It’s the hottest year ever…again. Heat-related deaths are spiking year after year. As Deceleration wrote recently, there were nearly 600 heat-related deaths in Texas last year. In Bexar County, 12 local residents died from the heat that year, according to data released to the Texas Tribune. Border counties have seen hundreds die from the heat since 2010, according to data released to Deceleration. So how are cities responding? What emergency hearings have been convened, let’s say, in San Antonio, Texas? We’re building a baseball field downtown and throwing possibly thousands of people from their homes. Aside from the deep injustice of such measures, displacement is particularly cruel as we know (thanks to communities that do track heat deaths, such as in Maricopa County, Arizona) that it is outdoor workers and those without homes that are most at risk of dying. Among the nearly 650 Maricopa County deaths that were logged in 2023, 75 percent of them occurred outdoors. And 45 percent were unsheltered individuals with limited access to cooling. And research, in particular by now Deceleration Executive Editor Marisol Cortez, has shown that even with $2,500 relocation assistance, forced evictions can be deadly. They also frequently require multiple moves, as Cortez explains, costing far more than that allowance. Currently, residents of nearly 400 units at the Soap Factory are fighting a slide toward displacement and demolition. A few blocks away, residents of roughly 70 units at the Robert E. Lee Apartments are likewise being targeted. For this new Deceleration Podcast, Episode 33, we make room for the residents of the Robert E. Lee Apartments to describe their experiences of downtown living and accelerating efforts to head off the same of the property and maintain their homes. There are lessons here for working people everywhere who have ever been targeted to make room for the Next Big Thing, even as the current thing requiring our full attention—climate unraveling—goes largely unaddressed. — Greg Harman

What Displacement Does:
Vecinos de Mission Trails Report: Making Displacement Visible: A Case Study Analysis of the 'Mission Trail of Tears'

Who Heat Kills
Maricopa County 2023 Heat Deaths Report
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San Antonio Specific Resources
Coalition for Tenant Justice
Texas Organizing Project
Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid
Pueblo Over Profit
Oppressed Revolutionaries for Worker Power

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