LAKE CHARLES, LA.—After Hurricane Laura hit in late August, a local chemical plant erupted in flames. The fire, one of 31 post-Laura oil and chemical leaks reported, sent up plumes of smoke and chlorine gas. Louisiana officials told residents (many of whom had lost power or their homes) to shelter in place and turn off their air conditioning in the summer heat to avoid the fumes.
“How do you shelter in place with no shelter?” KD Minor, a community organizer from Lake Charles, asked during a virtual conference in August. Minor began coordinating relief before Laura hit, providing residents with gas money to evacuate. Others matched her contributions, and “$5 turned into $1,000,” which Minor distributed through Forever Calcasieu, a mutual aid network. Minor is still helping people get assistance as hurricanes batter the region.
Laura wasn’t the first storm to expose overlapping vulnerabilities in the Gulf South—where thousands of oil and gas wells, refineries and petrochemical plants sit in a storm path supercharged by the emissions of the fossil fuel industry—nor will it be the last. While residents of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are building mutual aid networks, they’re also making longer-term plans, like the Gulf South for a Green New Deal.
Like the national Green New Deal (GND) resolution, the Gulf South GND proposes slashing planet-warming emissions through an energy transition with well-paying union jobs, housing, transportation and healthcare for all. But the Gulf South platform goes further, calling for an end to pipeline construction, divestment from regional military installations and repurposing fossil fuel infrastructure for renewable energy. It also demands food sovereignty, reparations for Black, Brown and Indigenous people, and the redistribution of unpolluted lands to marginalized groups.
Read more:
https://www.texasobserver.org/why-the-south-is-organizing-its-own-green-new-deal/
