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George Monbiot | Sea Change
George Monbiot, George Monbiot's Website
Monbiot writes: "When the BBC made a film about the crisis in our oceans, it somehow managed to avoid naming their greatest cause of ecological destruction: the fishing industry."
t last people are waking up to the fishing industry’s devastating impacts.When the BBC made a film about the crisis in our oceans, it somehow managed to avoid naming their greatest cause of ecological destruction: the fishing industry. The only significant sequence on fishing in 2017’s Blue Planet II was a heartwarming story about how kind Norwegian herring boats are to orcas[]. It presented industrial fishing not as the greatest threat to sealife, but as its saviour.
It’s as if you were to make a film about climate breakdown without revealing the role of fossil fuel companies. Oh, hang on, the BBC did that too. In 2006, its documentary The Truth about Climate Change mentioned fossil fuel companies only as part of the solution, because one of them was experimenting with carbon capture and storage. These films consisted of effete handwringing about a scarcely-defined problem, followed by a suggestion that we should “do something”, while offering no hint of what this something might be.
They are symptomatic of a disease that afflicts most of the media, most of the time: a phobia about confronting power. Though the BBC has subsequently made some better films, it still tends to direct us away from the massive commercial assaults on our life support systems, and towards the issues I call micro-consumerist bollocks(MCB), such as plastic straws and cotton buds. I see MCB as a displacement activity: a safe substitute for confronting economic power. Far from saving the planet, it distracts us from systemic problems and undermines effective action.
The central premise of neoliberalism is that the locus of decision-making can be shifted from democratic government to the individual, working through “the market”. Rather than using politics to change the world for the better, we can do it through our purchases. If neoliberals even half-believed this nonsense, you’d expect them to ensure we are as knowledgeable as possible, so that we can exercise effective decision-making in their great consumer democracy. Instead, the media keeps us in a state of almost total ignorance about the impacts of our consumption.
But one of our bubbles of ignorance has just been burst. On a small budget, with the first film they’ve ever made, Ali Tabrizi and Lucy Tabrizi have achieved what media giants have repeatedly failed to do: directly confronted power. Their film Seaspiracy has become a number 1 on Netflix in several nations, including the UK. (Disclosure: I’m a contributor). At last people have started to wake up to the astonishing fact that when you drag vast nets over the sea bed, or set lines of hooks 45 kilometres long, or relentlessly pursue declining species, you might just, well, you know, have some effect on ocean life.
The film gets some things wrong. It cites an outdated paper about the likely date of the global collapse of fisheries. Two of its figures about bycatch are incorrect. It confuses carbon stored by lifeforms with carbon stored in seawater. But the thrust of the film is correct: industrial fishing, an issue woefully neglected by the media and conservation groups, is driving many wildlife populations and ecosystems around the world towards collapse. Vast fishing ships from powerful nations deprive local people of their subsistence. Many “marine reserves” are a total farce, as industrial fishing is still allowed inside them. In the EU, the intensity of trawling in so-called protected areas is greater than in unprotected places. “Sustainable seafood” is often nothing of the kind. Commercial fishing is the greatest cause of the death and decline of marine animals. It can also be extremely cruel to humans: slavery and other gross exploitations of labour are rampant.
Only 6.2% of the world’s marine fish populations, according to the latest assessment by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, are neither “fully fished” nor “overfished”, and they continue to decline. “Fully fished” means that fish are being caught at their “maximum sustainable yield”: the most that can be taken without crashing the stock.
This is a central aim of fisheries management. But from the ecologist’s perspective, it often means grossly over-exploited. As the work of Professor Callum Roberts shows, populations of fish and other marine animals were massively greater before industrial fishing began, and the state of the seabed, in many areas, entirely different. Even “well-managed” fishing at maximum yields prevents the restoration of rich and abundant ecosystems.
I agree, however, that details also matter, and while all films – like all journalism and all science – make mistakes, we should be sticklers for the facts. So why did the fisheries scientists who are screaming about the errors in Seaspiracy not complain about the far greater misrepresentations and omissions in Blue Planet II and the BBC’s follow-up series, Blue Planet Live?
