The storm came, and just as Monica Coleman predicted, it hit places least equipped to handle it. On Monday morning, she was one of roughly 1 million Americans without power because of Winter Storm Fern. Officials in Lafayette County, Mississippi, where she lives, are warning residents that they could be without power for multiple days. […]
Black communities
Posted inEconomic Development, Housing, Politics & Policy
In LA, Olympic Dreams Lead to Nightmares for a Historic Black Community
Fre’Drisha Dixon can still recall the laughter that once spilled across the playground of the now-shuttered Clyde Woodworth Elementary School in Inglewood. Just as clearly, she can conjure up the loud banging of the bulldozers that plowed through the school’s classrooms last year. Today, both sounds are drowned out by talk of turning that barren […]
Posted inCulture, Politics & Policy
For Some Black Angelenos, ICE Raids Reopen the Wound of Displacement
When federal immigration agents swept through Los Angeles’ Fashion District, Boyle Heights, and Pico-Union neighborhoods last week, arresting dozens of migrants in coordinated raids, Bryant Odega was transported back into his childhood memories. In elementary school, Odega’s first airport visit was to watch his father, an immigrant from Nigeria, get deported back to his birth […]
Posted inClimate Change, Housing, Wealth Gap
In Altadena, Black Households Were Most Likely to Burn, Study Finds
The Jones family lost their home of 55 years on Altadena’s foothills. They were far from the only ones. The Eaton Fire that exploded in early January tore through more than 9,000 structures in the heart of Altadena, devastating a historically Black neighborhood that had persevered for generations through discrimination and, more recently, gentrification. A […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice
How Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Created a ‘Climate Time Bomb’ in Black Neighborhoods
Nearly 45 years ago, the Acres Homes area north of Houston was the largest unincorporated Black community in the South, a thriving 9-square mile area where homeownership was the norm. That was until the city of Houston annexed it, and the Interstate 45 highway was built through its heart. In the aftermath, the community’s poverty […]