Texas is getting hotter—nearly four degrees hotter in just the last few decades. The last 10 years all rank among the hottest years ever on the planet, with residents forced to navigate sometimes months upon months of 100-plus-degree days. We know our unhoused neighbors, residents without sufficient cooling, or those with medical conditions are highly vulnerable to heat stress and wildly undercounted heat-related death. But imagine trying to survive this monster heat in a 6x9 concrete box—without air conditioning—and you have a recipe for mass suffering and death. A judge already ruled the fact of most Texas prisons having no A/C unconstitutional. Now we’re waiting for the fix. 

This week, Deceleration speaks with Dr. Amite Dominick, founder & president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates (TPCA), about her long-standing advocacy for the incarcerated. She details how the fight began, the response from those in elected power, and why it’s very possible a breakthrough is right around the corner.

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“Project Matador” outside of Amarillo, Texas, pairs Fermi America and the Texas Tech University System seeking a pod of “hyperscale” data centers over 6,000 acres across a privately owned and operated electric grid. Already permitted for 6GW of power with 93 planned gas-fired turbines and seeking to build multiple nuclear power plants, this is a truly climate-breakdown accelerating power footprint that brings severe water concerns atop one of the planet’s most imperiled major aquifers that is relied upon by tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers (you know, the folks who produce our food and clothes, at least for those of us not wearing plastic). Deceleration’s guest this week is Kendra Seawright of Women’s March. She is doing the work of organizing the resistance on the ground that is pushing back on the many assumptions and assertions of what this project is good for—if anything. As more MAGA supporters start to split with President Trump on crypto and AI data centers, this means new challenges to foster a diverse hub of voices. We wanted to hear more about what that looks like and what lessons there may be for others in the trenches. 

“We didn’t expect a rubber stamp,” Seawright told us about the permit already in Fermi’s pocket. “We want real honest communication about what this is going to mean for our health and future generations too.” 

Next week is the deadline for a new permit application to take power production to 11GW (with a goal of 17GW of power and resulting pollution).

Details/Public Comment: https://www.amarilloaction.org/ai

Past Deceleration Data Center Coverage:

The Texas Data Center Rebellion Has Begun

Critical Texas Data Center Fights Happening Right Now

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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)
• Statement on AI Risk

More about Todos Agua:

• Esperanza Event Schedule

Subscribe to ICE Watch:

• Deceleration Newsletters

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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?

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 presentations to groups small and large. 

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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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’s Greg Harman speaks with Dave Cortez, Executive Director of the Lone Star Sierra Club, as part of Preparing to Protect, a series of interviews with those most targeted by the eliminationist engine of MAGA on how they are organizing to bash back to keep our communities safe. Topics in this podcast include right-wing organizing and rising autocracy in the United States, failures of organizing in Texas environmental movements, strategies to mobilize people around pocketbook concerns, and why we need to take the time for basic self-care in a world on fire. Dave also shares what’s percolating inside the state Sierra Club—including campaigns around energy and water justice—and how people can tap into those efforts.

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It’s the hottest year ever…again. Heat-related deaths have been spiking year over 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 same 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? Here we’re building a baseball field downtown and throwing possibly thousands of people from their homes to do it. Aside from the deep injustice of such measures, displacement is particularly cruel as we know (thanks to communities that track heat deaths, such as in Maricopa County, Arizona) that it is those without homes who are most at risk of dying from heat exposure. 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. Research by now Deceleration Executive Editor Marisol Cortez from several years ago shows that, even with $2,500 relocation assistance, forced evictions can be deadly. Evictions often force multiple moves, as Cortez explains, costing far more than that meager moving allowance. Currently, residents of nearly 400 units at the Soap Factory in downtown San Antonio are fighting a slide toward displacement and demolition of their units. Meanwhile, 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 gathering efforts to head off forced dislocation. There are lessons here for working-class residents everywhere who have ever been targeted for the Next Big Thing, even as the current big thing actually requiring our full attention—that is, our climate unraveling—goes largely unaddressed in local communities.

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

Understanding Who Heat Kills
Maricopa County 2023 Heat Deaths Report
…

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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Boca Chica, the “little mouth” of the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo is increasingly the epicenter of NewSpace new colonizing impulses bridged by an explosion of billion-dollar LNG projects seeking to feed Texas-fracked methane to the world market. It’s here in the lower Texas coast that has so far avoided much of the spoilage of the upper and middle coasts, themselves awash with petrochemical and fossil fuel facilities and all the risk and damages they pose to the land and peoples of the region. Next week the community of greater Boca Chica, let’s call it the Rio Grande Valley, or, as our guest reminds us this week: the sacred birthplace of the emergence of the Carrizo/Comecrudo peoples, is being challenged on two fronts.

