In 2018, Reel News went on a 14 week tour of North America to look at grassroots struggles around climate change, particularly struggles around a “just transition” from fossil fuels to renewable energy, where workers and communities control the process so that they benefit from the transition, and around “just recovery” – recovery from extreme weather events which do not exascerbate current inequalities.
What we found were inspiring and visionary struggles all over the continent, led by working class communities of colour, with people organising just transitions and just recoveries themselves. Now, you can see what we found in an 11 episode series.
Episode 9: Detroit, which sits on lakes representing 20% of the world’s fresh water – yet a staggering 100,000 households have had their water shut off. At an average 2.3 people per household, that’s nearly 250,000 people out of a population of just under 700,000 – in the city with the highest urban black population in the country.
This is a deliberate and brutal strategy to accelerate the gentrification of inner city Detroit by forcing people out of their homes, and the attacks are clearly part of a global trend by banks and multi-bilionaires to buy up water all over the world. But the people of Detroit, as always, are fighting back through collective action.
