Across Texas we’re seeing an explosion of two kinds of industrial warehouses going up: one to fill up with humans in the some of the most miserable conditions imaginable as part of the drive to deport millions (including many being actively stripped of citizenship or refugee protections to do so), the other to fill with an emerging human-like/human-displacing (anti-human?) consciousness. This week, Deceleration speaks with two members of the Data Center Action Coalition, Saunders Drukker and Kay, about what they learned while beating back an AI data center that had its sites on San Marcos, headwaters of the sacred San Marcos River. We speak in advance of a panel being hosted by the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio dedicated to recovering an identity rooted in relationship with water: Todos Agua, now in its third year. Azul Barrientos fills in the details of that convening. And ICE Watch correspondent Roxana Rojas speaks with local organizer Sarah Cruz about how women are leading the fight against the deportation-industrial complex in the state.

Data Center Resources:

• Data Center Action Coalition (Instagram)
• HARC Research on Data Centers
• "The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying and Addressing the Public Health
  Impact of Data Centers" (UC Riverside)

More about Todos Agua:

• Esperanza Event Schedule

Subscribe to ICE Watch:

• Deceleration Newsletters

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Deceleration.news: 'For the Earth. And all Her families.'

Humankind didn't evolve in heat like this. It's been well over 100,000 years since the planet has seen the sort of scorching temperatures that have become the norm in the last few years. And that goes for Texas too, where many are still tempted to shrug and claim, 'This is Texas. It's always been hot.'

But this is not the heat (or the humidity) of our parents or grandparents. And it's claiming lives. Obviously, until we transition away from fossil fuels and begin the work of ecological repair the world over to bring these temperatures back down, the work of adaptation will be needed. So how can we design our cities and towns to help more people survive this shift?

Bill Barker has worked as director of planning at VIA Metropolitan Transit, as executive director of Solar San Antonio, and has spent years thinking about heat, cities, and adaptation. Lately, he's been making his case for local action with presentation to small and large groups. Deceleration had a chance to sit down and hear from him recently about the situation in San Antonio, but the lessons here are relevant to communities the world over.

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Liam Ramos and father freed from Dilley Detention, but Federal Judge Biery's words need to be heard by those who snatched him. Plus: Extended dialogue with Gaige Davila about his years chronicling Texas Gulf fights over colonial extraction and plans for a new Deceleration newsletter, 'Coastlines & Faultlines.' Plus words from Syris Valentine on defeating Climate Behemoth and Sulma Franco on the crimes of immigration detention. Enjoy!

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Strange times, indeed. Deceleration turns 10 this year. Founder/Managing Editor Greg Harman speaks with Executive Editor Marisol Cortez and contributor/Alternative Futures correspondent Syris Valentine about the year behind and year ahead for Deceleration. More video is part of the recipe, so join us as we dust off some of these innerwebbings.

Marisol's recs for 2025 stories:

• Her Body Was 126 Degrees After She Died; Bexar County Medical Examiner Blames Drugs
• Messages from Jess’s Last Days—A Social Autopsy
• As Trump Works to Crush Climate Efforts, Local Projects Persevere at the Grassroots
• Femme Friendship as Eco-Resistance—From Barton Springs Attack to Poland’s ‘Sister Rivers’
• New Cli-Fi Novel Gropes for Happiness through the Dark of Texas Blackouts and Louisiana Heat
• On the Responsibility of Latin@ Academics, Artists, and Cultural Workers
• PODCAST: Building Radical Democracy Into Climate Struggles w/ Ashish Kothari
• ‘Vanishing Ice, Melting ICE’—A Deceleration Quarterly Creative Review
• ‘SUNAK’ (‘Awaken’) Music Video Release Celebrates Migration as a Birthright of All Beings
• Victims and Survivors of Martial Law Under Autocrat Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Remembered in a Moment of U.S. Authoritarian Peril

A few of Greg's favs:

• Jaguar Watch: What ‘Finishing the Wall’ Means for Borderland Cats
• Space Industry’s Explosive Growth Could ‘X’ the Earth’s Atmosphere
• ICE Abuses, Punishing Floods Show the Cesar Chavez March in the RGV is Still Necessary

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Deceleration’s Marisol Cortez speaks with Ashish Kothari on his work with the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, recently returned from the People’s Summit and COP30 in Belem, Brazil. An activist and author based in Pune, India, Kothari has been at the forefront of movements both in India and globally to imagine and enact on-the-ground alternatives to “development” as a colonial and often environmentally destructive paradigm. We talk with Kothari about radical democracy as the “missing debate” from climate discussions and the importance of maintaining focus on the work of “yes” as much as the work of “no.”

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Deceleration.news: 'For the Earth. And all Her families.'

In a community conversation closing out a gallery exhibit organized by ABOUT Face: Veterans Against the War, panelists from Texas and California discuss the histories of veteran activism against war and occupation and why soldiers today have a “right to refuse” Trump administration orders to deploy against US cities.

This panel was the concluding event of the multi-day Veteran Voce, hosted by Galeria E.V.A.

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Deceleration’s Marisol Cortez speaks with Anel Flores about their new novel Curtains of Rain/Cortinas de Lluvias (Jaded Ibis Press, 2025), a queer coming-of-age story that explores the intersections of homophobia and transphobia with environmental racism in South Texas, specifically the industrial contamination inflicted on Mission, Texas, for decades by companies like Monsanto. But it’s also a book about the beauty and sacredness of queer familia and the landscapes that hold us all, in all our relations, in spite of these histories of violence.

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Deceleration’s Marisol Cortez remembers our friend and neighbor Jack Elder who passed away last month, speaking with friends and comrades George Cisneros, Carlos Nicolas Flores, and Leslie Provence. Elder came to national attention in the 1980s for his work in the Sanctuary Movement, which aimed to assist refugees and asylum-seekers from the US-backed wars in Central America. But he was also a math teacher, a friend, a father of five and grandfather of seven and an all-around good neighbor who was active in San Antonio’s movements for social and environmental justice. For many years he volunteered at Catholic Worker House, washing dishes and tending to the gardens there. He walked and rode his bike everywhere, until Parkinson’s made that too difficult, and until the end of his life he cultivated beautiful xeriscaped
front and backyards. In every way he modeled what it means to live close to the Earth and in service to others, and we’re honored to have known and learned from him.

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Deceleration.news: 'For the Earth. And all Her families.'