Blue Planet Live took distraction and deflection to a whole new level. Though it focused largely on plastics, it failed to mention the plastics industry. It was as if plastic, climate breakdown and fishing pressure all materialised out of thin air. As it swerved round powerful interests, most of the solutions it proposed were tiny technological sticking plasters: rescuing orphaned seals, seeding coral, removing hooks from the mouths of sharks. Some of its claims were not just wrong but hilarious. For example, it stated that we can “rid our oceans of plastics” through beach cleans.
So why the silence? Perhaps because some fisheries scientists, as the great biologist Ramsom Myers pointed out, have come to identify with the industry on which their livelihoods depend. While they seem happy for outrageous distortions that favour industrial fishing to pass, they go beserk about much smaller mistakes that disfavour it.
To me, the problem is symbolised by two words I keep stumbling across in scientific and official papers: “underfished” and “underexploited”. These are the terms fisheries scientists use for populations that are not “fully fished”. The words people use expose the way they think, and what powerful, illuminating, horrible words these are. They seem to belong to another era, when we believed in the doctrine of dominion: humans have a sacred duty to conquer and exploit the Earth. I suspect some people are so angry because it’s not just malpractice Seaspiracy exposes, but an entire worldview.
It’s time to see the oceans in a new light: to treat fish not as seafood but as wildlife; to see their societies not as stocks but as populations; and marine food webs not as fisheries but as ecosystems. It’s time we saw their existence as a wonder of nature, rather than an opportunity for exploitation. It’s time to redefine our relationship with the blue planet.
Former Amazon employee, Christian Smalls, stands with fellow demonstrators during a protest outside of an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island on May 1, 2020. (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Amazon Faces a Union Fight in Staten Island, Where Warehouse Workers Are Energized by the Failed Drive in Alabama
Isobel Asher Hamilton, Business Insider
Hamilton writes: "A group of workers at the tech giant's warehouse in Staten Island, New York, announced Monday they were starting a union movement. It comes after a failed union vote at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama."
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Deb Haaland. (photo: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)
Deb Haaland: Missing and Murdered Natives Unit Will Have Six Times Initial Budget of DOJ Task Force
Zack Budryk, The Hill
Budryk writes:
nterior Secretary Deb Haaland said a new unit within the department focusing on missing and murdered Native Americans will have a budget of $6 million, six times that of a similar task force the Justice Department (DOJ) established in 2019.
In a Tuesday House Budget Committee hearing on the Biden administration’s budget request for fiscal 2022, Ranking Member Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) said he was “encouraged” by Haaland’s announcement of a unit dedicated to missing and murdered indigenous people within the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Haaland praised Operation Lady Justice, the DOJ task force, and said it was initially budgeted at $1 million. The Missing and Murdered Unit, she testified, would have an increased budget of $6 million.
Joyce also asked Haaland, the first Indigenous Cabinet secretary, for further detail on what work the new unit would perform.
“There’s been a lot of engagement across the government--we felt that it was important for this unit to provide the leadership that it needs so everyone is moving in the same direction,” Haaland replied. “The new unit will improve coordination within and outside of the [Bureau of Indian Affairs] to make sure that we’re not missing anything.”
The Interior Department, is “[m]aking a bigger tent to ensure that we’re not missing a thing,” she said. “This is an issue that’s been going on for 500 years since Europeans came to this continent. It’s going to take a lot more effort [and] we’ve started to scratch the surface.”
Haaland announced the creation of the unit on April 1, saying it would build on the work of the DOJ task force and establish a unit chief position to run point on policy.
“Violence against Indigenous peoples is a crisis that has been underfunded for decades. Far too often, murders and missing persons cases in Indian country go unsolved and unaddressed, leaving families and communities devastated,” she said in a statement.
The Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women estimates indigenous women are murder victims at over 10 times the national average. Among American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls from the ages of 10-24, homicide is the third-leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
73-year-old Karen Garner. (photo: Loveland Police/VICE)
Cops Assault a Grandma With Dementia Picking Flowers, Bodycam Footage Shows
Emma Ockerman, VICE
Ockerman writes: "A 73-year-old grandmother of nine was picking wildflowers on the side of the road in Loveland, Colorado, last summer when a local cop got out of his patrol vehicle and told her to stop - beginning a police encounter that ultimately left her with broken bones, bruised, and traumatized."
