pre-order: THE PROBLEM WITH PLASTIC: shorturl.at/Otagc

“An exposé of the plastics industry warns of the damages done to human beings and the planet.”
—Kirkus Reviews

(Pyramids not included)

The second largest oil refinery in California is currently on fire. Nearly 15,000 people live on the urban refinery's fence-line.

NEW: Last week, oil literally rained down on a Black town in rural Louisiana where 60% of folks live in poverty.

The company isn’t taking responsibility & the federal + state governments are saying residents have to clean it up themselves. capitalbnews.org/louisiana-oi...

This week marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina. 200,000 people left New Orleans and never returned after the storm. Today activists like Sess 45 with @hiphopcaucus.bsky.social are calling them home.

It is currently raining oil in Roseland, a majority-Black town in Louisiana, after an automobile manufacturing plant caught on fire. In Louisiana and across the country, there is no longer a legal mechanism to bring civil rights lawsuits after such kinds of industrial disasters.

But something unexpected is fighting back: community farms

Spaces like the 19-acre “Spaces of Opportunity” are transforming abandoned lots in2 lifelines across America's hottest city: cooling neighborhoods, feeding families, & rebuilding the bonds that once made survival possible

Since the 90s as the city's Black population has grown faster than virtually anywhere else, the city has been paved over with more concrete than any other city, too. Today, only 23% of Arizonans regularly talk to neighbors, and summer heat keeps people trapped indoors.

With transplants chasing Sunbelt luxuries rather than community and without deep family ties, newcomers face isolation that can be fatal. Phoenix's Black neighborhoods see more deaths from depression and hopelessness than virtually anywhere else.

With 70 days above 110°F in Phoenix, "Solitude is a climate risk" in the state leading climate-related deaths since 2019. And in Arizona, people report feeling more lonely and spending less time with people than virtually anywhere else in the country.

But even knowing this, the reporting of this story was really surprising for me. I’d always thought gentrification had poor outcomes for all people of color, but in reality, it hasn’t truly been comparable. Black folks are the only group of people that have not grown in gentrified neighborhoods.

I had more resources than my parents, but I also grew up longing for that same level of community and comfort they had. And as I traveled this country, I learned that my desires weren’t unique. In virtually every major city in the country, Black people have been displaced by gentrification.

Growing up, I heard stories from my parents and grandparents of LA that seemed foreign to me. Black public schools, Black homeownership, and a Black arts scene. By my childhood, our neighborhood saw a 25% decrease in Black residents and a 165% increase in Latino residents.

There are months that melt into years of couch-surfing, the slow burn of losing relationships when your loved ones can’t offer the support you need, & the everyday stress that quietly reshapes what it means to want a home. But, still, they're persevering.

The real battle is just starting. Victims said they’re left scrambling for housing in an increasingly unaffordable market, navigating endless paperwork, and coping with the emotional toll of displacement. For Black families, disasters often mean less aid and longer instability.

90 years ago, 900 Black sharecropping families were forced off their land by South Carolina and the feds for a new power plant facility. With them, 6,000 graves — including those of formerly enslaved people — were removed or desecrated.