It’s the hottest year ever…again. Heat-related deaths have been spiking year over year. As Deceleration wrote recently, there were nearly 600 heat-related deaths in Texas last year. In Bexar County, 12 local residents died from the heat that same year, according to data released to the Texas Tribune. Border counties have seen hundreds die from the heat since 2010, according to data released to Deceleration. So how are cities responding? What emergency hearings have been convened, let’s say, in San Antonio, Texas? Here we’re building a baseball field downtown and throwing possibly thousands of people from their homes to do it. Aside from the deep injustice of such measures, displacement is particularly cruel as we know (thanks to communities that track heat deaths, such as in Maricopa County, Arizona) that it is those without homes who are most at risk of dying from heat exposure. Among the nearly 650 Maricopa County deaths that were logged in 2023, 75 percent of them occurred outdoors. And 45 percent were unsheltered individuals with limited access to cooling. Research by now Deceleration Executive Editor Marisol Cortez from several years ago shows that, even with $2,500 relocation assistance, forced evictions can be deadly. Evictions often force multiple moves, as Cortez explains, costing far more than that meager moving allowance. Currently, residents of nearly 400 units at the Soap Factory in downtown San Antonio are fighting a slide toward displacement and demolition of their units. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, residents of roughly 70 units at the Robert E. Lee Apartments are likewise being targeted. For this new Deceleration Podcast, Episode 33, we make room for the residents of the Robert E. Lee Apartments to describe their experiences of downtown living and gathering efforts to head off forced dislocation. There are lessons here for working-class residents everywhere who have ever been targeted for the Next Big Thing, even as the current big thing actually requiring our full attention—that is, our climate unraveling—goes largely unaddressed in local communities.

What Displacement Does:
Vecinos de Mission Trails Report: Making Displacement Visible: A Case Study Analysis of the 'Mission Trail of Tears'

Understanding Who Heat Kills
Maricopa County 2023 Heat Deaths Report
…

San Antonio Specific Resources
Coalition for Tenant Justice
Texas Organizing Project
Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid
Pueblo Over Profit
Oppressed Revolutionaries for Worker Power

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Boca Chica, the “little mouth” of the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo is increasingly the epicenter of NewSpace new colonizing impulses bridged by an explosion of billion-dollar LNG projects seeking to feed Texas-fracked methane to the world market. It’s here in the lower Texas coast that has so far avoided much of the spoilage of the upper and middle coasts, themselves awash with petrochemical and fossil fuel facilities and all the risk and damages they pose to the land and peoples of the region. Next week the community of greater Boca Chica, let’s call it the Rio Grande Valley, or, as our guest reminds us this week: the sacred birthplace of the emergence of the Carrizo/Comecrudo peoples, is being challenged on two fronts.

October 15: In spite of an August rejection by a DC Circuit Court of a trio of LNG-related projects, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is putting the Texas LNG project back in motion and inviting public comments concerning the potential environmental threats of the project. Comments needed before 5:00 pm EST on October 15, 2024.

October 17: Two days later, Brownsville will host a public hearing on a state wastewater permit being sought by SpaceX, Elon Musk's colonizing mission to Mars now colonizing South Texas, that increasingly dominates the land and lives of this area. As the South Texas Environmental Justice Network writes, the wastewater permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) will permit polluted waters "on Boca Chica Beach and lands sacred to the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas." TCEQ will host a public hearing about SpaceX’s plans in Brownsville on October 17, 2024. Here’s a link to the TCEQ permit notice.

Our guest this week to discuss both of these matters in deep context is Christopher Basaldú, PhD, a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. Basaldú organizes in opposition to SpaceX, LNG, and border militarization in the state and for the recovery of Indigenous lifeways and values. Basaldú earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and later a masters in American Indian Studies and doctor of philosophy in anthropology from the University of Arizona.

Guest: Christopher Basaldú, PhD, Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas

More on Oct. 17 from the Regeneration calendar.
More from the STEJN.

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Deceleration Conversation: An April 2023 community conversation with Colombian decolonial scholar-activist Arturo Escobar, produced by Deceleration in partnership with UTSA. Financial support from the La Fundación Estudio, Mediación, Paz y Resolución de Conflictos (CEMPROC).

Guests: Arturo Escobar, Scholar/Activist; Diana Lopez, Southwest Workers Union; Society of Native Nations; Kimiya Factory, Black Freedom Factory; Maria Turvin, Yanawana Herbolarios. Facilitator: Marisol Cortez, Deceleration

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What do building relationships of trust and care between neighbors have to do with climate justice? Everything, according to local organizer Kara Jordan, an herbalist, regenerative agriculture specialist, and mother whose work highlights the interdependence of all beings. Focusing on social and environmental justice, Jordan explores the spaces between grassroots and institutional initiative with curiosity and play. Her passion for food sovereignty is the thread that weaves these efforts together. In our conversation today, we hear some report backs from her mutual aid work around extreme heat in her Eastside neighborhood, as well as from her involvement with the City of San Antonio's new Climate Ready Neighborhoods program. In the process we reflect on the importance of affect, social infrastructure, and inside/outside approaches to climate action. To support the work of the Eastside Heat Team, call or text 210-463-5194. You can donate your time, money, or specific heat-busting items like water bottles, electrolyte packets, sunscreen, chapstick, fans, umbrellas, and more. For updates on the next Mother's Rebellion action, look on Instagram for @mothers_rebellion_satx.

Guest: Kara Jordan, Mother's Rebellion

More on this topic via Deceleration.

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We've heard that this summer has been one of the hottest the Earth has seen since long before official record-keeping began. But policymakers and public health officials too often strain to understand how that heat is impacting people. Medical anthropologist Rose Jones has called the systems of tracking and understanding heat a “train wreck.” Here in dialogue with Deceleration Jones explains why our understanding of heat's impacts is so poor—including unnecessary politicization and official disinterest—and how we can go about fixing this huge public health failure.

Guest: Rose Jones, Medical Anthropologist

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Attacks on US energy infrastructure across the US are increasing. Incidents in Texas logged by the US Department of Energy shot up in 2021 and 2022. Meanwhile, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is mulling shifting more security obligations from plant owners to local law enforcement. Deceleration spoke with with Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, about all this and more.

Guest: Edwin Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists

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Deceleration Podcast #28: In the middle of October, San Antonio played host to the Climate Justice Alliance's Our Power Communities Summit. The gathering called together roughly 50 frontline community environmental-justice organizers from around the nation to “reground” the alliance members and begin developing a collective response to emerging so-called false solutions to the climate crisis.

Guests (in order of appearance): Christian Rodriguez, Ironbound Community Corp; Angel Ramos, The People's Port Authority; Mackenzie Marshland, Florida Rising; Alejandria Lyons, New Mexico No False Solutions; Ayana Grace, Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network; Katt Ramos, Richmond Our Power Coalition; Christine Cordero, Asian-Pacific Environmental Network

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In the shadow of the port shipping most of all US crude oil to the rest of the world, four 'Clean Slate' candidates are running for local City Council seats. They are bound together by shared values and policy interests—including a prioritization of clean air and water and the defeat of proposed desalination projects being built almost exclusively to benefit industrial users. One candidate is the president of the local teacher's union. One is a history professor and Sierra Club member. Another helps lead the local League of Women Voters. And our guest today, Armon Alex, is a climate organizer and activist who has worked in a variety of interesting roles highlighting the immense challenge and opportunities of this moment of increasing climate destabilization. Learn more about the candidate at https://www.voteclean.org/.

Guest: Armon Alex, Council Candidate

More about Clean Slate via Deceleration.

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