The oft-used moniker "frontline communities," which distinguishes the communities with heightened vulnerabilities to climate injustices tied to extreme weather events, increased pollution, or location in close proximity to toxic industries, is a designation that covers most, if not all, of The South's communities.
The South is a region that suffers from structural antiBlackness and the afterlife of the plantation's insistence on underdeveloping crucial infrastructures that protect against and speed recovery from extreme weather events. Run by conservative governments that insist on deregulating and expanding the very industries responsible for poisoning Southern communities for generations, we know all too well what it takes to survive a worsening climate crisis.
The selections in this list feature reporting on the Southern communities surviving in the wake of toxic chemical explosions, the multi-generational impacts of petrochemical pollution, and the way The South serves as the dystopian "frontier" of the technofascist regime's AI-driven data center boom.
It collects pieces from our Salt, Soil, and Supper section, which features an annual "Hurricane Season" special series, as well as our recently launched "Dirty Energy, Dirty South" series. "Dirty Energy, Dirty South" publishes stories that problematize the widely endorsed "clean energy transition," alongside stories from the frontlines of the fascist deregulation and expansion regime. It offers our audience continued analysis of disaster capitalism in The South, with a special emphasis on "dirty energy" and how it manifests as environmental racism and state abandonment.
"An analysis of water and soil following the explosion detected arsenic, barium, chromium, lead, and other hazardous materials like cancer-causing nitrobenzene. The agency maintains the position that the toxins are not a threat to human health."
"As climate crisis after climate crisis continues to devastate the world's various economic systems, climate-based immigration and migration motives will increase as well. As climate migration rises, so will the subsequent arrests and surveillance that come with it."
"Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans lies a 150-mile stretch along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley. This region hosts over 150 petrochemical facilities and oil refineries—the highest concentration of such industries in the Western Hemisphere. For the residents of Cancer Alley, industrial pollution is an inescapable part of daily life. Many have lost family members to cancer or respiratory illnesses, while others battle ongoing health issues. Communities report widespread cases of asthma, birth defects, and other conditions linked to industrial pollutants. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), certain areas within Cancer Alley have cancer risks from industrial air pollution that are more than seven times the national average."
"The most compelling challenge to xAI so far has come from its Black, working-class neighbors. Over the past century, grassroots movements in Memphis have drawn important connections between environmental destruction, state violence, and capitalist dispossession. During World War II (and for decades afterwards), the U.S. Army used South Memphis as a dumping ground for chemical weapons. In the 1970s, Black radicals saw urban renewal projects in their neighborhoods as manifestations of fascism. AI data centers hold those same tensions, as key signifiers of the growing alliance between big tech, the fossil fuel industry, and Trump's particular brand of authoritarianism. As recently as mid-July, xAI announced a new contract with the Department of Defense for up to $200 million, meaning that Grok will now assist in a variety of national security tasks."
"Imola Automotive USA, a Boca Raton, Florida-based startup, pitched officials in small, struggling towns in Georgia, Oklahoma and Arkansas on a bold vision. The company planned to build six EV plants, create 45,000 jobs — and help these impoverished communities secure a place in America's green future.
But more than 18 months later, the company hasn't broken ground on a single site."
"In Fort Valley, officials initially backed a plan for an EV facility expected to employ 7,500. But with no visible progress a year later, the company returned with a new pitch — a 99-year lighting contract. One council member called it a 'bait and switch.'"
"The company's recent history reveals a pattern of negligence…including violations of the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Air, and the Clean Water Act. Over the past 20 years, BioLab has been involved in three major chemical incidents in the city that led to evacuations and heightened public health risks."
"With funding for every federal government entity being slashed by the Trump Administration, including a proposed 55 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency following last year's 20 percent loss, there is little defense remaining for those who live in the dirtiest parts of the South."
"For the environmental and consumer advocacy groups, it was all about the rates and what the increasing energy bills meant for vulnerable Georgians. For the unions, it was about stable jobs, new opportunities for organized labor, and bringing clean energy onto the grid."
"Octavia Butler mapped the circuitry of Empire with prophetic clarity. In Parable of the Talents, privatized police forces mirror Cop City's kill-camp trainings. Her 'Christian America' cults stockpile AR-15s while preaching rapture, just as our Christofascist politicians bless bombs with one hand and hold Bibles in the other."