The officer grabbed the 73-year-old woman, threw her to the grass, and twisted her arms behind her back.
73-year-old grandmother of nine was picking wildflowers on the side of the road in Loveland, Colorado, last summer when a local cop got out of his patrol vehicle and told her to stop—beginning a police encounter that ultimately left her with broken bones, bruised, and traumatized.
Loveland Police Officer Austin Hopp had been driving behind Karen Garner with his overhead lights on because she was accused of shoplifting from a nearby Walmart. But Garner did not appear to notice, according to body camera footage published by Garner’s attorney Wednesday.
Garner has dementia and sensory aphasia, an inability to understand spoken and written speech, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed on her behalf this week against the city of Loveland and three officers involved in Garner’s arrest.
Hopp asked Garner why she didn’t stop after he activated his lights and siren, at which point Garner gave him a blank expression, said something unintelligible, and started to move away.
“No, no, no,” Hopp said, according to bodycam footage.
Hopp then grabbed the 80-pound woman, threw her to the grass, and twisted her arms behind her back, bodycam footage shows. Garner was still clutching a handful of wildflowers. A second cop, Daria Jalali, arrived within minutes and assisted in the arrest.
Then, despite Garner’s evident distress and small stature, Hopp pushed her left arm “painfully upward,” according to body camera footage and the lawsuit. Police repeatedly threw her on the ground, and hog-tied her on the side of the road—a controversial restraint that’s been banned by some police departments. Once her feet were bound, Jalali, Hopp, and their on-scene supervisor, Sgt. Philip Metzler, lifted her into the back of a police vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
“I’m going home,” Garner cried repeatedly.
As a result of the incident, Garner was left with a dislocated shoulder, a fractured humerus bone, and a sprained wrist, the lawsuit alleges. She was covered with bruises by the time she arrived at a hospital—although she wasn’t taken to the medical facility until several hours after she was first stopped by police, according to the lawsuit.
After the lawsuit was filed Wednesday and covered by local media outlets including KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Denver, the Loveland Police Department said in a statement that it’d investigate the encounter. Officials added they’d only heard of the incident this week, having not received any prior complaints. In the meantime, the department has placed Hopp on administrative leave, and reassigned Jalali and Metzler to administrative duties, according to the statement posted on the department’s Facebook page.
But Garner’s family wants to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone ever again—and they’re hoping for significant changes in personnel, leadership, and policy at the Loveland Police Department.
“This is not a ‘single bad apple’ type of scenario,” Sarah Schielke, Garner’s attorney in the lawsuit, told VICE News. “This is a systemic, cultural, deeply ingrained, coming-down-from-leadership type of attitude, where this is not community policing—it’s community terrorism, practically.”
She added: “If somebody’s dumb enough, in their mind, to not capitulate, they’re going to pay for it. Even if you’re an elderly disabled lady.”
While Garner’s children were doing their best to keep an eye on her, she slipped out to Walmart the afternoon of her arrest, Schielke said. Later, Garner wound up wandering out of the store without paying for Pepsi, a candy bar, a T-shirt, and some stain-removing wipes—worth less than $14 altogether.
Walmart employees stopped her and took the items back. They then refused her attempt to pay and called the police, according to the lawsuit.
Casey Staheli, a spokesperson for Walmart, said in a statement to VICE News: “We stopped the customer after noticing her attempt to take merchandise from the store without paying for it. To protect the safety of our people, the police were called only after Ms. Garner became physical with an associate.”
Hopp found Garner a few blocks away from the Walmart as she was walking home. When Garner appeared confused at his questions, he said to her: “You just left Walmart. Do you need to be arrested right now?” Then he tackled her.
At one point, a concerned citizen stopped and asked the officers, “Do you have to use that much aggression?”
“What are you doing? Get out of here,” Hopp said, according to body camera footage.
The man, who had pulled over to the side of the road, asked to know who Hopp’s sergeant was, saying he had seen the cop throw “that little kid.” (Garner is 5 feet tall, according to the lawsuit.)
“She just stole from Walmart and refused to stop, refused to listen to lawful orders, and to fight me,” Hopp told the man. “This is what happens when you fight the police. I have to use force to safely detain her. That’s what this is. This isn’t just some random act of aggression.”
