too many neighbors, friends, and family members fall ill to trust it.
NEW: The nation's most comprehensive climate risk tool was released today. It outlines 184 climate-related risks in 70,000 U.S. communities.
You should plug in your address and see what risks, and gaps, your home is facing.
SCOOP: For the last yr, *unlimited* funds have been open to EVERY local govt in the country to shelter unhoused people in non-congregate rooms (hotels)
Only 23 local govs used the $, leaving thousands unprotected from severe weather, pollution & police
I wrote a short explainer on some connections between pollution, climate change, policing, & incarceration
Today I’m thinking about the people in rikers, located on a landfill & exposed to the wildfire smoke, + the people in NYC’s jail located on a barge
not to take away from the great work at all, but the college student whose reporting led to the resignation of Stanford’s prez is the child of reporters from the NYT and New Yorker.
learning that took me back to medill very quickly
Absolute normal kind of city that blocks its major roads the day it’s planning to release footage of a 13-year-old child being killed by the police. Don’t like living in a world where these things are normalized.
The entire city of New Orleans was under a boil water advisory today because the water plant lost power last night. And while some folks went without power and everyone went without access to clean water, the heat index was over 100 degrees. Climate catastrophe.
.
@NorthwesternU
president, who has made more than 15 million dollars in his 11 years as president and lives in a mansion paid for by the school, calls the actions of his primarily Black and Brown students “disgust[ing]” for protesting outside of his house.
In some professional news: In 2 weeks, I’ll be starting at
@CapitalBNews
, a new nonprofit publication for and by Black folks
As the national climate/ environment writer, I’ll be bringing what I think is the most important beat today to the people it’ll impact the most. onwards🌱
Since Aug 2022, I’ve traveled 10k miles across the US mapping out today’s Great Black migration. Today, the last stories come out based on dozens of convos w/ new Southerners, the only region where more Black people are moving to than from.
🧵Since the pandemic, social media has been flooded w/ influencers calling on Black folks to visit and permanently move to Mexico -- and thousands of Black folks have.
Last month, I spent a few weeks in the country to talk to folks about their experience.
.
@TheTRiiBE
shifted the narrative around the Chicago mayoral election more than any of the big outlets in the city.
Don’t ever underestimate the power and history of Black media. So inspiring to watch, thanks
@_ToniaHill
@Waldens_Block
& everyone involved.
The year Northwestern unveiled its $150 million practice facility— the most expensive in the country— it took me three weeks to get a therapy session with a psychologist because they were so understaffed.
Four students committed suicide that year.
NEW: Texas is subsidizing $10B worth of new fossil fuel plants, citing new demand caused by climate change & population growth.
But in reality: The new demand is coming from supercomputers for AI + Crypto.
Guess where the new plants will be placed:
"With the rapid growth of the Latino population, Latinos form the majority in many low-wage workplaces. And instances of anti-Black bias and colorism among them is drawing new scrutiny."
1/3 anti-Black employment bias suits filed in LA & SF involved discrimination by Latinos
Local police in Evanston ( EPD + Northwestern Police) attempted to kettle student protesters tonight.
Dozens of ppl hit with some form of chemical weapon & at least one person arrested.
Northwestern students are protesting to disband police to fund Black students’ well-being.
I wrote about a new tree cover study produced by
@nature_org
that shows the amount of greenery on your street depends on the amount of green in your pockets.
In American cities, racism, poverty + social inequality are engrained in the trees.
NEW: In the Midwest, at least 23 jails — totaling $3.6 billion — have been proposed or constructed on toxic lands since the onset of the pandemic, according to a
@CapitalBNews
analysis.
“This practice is an amplified case of environmental racism.”
NEW: This yr I've visited the 4 cities that've lost the most Black folks since 2000 & 6 of the fastest-growing cities for Black ppl to understand why we're in the largest Black migration in 50 yrs
How Environmental Racism led to Today’s Great Migration
NEW: I traveled to Flint in anticipation of the 10 year anniversary of the start of the water crisis. I door knocked and spoke w/ folks at the library & local coney island spots. They all had the same response: The Flint Water Crisis is far from over.
