Three years after Hurricane Ida struck the bayou communities of Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish, locals are still reeling from the damage.
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Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
Florida's jails put incarcerated people's lives at risk during hurricane season
Florida has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Faced with the annual threat of powerful hurricanes, the state puts nearly 100,000 people at risk when officials refuse to evacuate the state's many flood-prone jails and prisons.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Weathering Storms
The average cost of storm repairs is about $10,000 for "moderate" wind-based damage, and a minimum of $4,000 to handle water damage. That's less than a quarter of a new home price. Add in price-gouged flood insurance costs and consider a scenario of heavy damage, rebuilding is still a fraction of buying anew.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
a list of things i did this summer
This poem was published as part of Bayou Blues: Ecopoetics of the Gulf South, a collection of ecopoetry centered on Houston, Texas curated by Hurricane Season editor, Aarohi Sheth. a chopped and screwed beat, i sketched a map of my heart. i made a birthday cake from scratch. i counted all the bayous i have […]
Posted inARTS & SOUL
Pothole
"Pothole" was published as part of Bayou Blues: Ecopoetics of the Gulf South, a collection of ecopoetry centered on Houston, Texas curated by Hurricane Season editor, Aarohi Sheth.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
East End Preserve, Galveston TX
This poem was published as part of Bayou Blues: Ecopoetics of the Gulf South, a collection of ecopoetry centered on Houston, Texas curated by Hurricane Season editor, Aarohi Sheth. Video Credit: Maha Abdelwahab We watch it: the sea diamondingand our impulse to free it from time. It was too early to worry about our coming to […]
Posted inARTS & SOUL
Giving Jim Grace
This poem was published as part of Bayou Blues: Ecopoetics of the Gulf South, a collection of ecopoetry centered on Houston, Texas curated by Hurricane Season editor, Aarohi Sheth. Lyric is a lie to the sentence and snow is a silent engine.While in it, all I can imagine is a slow torch prodigal in its returning. […]
Posted inRACE & PLACE
After the Aftermath: Disaster Gentrification in Louisiana's Bayous
The communities' identities are certainly being reshaped by lost businesses, the stripping of the school system, frustrations with excess costs of rebuilding and insuring homes, and annoyance with the outsiders exacerbating that market problem by land grabbing.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
The hidden toll of Hurricane Katrina on the mental health of Black survivors
The devastating storm that hit New Orleans in 2005 killed nearly 2,000 people and displaced thousands more. For those who survived Hurricane Katrina, the trauma they still carry reveals the long shadow of environmental racism on Black mental health.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
How Hurricane Katrina changed disaster preparedness and community response
'We never felt so cut off in all our lives.' New Orleans residents felt betrayed when Hurricane Katrina exposed deep inequities in federal disaster response. Here's what we can learn from the mistakes of 2005's recovery and preparation efforts.
Bayou Blues: Ecopoetics of the Gulf Coast
A collection of ecopoetry curated by Aarohi Sheth The South's land has a particular kind of poetry to it—one that's always catching its breath among oil rigs, histories, connectedness, heat, pollen, kinship, sacredness, wetlands, and flash floods. And ecopoetry has long been a space to reimagine a climate future in which we survive. It's a […]
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Scalawag's top stories of 2022
Amid the chaos that this year wrought, we here at Scalawag kept doing what we do best: Showcasing Southerners being their full selves, telling their own damn stories, and fiercely loving their people.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
White reporters: It's time to pop your parachute and share your byline
Erica Hensley reflects on why more white journalists should also shift away from using people like farmer Teresa Springs solely as sources—and democratize the byline instead.
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
(Virtual Event) Communing: Cooking & Cocktails with Scalawag
Join the Scalawag team—along with a few friends—at 7 p.m. ET for our next virtual event, Communing: Cooking & Cocktails. We'll be making regional recipes together, and share storytelling from the Gulf, to the Hollers, to the Piedmont.
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Salt, Soil, & Supper: Louisiana's shrimping industry is in jeopardy. Again!
Chances are, the shrimp you recently ate at a restaurant—or from your box of Cinnamon Toast crunch— weren't caught in domestic waters, much less the Gulf of Mexico next door. That's right–those golden fried shrimp speckled into between the lumps of fried flounder and stuffed crab shells on your plate, none of it came from the ocean just a few miles down the road.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
The South's communication infrastructure can't withstand climate change
Extreme weather is increasingly knocking out power lines and phone towers across the South. Without immediate action, critical internet and communications infrastructure may soon succumb to climate change events they weren't designed to withstand.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
After two devastating hurricanes, southwest Louisiana worries the rest of the country has already moved on
Battered by two hurricanes in six weeks, southwest Louisiana faces a long recovery and renewed questions about climate justice
Posted inRACE & PLACE
You're swamped? Join the club.
Climate change is coming for all of us. What the people of the Gulf South need is solidarity, not thoughts or prayers—and certainly not your emails.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Too heartbreaking to leave, too expensive to stay. More than 802,000 homes are at risk of climate disaster—mostly in the South.
Disaster aid budgets are being stretched thin, leaving many people needing to elevate or sell their homes in limbo.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
Ashes, Ashes
Grief can take us to our knees—right back to the dirt, dust, and the earth, from which all things grow. Nnenna Freelon consults Mother Nature—and a Black woman hemp farmer—to lean into the possibility of growth in harsh environments and bitter seasons.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
New Orleans has a trash problem. Thanks to climate change, your city probably will, too.
Some New Orleans neighborhoods went without trash pickup for over a month following Hurricane Ida. Climate change is making post-disaster waste management an urgent problem.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
A change in hurricane season
To grow up threatened by hurricanes—and then to move inland is to worry about family and train a digital eye on the forecast again and again.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
By the numbers: The disparate impacts of hurricane season
The impacts of 'natural' disasters vary widely across communities and between different built environments. An expert breaks down the numbers on hurricane vulnerability.
Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
Celebrity chefs cook up joy at the polls in the South
People in long waiting lines at the polls are hungry for more than change. They gotta eat. Meet the celebrity chefs feeding voters.
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Silent Night: When grief doesn't take a holiday
Holiday cheer doesn't cancel out sorrow—sometimes, it augments it. This condolence guide is a gentle reminder: Even though your journey is your own, you're not alone.
Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
Lingering long after a storm, mold and mental health issues
North Carolinians are organizing against "toxic resiliency," focused on healing from trauma.
Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
Poor southerners are joining the globe's climate migrants
This is what climate catastrophe looks like.
Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
High stakes for the climate in Louisiana elections
Louisiana politics will play a big role in the future of climate change. But only a few bold candidates in down-ballot races are talking about the crisis.
Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
Imagining another world in post-Irma Florida
Activists in Florida have dispatched aid all over the state, and to Puerto Rico. Can this grassroots storm response warm people up to a post-capitalist dream?
Posted inSOUTHERN POLITICS
North Carolina's strange election
North Carolina's partisan politics are moving—like the nation's—toward the extremes. The power "redistribution" orchestrated by North Carolina's GOP flies bluntly in the face of American traditions of democratic rule and respect for electoral results