Later, when Metzler arrived and the officers were recounting the events of the arrest together, Hopp admitted he “struggled” with Garner.
“You’re a little muddy, dude,” Metzler said, according to body camera footage.
“A little bloody, a little muddy, that’s how it works,” Jalali responded.
The officers were referring to Garner’s blood.
She was taken to jail and charged with theft of less than $50, obstructing a peace officer, and resisting arrest, according to the Loveland Reporter-Herald, though the Larimer County District Attorney agreed to dismiss the case in August 2020.
The intense encounter with police has still left its scars, though. Garner’s children have told Schielke that she’s able to find some peace playing solitaire, listening to music, or doing crafts at a memory care facility, but has otherwise become withdrawn and mistrustful. They noted that in the past, Garner was the ultimate, crafty home-maker, who loved to go to concerts and play cards.
“What little freedom and happiness Ms. Garner enjoyed in her life as an elderly adult with declining mental health was, on June 26, 2020, recklessly and deliberately obliterated by the Loveland Police Department,” the lawsuit states.
Tom Hacker, a spokesman for the Loveland Police Department, said the agency's professional standards unit will examine the incident. "There's no record associated with this event, no frame of video, no shred of any evidence that won't be looked at pretty thoroughly," he told VICE News.
It was unclear if the officers named in the lawsuit had attorneys who could speak on their behalf; the local police union didn’t immediately respond to VICE News' request for comment.
The logo of Home Depot is seen in Encinitas, California, April 4, 2016. (photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)
Home Depot to Face Boycott Over Georgia Voting Curbs
Hilary Russ and Joseph Ax, Reuters
Excerpt: "Black religious leaders in Georgia representing more than 1,000 churches called on Tuesday for a boycott of Home Depot Inc (HD.N), accusing the home improvement giant of failing to take a stand against the state's new Republican-backed curbs on voting."
eligious leaders in Georgia on Tuesday will call for a boycott of Home Depot Inc (HD.N) because of its silence on the state’s new voting curbs that activists say make it harder for Black people and other racial minorities to vote.Other Georgia-based corporations - including Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N) and Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) - have been meeting with the activists for weeks and issued statements opposing the voting restrictions.
Coca-Cola also hosted a meeting of several companies on April 13 with the faith leaders, but Home Depot did not attend and has since "ignored a series of follow-up requests, and has failed to speak publicly on the new law," the activists - led by AME Bishop Reginald Jackson and representing more than 1,000 chruches - said in a notice to media on Tuesday.
"Blacks and others have become wary and frustrated with spending their money (at) companies that do not support us on our right to vote and other issues," Jackson said last week.
Republicans across the country are using former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud to back state-level voting changes they say are needed to restore election integrity.
Opponents of the moves say they are intended to disenfranchise citizens who tend not to vote Republican.
More than 100 U.S. companies including Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) have declared their opposition to voting curbs that a number of states are considering implementing.
Home Depot said on Tuesday it believes "all elections should be accessible, fair and secure and support broad voter participation" and that it would "continue to work to ensure our associates in Georgia and across the country have the information and resources to vote."
It also said it ran its own initiatives, including registering more than 15,000 of its associates to vote.
Police officers work at a crime scene where gunmen killed at least 13 Mexican police officers in an ambush in Coatepec Harinas. (photo: Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Violence Erupts as Mexico's Deadly Gangs Aim to Cement Power in Largest Ever Elections
Falko Ernst, Guardian UK
Ernst writes: "Violent clashes between rival Mexican criminal groups - and their alleged allies in the security forces - are escalating ahead of mid-term elections in June, triggering a string of political assassinations and the forced displacement of thousands."
Clashes have sparked political assassinations and the forced displacement of thousands ahead of crunch 6 June polls
iolent clashes between rival Mexican criminal groups – and their alleged allies in the security forces – are escalating ahead of mid-term elections in June, triggering a string of political assassinations and the forced displacement of thousands.
State and federal security forces have actively colluded with – and even fought alongside – the warring factions, according to local civilians, civil society activists and gunmen from various factions.
But as well as engaging in pitched gun battles, criminal factions are also confronting each other on the electoral field.