For over a week, all of New Orleans' public libraries have been without wifi.
In the middle of a weeks long heatwave where temps are reaching triple digits w/ humidity, an important community resource has collapsed.
In rural Alabama, industrial companies lobbied for a highway to put the region in the fast lane of economic development. All it did for the area's Black community was create a flooding crisis.
Residents have now brought a civil rights complaint to the feds
Black warehouse workers being diagnosed with PTSD, disproportionately fired and not allowed to advance through the ranks.
"about 300 Black workers are gaining compensation, some as much as tens of thousands of dollars"
NEWS: LA District Attorney Gascón has filed 22 felonies and 2 misdemeanor counts against Atlas Metals, a metal scrapyard that has overburdened the historically Black community of Watts for decades + has allowed metal scraps to rain down on students at a local high school.
I applied for this my freshman year with literally zero internship or school media experience because I didn’t understand how fellowships/journalism worked.
So it’s cool to finally be apart of the group now 😬
Three years after the first
#juneteenth
, formerly enslaved Texans developed a town just east of Galveston, building churches and schools.
Today, most of that land is owned by Exxonmobil, paved over for parking lots.
Today’s Supreme Court ruling practically guarantees that cities across the country are going to follow suit with levying fines and fees and locking up people for sleeping in public places.
Those most impacted? Black elders.
This story is apart of a larger project i’m working about the new Black migration & how racism + climate change may disrupt it. Black folks are moving in record numbers for safer, more affordable & Blacker communities. But what about climate change?
Half of the infrastructure projects created through Biden’s climate plan have been allocated to the expansion of highways, displacing residents, stunting homeownership chances, and leaving Black people overexposed to pollution.
@feralmeme
@JoshuaPHilll
yes, not enough characters on here. This is being cast as the first time where police have shot and killed an environmental activist engaged in an attempt to protect a forest from being razed and developed.
not to diminish the violence folks have experienced at pipeline protests
For my last byline of 2021, I wrote about a small coastal town threatened by sea level rise, the federal 1033 program, and how cities are trying to militarize their police forces as a climate “adaptation” tool.
"Latino supervisors often wouldn’t let the Black workers get water or take bathroom breaks. They’d say, ‘You’re big and Black, you can keep working.’"
"some complained to him about being called 'monkey,' and 'boy' by Latino colleagues."
"Since at least 2016, the EEOC alleged, Black workers were subjected to the N-word by co-workers and managers “many times per day…including ‘n— bitch’, ‘lazy ass n— ain’t did no work all day,’ and ‘Look at those n—looking like monkeys, working like slaves like they should be.’”
This highway connects major suppliers for EV, solar, + electrical production to Montgomery. In recent years, AL has become one of the biggest manufactures of EVs, requiring infrastructure to support the growth. But the highway drainage system is pointed directly at Black homes
Earlier this month, I sat in a community center w/ Black elders as they prepped and shared tips on how to survive this upcoming summer heat.
I’ve noticed as federal protections have been slow to come, Black communities are protecting themselves.
45 years ago, nearly a thousand Black San Franciscans were killed in one of the most notorious mass murder-suicides in history. The massacre still reverberates through the city today.
My first of 2024:
The Chicago Police Department killed three young people aged 13-22 last week. Adam Toledo, 13. Travon Chadwell, 18. Anthony Alvarez, 22.
This was taken at the Rogers Park Solidarity Network’s shrine commemorating dozens of lives lost to violence the last couple of years.
My latest is about Samuel Sharpe Jr, the unhoused Black man who was shot and killed by police officers a mile from the Republican National Convention.
In Wisconsin, Black people are nearly six times more likely to be killed by police than white people.
In a state where Black folks get abortions at a rate 5x higher than white ppl & where Black communities are most likely to flood, this political warfare has life-or-death implications
How a disproportionately white legislature is controlling Black bodies:
It has been a little over a year since
@prisonculture
and
@eveewing
published this amazing conversation in
@Adi_Magazine
that I still find myself going back to.