October 15: In spite of an August rejection by a DC Circuit Court of a trio of LNG-related projects, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is putting the Texas LNG project back in motion and inviting public comments concerning the potential environmental threats of the project. Comments needed before 5:00 pm EST on October 15, 2024.

October 17: Two days later, Brownsville will host a public hearing on a state wastewater permit being sought by SpaceX, Elon Musk's colonizing mission to Mars now colonizing South Texas, that increasingly dominates the land and lives of this area. As the South Texas Environmental Justice Network writes, the wastewater permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) will permit polluted waters "on Boca Chica Beach and lands sacred to the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas." TCEQ will host a public hearing about SpaceX’s plans in Brownsville on October 17, 2024. Here’s a link to the TCEQ permit notice.

Our guest this week to discuss both of these matters in deep context is Christopher Basaldú, PhD, a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. Basaldú organizes in opposition to SpaceX, LNG, and border militarization in the state and for the recovery of Indigenous lifeways and values. Basaldú earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and later a masters in American Indian Studies and doctor of philosophy in anthropology from the University of Arizona.

Guest: Christopher Basaldú, PhD, Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas

More on Oct. 17 from the Regeneration calendar.
More from the STEJN.

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Deceleration Conversation: An April 2023 community conversation with Colombian decolonial scholar-activist Arturo Escobar, produced by Deceleration in partnership with UTSA. Financial support from the La Fundación Estudio, Mediación, Paz y Resolución de Conflictos (CEMPROC).

Guests: Arturo Escobar, Scholar/Activist; Diana Lopez, Southwest Workers Union; Society of Native Nations; Kimiya Factory, Black Freedom Factory; Maria Turvin, Yanawana Herbolarios. Facilitator: Marisol Cortez, Deceleration

More via Deceleration.

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What do building relationships of trust and care between neighbors have to do with climate justice? Everything, according to local organizer Kara Jordan, an herbalist, regenerative agriculture specialist, and mother whose work highlights the interdependence of all beings. Focusing on social and environmental justice, Jordan explores the spaces between grassroots and institutional initiative with curiosity and play. Her passion for food sovereignty is the thread that weaves these efforts together. In our conversation today, we hear some report backs from her mutual aid work around extreme heat in her Eastside neighborhood, as well as from her involvement with the City of San Antonio's new Climate Ready Neighborhoods program. In the process we reflect on the importance of affect, social infrastructure, and inside/outside approaches to climate action. To support the work of the Eastside Heat Team, call or text 210-463-5194. You can donate your time, money, or specific heat-busting items like water bottles, electrolyte packets, sunscreen, chapstick, fans, umbrellas, and more. For updates on the next Mother's Rebellion action, look on Instagram for @mothers_rebellion_satx.

Guest: Kara Jordan, Mother's Rebellion

More on this topic via Deceleration.

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We've heard that this summer has been one of the hottest the Earth has seen since long before official record-keeping began. But policymakers and public health officials too often strain to understand how that heat is impacting people. Medical anthropologist Rose Jones has called the systems of tracking and understanding heat a “train wreck.” Here in dialogue with Deceleration Jones explains why our understanding of heat's impacts is so poor—including unnecessary politicization and official disinterest—and how we can go about fixing this huge public health failure.

Guest: Rose Jones, Medical Anthropologist

More via Deceleration.

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Attacks on US energy infrastructure across the US are increasing. Incidents in Texas logged by the US Department of Energy shot up in 2021 and 2022. Meanwhile, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is mulling shifting more security obligations from plant owners to local law enforcement. Deceleration spoke with with Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, about all this and more.

Guest: Edwin Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists

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Deceleration Podcast #28: In the middle of October, San Antonio played host to the Climate Justice Alliance's Our Power Communities Summit. The gathering called together roughly 50 frontline community environmental-justice organizers from around the nation to “reground” the alliance members and begin developing a collective response to emerging so-called false solutions to the climate crisis.