“All the [criminal] groups are trying to make gains right now,” said a Michoacán political consultant with first-hand knowledge of how arrangements are brokered between organized crime and political candidates.
With more than 21,000 posts in local, state and national government up for election – including 15 state governorships – the 6 June polls are the largest in Mexico’s history, and criminal groups see the elections as an opportunity to further their interests.
Much of the recent fighting has focused on the western state of Michoacán, where the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (Jalisco New Generation cartel) has stepped up its conflict with an alliance of local groups calling themselves the United Cartels.
The violence has forced more than a thousand people to flee the area, feeding the flow of migrants heading to the US to seek asylum, and adding to the current uptick of arrivals at the border that the Biden administration is struggling to manage.
According to preliminary data by US Customs and Border Protection, Mexican nationals accounted for 42% of all apprehensions at the US southern border in March – up from 13% during last May’s peak in arrivals.
“They are leaving because they get caught in the crossfire, because their homes have been destroyed, [and] because the main roads into [the area] have been carved up to stop the advance of the Jaliscos,” said Gregorio López, a Catholic priest who has sheltered refuges in the nearby city of Apatzingán.
Amid the tumult, he said, local livelihoods have become unsustainable: “Basic goods aren’t getting through any more, there is no more fresh food, and everything has become very expensive, gasoline now costs three times as much as before.”
Locals say that some people had been forced to run by a “cleansing” campaign against those with suspected ties to the United Cartels. Others have simply fled.
The Jalisco cartel, Mexico’s fastest-expanding criminal network, considers Michoacán, rich in international trafficking routes and extortion markets, a key building block in its bid for national criminal hegemony. A source in the cartel said that gaining control over Michoacán was an “obsession” of the group’s leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, who was born in the state.
But its decade-long attempt to take over the region has so far been frustrated by the local opponents’ deep political and social roots. With neither side able to impose its designs on the other or willing to back down, more than 15,500 homicides have been recorded here from January 2011 to February this year.
The fighting goes hand-in-hand with the struggle for political power. Since campaign season officially began on 7 September last year, 69 politicians, including 22 candidates, have been assassinated across the country.
Greater territorial control allows criminal groups to move blocs of votes, giving them leverage to negotiate deals with current and future officeholders.
“If there’s one rule all of them know, it’s that only those who have the protection of the state can grow,” said the political consultant. This can be achieved through illicit campaign financing, which can later provide perks such as being able to tap into state finances and influence the actions of state security institutions.
One high-ranking lieutenant in a local faction that is currently non-aligned in the conflict said his group’s attempts to take on the United Cartels had failed because of the group’s powerful political connections.
He said: “They have the state government on their side … and when we try to attack, they send helicopters and launch operations.”
He hoped that his own group could balance things out by channeling votes from its area of control to a high-level candidate. He said: “The idea is that the next government will let us do our work … that there’ll be an alignment [with federal and state forces].”
Much of the recent fighting has raged around the strategic rural municipality of Aguililla, not far from the border of Jalisco, the home state of the Jalisco cartel. The violence has produced a humanitarian crisis: in recent days more than one hundred families have fled Aguililla.
The total number of people displaced by fighting is unknown: there is no official register, and those who have recently been displaced are not mirrored in the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights’ nationwide count of at least 346,945 displaced persons – a figure that the NGO is yet to update for 2020 and 2021.
Meanwhile, state and federal authorities have done little to protect the civilian population.
Salvador Maldonado, an anthropologist specializing in the security situation in Michoacán, said this reflects a political calculation by the current administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who came to power in 2018 offering “hugs not bullets”.
“He wants to avoid the high political costs past governments have suffered after they declared war against organized crime, so that he can achieve other priorities like structural reforms instead” such as in the energy sector, Maldonado said.
“The president’s view of organised crime is one that focuses on [helping] young people without work, but he completely ignores the enormous institutional corruption and state capture at the local level.”
Criminal operatives in various rival factions, local civilians and activists, agree that the problem of state complicity goes beyond simple inertia.
Soldiers and police, they say, have drawn up alliances with those they are meant to fight.
“The truth is,” one local said, “that the army and the national guard are allied with [United Cartels] … they are working together, they are doing operations together, some criminal leaders are even [embedded] with the army, riding in their helicopters and wearing their uniforms.”