Forever grateful for their work and their words.
🧵Last week, I spent a few days talking to Black unhoused folks in LA's Watts, Wilmington, & Harbor Gateway neighborhoods
We talked about a lot, including 41.18 and why Black Angelenos are 8 times as likely to be unhoused than any other racial group.
As we’ve been shown for eons, Indigenous resistance works.
My latest is about a study from
@IENearth
,
@PriceofOil
that found Indigenous-led resistance has staved off 25% of U.S. and Canada’s annual emissions
Story w/ insight from
@dallasgoldtooth
For
@guardian
in
#Kenosha
I spent the day talking to people in Kenosha about their reaction to Jacob Blake’s shooting + what life in the city is really like.
My takeaway: State violence is so insidious that even when you rebel, you cause yourself harm.
This is a part of a series we are working on
@CapitalBNews
about the petrochemical industry, water issues, and the meaning of home throughout the U.S. South. I hope y'all continue to follow along!
#dreadheadcowboy
is back out at protests less than 3 hours after being released from Cook County Jail.
“This isn’t about me, this is about us. About our children,” he said as he address a crowd of protestors on the streets for
#BreonnaTaylor
"Photos taken by Black workers showed a women’s restroom defaced with graffiti: N— stink up the aisles and Black pipo stink. A men’s restroom was defaced with “n—killer.”
“There would be milkshake all over our cars.” “Our tires were flat. There would be urine on our tires.”
For
@highcountrynews
I wrote about the state violence that has disrupted my life the most & the shame that I hold as a result.
The US thrives on this cycle of trauma & shame held by Black & Brown folks
It helps to maintain the violent American Empire. /5
Truck drivers, who move containers from the Port of LA/LB, are in the middle of a work stop/protest. Dozens of trucks are driving through Wilmington and the 110 Freeway that connects the port to the rest of LA blocking traffic and honking their horns.
tired: today is my last day as the EJ fellow at Grist
wired: I’m staying on full time, transitioning into a full time reporter role with a focus on EJ and Investigations
Just a necessary reminder:
After LA City Council agreed to defund police by $150 million they rerouted an undisclosed amount of money back into LAPD based off of recommendations from two property investment groups.
Story here:
NEW: I analyzed EPA data of the 11 main county jails within the 3 biggest county jail systems (LA, NYC & CHI) and found what you’d expect: America’s jails are uniquely and intensely exposed to environmental hazards
as a child of a public school educator, I can confidently say that 99.9% of the people on this app trashing CTU members have absolutely no understanding of how daunting and draining it is to be an educator -- and how little recognition educators receive for their work.
friday night news dump: Starting next month, I will be
@grist
's Environmental Justice Reporter.
I'm super excited to get started! I hope my work broadens what we perceive as state violence, connecting our built and natural environments to carcerality and environmental harm.
Still I connected w/ some lovely folks:
Collette & Brian Watson, a true fairytale love story who moved to PHX together after Hurricane Sandy upended their life in NJ/NY.
Rashaad Thomas, an air force vet, who uses poetry to process how environmental racism shapes the booming city
In the early 60s, Jennifer’s grandma moved to Wilmington, a formerly redlined neighborhood in Los Angeles’ massive oil basin
In the decades since, a half-dozen cancer diagnoses, lung disease, and chronic illness has followed.
This is life when home is next to an oil refinery
🧵
NEW: In June, I wrote about a Black community that felt like they were being flooded out so industry could move in... well, there's more
A 2-ft-wide pipeline through their homes to be exact. Ironically, it has a connection to the US largest climate bill
I don't think we understand how insidiously our trucking and logistics industry has grown, and how it is disproportionately affecting Black folks nationwide.
Joliet, where the nation's largest inland port is located, is the perfect example.
Earlier this year, I traveled by train from L.A. to Memphis, stopping in 11 cities
I wanted to experience new parts of the country, but most importantly, I wanted to gain a new understanding of the ways environmental injustices have hampered life outcomes for Black Southerners.