Guests (in order of appearance): Christian Rodriguez, Ironbound Community Corp; Angel Ramos, The People's Port Authority; Mackenzie Marshland, Florida Rising; Alejandria Lyons, New Mexico No False Solutions; Ayana Grace, Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network; Katt Ramos, Richmond Our Power Coalition; Christine Cordero, Asian-Pacific Environmental Network

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In the shadow of the port shipping most of all US crude oil to the rest of the world, four 'Clean Slate' candidates are running for local City Council seats. They are bound together by shared values and policy interests—including a prioritization of clean air and water and the defeat of proposed desalination projects being built almost exclusively to benefit industrial users. One candidate is the president of the local teacher's union. One is a history professor and Sierra Club member. Another helps lead the local League of Women Voters. And our guest today, Armon Alex, is a climate organizer and activist who has worked in a variety of interesting roles highlighting the immense challenge and opportunities of this moment of increasing climate destabilization. Learn more about the candidate at https://www.voteclean.org/.

Guest: Armon Alex, Council Candidate

More about Clean Slate via Deceleration.

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This week, Deceleration speaks with the amazing team behind the Anti-Creep Climate Initiative, who utilize Marvel characters to educate the public about the dangerous fallacies behind fascistic thinking on global environmental challenges. Their webzine is a powerful and gorgeous read. In it they demonstrate how many of these dangerous concepts come straight out of Western environmental canon. They also show clearly why they are logically wrong. And who they ultimately serve. Wanna help stop the creep of ecofascistic ideas informing the manifestos of racist mass murderers? Here's some powerful food for thought. Write to the creators themselves at: thanoswasanecofascist@gmail.com. Image: Courtesy Marvel

Guests: April Anson, Cassie Galentine, Shane Hall, Alex Menrisky, & Bruno Seraphin

More on the Anti-Creep Climate Initiative via Deceleration.

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Somewhere in between decentralized rooftop solar and sprawling rural utility-scale solar farms is a middle path that could allow companies go 100-percent renewable in under a year. New solar startup Evergreen is about to unleash the "Goldilocks" of solar with a trio of projects in South Texas. And they expect to scale up quickly in this overlooked niche, says Evergreen CEO Cris Eugster. Local listeners may recognize that name as the former CPS Energy COO and one-time sustainability manager. "I feel like we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to figure out this energy transition and to tackle climate change," he said.

Guest: Cris Eugster, Evergreen

More on Evergreen via Deceleration.

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Who are the Tree and Bird Protectors of Brackenridge Park? They've been smeared as disinformation agents for linking a campaign to forcefully dislocate a thriving rookery of migratory birds the Brackenridge bond project that would claim more than 105 trees, ostensibly to restore and repair historic structures in the park. After saving the trees they pivoted to resist ongoing efforts to drive migratory birds away from Brackenridge's headwaters and uncovered evidence of forced displacement inside the SA Zoo.

Guests: Alesia Garlock & Daniel Armstrong

More via Deceleration.

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What do we learn from a year-long intervention on behalf of an unhoused neighbor who lost limbs to Winter Storm Uri? That it takes dozens of interveners to make up for San Antonio’s broken safety net and lack of climate preparation. A serialized intervention by Deceleration Co-Editor Marisol Cortez.

Guests: Maria Turvin, Yanawana Herbolarios; Rachel Tucker, Office of Councilmember Teri Castillo (D5); Marisol Cortez, Deceleration Co-Editor, Author; Hosting: Greg Harman, Deceleration Co-Editor

More via Deceleration.

Update: RIP Albert Garcia.

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Deceleration talks to San Antonio musician George Garza Jr., well known and loved for this work with Pop Pistol and other projects, about the ideas and processes that went into creating the new Deceleration theme music. Some sound recordings came right off the street, but that world-to-come vibe came straight from the heart.

Guest: George Garza Jr.

More about George Garza Jr. 

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Several incoming San Antonio Council members want to freeze utility disconnections, reform CPS Energy rates, and close the Spruce coal plant early. They'd do well to listen to the attorney fighting CPS Energy's lawsuit to preserve the people's right to reform the utility by petition.

Guest: Darby Riley

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In San Antonio, Lanny Sinkin is known as the former director of Solar San Antonio. Today he is known as Ali`i Mana`o Nui, adviser to Edmund Keli’i Silva Jr., who he considers the rightful leader of a soon-to-be-restored Kingdom of Hawai'i. Here I speak with Sinkin about his transition from solar advocate to king's advisor, his work with the Temple of Lono, fighting the Thirty Meter Telescope at the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea, the evolution of Dolphinville, and the ethics of swimming with whales and dolphins.

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