Opposing criminal groups collaborate with different factions of the state in different geographical areas, leveling out advantages and perpetuating deadly violence.
“There are a lot of pacts [between state and crime],” said a white-collar broker providing services to the Jalisco cartel, “but only at the local and regional level. There is no one big pact.” This, he added, also helped to explain frequent attacks on the security forces by armed groups seeking to disrupt other factions’ arrangements.
Commanders of Mexico’s armed forces have repeatedly denied all allegations of corruption, saying that “no deviations of any type are tolerated”. López Obrador has described the security forces as “incorruptible”.
The Jalisco cartel has a long record of attacking state forces. An October 2019 ambush in El Aguaje – another town in Aguililla – left 13 state police dead. This April, it mobilised civilians to confront soldiers in Aguililla, leading to the temporary retreat of federal forces from the area, sources said.
Afterwards, López Obrador told reporters said that the army had “acted very well [in Aguililla] … because it did not lend itself to a confrontation”, reiterating his stance that “fire cannot be put out with fire”.
Locals say that Jalisco cartel forces reached the municipal capital, also called Aguililla, on 31 March. Since then, its men have been “going door to door”.
“They are making people choose sides … so that people protect them, tell them when [enemy operatives] enter” the area, offering small material benefits such as food parcels in exchange.
Those who do not comply are driven out of town – or killed.
“We don’t want to support any of those groups,” one local woman said, “but we might not have a choice.”
Terri Domer visits the riverside encampment in Cedar Rapids, where she weathered last August's derecho. (photo: Andrew McCormick/NBC News)
Crises Collide: Homeless in America When Climate Disaster Strikes
Andrew McCormick, NBC News
McCormick writes: "Terri Domer knows well what a brewing storm looks like."
For the homeless, natural disasters prove torturous for more than the obvious fact that it's worse to be outside than inside during a storm.
erri Domer knows well what a brewing storm looks like.
Domer, 62, an Iowa native, has spent her life watching thunderstorms gather and tornadoes dash across rolling hills. Last August, when the midday sky darkened over the riverside homeless encampment where Domer and four other people spent most nights — built on a sandy bank near downtown, under tall trees — she quickly set about covering up their supplies.
A campmate said Domer was overreacting and left for a walk. "Suit yourself," she told him.
Domer was busy weighing down a tent when she heard a shout: "I was wrong!" She turned to spot her companion racing back to camp. The sky behind him was "black," Domer said — darker than it had been just moments earlier, darker than she'd ever seen it.
The derecho hit with a fury, winds whipping up sand and snapping limbs overhead. Domer rushed for cover, pulling a tent canopy over her head. Tornadoes typically come and go in minutes. But the derecho, a straight-line windstorm, was relentless. All around Domer, branches and whole trees crashed to the ground.
"I kept thinking, 'When is it going to stop?'" Domer said. She said a prayer that she would live.
It's an immutable truth of the climate crisis that the most vulnerable are hit first and hardest. At a time of rising homelessness in the U.S. and as climate-related disasters become common — wildfires in California, monster hurricanes that thrash the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, an arctic blast in Texas — the rule holds.
"We're definitely seeing more homelessness, more housing disruption, as a result of these disasters," said Steve Berg, programs and policy director at the Washington-based National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Climate change didn't directly cause the Midwest derecho last year or any of those other disasters. Scientists are clear, however, that a warmer planet makes extreme weather more likely and more ferocious. For people experiencing homelessness, like Domer, the storms make matters only more difficult. Others are made homeless. In both cases, government agencies and nonprofits provide support, but increasingly the needs exceed their capacity.
Together, these experiences constitute a grim warning that the climate emergency is here already, draining resources and devastating lives.
There are an estimated 580,000 people experiencing homelessness in America, based on a single-night count in January 2020 — the fourth straight year homelessness had increased, according to a study released last month by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It was the first year since HUD began collecting data that the number of homeless people with children had gone up. And, as usual, people of color remained starkly overrepresented compared with the U.S. population overall.
Crucially, that's all pre-pandemic data, and the reality is likely to be worse than we know. Millions lost work because of Covid-19, and even as the economy recovers, there remain 8.4 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic hit. Eviction moratoriums have helped, advocates say, but as some of those expire soon, the situation could grow more dire still.
The homeless population in Cedar Rapids numbers in the hundreds. It's a far cry from the tens of thousands in larger cities, like Los Angeles, but the derecho's lingering impact here is a microcosm of the various crises that can befall homeless groups in the aftermath of extreme weather.
When the windstorm finally did let up, about 45 minutes after it had begun, Domer's campsite was in tatters: tents ruined, stoves and lanterns simply gone and just about everything else soiled with wet grime.
What struck Domer most, however, was the quiet. Gone were the normal afternoon sounds of the city. Even the nearby corn processing plant, a reliable source of ambient churning, was silent.
"I realized the whole town had been hit, and I thought, 'Oh, my God,'" Domer said.
The derecho swept across multiple states that day, leaving widespread and often severe damage in its wake. The Cedar Rapids area fared worst, with winds reaching 140 mph, the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. Two-thirds of the city's famously lush tree canopy was gone, much of it displaced onto streets and homes. And the power was out. In some parts of town, it would be weeks before it returned.
For the homeless, natural disasters prove torturous for more than the obvious fact that it's worse to be outside than inside during a storm.
Only one-quarter of the homeless population is considered "chronically homeless," meaning homeless for more than a year or experiencing repeat bouts of homelessness. At any given time, then, the vast majority of homeless people, including some who are chronically homeless, are scraping their way back toward stability. After disasters, backslide is all but inevitable.
Encampments are destroyed. Resources, often hard-won, are lost. If infrastructure is damaged, a job might become more difficult or impossible to get to.
Furthermore, many people who are homeless wrestle with untreated medical or mental health conditions that disasters might worsen. Domer, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, said the derecho triggered substantial anxiety and depression, which she's still coping with. Christian Murphy, who was also on the riverbank during the storm, said he worries that Cedar Rapids' devastated tree stock will lead to lower air quality, complicating trouble he has already with breathing.
After the derecho, a short distance from Domer's and Murphy's encampment, Kari Fisher surveyed the damage to the duplex where she lived with her husband and six children, ages 1 to 10.
When the storm hit, Fisher had been home-schooling, a new responsibility due to the pandemic but one she enjoyed. Structural damage to the home was clear; in the unit opposite Fisher's, a tree had smashed into the kitchen. City officials declared the home unfit for habitation, but with nowhere else to go, Fisher's family stayed. Power was shot for good, so for months they got by using plastic coolers and a propane camping stove. (Thanks to the downed trees, Fisher jokes, they also had plenty of wood.)
In November, police cited the family for unlawful habitation. (Fisher is fighting the citation; she faces possible jail time, even though the family had continued to pay rent.) They were directed to Willis Dady, a homeless services nonprofit, which moved the family into a Hampton Inn & Suites north of town, using federal emergency funds made available to the city.
Fisher expected they'd be there for a couple weeks. Six months later, fully eight months on from the derecho, they're stuck. In two hotel rooms, it's Fisher, her husband, an ex-husband who has a disability, seven children — Fisher gave birth to a boy in February — and two dogs. In the same Hampton Inn & Suites, there are dozens more like Fisher, and it's not the only hotel in town still housing people made homeless by the storm.
"It feels like sardines," Fisher said. "It's not sustainable."
While her husband works, Fisher spends days searching Zillow, Zumper, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for available homes. On rental application fees alone, the family has spent $4,500 — dipping ever further into diminished savings — but nothing comes through. With so many people looking, prices are high. By the time most units are listed, they're already gone.
"We're in a hole," Fisher said. "No matter how much I do, no matter how many phone calls I make, we're still here." Her "worst nightmare" is that the money supporting their hotel stay will run out before the family finds new shelter.
"I'm waiting for it," she said. "And when that happens, it's 'OK, what are we going to do now?' A tent at a campground? I can't raise children in a minivan." As of mid-April, the family hoped to move into a trailer.
Fisher's situation, advocates said, is characteristic. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — the first major storm in the U.S. that scientists linked to climate change — disasters have been routine drivers of new homelessness.
In Houston, for example, homeless rates fell year over year starting in 2012. In 2018, the year after Hurricane Harvey, they ticked back up. Last year, 11 percent of the city's unsheltered homeless population said they had become homeless because of the hurricane or another natural disaster, according to a survey by Houston's Coalition for the Homeless.
The problem isn't just that homes are destroyed. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, America is short nearly 7 million affordable housing units. During an extreme weather event, affordable housing — more likely to have been built in disaster-prone areas in the first place — is especially vulnerable and often hit the hardest, shrinking the already limited inventory. Pricier homes aren't immune to destruction, of course, so families who are financially better off might also find themselves in need of short-term, lower-cost options. Demand peaks at the same time that options are depleted the most.
"Disasters of this magnitude really trickle out," said Ana Rausch, program operations director at the Coalition for the Homeless. After Harvey, she said, "our regular housing of the homeless pretty much came to a halt, because we were trying to house people in the disaster shelters. And not all of those individuals were homeless."
The pattern goes like this: Disasters push people who had been housing secure toward insecurity. People who were already insecure or severely burdened by housing costs are pushed to the edge of homelessness. And, finally, people who were already homeless are pushed further back in the long wait for limited resources.
The web of government agencies and nonprofits designed to help, meanwhile, is stretched to the max.
In Cedar Rapids, Willis Dady typically serves 500 people in a year, including those who are actively homeless and those who are at risk of becoming homeless. Now, given the combined effects of Covid-19 and the derecho, 500 people need assistance every day, said Alicia Faust, the organization's executive director. The staff has risen to the occasion, working overtime, extending shelter hours and taking on more clients than ever, but still it's hard to keep up.
To fully meet the demand, Faust said, she would need 16 full-time homelessness prevention case managers, working 30 to 35 cases apiece. Willis Dady has three.
Bandwidth issues like that are a nationwide problem, said Berg, of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. And that's in part because the government responses to homelessness and disasters have both tended to treat symptoms of problems and not their root causes.
"There's always a response to the emergency," Berg said. "But there isn't an overall response to people becoming homeless or the [already homeless people] impacted by this weather."
When it comes to homelessness, that is, the response is overwhelmingly oriented toward people already in crisis — not the broad economic currents that underlie homelessness, including soaring rent costs, stagnant wages and the dearth of affordable housing. As for disasters, the government mobilizes in their aftermath, but it hasn't yet taken robust, transformational action to curb climate change and foster resilience.
Several recent and proposed policies could be cause for hope, however. And in some cases, solutions to homelessness and the climate crisis might be one and the same.
Between coronavirus relief measures passed during the Trump administration and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed last month, nearly $80 billion was allocated to HUD, the Treasury Department and various federal grant recipients to fight homelessness and housing instability, a HUD spokesperson said in an email. Moreover, the White House's newly announced $3 trillion-plus infrastructure plan includes funding to build and retrofit 1 million affordable and energy-efficient housing units.
"The Administration's plan will extend affordable housing rental opportunities to underserved communities nationwide, including in rural and tribal areas," the HUD spokesperson said. The plan would also "flexibly support communities in creating housing for people experiencing homelessness and the housing insecure."
Another promise of Biden's infrastructure proposal and Climate Action Plan: millions of jobs, as the administration seeks to build out America's clean energy infrastructure.
Advocates for the homeless expressed cautious optimism. New affordable housing is a clear win, while the benefits of upgrading and retrofitting existing units are twofold: Just as energy efficiency is good for the planet, it lowers utility costs for renters. As for jobs, many people who experience homelessness find work in construction already. If enough training is packaged with the green jobs in Biden's plan, as the administration says it will be, those jobs could be an apt fit and a much-needed path to stability.
Indeed, after the derecho, several members of the Cedar Rapids homeless community found work helping with the cleanup effort. Some continue to work in construction-related jobs as part of a Willis Dady employment initiative.
Domer, as it happens, has a background in road and home construction, with a former specialty in woodwork. She is in her 60s, and both shoulders give her trouble, so those days are probably behind her — she hopes to find work soon driving a cab. But plenty of people she knows, Domer said, would jump at the opportunity. At a time when many are still struggling with the storm's repercussions, it could be a way to finally move on.
"Anything would help," Domer said. "The pandemic was already tough, and then a derecho. We're still trying to figure out what normal looks like."
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